Pete Buttigieg critiques Elon Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency" for firing staff based on status rather than performance, contrasting this with his own data-driven approach in South Bend. He argues that tariffs function as regressive taxes on consumers while billionaires exploit shell companies to avoid capital gains, urging Democrats to pivot from moralizing to empathetic persuasion on issues like affordable housing and parental leave. Buttigieg emphasizes that overcoming political polarization requires bridging divides through shared human experiences, such as his journey as a gay man and father of Black twins, while advocating for strategic domestic investment in AI and clean technology to counter China's economic dominance without relying on isolationist policies. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Lachlan's Tragic Death00:02:07
What's up guys today we are joined by the Democrats secret weapon He's an Afghan war veteran and the former secretary of transportation He's also one of the first gay men to run for president and today he's here to explain how he kept the planes in the sky how billionaires legally dodged taxes why Trump's new tariffs could be hurt in America what he ate in Afghanistan that made him gay and most importantly why every Republican national convention grinder is on fire.
Give it up for Pete Buddha Judge.
You started a conversation when you sat down on the couch.
You said that Lachlan should have died, which is not the first thing we often hear from a future president.
He said Lachlan should have died in White Lotus.
Talk to us.
Like this is a big time, you know.
I hate to say it.
I love him.
He's a good kid, right?
But just from a narrative perspective doing that to his brothers.
Yeah.
Jesus.
No, I mean, you know, I think the dad has to sit with Chastin, my husband and I have been talking about this a lot.
The dad should have to sit with what he did.
The guilt?
Yes.
And there were so many parallels to what happens with Tanya where he's like floating when he seems like he's dying or maybe sort of dead.
Yeah.
I think just story-wise that otherwise, you know, I don't have a lot of notes for this year's White Lotus.
I mean, it was incredible.
I guess the one thing would be, does anything really happen to the ultra-wealthy?
Maybe that's what he's trying to showcase, which is kind of what always they always get away with it.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah, even the kid.
Even the kid.
Yeah.
Yeah, because by the time they're on the boat, it's like none of that even happened, right?
Yeah.
And then the four security guards that are guarding the guy, they die.
Yeah.
No one talks about them.
No, I forgot about that.
I ain't like her.
Like those guys they were mean to what's his name?
Guy thought.
Fuck that.
Yeah.
I'm okay with this.
That's a good point.
They were bullies, dude.
Really fell in love with that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, dude.
He had such a pure heart.
The Cost of Corruption00:02:55
Don't bully this guy.
Yeah, that is true.
And then the three women seem fine after witnessing a mass shooting.
Like, they're just flashing at the cheek, right?
Just on the boat, having a good time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah, in season one, if you remember, the guy, the really rich kid, like, stabs the guy, and then he's just in the airport 20 minutes later or whatever.
No questioning, no nothing.
And I think that's kind of to Andrew's point is like, I think the point of that show is the ultra-wealthy.
One guy has his wife killed.
Nothing seems to happen.
They just kind of get away with it.
But there is social mobility because Belinda joins the team.
The second she joins the club, what happens to her?
She seems fine.
She becomes the woman that has always hated.
She leaves her.
Doesn't she use the same language?
I think she's like the same.
I have to do something for myself.
But like the whole show, I was worried about her.
Yeah.
Physically, not morally.
And then it turns out, I was.
And I thought that was a genius choice.
You're worried about her well-being, and then she gets to $5 million.
You're so happy, but then she also just kind of becomes gross right after.
You know what I mean?
I thought that was a really good way to do it.
Money corrupts, baby.
Money corrupts.
Speaking of, how do we corrupt you?
No.
What do we do?
I keep on hearing conversations about how we're going to tax people who make a lot of money.
I've been very fortunate.
I've made a lot of money and they're doing a really good job at it.
So how do we tax the people who really are making a lot of money?
Like the guys who send their wives to space for fun?
How do we make sure?
What did you think about that?
The space flight?
Yeah.
I'm glad they got back okay.
I mean, yeah, I guess, I mean, it seems to me there's some other things we could probably be paying a little more attention to, but it's exciting.
Look, we're in this era of commercial spaceflight, which is exciting.
Yeah.
And I worked on this when I was Secretary of Transportation like that.
Oh, you were part of that.
Well, yeah, I mean, it's transportation, right?
Our main thing was just making sure on the way, it's actually a very wild west right now, big picture-wise.
The main concerns are making sure you don't hit anything on the way up because you've got to go through the national airspace.
And that if anything blows up on the ground, you don't hurt anybody on the ground.
Like those are kind of the main concerns.
But eventually, we'll have to start regulating that like we do commercial air channel, right?
In order to make it like now, I think there's a sense of fly at your own risk, right?
You understand if you're being ask permission when you're ready to go.
I'm guessing there's all kinds of, I don't, I haven't seen it, but I'm guessing there's all kinds of releases and paperwork.
If only we could talk to the transportation secretary.
But there's an understanding there's a different level of risk.
Yeah, right.
Whereas on commercial aviation, we have zero tolerance for risk.
And actually, that's worked out pretty well.
I think one thing that we always talk about the things that are going poorly.
We pay attention to the bad thing before we notice the good thing.
It does feel like that a little bit recently that the planes aren't making it as much.
Yeah, well, we can get into that.
But we had 15 years with zero commercial airline fatal crashes.
15 years.
Taxing Capital Gains00:15:16
Think about that.
Like just in the time I was secretary, what about 4 billion people get on airplanes?
Like statistically, if you took your seat on an airplane and you were sitting there buckling your seatbelt, eating your snack, you would be statistically more likely to randomly die of natural causes than to be involved in a fatal crash.
And that didn't just randomly happen.
That happened years of technology, regulation, policy, like a lot of things go into that.
And that's what it looks like kind of on the other side of that process, where with commercial spaceflight, it's very new.
It's understood that it's very risky, and I guess that's okay.
But I don't want to lose the first thing you asked about, which is taxation, because I think, you know, a big thing, I think most Americans, definitely my party, but I think most Americans believe that if you're making a billion dollars, good for you.
But like you should at least be paying an effective tax rate that's comparable, or I would argue more than like a firefighter.
And that's not true right now.
Because nobody really makes a billion dollars.
Right, because it's all equity.
Nobody makes income.
Like anybody that's generating that type of wealth is not making income.
So it's almost like, and this is not like a woo-hoo, like, oh, we got it so tough, but it's almost like the people who are, I think Miles used the term like not middle rich, like middle class, like they're the ones that are actually paying what they should pay.
If they're adhering to the tax code, they're not, you know, hiring these tax attorneys that are going to attack it all willingly and try to reduce whatever they're paying in.
But let's assume, let's take it for face value, right?
Somebody, an athlete or somebody that's making $5 million, and let's say that they pay $2.5 million around.
The concern I have really is potentially the corporations.
And I'm not smart enough to even know about this stuff, but it seems to me, and I think tariffs play into this, so I'd love to hear your technology.
But it seems to me on the surface, and again, I'm giving a very emotional argument.
You can give me tons of data, call me an idiot for even thinking this, but it's all.
Okay.
Seems to me that there's been an effort that has been supported to send the manufacturing of some of these products overseas to increase profits, right?
Sure.
Or maybe it's more effective to manufacture them overseas.
Maybe it's not all nefarious, but the idea is to like increase shareholder profits or increase the profits of the company.
Which I'm not necessarily against.
What I'm against is when you also put these shell companies overseas to decrease, like you create the headquarters and you put it in Dublin or something like that so you can avoid taxes.
And it's a P.O. box.
Like nobody's even there.
Exactly.
So you can't do both.
You can send the manufacturing overseas.
But at least if we're taxing the revenue of that company that's generating billions of dollars, you would like to believe that that money would come back to the American people and then we could reinvest in the American people.
And then maybe there's other industries that would pop up and those jobs could transfer from manufacturing to those new ones.
Or vice versa.
But you can't do, to me, it just feels like if you do both, you are using the marketplace that America is.
Entrepreneurship, all of that, but not really giving back.
And then stealing from it.
Yeah, there's no question, especially because a lot of what that tax revenue goes into or is supposed to go into here in the U.S. is what then turns around and makes it possible for businesses to thrive.
Can you give me this example of that?
Yeah, my favorite example is probably the smartphone.
So have you ever noticed like in talks or like whenever somebody mentions a smartphone, they like start to pull it out of their pocket or something like that.
But so the federal government could not have invented the iPhone, right?
Like I don't think any of us would want a phone that was like invented by the federal government.
That thing would suck.
That is like all of the design, the manufacturing supply chains, that's the kind of thing that corporations can do very well.
And Apple did it very well and their competitors.
But what makes the iPhone work?
Well, among other things, the Internet.
The Internet was literally invented by a federal research project.
And it would never have been possible to invent the Internet with a private company because you wouldn't have got the kind of capital return, even though it's a trillion-dollar idea or a multi-trillion dollar idea.
Companies can do multi-billion dollar ideas, but a trillion-dollar idea like inventing the internet, that requires basic research.
And that's the kind of thing the government's supposed to do, among many other things.
It requires basic research.
What does that mean?
Yeah, by basic research, I mean things that are so fundamental that you actually don't know for 50 or 100 years if they're going to have a return.
They might never work out.
Oh, yeah.
You can't look at it as this thing that's going to be profitable.
It has to be a civilian endeavor versus.
Yeah, it's different from research on like a pharmaceutical company researches a new medication, expecting that they're going to have a return in the next 10, 20 years.
Right.
At least kind of within the kind of profit run.
But public parks is another version of this and stuff like that.
You can't privatize at the public park.
Right.
This is the whole idea of public goods.
Sure, sure.
Why we have governments, why we collect taxes.
God, we're turning into such libs already, dude.
But there's a handshake, right?
There are the things that only the government can do.
And then there are the things that the private sector can and should do.
And they meet in the middle.
But if you start shorting, and part of what really worries me right now about this kind of war on academia, and there are some things about academia that need to change, but the war on academia, the cuts to cancer research, the cuts to science research, this kind of like general anti-science like atmosphere that I think is emanating from the administration, like that costs us in ways that don't show up on a corporate profit and loss statement six months from now or a year from now.
But in terms of whether a country, a society, and economy is productive and is growing and is innovating, that starts to really cost you over time.
And if we're shorting that, or if corporations and extremely wealthy people don't want to be paying into that through taxes, that is, I think, a classic example of a kind of short-term gain that causes long-term pain.
I'm really worried about that.
And I think that's why there seems to be a lot of support for the administration right now, or one reason why, and even support for the administration when it comes to tariffs.
You know, when the tariffs happen and you hear about like the stock market being deeply affected, most Americans are not invested in the stock market.
So they're like, I don't give a fuck.
Oh, rich people are losing some money or 50%.
We can go off the numbers.
Meaning there's a large swath of Americans that don't feel directly.
But here's the thing, right?
Tariff, so part of what's happening is the markets are responding to their belief that the tariffs will probably make the world economy less productive and make a recession more likely.
But a tariff is a tax that people pay on stuff they buy every day.
And proportionally, if you're, what'd you call it, middle rich versus like people in the neighborhood I grew up in in South Bend, Indiana?
Sure.
Like proportionally, it's the people in Indiana who are spending a much bigger portion of their income at, let's say, Walmart.
And everything at Walmart is about to get more expensive.
You're 100% right.
I'm talking about the knee-jerk emotional reaction when you see like people who have money and have seemingly left you behind as they've gotten richer start to suffer a little bit.
You go, yeah, I don't really care if you're suffering.
In the same way that when the Palisades fires happened, there was this sentiment of like, oh, a rich person's third home is on fire.
They'll figure it out.
Not this person's entire life and belongings just went up in smoke.
So I think that there is this like sentiment amongst a lot of Americans.
You probably experienced it where you're from, just this kind of being like left behind.
And I think this taxation of these corporations is a perfect example that really justifies that sentiment.
It's like, why are you using the American marketplace and the support that we've given you and the lack of regulation?
There's a reason why these companies don't sprout up in other countries, right?
They sprout up here.
And it's not just because they happen to be these unique smart individuals.
It's because there is this marketplace that allows them to thrive here.
You don't get to remove the headquarters so that you can not pay your fair share of taxes that's going to then support the next generation of people who do the same thing.
But how do you tax them?
What do you do?
But look at what's about to happen, right?
Like as we speak, congressional Republicans are working on a budget framework that's going to cut corporate taxes.
Like that's one of the biggest things it's going to do.
And even this president, you know, the least popular he ever was last time around was when they passed his tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.
So a lot of this is about, look, can I ask a question about that real quick?
Is there a world where, and I doubt that this is possible, but is there a world where if they do that, it will influence companies that have gone abroad with their headquarters to come back here?
I think that's a good question.
No, no, I get that argument.
But honestly, there are ways to structure taxes so that they capture where the wealth, the value and the wealth is actually created.
Like you can have a P.O. box in the Bahamas or Ireland or whatever.
But so one of the things, for example, that happened in the last administration was an international agreement on like a threshold, a minimum.
And now it only works if everybody agrees on it.
This is part of why diplomacy matters so much.
But no other country really wants to see too much of that happening either.
So there's a way to create a floor that gets you a more level playing field.
An international agreement for taxation of corporations.
Yeah, the basic terms.
So even if your account is in Switzerland, if you have a trillion dollars in Switzerland or the cayman or whatever, you're a trillionaire.
You're going to get taxed as such.
Exactly.
So it reduces the incentive to offshore your books.
Now it kind of seems like you're making the argument for a tariff on Lesotho.
Right?
I don't know why they're beating up on Lesotho.
No, no, no.
I think the justification for that was so that someone can't go put a manufacturing factory on the plate.
Tariffs out of their place, right?
I mean, we're not limiting about tariffs in general, but just taxation.
But again, what really worries me about tariffs is those don't amount to a tax on corporations.
They amount to taxes.
Without a doubt.
I mean, pushback, sorry.
I'm on a pushback.
And this is something Andrew brought up on a call that I completely agree with.
And I'm an idiot.
But I feel when people say these things, oh, the buck gets passed on to the consumer.
That only happens because the corporations have exploited profits to the highest possible degree to keep their shareholder share price as high as possible.
Things have gotten more expensive over the past 50 years, every year.
It's not just inflation.
I think corporate greed is a big part of that.
So why is it that now that there's a tariff, their profit has to stay the exact same and nobody's looking at them as perpetrators of any kind of greed?
And it's just, oh, the United States government is deciding here's a measure to help middle America.
And now we have to, we have to eat that.
But how is making Middle America pay more a measure to help middle America, right?
I mean, well, I would, and I, I don't, I do think I get more frustrated with Democrats because I want very badly to be that.
I definitely do not identify as conservative, but I find there's this, I, when I go to Middle America, and I'm sure you go there, we, we travel the country.
Yeah, you live there, yeah, that's what I meant to say.
But it's like, oh, there's like decay in some of these places.
And it doesn't feel like the party that I want to identify with has any empathy for them.
And this, to me, was an idea that could help bring jobs back there.
And I don't think the execution has been great from what I'm seeing, but this could help them.
Why don't we look at any measure that could help them beyond let's keep things the way they are?
Because the way status quo is not helping.
I agree on that.
Yeah, I think that's really important.
And I think what my party has to do is respond to this in a way that doesn't make it sound like our whole argument is let's just go back to 2024, right?
Like if things like this, moments like this, movements like the one that's in charge of the White House right now, don't spring up in a country or an economy where everything's going along fine.
And look, I lived this too.
I grew up in South Bend, Indiana.
People think South Bend, they know Notre Dame.
The big employer that propelled South Bend wasn't Notre Dame.
It was Studebaker.
Studebaker made cars.
Before the big three, it was the big four.
And we were one of them.
It dominated our city, grew our city.
And then in 1963, they shut down.
That's 20 years before I was born.
And we were still dealing with it 20 years later.
We were still dealing with it 50 years later when I became the mayor there at the age of 29.
And what had happened was, I mean, when we were going to school, I would go in between just acres of collapsing factories that literally looked like a war zone.
I have been to war zones that looked very similar to the way a lot of places in the industrial Midwest, like where I grew up, looked because of some of these things you're talking about.
Which is why I think there's an appeal to saying, we're going to bring back manufacturing.
And by the way, again, I don't want to move away from what I was saying that we shouldn't go back to where we were because I think a lot needs to change.
But I would point out that in our entire lifetime, the year when there was the most investment in factories in the United States, the most factories being built, was last year.
Because there were a lot of policies, the chip stuff, the manufacturing stuff, trying to get more of the green economy stuff to be built on U.S. soil that led to a lot of these factories.
Now, a lot of them are still in construction as we speak.
Some of them actually opened, some of them still haven't.
But right now, in Kokomo, Indiana, I just read a story today about 370 workers at Stellantis who just got laid off, auto workers who got laid off because of the tariffs.
So this is a tool that you can use for sure.
But it's absolutely critically important that you know what you're doing when you do.
And if you're just making shit up as you go along, or if you're doing it for a reason that's actually less about helping Middle America and more about consolidating power, which is what I think is actually happening.
We can get into that.
Then it's not going to work.
But I don't want to completely disagree with what you're saying earlier.
Like, yeah, part of what's happening is like part of why things cost more is that they actually cost more.
But also, we've seen a lot of expansion of the corporate profits that people cash in on, right?
Which help to explain why a lot of things cost more.
But to me, the answer to that is, okay, let's have a fairer tax system that says, well, I mean, at risk of sounding simplistic, like you pass a law, like we can do this, right?
It's not like laws, for example.
It's like, it's not going to be income tax, right?
Because they'll find a way to not have income.
So you can adjust capital gains, right?
It doesn't have to be like all the way at the level that it used to be.
But if capital gains, you're only taxing them when they cash out.
And a lot of these guys won't cash out.
They just take loans against their investments and then loans aren't taxable.
So they live for free.
So that's where the idea of wealth taxes come in, right?
And what is that?
If you're just sitting on it at a certain point, especially if you're past a certain point and how much you're sitting on, you got to contribute a little bit.
I mean, this is not a novel.
Property taxes are that way, right?
Like, you don't wait, depends where you live, but usually you don't wait until you sell a home to have to pay property tax on every year.
Like, you contribute a little bit of the value of the real estate you're sitting on, right?
And that goes to the county roads and the school and the sheriff's department or whatever else you count on, right?
So, there is a way to do that nationally.
Property taxes are going to close that gap.
I don't think it's going to close that gap.
I mean, if you had all of these ads, well, you have pieces of that a lot, right?
Trade Deficit Realities00:17:34
No, I'm not saying we shouldn't do it.
I just think that there is this feeling, this sentiment, I think, that Akash was tapping into as well.
And there's two things.
Like, you seem like someone who's very knowledgeable, very aware of all these things.
You know, these people that were fired in this random factory in what did you say it was I?
Tokomo, Indiana.
In Indiana, right?
It's like the average person might not know about that.
They don't know about these factories being built, but you have to meet the average person where they feel emotionally.
And like, I think you do a really good job, and I've seen a lot of your interviews is like acknowledging the emotions of the people that you're talking to before giving them evidence that might be contrary to them.
Yeah.
Instead of this like finger-wagging approach, which is like, oh, you're stupid if you don't agree with me.
Really important.
But just quick, like I think it'd be, I think the average like American isn't even aware that like what Jeff what Amazon makes a year and what they pay in taxes.
Like I think they paid zero dollars last year.
A bunch of these corporations.
And I get what they're doing.
And I, it's like they're writing off losses from other parts of the business or they're reinvesting that money and growing the business.
And I don't want to, I don't want the pendulum to swing so far that you can't start a business and you can't grow and thrive.
And I think that's like one of the great things about America.
But there has to be this middle ground.
And if we don't do something about it, the American people should at least be aware of the, I don't want to say the CEOs, but the people, the people that own these companies that are essentially stealing from the American people and using the system.
Like we should be aware of who they are.
Now, I'm not saying we should do anything to them, but they should be shamed.
Or taxed.
If they're not going to pay the taxes, you're going to pay it emotionally.
Because that, like, I don't really care about their emotions.
I just want to tax them.
I do think there's association.
There's going to be these people that you might underestimate.
Yes, true.
But like, maybe their partners will, like, there will be no more chick flights of space.
I promise you.
After the reaction to this, there'll be no more chick flights of space.
I promise you.
It will not happen again.
And the next one that happens, it will have like a real purpose.
That's a fight when they get home.
When she gets home, he's going to be like, you see how much shit I had to deal with fucking.
Also, guys, tour dates on May 9th and 10th, Virginia Beach, June 19th through 21st.
I'm going to be in Salt Lake City at Wise Guys.
All those dates and plenty more on Akashing.com.
Now let's get back to the show.
Hold on a second.
Don't skip forward, guys, because it's the world's fastest ad read.
Let's get a fuck miles in the chat, by the way, to prove you didn't skip.
We got Raleigh, North Carolina, Poughkeepsie, Portland, Fort Worth, Austin, Stanford, Philly, Levantown, Chandler, and San Diego.
More dates to come.
You can get it at my website, markgagnonlive.com.
And I can't wait to see you guys there for consensual time where no one's going to have no one's going to suck my dick.
Somebody suck his dick.
I could be assuming wrong, but it seems like you're against the current administration's tariff plan.
And what would you do different?
Because no one's giving actual solutions.
Yeah.
So I think what you do is you peg it very basically, you do what they're pretending to do.
So what they said they were doing is they're kind of scanning all of the different countries and they're saying, okay, here's some countries that are really not trading with us on fair terms.
Like they're restricting our trade with them or they're artificially manipulating their currency.
China does this for sure.
What does that mean?
To artificially manipulate your currency.
So in a nutshell, the cheaper the exchange rate, the more you're going to export because the cheaper your goods are, right?
So the strong dollar, right?
Basically, the weaker the dollar is actually, the cheaper our stuff looks to the rest of the world and the more they're going to purchase our things.
So if you're China, one thing you're going to do is you're going to, it sounds counterintuitive.
Like usually you think like a nationalistic country, we want our currency to be cheaper.
You make your currency cheap so you have a competitive advantage.
Yes.
Now, how does that work?
But think about it.
If you ever traveled in like Southeast Asia and the dollar's doing really strong, you're like, wow, I'm going to buy like everything here in Thailand.
It's the first thing, right?
Like when you're going to Europe and you find out the Euros, like there are moments where it's like under the dollar and you're like, oh my God, let's go.
I'm getting this hotel.
If I go to India, I want a five-star hotel.
It's $200, $300 right now.
So that applies on everything from your experience as a tourist to like major industrial cultures, right?
And how does one do that?
Do they print more money?
So you can print more money.
You can buy and sell bonds.
You can, some countries just officially set an exchange rate and then use their central bank to do.
There's all kinds of ways to do it.
But the point is, part of trading deals is you're supposed to promise not to do it.
And so what I'm saying is what you do is you look for a place where there's an unfair trading practice and then you respond.
And you say, okay, you either drop this trading practice or we're going to impose these restrictions on how you trade with us, which again is exactly what they say they're doing, but it is not what they're doing.
And you can tell.
They came up with this weird formula.
It's actually the same thing that ChatGPT would suggest if you just ask ChatGPT, like, hey, hey, like, make up a table of how I should turn your shares.
They used a totally different measure called the trade deficit, which we could get into, and said, okay, whatever the trade deficit is, we're going to do this formula off of that.
And by the way, there was a math mistake that a conservative think tank discovered in the way they did it.
And they just randomly applied, there were islands that don't even have people.
There are islands that are actually like U.S.-UK.
I heard that this is a little bit of a misnomer, though.
I heard that there was a language, there's a little confusion with language where they said reciprocal, but it was supposed to be proportional.
Either way, it showed the sloppiness of the process.
Sure, in terms of the communication, but if the actual process, and I don't want to seem like I'm defending the administration, but I do want to seem like it's important that we get true information out there.
Yep.
So it's like if they're doing proportional tariffs to that trade deficit, that would make sense.
If it's reciprocal, it doesn't make sense because there's no way you could match a trade deficit from a country that is.
Right, but what I'm saying is I think it also doesn't make sense as policy.
Like a trade deficit may or may not be helpful to us economically.
Actually, it's not just a simple thing, like trade deficit bad.
So what I'm saying is you use the tariffs in a much more targeted and specific way when you know that you either have that kind of unfair trade situation or you're trying to protect a certain industry that you think is vulnerable domestically.
Right.
But it's really important to know what you're doing or else a whole bunch of people get screwed in the process.
Like the other day I was having breakfast in Michigan out and a couple of people came up to me.
They run like a little shop that was right next to the breakfast place where I was eating.
And the woman who runs it said, I'm not sure what we're going to do.
It's like clothes, like bags and stuff.
And they store stuff from all over the world.
And she said, you know, we just put an order in.
We don't even know how much it's going to cost us.
And I don't know what I'm going to do for next month.
I got some inventory here I can use this month, but we're going to be screwed, especially if we don't even know how to plan.
Because the other thing you need to do, it's like any form of diplomacy.
Like you do shots across the bow, you make clear what, you know, if you do this, we're going to respond that way.
And there has to be some like logic to it or order to it if you want to shape the behavior of other countries, right?
And what we're seeing instead is this like really like chaotic, like grab-ass policy where like he changes his mind every couple of days on things, right?
And that makes it that much harder, especially if you're a small business or if you're a giant corporation, you have all kinds of hedges and like ways you can maneuver through this.
Or they'll just remove the tariffs.
That was another thing that really frustrated me.
If you're going to put the tariffs on, put them on everything.
Seems to me like hold it.
But you know, they're like picking and choosing what they're going to do.
Yeah, so now Apple doesn't have the tariffs.
And it's just like, but to me, that frustrated because Apple is the one that should be paying more than anybody.
They're the one that parks their money overseas.
They're the one that's skirting the taxes.
The mom and pop businesses that are fucked by the tariffs are still going to have to pay.
So now you're disproportionately punishing the people that are actually doing the right thing for the country in the first place.
They're building their small businesses.
They're paying into the system.
And I do think one thing that, again, I don't like the way it's executed.
I don't agree with a lot of things that are happening in this administration.
But I do like that it kind of shone a light on something that didn't seem like it was getting talked about by either party, which is there is a lot of decay happening, which I do.
That's one thing I really have a lot of hope for you: that you live there, you reside over it, you've experienced it and you speak to it.
And I sometimes wonder if you get frustrated.
I mean, you can find a more diplomatic way of saying it, but have you been frustrated at all with the way that it's worded amongst the Democratic Party where it seems like it's a lot more identity politics, which matters, but not, to me, it's not as prescient as, I don't know, some people are pressing as people who can't afford to feed their families and are losing jobs.
Yeah, especially because there are a lot of people that I think Democrats are understood to care about.
Yes.
Low-income people, black and brown people are disproportionately caught up in the economic pain when something like this happens.
And so I do think my party needs to do a much better job, especially with the kind of finger wagging that you're talking about.
I think we are very prone to that.
And I've seen it happen on any side.
I think a lot of people get this sense of moral conviction and you're so sure of it that you start to think it makes it okay to be an asshole.
Because you're deep down, like the thing, and this is like far right and far left movements through the ages.
But I think it's definitely true of far right and far left in the U.S. right now.
You just think you can treat people however you want.
You say whatever you want about them because they're evil.
And if they win, all is lost.
And their pain becomes intellectualized.
Like you'll see think pieces of like, why does the South love MAGA?
Like, how can we, like, why, why is neo-Nazism on the rise through like a chart?
And I feel like it misses the feeling of low-income people saying, like, no, we're in pain.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think pain is a really important place to start because if you encounter somebody in pain and you approach that with compassion and you actually listen, that's a very different place to come from than like, either how can I use this or how am I going to judge the choices that this person made while in pain?
Especially if they have developed very understandably a distrust of everybody.
So what are things a Democratic Party can do better?
Because I like you go speak to both sides.
We've begged so many Democrats to come on this platform.
You were the only guy that agreed and then you had to back out allegedly because you had to do debate prep.
Oh, okay.
Sorry.
That seems like a big deal.
I'm going to work out on the end.
But we've been trying to.
It was like Mark Cuban, who was obviously a surrogate for the party, and he came on.
He was fantastic.
But everybody who asked is, you know, they just wouldn't do it.
Yeah.
Look, there's this, even like going on.
I don't want to get away from Alex's question.
Yeah, no, but I mean, to your point, like, part of it is like, where do we go?
Right.
To me, especially after we lose, our party or any party has this debate of like, what do we have to say and how do we say it?
To me, there's actually three things we need to deal with.
What do we have to say?
I mean, like, the policies, the ideas.
If they're right, we should hold to it.
If we're not so sure they're right, we should rethink them.
So there's that.
Then there's how do we say it?
That's the tone, the message, the style, whether people feel like you're wagging a finger at them or not, whether people think you get the kind of pain they're going through or not.
And then the part nobody talks about is where we say it.
And I think right now, where we say it is kind of everything because there are so many spaces where people, like I'm sure you don't think yourselves as maybe a political show or a news show.
Look, the reality is there's probably a lot of folks who are like, this is where they're getting their news because they're not sitting watching CNN.
I mean, I remember the moment when I was back in college that I realized I was getting more of my news from the Daily Show than I was from news sources.
And so I think it's really important for anyone practicing politics, and definitely my party after what just happened to it, to be saying, okay, where else do we need to be?
And like, it's all well and good for me to keep going on Fox News, and I will, although they don't seem to be inviting me as much lately.
But he just called y'all pussy.
I like that.
Talk your shit.
Talk your shit, Pete.
I'm just saying.
We were really close to having a conversation about the whole signal gate.
Do you put the wrong dude on your just didn't quite get around?
Was it debate press?
They were working on something.
But a lot of people aren't watching left, right, or center.
They're not watching television cable news all the time.
And I think my party has this illusion that we're the savvy ones about tech.
And 15 years ago, we were, right?
Like we were onto things like Facebook and social media, probably a little more than the right was, or we were there first.
But at least since 2016, the Twitter election, like that has been true less, right?
So I think we need to be prepared to go everywhere.
And that's always been my style.
I mean, largely because I had to when I was first running for president.
I would talk to anybody who would listen, which at first wasn't a lot of people.
And I would go to any place that would have me.
But, you know, to go back a little bit in what I was saying, I do think we also need to revisit what it is we're offering.
Because if it sounds like what we're offering is, let's just go back.
This isn't working out.
Obviously, the terrorists are hurting people.
He's consolidating absolute power.
Lots of things are bad about this, which is true.
Therefore, let's go back to that.
You have Bernie and AFC who clearly have a message that's resonating.
Why isn't the party getting behind that?
So I think a lot of what they have to say will get more and more traction in the party, especially on the economic piece, right?
This idea that you have a lot of regular people in regular life getting screwed over by the way things work.
And if we don't have better services and fairer taxes, like we're just never going to get through that.
And it's thrown in their face.
And it's thrown in their face quite often.
Look how great Biden's economy is.
Look at the stock market.
And they're like, that doesn't affect me at all.
Serial's $10.
Yes.
What are you talking about?
Yeah, I would feel deeply offended if I was them, Especially when you throw that kind of support behind one specific party.
And I think that's why you saw a lot of them start to migrate.
So then what do you do?
Like, what is how do you get working class people back?
Well, first, I think we need to be more disciplined and louder about that economic message.
They'll look, to be clear, we will be advancing policies that make sure you are economically better off.
What does that mean?
That means that you can, you know, the one thing I think people do give us a lot of credit for is healthcare, but there's more to do on that, right?
We're not going to let them like tear up Obamacare.
We're going to make sure that there is a fairer tax code, like not just standing against the tax cuts for the rich that he's about to push through Congress, but actually having a tax code where there's not a benefit to a corporation, like moving billions of dollars overseas, where there's not a benefit to kind of hiding your worth, where you're not better off basically with wealth than work, which is where the tax code is right now.
We, I think, need to be much more clear about what we would provide in terms of services for people.
Like, we still, we're the only country, I think maybe Papua New Guinea is the only other country in the world that doesn't do a policy for parental leave, like some level of like national guarantee that when you have it, don't start this, bro.
You will get leave.
Don't start this, man.
I got people trying to have kids working at this company right here.
We cannot, and we cannot recover from this financial piece.
It can be done, I promise.
Because we did it when I was great.
When I was greater, we did it.
Locally, for city employees.
And we, at our company, we pay for anybody that wants to have their eggs frozen.
It's great.
We don't hire women, though.
We will pay for it.
It's always a loophole.
Some type of a loophole.
These middle rich.
We need to tax them.
No, I think it's not.
The cost of eggs are too high.
But yes, we should absolutely pay for it.
Sorry.
To finish, and I had another question based on the future.
But I think there are also some things that we need to kind of rewire in the way government works to make it work better for people.
And I lived this.
So, for example, I'm watching them basically burn the federal government down.
And obviously, I've got problems with the way they're destroying cancer research or making it harder for the FAA to keep airplanes safe.
Like a lot of that is bad.
But I will also admit that I have been furious and frustrated with the way things work in our federal government.
And it's actually gotten to where it makes it harder to do things that I think progressives in particular care about.
Building things, building housing, building roads and bridges, which I lived for four years, building clean energy projects, like stuff we should objectively definitely be doing.
And we've gotten our own way with these layers of process, layers of procedure, all of them introduced with good intentions, but which collectively have made it almost impossible or unaffordable to do anything.
So you want less regulations.
So we need a, yeah, we definitely need to be smarter and there needs to be less procedure, still powerful regulations to keep people safe.
So we're going to be a department to make sure the government is efficient.
I think that's like really a great gone and it's great.
Government Efficiency Push00:05:53
Didn't you work as another excuse?
Do you work on that in the private sector?
Isn't that what?
Yeah.
What was that company that you work for?
The consultant company?
McKinsey McKinsey.
And isn't that partially like what governments will hire a company like that to for to do Doge stuff, right?
Yeah.
I wouldn't call it.
Again, you're a fucking doge on the Doge.
You're such a doge.
If a Doge was actually about government efficiency, I'd be all for it.
But it's not about that.
No.
What is it about?
It's about power.
Look, I'll give you an example.
Yeah.
You tell me people in government are concerned with power.
I know.
Shots.
I know.
Hot take.
Truth bomb stand dropped on flagrant.
No, but look at look at it this way.
So, yeah, when I was in government, like as mayor, when I had my kind of small government that I was running, we took whole departments apart and put them back together.
We removed people who weren't performing very well.
And by the way, that was hard.
Like one of the reasons I've always had a problem with this president is he emerged kind of play acting, like firing people for fun, right?
It was like his taglines are fired.
For me, at least, as a young CEO, basically, of a city government, other than dealing with violence and death, the worst part of my job was firing people.
I hated it, especially because it wasn't necessarily a bad person, but you had a person who was in a role that they didn't fit in and their department wasn't doing as well as I thought it needed to do to serve residents.
I would have this very painful conversation where we would sit down, I'd look them in the eye, and that sucked for obviously most of all for them.
But anyway, we were not afraid to do that because you have to do that.
But look at what happened when they came in, right?
If this is actually about government efficiency, then the problem you would be solving, which is a real problem, is that in the federal government, it is too hard to reward your top performers.
So you could be somebody who could be commanding a multi-million dollar salary in the private sector, working on something wildly important, but there's just no way that you're getting, you know, you're in your particular pay grade, same as everybody else.
And to remove your bottom performance.
Like a lot of people who've been in and out of business in government will tell me, like when I was in the private sector and the public sector, actually, like the top 10% were pretty much the same, these amazing driven people.
You know, the government ones weren't compensated as well, but they were purpose-driven.
But the bottom 10% was completely different because I couldn't do anything about the bottom 10%.
So imagine if Doge had come in and they had gone through every department and said, okay, we're going to create a way to reward the top performers.
And we're also going to analyze who's either whose job description is no longer needed or their job performance is not there.
And even though it's painful, even though maybe it's politically tough, we're going to show them the door.
That would be one thing.
But they just sent an email to everybody, many of whom were in fact top performers.
Like some of the people they fired who got caught up in this thing, people got fired just based on whether you were in a category called probationary employee.
But to be clear, probationary isn't like you fucked up and you're on probation.
Yeah, you just start.
You can actually be because you were promoted.
You could be a seven-year veteran at the FAA, or maybe you'd been there as a contractor, but you were so good that the FAA said, we want to hire you now as a government employee.
And even though it might have been a little pay cut, you went for it.
And you're probationary.
And then next thing you know, like you wake up one day and this office department, whatever Doge is, clearly hasn't like gone through and checked who's doing a good job or who's there's no way because there wasn't even trying to do that.
And they're just like, guess what?
You're fired.
Yeah.
Too bad.
I think there is.
Wow.
I wouldn't say unanimous support with the criticism of Doge, but I think that there is a lot of support for the way that it's been handled.
Though I would also say that the idea of an agency that is attacking bloat and excess spending of the government is a bipartisan supported issue as well.
I think initially when Doge, when Elon first announces this, and I think it's Elon and Vivek, people are really supportive, I think, on both sides.
They're like, yeah, let's cut some government spending.
If you're actually doing it for real, and that's another part of the answer to your question of like what Democrats should be talking about.
Because I think we're the ones who believe, some say we believe it to a fault, like we believe it naively, but we're the ones who believe that there is a government has the, if you do it right, government has the power to make people better off.
But if we're going to do that, let's actually do it.
And part of that does mean like taking a hard look at everything we do.
And I mean, I remember, again, most of my examples will come from transportation, right?
But I remember something that went on with the FAA where they had to get some special waiver in order to allow a certain class of airplane to fly because there was no, because there was a regulation that said there had to be a switch to turn off the no-smoking light.
And this was written back when sometimes you turned off the no-smoking light.
Now, obviously, there's just always no smoking light because you can't smoke on airplanes.
And there's this like scramble.
That's the kind of stuff that we should absolutely be getting.
And there are things that we do.
In government, sometimes or in the military, we call it a self-licking ice cream cone.
Like there's definitely things that are there.
These just like self-perpetuating processes that nobody would have come up with on their own, but they're still there.
I think we should absolutely own that space because we have a good faith belief that government should serve people better and should work better.
And we should be the ones who are making that happen.
So on that, so this idea with Doge, it seems to me, and again, I only know like the most surface level version of it, is that the way that the government becomes more efficient is just firing a bunch of people.
That seems like saving money.
I don't know if that's how it becomes more efficient.
The efficiency is getting rid of the bureaucracy that stops a plane from flying just because it doesn't have an on and off switch for a smoking light.
It's surgery because you don't want to get rid of the part of the bureaucracy that makes it better.
But it's good.
It protects people.
100%.
Because a lot of, I think that there is altruism and benevolence in a lot of these policies, right?
They're trying to protect.
But they're all there for some reason or another.
Yeah.
And like maybe some is like, I don't know, what have you experienced?
Bureaucracy vs Safety00:04:20
Like you were, you know, Secretary of Transportation, like when you're trying to rebuild some bridge or whatever like that, what was the biggest hiccup that you experienced that you're like, we got to just get this out of the way.
There's no way we're going to be able to improve people's lives if this is here.
What is an example of that?
Well, so there's an entire process where to permit a federal project, you have to listen to every you have to take in every comment from anybody who wants to weigh in, and then you have to respond to every comment or a human has to kind of review all of that.
Which, by the way, one thing I'm really worried about is if you have, let's say there's some regulation coming and an industry wants to stop it, can they just keep commenting?
Yeah, or can you use AI?
Because it used to be like, well, you have to take the trouble to write a letter or at least go to the trouble of like getting people to write form letters, right?
Now you could write customized letters.
You use bureaucracy to fight bureaucracy.
Well, use bureaucracy to stop something from happening.
Yeah, yeah.
Which is a real problem if that's a thing that needed to happen, especially because you also need to go through that process to remove a regulation or to replace or to modernize it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So there's a level of problem, and I encountered it all the time.
I mean, right here in New York, right, there are so many major transportation projects going on.
And I'm proud to have worked on them.
BQE, Hudson River Tunnel.
I mean, that's one of the biggest transportation projects in our time.
Second Avenue subway.
That Second Avenue subway we don't want.
I'm going to tell you once, as a New Yorker, we don't want it.
We never needed it.
It's never been an issue.
I remember when you guys started building, we're like, who the fuck is this for?
Nobody on the Upper East Side from where it goes to where it ends uses the subway.
That's all old ladies.
They take taxis.
Nobody, there hasn't been a dumb, I'm sorry if this is your idea, but it's so fucking stupid.
There's never been a dumber idea for a subway.
There are so many other places we could put subways.
We could add some more trains, but Second Avenue specifically, there's a train on Lex.
But here's the crazy thing.
Walk two more blocks to get a train.
I don't know my New York geography as well as you do, but the really crazy thing about the Second Avenue subway is the tunnel's already there.
It's been there for 50 years.
Well, just because there's a tunnel, you don't need to put a subway.
How are the Jews going to get it?
Yeah, we need to organize a lot of the things.
This is the fancy organization.
This is why I don't come on these podcasts.
Okay, go, Star Rozo, Bertie's side.
So I will always defend Sec News.
This is a neighborhood that deserves good transit to where everybody else gets.
It has good transit.
Yeah, but it doesn't go all the way up to what it is.
To where it's 125th.
To where?
Nobody needs to go up to 125th and 2nd Avenue.
He doesn't ride a subway all the time.
I'm telling you, you don't need.
I'm telling you, we don't use it.
It's also in New York.
Yeah, I know.
I used to live up there.
Okay.
I did.
I went to school in the Upper East Side my entire life.
You didn't live.
You didn't live?
I did live on the Upper East Side, but I didn't live on the Upper East Side.
I was on the subway.
Look at Fall Rock.
I used to work in Georgia.
I got another guy.
I know, that's crazy.
I used to work in New York Presbyterian, and that walk did suck.
Walking from York Avenue to Lexington.
Okay, so how are you going to get there?
I'm just saying, one second.
How are you going to get to that Second Avenue line?
What are you talking about?
It's First Avenue.
I'm talking about the subway right now.
Yeah, but I'm talking about the walk that I would have to do every day going to and from work to York to Lex suck.
It would have been great if a Second Avenue train was there.
And that mine.
I got to walk two less blocks.
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
Yo, Avenue is spoiled.
Three blocks.
Cross town blocks there.
Yeah, those avenues.
Come on.
I'm pushing the limits of my New York expertise.
And to get to the airport, he just levied.
He says, we need a subway on Second Avenue.
You've never said one New Yorker.
That's just not true.
I actually went on.
I went near it.
You went near it?
I didn't go on it.
I went near it.
I went near it, and I was like, is anybody even there?
I looked.
I was like, is anybody even here?
Nobody did.
I don't want to like.
Is there a subway there, beyond?
I don't want to challenge your expertise as somebody who once went near it.
I went near it.
A lot of New Yorkers seem to really want this because I got a lot of calls and we worked hard on it.
But to think about it, that's boxed.
This guy hasn't been on a subway in 10 years.
Subway Upgrade Debates00:05:54
Wow.
That's a training box.
That's people from Jersey starting to drain our money.
The 456 is the most crowded train.
It's very crowded.
So if you're on it, you're like, yo, if there's something to eat, congestion relief, that'd be nice.
There's safety.
That's a great idea.
There's safety in it being crowded.
There's safety in it being crowded.
You've never had a homeless guy jerk off on you when it's crowded.
Actually, that's what they try to do it now.
There's so much covering.
I'll put it on B.
This is what we do for a living.
Before we get too far away from it, you said that's terrifying.
You said Doge.
We all agree that there's money being wasted in government.
And we were for the idea of Doge, but you said they're only doing it for power.
How is what they're doing for power?
Because it seems like they're just focusing on cutting down expenditures so they have something that can be like, look, we saved all this money.
But how did a power play?
Because it makes everything, because they're not going through the regular, like any kind of process where you have to like check with Congress or evaluate which of the programs are actually doing something and which ones aren't, or which people are good at their jobs and which aren't.
It means all that really matters is whether you're on the White House's good side.
And it's good side.
It sends the message basically, be on our good side, we won't clip your program.
That is one way of interpreting it for sure.
And they're doing this with everything.
The tariffs are like this.
Of course.
But in the end, if your company or your country or your industry gets on his good side, then you get out.
That has nothing to do with whether it's good economic policy or whether it's going to help my neighbors in Michigan, but it is something that helps consolidate power, right?
Law firms, he's sending this message.
Like, if your law firm doesn't get on my good side, then you're going to be screwed because we're going to use, even though it's completely illegal, we're going to manipulate your access to security clearances or anything else because I don't like you.
Isn't that what Biden did to Mayor Adams, though, when he was just trying to get some upgrades?
No, I would argue the opposite is true.
I would argue what happened was, and I know he was just sitting in here talking about this.
He just wants some upgrades, dude.
He wants to build a 24-hour strip club.
Everybody wants upgrades.
That's way better than a second avenue subway if you want to talk about coal so people can pay money.
We're really happy.
This is why they don't come off for me.
A little different than Fox News, right?
Think about what it means if you get if you get caught or accused of, like in his case, being mixed up with a foreign government and making policy decisions based on that.
Being a politician.
But that can't be what that can't be how low our expectations are.
That's how we all look at it.
Hold on, hold on.
During your time as the Secretary of Transportation, right?
Did nobody try to bribe you or anything?
If I got an upgrade, how'd you keep the planes in the air?
What would you do?
If I got an upgrade, and by the way, not because the Turkish government liked me, but like because I was a frequent flyer on United or whatever.
If I got an upgrade, I would have my security detail go to the gate agent and negotiate the downgrade so I didn't have to deal with, not because there was a rule about it, but so I didn't have to deal with like a bunch of people on Twitter saying, look at this asshole in first class.
I'll take all your upgrades.
You better than me, bro.
If you're better to services, that's crazy.
Pete.
P, P, come on.
And come on, I love you.
You're doing downgrades and trying to build a second avenue subway.
You're making horrible decisions, bro.
People do not relate to this stuff right here, Pete.
Who gets a downgrade on Delta or United?
Because I don't want people asking, I'm regulating airlines.
I shouldn't be like up there.
Now I take the upgrade.
I will take the private sector.
I love the upgrade.
Yeah.
Anyway, this is not about upgrades.
This is about whether somebody who has been indicted for a crime can get out of it by getting on the good side of the whole point of this country is that no one person should have too much power.
Like to me, that's the whole point of a country.
The king was somebody who had too much power.
Yep.
And we said we're not going to do it that way.
There were ferocious debates at the time of the founding over whether to even create a presidency because Jefferson was worried that if we had a president, it would turn into a king.
And they kind of hit a compromise where we created the president, but we took all these measures in the Constitution to make sure that that presidency didn't become too powerful.
And this is like a part of the texture of our country.
My favorite fun fact about Washington, D.C. is the Jefferson Memorial, the round domed, columned structure with the statue of Jefferson right in the middle.
Yep.
Has him perfectly aligned with the exact center line of the White House.
So that if you're standing in the blue room, which is in the middle of the White House, looking south, you have Jeff.
There's a straight line that goes because he's watching.
He's watching the executive saying he doesn't want the executive office to get out of the question.
Lincoln Memorial and Jefferson Memorial, right?
Both liberal politicians.
For the time?
Jefferson.
Do you think he was like extreme conservative?
Kind of both, right?
I mean, he was agrarian.
He was definitely more kind of libertarian if we were to try to map it onto today's term.
It's a whole joke right now.
I was trying to shoehorn a joke.
Let's go with it.
Let's go to joke.
He's so right.
He's so mile away.
It's just true.
We say 2nd Avenue something.
There was never a Second Avenue selling.
Okay, Pete, here's the actual question.
Trust in State Results00:15:05
I hear a lot of what you're saying is tax the rich, they need to pay their taxes.
I remember moving from Texas to California, Texas.
I started paying taxes, and it was like, I remember I was working at Verizon Wireless and doing a horrible job selling cell phones.
And my commission would get taxed at like 40%.
And I was like, okay, fair enough.
But then I'm driving.
The roads suck.
The schools, from what I heard, sucked.
New York, same thing.
Very high taxes.
There's no Second Avenue subway.
Schools are horrible.
You have any kind of money, it seems like you're sending your kids to private schools, or you live in such a rich neighborhood that the public school is basically a private school.
What the tax money seems like it gets wasted and doesn't get used wisely.
So, I have a very, oh, they should pay their taxes because my reaction is: I've seen what happens when people pay taxes.
I agree with you.
I think what he said about California.
I think what he said about California was on one state or another, but yeah, there is obviously a relationship between the results you see and your willingness to trust that there's anything you're getting out of your tax dollars.
My trust is very low, especially if my trust is very low, right?
And if you look at, I mean, I know Democrats always like to point to Scandinavian countries, but I'm going to do it.
One thing you notice about those countries, which do have a pretty high tax burden, but the reason there's also a higher sense among people that it's fair is that they get good results.
They have good health care and good education.
And that doesn't just happen because you put the money in.
But if you put the money in and you do it right, then the public's going to be more trusting that you're getting something out of those tax dollars.
I think it's easy to do when every girl's hot.
This guy.
No, like, have you been to Scandinavian?
Have you been to Scandinavia?
It's like every girl's hot, right?
So you're to the wrong guy.
The dudes are hot there, too.
The dudes are good-looking guys.
If you're into that look, I don't know if you're into that look.
Ow, what's going on?
They're so good-looking.
75%.
Listen, this is a crazier take than building a fucking subway on Second Avenue.
Who the hell is going to use that?
Ah, Kashja Singh.
What I'm trying to say is: if you go to Denmark, you go to Sweden.
Saying if you're good looking, there's going to be a higher perception of it.
You'll spend a little bit more.
You know what I mean?
It's something to look at.
Because you're just happy to be there.
You're happy to be there.
Have you talked to Scandinavians when they travel abroad and what they see?
Can I get a real answer from this guy?
I'm real.
This is a real experience.
I'm asking, I got this.
Dude, still, they're tall, they're handsome, they have facial hair, they're Vikings.
Where were we?
I'm just saying, we have to.
We were getting to a real point.
You're real like a Second Avenue subway.
They're basically saying, if you pay, have faith that it will get fixed.
No, no, no, no.
I'm not saying that.
I'm saying that I back off.
I'm saying people don't see the results.
Yeah.
Especially we're coming along saying, like, okay, everybody's going to have to pay into this.
They're going to say, well, fuck off.
I'm not seeing the results.
Yeah.
Right.
Now, I think that's a nuanced story because the best results sometimes, especially when you're in safety, you know, my kind of a big part of my job, it wasn't just building.
It was transportation.
Right.
A big part of the results is what doesn't happen.
Right.
That's bad things that don't happen.
You don't notice your school being good.
You just notice when it's bad.
Yeah.
And you don't notice your road being smooth.
You just notice when there's a pothole in it.
And you don't notice when an airplane doesn't crash.
And you don't notice when you have clean, safe drinking water.
By the way, that's okay.
Like, that's the point.
Like, you shouldn't have to worry about whether your drinking water is clean.
Yeah.
Because if you did, you wouldn't be able to worry about whatever else matters to you in life.
Yeah.
So I don't think anybody can argue that the American taxpayer has gotten their money's worth.
Yeah.
I think there's lots of reasons for that.
Part of it is, though, that we underinvest and we underinvest not because the overall tax rates are too low.
I don't think that most people should be paying more in taxes.
I do think certain people should be paying much more in taxes.
And that's where we get to like the giant multi-billion dollar corporation that figures out a way to do their books and pay zero.
Right.
And they're just fine.
Why is Warren Buffett bragging about it?
Well, I mean, it's tell him to pay up.
Why the like don't you?
But we can't, you can't blame him for using the rules of the system.
I actually like him calling attention to.
Because if they don't, the whole capitalist system, for good and for ill, is that if you don't play that to your advantage, somebody else will and they will beat you.
So instead of asking somebody to leave money on the table, we should just fix the rules so that they're more fair.
And that's the investment side.
But the other side of it is throwing money at the problem is not enough.
Like it is clearly true.
And this is the other point about the Second Avenue subway, which I will defend to my death that it is a good project.
Have you been on it?
We can do it.
We've been built.
It's been built.
You haven't built it yet?
It's not there.
I remember reading about this in 2008 on the subway.
They had ads.
Coming in 2015, Second Avenue Subway.
Right.
So that's my point.
We were so excited.
Dude, it was like, I was parading.
I was excited.
There was parades in New York City.
I'm telling you, there was parades in New York City.
There was a memo sent out there like, we're building Second Avenue.
We were like, our fucking sunglasses.
That was the part of the Indian parade.
They live off the east side.
I mean, it was.
But what is very hard to defend.
It was going to totally reinvigorate that economically destitute area called the Upper East Side.
What's really impossible to defend is how long it has taken.
I'm not joking when I say it's been there for 50.
The tunnel's there for 50 years.
It's a 100-year project.
Yep.
We started in 1920.
Which is nuts.
And the cost of it.
But it's not that.
It's like obviously the rail project in California.
We were doing a show in Hawaii, and it was a joke that everybody kind of makes where there was a rail project out there, not underground, and they put $12 billion into it.
It hasn't moved a centimeter in 10 years.
And from my understanding for people out there, they're like, it's just pure corruption.
It's not even bureaucracy.
I don't know that that's true, but I know that if you see that much money going in and you don't see results, I don't blame you for assuming it's corruption.
Right.
Well, where could it go?
I think a lot of it is bureaucracy, actually.
And it's the inability to get even basic things done.
There are exceptions.
We worked on the one thing I worked on that I'm very excited about is another high-speed line that goes from Las Vegas to California, to Southern California.
They could be open by 2028 if they hit all of their marks and everything goes well.
There's some reasons why that was different, though.
And part of why it was different was the public-private partnership, which created a different, and it's a red state next to a blue state, but it's California too, right?
So it's Nevada and California, sponsored by Nevada, which is a swing state, by the way, not a red state, I would argue.
Good point.
Good point.
And they did some right away stuff where a big part of the route is actually just right down the median of I-15.
So it's easy, comparatively easy, compared to having to buy the problem with Second Avenue subway, the cost of it.
It sounds like you know a lot about this.
Loves trains.
I do love trains.
Good.
I love trains too.
Don't let them laugh at it.
No.
This is facility to trains over here.
Somebody in the room is on board your train.
It's just you and I in this car, this podcast.
It's now me and you.
Don't let them laugh.
We love trains and loss.
You're right on top of them, hoes.
So the reason it's costing so much here is to even put in like a little power facility, let alone a station, you've got to buy real estate out in one of the most dense and expensive places, probably the most dense and expensive places in the world.
Expensive buildings in the world.
It's incredibly complicated to even just do the signal work in the stations, right?
Anyway, my point is I agree that we have to have better results, better return on taxpayer money.
But when it goes well, I mean, again, we're all living off of the value, even though the internet has proven to be a mixed bag.
Many people, including like these Doge guys, right, made all of their money off of something that was literally invented by the federal government, the internet.
That's a great point, honestly.
So it can work.
I'm not here to say it always does work.
It can work, but you have to actually have people who care about it working versus just gathering their own power and making it all better.
Not by any means, and don't let me speak for you guys like hardline, the government is horrible and everything about is horrible at all.
We live in New York City.
Like we understand the importance of like rules and regulations.
You got someone living above you and below you.
They're blasting music after 10 o'clock.
You're like I would like the government to step in here and make a rule where they can't do that.
It's nice.
So like, I think we understand more than most Americans how important regulation can be to you living like a happy, fruitful life.
So we're.
If you're living in a house somewhere in the middle of nowhere, your next neighbor is three miles away.
I get why you're like government, get the fuck out of my life.
I get it.
When you live on top of people and below people, you see no, I think that's true in a city.
When you live in a dense neighborhood, you're like more aware of the hundred, although I'd also argue, wherever you live right short, you count on things from national defense to to, you know, railroads.
I'm not saying you don't, but I think that it's easier for them to ignore that exactly.
Yeah, because you can't confuse yourself, for not if you get on the subway, which I still can't tell if you ever have you you, I don't know, I'm just, I'm trying to infer.
I grew up, I was born and raised on the subway.
listen I know okay so when you're sitting on the subway name one stop I'll tell you what it is you can't miss Name any train name any train.
Name your favorite trainer.
I apologize, I'm off sugar from let name your favorite train.
I'll tell you my favorite.
No one's fucking trying guys.
Guys, come on, we're saving America.
Listen, when there's big projects like that, that nothing happens.
It feels like when construction, where it's like the construction crew tells you oh, we'll get this done in three months, and then they take three years because they just want to squeeze it out.
So it's like we have no faith in government getting shit done because we don't see a lot less less faith, less faith.
Yeah, I'm gonna be completely transparent.
I have almost no faith anything will get done, and I think that that is specifically positioned on liberals.
I think that the Republicans have done a really good job of projecting that on Democrats.
Like you hear a lot of rhetoric, whether it's right or wrong, whether there's data to back it or not, who knows?
But they've done a really good job of going.
Hey, look at California, look how California looks, look at these cities.
They spent this much on homeless people and there are even more of them that are homeless yeah, right.
And look at San Francisco.
Look what's happening, people moving out of city, etc.
I think they've done a really good job of marketing the perceived failures of Democrats in these states.
How do you, as a Democrat, change that perception?
Yeah, while also while not gaslighting the people who live there that do feel like their cities have um, have I don't want to say become ruined, but have definitely like decreased the standard of living yeah.
So I think, first of all you, you have to acknowledge why people are skeptical, and I do think that's.
I mean look, anybody who's been in a relationship knows that like, if somebody's upset or pissed, like you don't start and say like you should feel, you should feel better than you do.
Actually, here's why you're wrong to be upset, Upset.
Right.
Right.
Like, we can't be caught doing that.
We are right.
Is he doing that with a dude?
No, it's the same.
Really?
Yeah.
No.
Fuck.
This whole time I was like, man, at least you could be like, you're wrong, bro.
And they'd be like, yeah, it was.
No, I'm sorry.
My side's got a lot to offer, but it's there's no loopholes in relationships.
Yeah, dang.
Okay, please continue.
Or was that so?
So part of it's kind of that approach.
Part of it is to demonstrate the things that are going well or that can be done well.
So we talk about crime, right, in cities.
And you would think if you watch like the Republicans that like every city is a like hellhole of crime.
Now, if we respond and we're like, what crime?
Then obviously when you got like people getting pushed into the subway and you've got carjacking stuff, it's going to sound like we're just making shit up.
If on the other hand, we point to the fact that Boston is at something like a 70-year low in the murder rate there.
Or we point to the achievements in Denver under their mayor there about tackling some of the hardest problems in the world, like homelessness and housing.
And having lived that as a mayor in a largely low-income community, like that is one of the hardest things that people working in government can ever try to solve.
And there are people who are doing it well.
And most of those people, in my experience, are Democrats.
Now, they may not be like Washington Democrats or like federal congressional part of our party, but because I think the folks who are saying like government got this wrong, which might be true any number of times, what they're really saying is like the policies of this person in government got it wrong, but they don't have an answer.
Their answer is burn it all down, right?
If we haven't solved poverty, their answer is we're going to slash Medicaid, which is what the Republican budget moving through Congress right now will do, is slash Medicaid.
Medicaid may not be perfect.
In fact, I know for a fact that many issues come up in the way it's administered, the way people have access to it.
But I also know for a fact that if your answer to that is just to cut out a bunch of poor people or VA, like any veteran can tell you the horror stories of all the times things didn't go right in dealing with the VA.
But if you think the answer is to just cut it or privatize it, that's not an answer.
We can do better than that.
And I think my party's job is to make clear what that looks like and how we would do it better.
How would you do it?
Well, I would follow the lead of some of these mayors we're talking about who are solving some of these problems in a more localized area, city governments that make systems work better in ways that complicated federal systems like Social Security or like VA.
I mean, how would you get the messaging out?
How would you help people realize good things are actually happening?
We had Mayor Adams on him.
We were brought up the subway system and the perception that it's incredibly dangerous right now.
And he was like, it's the safest it's been in X amount of years.
He gave examples for crimes being down.
Now, there's other ways to fudge these crime numbers.
If you're not, what is the word where you actually punish people for the crime?
If you're not trying, if you're not prosecuting crimes, I guess you could say that these crimes didn't happen.
So then all of a sudden it looks like crimes are down.
So I think there are ways of fudging numbers.
Yeah, I mean, usually those numbers are based on arrests more than prosecutions.
But he was giving me crime statistics, not arrest statistics, but sure.
But still, he came and he gave me this data or he gave us this data.
And then we're kind of shocked.
We were like, oh, I thought the subway was dangerous again.
Fudging the Numbers00:06:35
Well, there's that perception in reality thing.
I mean, back again to aviation, right?
So a lot of folks are nervous flyers, don't know if it's safe to fly.
Meanwhile, like I said, there was this horrible crash in January, but America went 15 years without a fatal commercial airline crash.
Meanwhile, the number of people who are going to die today in car crashes is basically the same as the number of people you can fit into a 737.
And yet most of us every single day, 40,000 people a year.
Yeah.
Ish.
Yeah.
Same as gun violence, roughly.
And yet, most people feel safer when they get in a car, especially if they're the ones driving.
You're on the ground, you have some level of control.
Yeah, but your life is in way more dangerous.
So, then it's kind of a psychology question.
Like, how do you find people where they are?
You want to blow off those fears, but you do want to reach people with real data and real numbers and information that is real.
And the thing that really scares me about the moment we're in is it's harder and harder for everybody to have access to the same facts.
It's one thing, like I grew up in a world where you watch TV, you got your news from TV, which is like antique from what I can tell talking to students now.
But you would watch a TV show, and maybe the, you know, maybe that TV show, that network didn't do it perfectly.
But generally, what they would try to do is they would cover an issue, whatever it was, abortion, taxes, some bill moving through Congress, and they would have the Republican saying Republican things and the Democrat saying Democratic things, and you would think about it.
And watching that, like often hearing the other side would just make you feel what you believed even stronger because you'd be thinking of your own counterarguments.
And other times, something the other side said would actually get through to you.
But the point is, you would think about it and you would have to contend with what other people had to say.
And while there were different opinions going around based on different values, they tended to be in an argument that was over the same facts.
Now, we don't even have the same facts.
Yeah.
And that is a massive, massive problem.
Trusting statistics, like me personally, I have an issue with data in that regard.
Because what's saying, you can torture the numbers, they'll tell you anything you want.
It's difficult because every side has different data interpretations to support their idea.
And now they're just making up stuff.
Yeah.
And a lack of public trust that I think is probably one of the largest issues in American politics.
Absolutely.
You can't trust the data.
You can't trust the politicians.
I think that's the general feeling.
And I think even congressional stock trading is a major issue with this.
I'm curious your opinion on private holdings for publicly elected officials when it comes to the stock market.
Again, I think that is one of the main things that is eroding the public trust in politicians.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a real problem, and I think they should get rid of it.
I mean, this was not a problem for me because I didn't have a lot of wealth.
But, and look, I get it.
If I was a millionaire, I'm sure I would think twice before taking a public service job if that meant having to divest.
But we're talking about people who are sometimes responsible for multi-billion dollar decisions, or in terms of the course of the national economy, like trillion-dollar-level outcomes.
And if they think even for a second about like, oh, what's this going to do to my stock or Google or whatever?
That's a problem.
Yeah.
And, you know, that coupled with, and this is less politically popular, but I also think a lot of public servants don't get paid enough.
And I would go to bad for them getting paid, maybe not the same as the private sector.
Like, I get that that's never going to be the same.
But I do think that they need to be compensated well enough that they don't have to swallow quite as hard before.
You have to incentivize the best and brightest to do the most important jobs.
Yeah.
I think that's a fair thing.
And again, ideally, reward the ones who are stock to make up for the difference, I think.
But I think it's interesting what you said.
Like, people feel like they can't trust the data, they can't trust the politicians.
Like, I think those two things are linked because actually the data, it's actually very, very rare for data to be put out that is objectively false.
But it can happen.
Like, usually, like, the data are based on some real set that showed us some exactly.
It can be manipulated.
But yeah, how it looks or how you make it sound.
I mean, they're doing this right now.
Again, the doses make it sound like there's like millions of dead people getting Social Security.
We're just not.
That's just not true.
So how many are getting, are there dead people?
That's because this seemed to me fact.
Well, first of all, like Biden can get it.
I mean, one thing to think about is like, obviously, the vast majority of people who die of old age are getting Social Security the day they die.
Right.
And so, like, for at least a minute or a week or a month or however long it takes, there's that process of updating.
But part of it had to do with how the database was built.
And you just didn't necessarily remove everybody from the database.
It didn't mean they were getting money, but it meant they were in the database.
And so you could twist that into looking like this is what the president did in his speech.
Like, it's true, there's this database that had all these people from like, you know, 100 years ago.
It was not true that they were getting checks.
Okay.
But he said the one part.
That's good.
And your brain fills in the blanks.
And now you think, oh shit, there's like millions of people who are 150 years old getting checked.
Which is not true.
So, but the real thing is, we don't trust the people who are supposed to be interpreting the data.
And that is like a societal problem.
It's not just politicians, right?
It's an erosion of trust in every institution where somebody is supposed to help us make sense of this.
And I come out of the local, right?
Where we're a little more connected to reality because if the roads are in shitty condition and I'm the mayor and I can produce some statistics saying that the roads are great, people can call me out and say, no, they're not.
Like I drive on these roads all the time and they're not.
And it's C with the supervisor.
And they will find me and they will tell me what they think of the condition of our roads, right?
You get up to the national level and you're so removed from them that you start to get into these like alternate reality zones.
And then you add to that the fragmentation of where people get their information because there isn't the, you know, Walter, the famous example is Walter Cronkite, right?
Like everybody in the 60s like turns on Walter Cronkite.
And it's not so much that he told people what to think, it's that he laid out a certain set of facts, certain set of things that happened.
And everybody, they could argue over what it means, but they would generally agree on what just happened.
And we don't even have that.
Yeah, we're in the echo chambers, and the algorithms are just making those echo chambers more extreme.
So the algorithms are even worse.
I mean, the other problem I would say is like we no longer have the editor access to the editorial function, by which I mean like a professional news organization.
I used to get so mad at every from the South Bend Tribune to the New York Times.
There were times when I was so pissed over a story or framing or whatever.
Lizard Brain Algorithms00:04:23
But I will say if I actually found that they got something actually, factually wrong and showed it, they would correct it.
Like there is that ethos.
I know.
They always know.
And professional journalistic organizations have to do that.
But if we're in a world where somebody waits like what some dude on the internet says the same as an organization where there are people who have to hold to journalistic standards, if that's the same, well, that dude on the internet doesn't have to issue information.
He doesn't even have to reveal who he is.
I think there's a lot of people looking at their feeds, and those two things seem equal.
Also, go, go, go, go.
The algorithm is going to reward the more salacious version of that information.
Yes, it rewards the lizard brain.
Yes.
Because your lizard brain is taught.
You see, the thing we don't realize is every time we click on something, look at something, let alone like something or share something, or I don't know, I'm still talking in Twitter terms like an old man, but like whatever the kids are doing these days.
You are actually making a statement about your editorial preference.
Yep.
You're not intentionally doing it.
You're not saying better than we know ourselves.
Give me more.
But to me, it's not just how they know us.
We all have different levels.
It's like what we want and what we want to want.
There's what we think is important.
This is why TikTok works better than Instagram.
How do you mean?
Because TikTok is what we actually want.
And Instagram is what we want to want.
We follow all these people.
We think we want information about what's going on in the world.
But TikTok is like, motherfucker, I know what you want.
Just shut up, sit down, and scroll.
And that's why we watch more TikTok.
And Instagram's trying to compete.
But the reality is we don't want to look at all the people we follow.
But also, because both of those things are true.
Both of those are us, right?
The me that clicks on the stupid bullshit because it's funny.
Yeah.
Is the same me as the one who, if you just sat me down and said, okay, if I want to allocate like what topics are covered in the hour I'm going to spend online today, would like try to like choose the more high-minded stuff, right?
They're both us, they're both real.
Yeah, yes, But the algorithm is empowering the lizard brain over the actual, like the citizen brain.
Yeah, it's less cognitive effort.
It's more cognitive effort to think about what you want to consume that day and put some work into it.
Way less to just scroll.
Even though if it makes you better off in the same way that like reading a good book might actually at the end of the enhance how you're doing it, like make you better, like make you feel better.
Guys, let's take a break real quick.
So we talked about the NBA playoffs.
Pete, this is not his bank.
You know what I mean?
Even though the men are in shorts.
You're a fan, finally.
Oh, yeah.
This is the time of year.
That's great.
Knicks have played two playoff games.
You've watched both of them, I assume.
I mean, you know.
There you go.
These guys missed 50% of the Knicks playoff games.
Didn't go to a single regular season game.
Didn't watch game two.
I didn't watch game two.
They lost.
So clearly they need my eyes to lose.
I didn't watch game two either.
Exactly.
They need our eyes.
They need New Yorkers.
I don't know why that is.
It is the least important in a seven-game series.
Yeah.
When was game two?
It was last night.
Jesus Christ, dude.
I don't know.
I wasn't about it.
It's like something about Detroit.
Like, I don't even need to see Detroit.
Well, it's 1-1.
So you might need to see Detroit.
Yeah, I might need to.
I might need to.
Game five, Tuesday.
We're going.
You know what I mean?
As long as Schultz didn't get on Celebrity Heroes.
Yo, we should go and then just heckle the fuck out of him.
We should get Seeks to Celebrity Hero and just heckle the fuck out of Schultz.
Now we're talking.
Y'all too cheap.
Last minute, you can get some tickets for Jeep.
Let's do it.
So we got game three now that our eyes are going to be on it.
Now that our eyes are going to be on it.
No, we definitely want to.
We're going to watch game three.
Six are going to go in game three, I think.
Even though it's in Detroit?
Yeah.
I'm not that one.
What about Lakers T-Wolves?
I think the Lakers get game two.
That's happening, though, before this comes out.
I think that's tonight.
And I think game three will go Lakers as well.
I think.
Okay, so Lakers taking care of that.
I just trust Luca, but that's because I'm biased.
All right, listen, put your money where Akash has put his money historically.
That's always worked out.
Whatever team Akash is rooted for.
If you guys want to give me back my Bitcoin, that'd be great.
Those of you who stole it from me, I'd appreciate that.
Stink is the leader in global betting in U.S. social casinos, been on top of sports and political events.
He used the promo code Flagrant for your welcome bonus.
Now let's get back to the show.
Social Order Issues00:15:22
You said one thing that's important for the Democrats is to, it's where they go and not just kind of staying in the echo chamber.
So you're coming on this podcast, which I, again, I commend you and thank you for.
But is that getting met with a lot of like, I guess, acceptance and like, oh, yes, we should do that.
Or are you kind of the only Democrat doing this?
I think, it sounds like your experience has been not a lot of people in my party are willing to begging these people to do this.
Yeah.
I think that's a mistake.
Yeah.
But yeah, I think, look, to be fair, you know, if you're in politics, you know that anything you do, you can get shredded for.
Even not something you do, but something that somebody sitting next to you does and you don't make the appropriate face or scold them for, right?
Like, and there's even a contagion of cancel culture where like if you're around somebody who does something, right?
And I want to parse like some of that's maybe legitimate and some of it is problematic, right?
But all of that's there.
And people who are running for office want to win, obviously.
They want to keep their jobs.
And to me, it's worth some risk in order to reach everybody.
And again, that's partly the habits that I formed while I was an unheard of, you know, 30-something year old Indiana mayor running for president.
So we did everything.
Like we would do CNN if they would have me, but we would do, I mean, literally like Iowa college lesbian radio.
It was like I would like do a show, like anybody who would talk to me.
I think that's better, though, because I think it better resembles what politics is supposed to be.
Like, politics obviously has a bad name.
People are pissed at politics and frustrated at politics and hurt by politics.
But like, to me, politics is a process of making decisions about how we're going to have laws and rules that all of us have to live by and how we're going to spend resources that all of us are paying into.
And for that to make any sense, there has to be a process of encounter.
Like, we have to be encountering people who don't think like us and don't view the world the way we do, both in order to actually legitimately become smarter and better and make better choices and have better positions, and just in order to persuade.
There's no persuasion now, or there's, I think there's not enough persuasion.
And that's why we have these 50-50 elections, like this current election.
The president won.
He says it was a landslide.
But like, we used to have actual landslides in this country, Reagan, Monde.
That was a landslide.
And I think that my party should aspire to be like a 60% party.
And I think we could do it because most of the issues that most people care about, not all, but most issues, taxes, abortion, guns, education, like things that affect how your day-to-day life goes, healthcare for sure.
You think guns is one of them?
Yeah.
I mean, maybe, look, obviously there's a big divide on the country.
But if we're talking about like, I don't know if I'm talking about background checks.
Talk about what's the election of guns.
Sure, sure.
But what I'm saying is like something like universal background checks, that's got like between 80 and 90% support.
Yeah, 80% of Republicans are supporting reverse.
And yet we don't have, yeah, like it's hard to even hold on to what we've got, right?
Yeah.
So anyway, my point is like my party should be, by the numbers, doing better than it does because more people agree with us more of the time on more policies than not.
And so, yes, we have some work to do on policy.
So what do you got to change?
Like, how do you just, sorry, how do you change that perception?
If you know that more people agree with the policies that you guys have, why aren't they agreeing with you?
And what are you doing wrong?
I think the biggest problem.
Yeah.
So I think it's great going everywhere to speak to people.
One thing that I don't see happening from the Democratic Party is getting their message out and actually convincing people or letting them know, like, hey, we're doing stuff or these are the stuff we've gotten done.
This is something I don't like that Trump does, but it actually works with like permeating the culture.
Like he ran on, hey, I'm going to get all these criminal migrants out of the country.
And then he makes a video where you see all these guys chained up, coming off a plane, going in.
That's messaging that you don't even need to understand.
You see it and it's like, hey, he said he's going to do something.
And look, he's getting it done.
So it's like, I think he knows how to play that social media game where it's like, oh, I know how to speak to people.
And that's something gems aren't doing at all.
So it's great that you go talk to other places, but what other ways can you get your messaging through to people?
The only one that does it is AOC and Bernie.
And it's very specific and very targeted and it works.
And it feels like everybody else is worried about, you know, offending somebody or being yelled at by one of your constituents or one of those groups that you're supposed to be protecting.
Yeah.
So I think two things.
One, I think what they're getting right, which is also what Trump understands about politics and attention, is that you can't be afraid of controversy.
And sometimes it takes controversy to get something recognized.
So things are like part of why the country is talking about these deportations is there's a couple of things that are traveling together.
Like one, like I think most people would agree with the idea that like violent criminals shouldn't be here, right?
But then other things are happening.
Like they take some guy and just send him by mistake to a Salvadoran prison, right?
Which is obviously, first of all, a huge, huge problem, like morally and policy-wise.
But in terms of the media game that he's playing, even if it's bad look to have screwed up in that way, it helps him draw attention to what you're talking about.
In addition to like the social media pictures of the being lined up in the chains, I experienced this a little bit in our stuff because when we did something, when we like got a bridge or a road built, it was incredibly hard to get attention on that.
Like we did it, like I was out there, I'd go on TV, I'd wave the flag, we'd do an event, cut a ribbon.
But it turns out when something was uncontroversially good, it was way harder to get anybody to notice.
The projects we got the most coverage on didn't get the most coverage because the project was really great, although I believe in our projects.
We did 70,000 projects around the country from like Little Airport thing to like the Hudson River Tunnel.
The projects that got the most coverage were the ones where we caught a Republican congressman trying to take credit for the project after they voted against it because it just created like a different, more interesting story, right?
It's like nobody would even know that we were, or very few people would have ever heard that we were doing a rapid transit project in Charleston, South Carolina, if the member of Congress there, Nancy Mace, hadn't tried to take credit for it and then got blown up on the internet because she tried to stop the funding from happening in the first place.
So it's complicated to figure out what lesson Democrats should learn from all this, but part of it and part of what I think Bernie and AOC are doing quite well is they're not afraid of some controversy, of naming bad guys, of talking about kind of why we are where we are.
And I think we need to.
So just addressing societal utility.
Like if you want attention for a project that has to mean societal utility, people have to need it.
They have to want it and they have to feel like they're not allowed to have it.
And then you bring it to them and then they're really excited.
If people aren't tripping about a bridge or like worried about a second avenue subway, like I'm telling you, nobody's going to care when they have to get to that subway.
And it's not going to be anything that you get patted on the back about.
But if there's something that people in New York City do really care about and they're really concerned about and you guys address it, you will be heroes.
It's the nature of what, so it's like I think so, but it is tougher when it just goes well.
No, I understand what you're saying.
I think that makes perfect sense.
Like when we expect the roads to work.
So when they work, we don't go, great job, Pete, right?
Or whoever is in control, right?
We expect the plane to land.
We don't go.
Matter of fact, if they applaud for the captain, you're like, who are these cornballs?
Like, it's supposed to land, right?
Like, that is like a reaction people have.
But if there are things that we, and this is one of those situations where it's like, if there's things that we want, the people want, and you are the one to bring it to us, you will be really applauded, especially if we feel like we've been asking for it for years and nobody's listened to us at all.
I think if you do certain things for us, not you, somebody in your position, that we're not asking for, right?
And then go, but this is what you need.
Now we're back at the finger wagging where we're like, bro, I didn't even want that to be fixed.
Why do you want credit for this thing we're not even asking for?
So I think it's really about listening.
What do you think people actually in America, what do you think people really need?
If there's five issues, what are the things that they're concerned about?
Like all of them are some version of the same thing, which is freedom and security.
And with that, I think democracy.
But really, I don't think a lot of people come up on the street saying, I want more democracy.
I think there's a way that's absolutely true.
But in terms of what people really want, I think people want to live a life of their choosing.
They want things to work.
They want our country to be better than any other country in terms of the quality of our roads and the strength of our economy and the kind of education they can get.
We want America to be the best place to live.
Roads.
We go all over the country.
We're actually weirdly good people.
Comedians are good people to talk about when it comes to the different parts of this country and how people are living because we go every single weekend to every different weird, obscure part of this country.
We're there.
It's not just the big cities.
We're everywhere.
And it's roads everywhere.
I ask people every time I go to a city because I want to know what's going on.
I want to know what they're frustrated by.
It's roads every single time.
If Pete, this day one, you're like, I'm fixing every fucking road in America.
And then you did, you'd be president.
Because it's something people are actually frustrated by and they don't feel like the government is answering.
What are the other five things like that?
Okay, so that's one.
Security is the other one.
But before we get to security, I think there's also like a sense that you can afford what you need in order to live.
That's why prices are such a huge problem.
And it's why I think terrorists are the wrong medicine because they might make certain things or be designed to make certain things better, but they don't make prices better.
They make prices worse.
Affordability, housing, right?
The ability to just believe that you get a job, you get a promotion, you're going to get a house or you're going to get a better house.
How do we do it?
Right.
So we've got to build more houses.
How?
Well, we've got to strip away some of the barriers to building houses.
Talk that's this is what I like.
Tell me.
Take back land.
What?
What?
Oh, well, it sounded fun.
I'm just saying, like, I want to see the Democrats be a little more gangster.
Like, Republicans would go, we're taking Greenland.
What is your build-a-wall?
What is your statement?
What is your outlandish thing that you might not do, but it kind of riles people up?
It gets the people going.
Like, if you want to say, hey, we're going to seize this land and we're going to build 200,000 affordable housing units on it.
That might make some people get excited.
It would get attention.
Yeah, it would solve for that contention.
Not exactly how I would solve the problem.
But yeah, point is like, we need to.
I'm being facetious, but there is a truth.
There is some truth in it, which is like, I don't know what the statement is for Democrats.
I don't know what your build a wall is.
And you need a version of that because those are the things that people attach themselves to.
As Alex said, he's like, hey, we're deporting all these people who are here illegally.
And then you show the video and then people are like, that's what I voted for.
And it's happening.
I feel good.
I thought the build back better that Biden tried to do was a good idea.
And then it failed fairly quickly.
And then that was just kind of the end of that.
I'm sorry.
I feel like the thing we're kind of skirting, like touching on a little, I'm curious what you think.
Like it seems like from like a political philosophy point of view, it's easier for conservatives when looking at like the conservative liberal paradigm.
Because for conservative, like for liberals, they have to have a direction to go.
They have to say, where are we going to go?
And it seems like within the Democrat Party, there's a fracturing or like a bifurcating where you have the anti-Trump people that are like, we just hate Trump.
And then you have sort of the economic, you know, leftist liberal that says we need to tax the rich.
And then you have sort of the social cultural war Democrat that's like, you know, we need to support all the downtrodden people.
Different ideas for progress.
And it seems so spread and disorganized.
Whereas the conservatives just have to say, let's go back.
And they can point at all the liberals and say, look how crazy they are.
Let's just go back.
And so it seems like it's way easier for the conservatives.
Oh, no question.
Yeah.
I mean, if the conservative project is just we're going to demolish, you know, government is frustrating, irritating, doesn't always meet your expectations, so we're just going to burn it down.
Or everything was better way back when, so we're just going to take you back there.
Absolutely.
I mean, that's what Make America great again.
Exactly.
And what this likes.
But the reality is like there is no such thing as in the real world.
There is no again.
The future is going to look different.
Look at the world we're going into.
We're going into a world where AI is transforming everything.
I think we're still at the outset of that.
We're going into a world where China is a very different kind of player than it was not that long ago.
We're contending with some really heavy things that are going to require really original thinking.
And part of, I think, where both parties have a problem is a kind of nostalgia.
So you've got Republicans who are kind of nostalgic for the social order of the 50s.
Like women are in their place and we don't have to worry too much about like, you know, any kind of minority, whether it's a racial minority or a gender minority, like asserting too much desire for freedom or equality.
Like everything's just everybody's in their place.
And Democrats have a nostalgia for this kind of New Deal and post-World War II order.
Like in terms of foreign policy, it's the post-World War II framework that we set up with the UN and NATO that kind of made, you know, was our response to everything that happened.
And then domestically, we set up this administrative state, which solved a lot of problems, but has now run the risk of collapsing under its own weight, right?
So we've got to cure ourselves of our nostalgia in my party and refuge it.
Like there's no going back.
I do think it's a bit unfair to say that about Republicans.
There's a faction of Republicans I absolutely believe that about with the social order.
But again, you go to Middle America, and then it was very eye-opening for me.
I went to a city, I think it was Toledo in Ohio, where I was like, oh, I expected a city and this place is like decaying.
And anytime I made a joke about it at a show, they would like laugh so cathartically, like finally someone gets it.
And I think when they hear Make America Great Again, I'm sure some people think about social order, but a lot of them are probably thinking, much like your town, we used to have the Studebaker or whatever here.
We used to have manufacturing here.
Bring that back.
The racial stuff, I don't care about that.
I just want to make my city great again.
That was what America was to me.
But to your point, and to your point, like what we had to do when I was mayor of South Bend was to move on from that.
And it wasn't saying like we're done with manufacturing.
We're never going to make things anymore.
It was saying we're not going, there's no such thing as going back to the Stude of Baker Day.
I'm just touchy because I think for liberals, we often, well, we liberals often will say that about conservatives.
Oh, they like the social order.
And I feel that's a bit dismissive of their pain.
And not that you are very good about, I just think there's a messaging issue in the way they're often talked about.
Sure, sure.
And we should come back to that.
I think the conservative, if you look at the actual conservative governing plan, though, not the talk, not the campaigning, not the posturing, what they actually do.
Okay.
I would say the biggest social policy commitment that they've made that they actually care about to the point that they actually went through and kept it was to get rid of the right to choose.
Number one project the Republican Party on the social side.
That's one of the few promises they actually kept.
Promises and Stickers00:06:37
That's valid.
And then economically, the biggest promise they've actually kept is tax cuts for the rich.
Biggest thing that he did in his first term.
And right now, it's up for debate right now.
Literally, Congress is not getting as much attention because all the other crazy things going on.
But it's more tax cuts for the rich and for corporations, right?
So to me, like most of the stuff he said he was going to do, he didn't actually do.
He didn't do the big infrastructure bill he talked about.
We actually did it.
He didn't even build the wall.
That's the thing.
Build the wall was like a galvanizing statement.
It's not like he actually did it.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
80% of it.
But I want to do something.
You can follow through on, right?
Galvanizing statements is all bullshit.
It's not good enough.
Give me something.
I think what he's...
He's being hyperbolic.
I can try to bring it up.
No, I'm not.
I'm being dead serious.
Speak to people at an emotional level, even if it's not realistic.
Okay, so this brings us to the other thing that I think we've been skirting around a little bit, right?
What I'm saying is tell people, if you want to help them, say the thing that you think they need help with out loud directly and say that you're going to do it and then endeavor to do it.
We already expect you guys not to do it.
So the least you could do is fucking lie to me.
You don't even lie to me.
Like, have the decency.
It's like, we're married, okay?
You're out there cheating on me with Scandinavians.
He's good.
He's good.
You're out there cheating me with Scandinavians, right?
You don't have to throw it in my face.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, at least just do the decency of telling me the thing that I want to hear and then endeavor to do it.
Because right now, I don't know what is the platform.
The Republicans did an amazing job of making the Democratic platform feel like this wasn't it at all.
This was completely wrong, but they made it feel like we're going to let the school do whatever they want to your kids' balls.
No, that was their message for sure.
And they talked more about that than they talked about the economy.
I think One of the greatest political ads I've ever seen.
No question, it was incredibly effective because it made it sound like that was all we cared about.
And then, and you didn't have a message of something that you cared about that was loud enough to refute that.
Or again, controversial enough to get people as excited.
Because look, our message is no way.
What did you care about?
I want everyday life to be better.
That's what they want, too.
You get up in the morning.
Yeah, but importantly, like all the controversies are over what that's like.
Like, I want you to be able to get up in the morning.
And the first thing you do is you commute to work.
And by the way, if you're on EV, I want that to be affordable for you.
Or if you're on public transit, not to get back into the subway situation, but I want you to have good public transit to get to where you're going.
And then when you get to that job, I want you to be paid well.
And if you're about to have a kid, I want you to know that you're going to have parental leave when you have that kid.
And if you don't want to have a kid, I want you to have the right to choose whatever kid, which means access to birth control and abortion and those things that give you the freedom to decide on that.
And if you already have a kid, when you picked them up at school, I want that school to be good, not having its funding slash while they set fire to the Department of Education.
And then when you get home, I want you to be in a neighborhood that is safe and where you can breathe the air because we didn't let them get rid of the Clean Air Act.
And you don't have to think for one moment about whether the air you breathe or the water you drink is clean and clear, which actually takes a lot because it means the government has to constrain those actors that would make you unfree by polluting the air and polluting the water.
And then when you go to bed, I want you to know that your family is going to be fine, even if it's family like mine, despite there being some Supreme Court justice who wants to obliterate your family because it doesn't match his interpretation of his religion.
Like that's the life I want everybody to be able to live.
Yeah, I think, and I think we can deliver that.
I love that.
That's it.
Yeah, that's fine.
That's your problem.
Listen, listen, I am from.
I liked hearing that.
I thought it was awesome.
I thought it was beautiful.
I know you want that.
Tell me that it's going to happen.
We can make it happen.
And then how is it going to happen?
Like, that's the difference between it's build the wall.
And I keep harping on this, but I think it's important for Democrats to understand the effectiveness of that statement.
Build the wall wasn't even about build the wall.
That's an idea.
It was an idea that satisfied a concern that people felt.
So what are your ideas that are going to satisfy the concern?
Well, you just told me all these things that I also want.
So now we're together.
We both want the same things.
But you didn't give me the solution to the feeling that I have.
I too want a safe home.
You didn't say security guard outside of your door every night, whatever bullshit.
You know what I mean?
If it's more police on the street, whatever the thing is, punish petty crimes, whatever the thing is.
So, and I think that there's a lot of Americans that are at the end of their hope, right?
And they feel really disillusioned and they feel this lack of trust that we've spoken about today.
And simply wanting things that they want isn't enough.
And I think that's when you said like current circumstances lead to a Trump victory.
It's not like Trump populism.
I think there was a rejection of the establishment for a lot of people.
And then hearing from Kama that she wasn't really going to do anything differently.
I think that was a big mistake because I think people wanted to change.
So I think that's something that you guys should endeavor to do is tell us specifically what you're going to do that satisfies those things we're feeling.
It seems you know exactly what we're feeling because that was beautiful.
I think all of us were like, yo, you just hit me, you knocked out the park.
But I need the statements that are going to satisfy those feelings because that's what gets people to sway over.
And that's what they're fucking good at.
Yeah.
The bumper sticker.
They are.
So what's a Democratic bumper sticker?
I'm working on it.
Fair enough.
But that is the important thing.
And I think people need to know that we see them and we don't see them as the problem.
Right.
Because I do think to the finger-wagging point, so much of politics is about what people think you think of them or how you make people feel about themselves.
Before people even start to decide what they think about you, They're thinking about how you make them feel about themselves.
And this is a struggle, especially because I belong to a party that has deep moral convictions.
And you could argue we take it too far, whatever.
But we are propelled by a lot of deep moral convictions.
Whether we're talking about an economy where we think that it's too easy for the wealthy and too hard to work your way up, or whether we're talking about a society where we're worried about racial justice and marginalized groups.
But there is a way to engage people who don't start with where you can't lead people to where they already are anyway.
One thing I think about a lot is right around the time I came out, which is like a terrifying thing to do as an elected official in Indiana, right?
Writing Moral Letters00:02:37
This was after you got back from Afghanistan.
Yeah, exactly.
What did you eat out there?
No, honestly, what happened was, you know, you, when you get deployed, they tell you to write a letter.
And I still have it in a drawer somewhere.
And it's the letter, it just says just in case on the outside.
Wow.
And it's everything that you want your loved ones to know from your internet passwords to like how you feel your life went, right?
Everybody should do this, by the way.
You shouldn't have to wait to be sent to war to do this.
Yeah.
And I was the sitting mayor of my hometown because I was a reservist.
So I got deployed while I was in office and I just took a leave, stopped being mayor, started being a lieutenant, and went into my other job, basically.
So I was the sitting mayor of my hometown.
I had a beautiful house.
I had good friends.
I like a good life.
And that was part of what I wrote about in that letter.
But in the back of my head, I'm thinking, all right, but I'm also, I'm a grown-ass man in a position of responsibility.
And I don't actually know what it's like to be in love.
And if I get back, I'm not going to let that continue.
Like, whatever the implications, I'll just, I'd rather deal with that than once again contemplate the idea that I could go to my grave not knowing what it's like to be in love.
So then, you know, it was awkward timing because it's actually the middle of a re-election.
But I took some time, like I took months to think through, okay, how do I do this?
How do I say this?
Like, what is that?
And then, and then one day I did it.
I wrote a little op-ed in the local paper.
I said, I don't think this should be anybody's business, but I know it's a thing.
Here's something you should know about me.
And it was fine.
I mean, it wasn't fine.
There were, you know, people up there.
There was some ugliness around it.
But like, you know, nothing ever happened that made me regret that I did it.
But the story I was starting to tell was that sometime after that, when I started dating Chastin, maybe, I don't know, some months ago.
Did he jump on that immediately?
Was he like, oh, hell yeah.
Did he like slide into the DMs?
He was like, he's, you know what I mean?
Like, was that quick afterwards?
No, no, no.
I found him.
Well, we were on, it was like it was Hinge, you know, the dating app.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wasn't Grinder.
Grinders or Republicans.
I know everybody thinks that we do need to talk about why every time the RC happens, the grinder explodes.
I'm just saying.
Out him.
Finding Gay Belonging00:15:24
Seems like a lot of letters need to be written.
They don't serve.
So anyway, I met him, fall in love, start dating.
And this, I run into this woman I know, I think in the lobby of the county city building.
I'm walking into work.
I know she's a little more conservative.
And she comes up and she says, I ran into your friend and he's wonderful.
And it was one of those moments, right?
Where like, I think it was very important that the thing to recognize is like for her, she was signaling something pretty big for her.
Yeah.
Like, I don't know exactly, but I can guess how she thought about and talked about gay people probably all her life.
But she knew me, she met him, he's wonderful.
Like, right versus if I like treated her to a lecture on the difference between a friend and a partner, right?
Um, yeah, you know, that would have pushed her right back into the arms of these people who don't want great thinking for like me.
So, what I take from that is this broader process that needs to go on where we find people, and as passionate as we are, and as right as I believe we are about the big things, even though I'm open to the fact that we may not be right about everything, um, we're not telling people that they are bigoted or racist or whatever because they don't already start out in the same place that we are.
There has to be that process of kind of inviting people to look at things the way we look at things versus commanding them to.
And I think that is something that in the culture of my party has been especially challenging the last like 10 or 20 years.
But that we need to work through because, again, politics is about persuasion.
It's about finding people where they are.
It's about how they feel about themselves.
I think there is a desire for belonging that is not just something liberals care about.
I actually think the loss of belonging that happens in a town like where I grew up when you're you lose your auto job and the workforce development agency comes along and says, Good news, I've found a job that you can get qualified for based on your education and it pays just as much and you're going to be a nursing assistant.
Yeah.
And like, maybe that is that's a perfectly good job, obviously.
But, like, if the last 20 years of your life have been about not just the way you make your money, but the way you see where you fit in the world is about what you know how to do in a machine shop.
And some well-intentioned person with a clipboard is telling you, guess what?
Now you get to be a nursing assistant.
Like, that is not finding people where they are.
That's not because something has happened to their sense of belonging.
And we really care about belonging, maybe to a fault, but like we try to make sure that there is room for everybody at the table in society and in different processes and in our politics.
But if we really take that seriously, like if we really live up to that, that means recognizing that some crises around belonging are a big part of why some people, many of whom voted for the other guy this last time, are really prepared to just burn the house down and think that's no worse than any of the other things that could happen.
So including them in those groups of people that you are looking out for.
Yeah, and meaning it.
And meaning you can't really be persuasive about that unless you actually mean it.
Yeah.
I think that there's a really beautiful story about giving that woman grace and choosing maybe to not correct her and understanding.
Now, you had the benefit of having a relationship with that person and understanding maybe how difficult it was for her to even come there.
And you both had this amazing experience where you connected with people as individuals before you knew things about each other that might create some separation, which is kind of a really awesome thing about the human spirit.
It's like, once I kind of know who you are as a dude or a chick, like these other things in your life, all of a sudden I have a little bit more empathy for or understanding, or at least want to understand because I like who you are.
But what a great experiment.
How do we get to that point?
And how do Republicans also do that?
Like, this is something I've been every time I go on like a really conservative podcast, the trans discussion comes up.
And then like, and what I've tried to explain, at least from my perspective, is like both sides are trying to protect kids.
They just think the protection is different.
Right.
And I imagine like the most benevolent part of the left is going, hey, these kids might be suffering in the wrong body and their parents might not create a space for them at home where they can like be their true selves.
And then parents on the right go, hey, I don't want to be in second place for the decisions made about my kid to the school.
Like, I don't even know the principal.
Why are they like, and I have empathy for that too?
And if how do we get to a point where we're not constantly trying to dunk on one another?
Right.
And we're actually trying to, like you said, meet people where they are.
Yeah.
Like, well, how do we do that as countries in general?
The key word there is the empathy, right?
The like understanding.
So I think you put it really well, like having empathy for parents or students who are in that position, which is terrifying, belonging to one of the most tiny and kind of harassed minorities that there is in the country, but also empathy for people who sincerely want to make sure that sports are safe and fair and want to make sure that they have the most important say in what's happening in deciding what's best for their children.
These are very human things that if you strip away all the layers of the politics of it, come from a place of very understandable concern and like humanity, right?
There is humanity in both positions.
And I think that's lost in the dialogue sometimes.
Yes, which brings us in some ways back to the algorithm.
So I think a big part of the answer to your question is offline.
There have to be spaces that are offline, or at least that are not like shaped by algorithms where these conversations happen.
Because to your point, if all I know about you is that you're some random account on Twitter shit posting like something I really care about, then I'm going to assume you're an asshole.
But if I know you and then we discover that we view these things in different ways, we're away from the keyboards, right?
That's a completely different conversation.
And I really worry, and sometimes this is coded as like a conservative worry, but I think liberals should be just as worried about it.
About things like neighborhoods and faith communities and other sources of belonging and meaning that overlap the different political commitments that we have.
Because it's in those spaces.
I mean, again, I think back to the military.
Like if I was getting in a vehicle to go outside the wire, like the other people getting in the vehicle with me definitely did not care if I was a Republican or a Democrat or like what country my dad immigrated from or if I was going home to a girlfriend.
Yeah.
I'm really excited for the next hour we're going to talk about Malta by this.
Like all they wanted to know obviously was that they could trust me to do my job.
Same thing, you know, vice versa because we were trusting each other without conversation.
Every time we went outside the wire.
And to be clear, I was not into like a combat or maneuver.
My job was just to like drive them safely to where they needed to go, but that could be scary.
That does have risk.
And not that everybody should be in the military, but like everybody should be in environments where you know people as people first.
We start this way.
We grow up.
Families are like this.
Sports a lot of times.
Sports team sports is like this.
I agree with you a million percent.
You know how somebody handles themselves in a tough situation and then you find out like how each of you comes at something.
That's just such a more honest and human and ultimately respectful and decent process of encounter.
It's amazing how understanding we can be when we have that type of relationship built first.
Yeah.
All right, guys, let's take a break for a second.
It's time to start.
Like when you came out, did you speak to any of your military brethren and how did they feel about it?
Yeah.
And some of them, like, I got to tell you, like, when I got to my unit, and by then, like, I wasn't out, but I like knew that I was gay, obviously.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, and like the gay jokes are flying around, right?
Like all the way down to like, oh man, that like memo that just came down from the command, is that the gayest thing you've ever seen?
Like, Sergeant, what's the gayest thing you've ever seen?
This is even gayer than that, right?
Like, I know.
To me, it sounded kind of retro, but that was definitely how people were talking about the gay.
Like, you know, 2014 or whatever.
Children, lower intelligence.
Like those seemed like you know, they were all like fine.
Like they either made it clear that they didn't care, yeah, or they found some excuse, like unrelated to anything to like check on how I was doing, right?
But that's endearing too much because you know that, yeah, exactly, yeah.
And then a couple people turned out, including somebody who I like turned to more than once to volunteer for outside-the-wire uh drives that he didn't have to do with me.
Um, um, but I needed somebody else who was qualified on a long gun.
Um, uh, turned out he was in the same boat, I never knew it.
So you vampired him, it's not contagious.
Is that what you're saying?
I don't know what's happening.
He did have the long gun.
No, okay, so wow, yeah, but you feel like we knew each other, we trusted each other, we understood each other.
Something we like went and suddenly agreed about politics.
Like some of the people I served with were like super conservative and still are, obviously.
But like, yeah, we kind of, you know, that wasn't like central because we knew each other at a human level.
And you built that trust up with them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because we did something hard together, right?
Yeah.
That's so interesting because I feel like you're in a unique position to see both sides.
You know what I mean?
Like, because I feel like there's a perception from many people on the left, like, oh, these, you know, these conservatives are racist and homophobes and da-da-da.
Where I think many of them, at least like, you know, my family and all my friends in Florida that identify as conservative, they don't really care about their friend being gay, you know, or like living in communities with like, you know, multi-ethnic backgrounds.
It's not pressing for them.
And sometimes they will say things that are problematic.
You know, like they'll be like, yeah, I don't care if my friends are gay, but don't make my kids gay, which obviously is a problematic idea.
But the core of what they're saying, I think the feeling that comes through, you're able to sort of understand in a way that I think a lot of people on the left don't because they hear that and they go, well, you shouldn't say that.
But you can kind of be in a position to say, well, no, I understand what he's trying to say.
He's just not saying it properly.
It's almost like you treat everybody like a grandparent at first.
Yeah, excuse me.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, you know how your granddad could say something really fucked up, but like he comes from a good place.
And then you love it.
And then eventually, after meeting your friend who's Asian and you convince him that he's not Vietnamese and you're like, you know, and then he's like, oh, I love this guy.
He still says Oriental.
It's not the exact words, but there's love there and empathy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So can I just ask you, are you familiar with white boy fun?
No, this term.
Okay.
So this is when straight guys pretend to be gay with each other.
Straight white guys.
Straight white guys.
Black guys are just getting on it and they're like, they're doing really good.
They're like really coming around.
Owls.
That usually happens.
Yeah.
You get a little bit late and then you take it to the next level and they're going to completely dominate it.
But okay.
So have you, did you never see any of that in the military where guys would like do little gay jokes with each other and that kind of stuff?
Like vaguely.
I mean, that's like half of middle school humor.
Like also just like in your 40s, whatever.
But okay, okay.
So like during this and during this time, and it's not like to me, it's not like shrouded in like any like hatred for gays.
It's more about just like, how can I do something that potentially makes my trolls my friend or makes him feel uncomfortable in this moment?
Right.
Are you ever in those scenarios?
And at this time, you know, you're gay, but you're not out.
And then they're doing this game with you.
We're like, oh, I'm going to make people feel so uncomfortable.
And you're like, jokes on you.
This is so weird, guys.
Not really, no, but I know like that, yeah, that happens to a lot of people in this situation where there's this assumption.
It's just like one of the few minorities that it's not obvious to everybody whether you're part of that minority, right?
Yeah.
Unless you decide to tell people.
And so, yeah, I definitely know that that kind of thing can happen, but I can't off the top of my head think of those things.
Okay.
All right.
You finally come out.
Yeah.
Okay.
And I'm glad we waited to the end of the episode to talk about this because I have so many questions about it, given your situations in life, but I didn't want to feel reductive like this was your whole identity.
I actually kind of wanted to get to know you before I asked you about two things, which is ironic we're having this conversation right now.
But like, okay, so you come out like scariest thing you've been at war.
You know what I mean?
Like, is it more terrifying than doing a drive where an IUD could go off?
And like, what is the difference between you?
I have my blood pumping just as much for sure.
Even when it's not totally rational, like telling my parents was not easy.
And I had it way easier than most people.
My parents were like very loving and very kind of socially liberal.
Like it was not actually a problem.
Did they know?
Or were they surprised?
They didn't, if they knew, they didn't say anything.
I think they noticed at a certain point that I wasn't bringing girlfriends around.
Are you like gold star or platinum?
Like what?
Do you know about these things?
Oh, right.
Yeah.
Justin tried to explain this to me once.
I feel like you're still learning how to be gay.
I'm not really the best representative of my business.
No, I'm not.
Okay, so you're in that.
What's platinum?
So platinum is you come out C-section.
So you never even touch a banana.
No, I'm neither gold nor platinum.
All right, fair enough.
Okay, so in that process.
That's really a thing.
Like I go all the way back to these are my gays telling.
My gays tell me these things.
So I gotta know.
So, okay, so in this process, like you're dating girls, you're like, I don't really know.
At what point are you like, okay, I'm definitely gay?
And is there a part of you where like, I have these aspirations to do these other things in my life and this isn't my entire identity?
Are you going in that moment?
Do I stuff this down?
Have you accepted it or have you not accepted it?
Yeah, my entire 20s were like this.
Like, because by then, like, I wanted, I really, really wanted to not be gay, right?
Because, I mean, separate apart from wanting to have a life in public service, like grew up in Indiana.
Like, I don't think most kids, I don't think most gay kids growing up in Indiana in the 90s, like, if you really gave them a choice, would, yeah, absolutely.
And so part of that was like, okay, like, I dated this like string of amazing women.
And like, over time, like, it was just very clear, as amazing as they were, that like the things that are supposed to happen in terms of the way you feel about and fall in love with somebody, like, that's, you know, I'm not saying it's just a process of elimination.
Like, there are other ways you know who you're attracted to, but like, you can pack that away.
Like, you packed it.
Once you came out, you also made them feel so good.
Right?
Because they got over that rejection.
I mean, yeah, they all did fine.
Yeah.
Coming to Terms00:04:03
You're the only guy who was like, it was me and told the truth.
But I knew actually before I became, like, years before the Afghanistan deployment coming out and all that, my first selection, I won the primary.
And the way things were shaping up, I knew that I would probably win the general election.
I was probably going to be mayor.
And that was like a huge leap in responsibility.
Obviously, I had been like a consultant and, you know, I was a military guy.
I'm young too.
You're like 20.
20.
Yeah, 20, 29.
Oh, sorry.
So I knew that I should not be in a position of that kind of responsibility unless I've resolved this in some way.
And if I'm not ready to come out to the world, I got to come out to somebody because that's the best way I can come out to myself, right?
If I've just told even one person, then it's kind of real.
And I'm no longer kind of like in that fog mentally.
And so I like took a deep breath and just a good buddy of mine from over the years, one of my best friends over beers.
And I'm just like, look, why don't I tell you something?
And one of the first things he, one of the first things he said, he kind of patted me on the shoulder and said, you know, you.
Dude, I'm not into you like this.
And you see straight.
We said, like, you didn't exactly make it easy on yourself.
And what he meant was my, you know, my career, to the extent I had a career, there were two parts to it, right?
There was the majority of it, which was public office in Indiana.
Yeah.
And there was the other part, which was service in the military because we were service.
And by the way, that was still don't ask, don't tell back then.
Yeah, too.
So I could literally be fired, which is another reason I didn't come out too quickly.
And anyway, it was that process of like just coming to terms with that and just knowing, even if I wasn't ready to tell everybody or like deal with everything that went with it.
And in my case, that meant I wasn't going to start dating either because I didn't want to like, I didn't want to be like hiding a boyfriend or like that just seemed really unhealthy.
And, you know, I was so invested in my work that for a while I wasn't missing.
I mean, I don't want to say I wasn't missing much.
I didn't feel that I was missing a lot because I had this, I used to joke that like the city was a jealous bride, you know?
And then it was my whole, we talked about my deployment experience that put me over the edge.
When did you first start to think, oh, okay, I might be gay.
And then when, what was the gap between that and being like, I can't hide this.
I can't compartmentalize this.
This is what it is.
And what are you going through mentally and emotionally in that time?
I mean, there's years and years and years of that, right?
Like, I mean, at some level, when you're a teenager, like you're, there's some data, there's some pretty strong data points, right?
Yeah, yeah.
But the things you can tell yourself, if you really want something to not be true, the things you can tell yourself to try to make it not be true are pretty powerful, right?
I mean, you, you, you know, you can tell yourself, like, everybody, you know, at like 14 or 15, every, every dude you know seems like they, they want to nail anything that moves, right?
So like you can convince yourself, like, oh, it's just like everybody's all over the place.
And I'm just like, you know, and then like you start noticing like more of a pattern, especially when you're dating women.
And it's like not, and there's a lot of extrapolating, right?
You're like watching like a straight love story and you're like trying to like relate to it.
It just doesn't quite land.
It's funny.
And yeah, I think by the time I was like, you know, mid to late 20s, I was like, okay, this is, I can't, first of all, I can't like waste women's time or mine.
Yeah.
Messing around, like hoping that somehow I'm like valuable years less than one.
Cause like that, there's a point where like, that's not a fair thing to do to someone.
100%.
And also like wasting my time.
And, you know, that's crazy.
Premature Love Stories00:07:12
You've dated more women than me.
Yes.
These guys have only been with one woman each.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you're straighter kind of a lot of land.
And then, oh, sorry.
Fast forward just a little bit.
So now you're happy, you're out, you're in a relationship, and then you choose to adopt twins.
Yeah.
Black twins, respect.
How has fatherhood been?
Crazy.
Like nothing I have ever attempted or done has come anywhere close.
It's been as rewarding or as hard.
Like I knew it would be more rewarding based on what everybody said.
I mean, you never really know, right?
Until it, until it's you.
I didn't understand how hard it would be.
I didn't understand how physically hard it would be.
Like in those first weeks, and I say, obviously, you know, men relate to things differently.
Like, I didn't have to, like, you know, neither one of us had to go into labor.
But the just the first few weeks were like, they tell you that they tell you they need to feed every three hours or so, right?
Yeah.
They don't mention that that means they need to start to feed every three hours.
Oh, yeah, you got it too.
And our daughter had this reflux thing where you couldn't really lay her down after feeding her.
So it was really like at least an hour and a half upright.
And anything else you want to do, you have to do in between.
Like you start the clock, you're feeding them, and there's two of them.
Yeah.
And you got the bottles.
We had this like contraption, this like pillow you could use to actually bottle feed two twins at once, which is amazing.
There's like fake breasts.
No, there's this like, I don't even know if that's a real thing or not.
There's this like fake image that goes around online of me with one of these like contraptions, which I didn't know it existed.
I don't know if it's a real thing or just someone being a dick, but oh yeah, this is like a whole thing.
There's like your right-wing account.
It's like this like contraption.
Like fake breasts, like a mechanism with fake breasts.
Maybe that is the thing.
I don't know.
But like, I just use like bottles, like you might expect.
And that was just like the first few weeks and months.
And then both of them had some medical challenges early on.
One of them had an extremely, extremely serious medical problem, which he recovered from.
And that was the most terrifying thing of my life.
And then, and it's hard to believe because we were fighting.
They were also kind of early or premature.
It's not unusual with twins, but especially in their case.
And we fought so hard just to get them on the chart.
Like you would count down to the milliliter, like how much food they're taking, you know, how much they're taking.
And now, like, they're just like wolfing down.
He'll like take one of those uncrustables.
But their kids are three and a half now.
Yeah.
Our son will take one of those uncrustables and just like just the entire thing.
One bite.
And I'm thinking like, how in this short of a time has that happened?
And just every day there's this new challenge and you have to like relate to what is a big deal to them, which is even harder than relating to somebody on the opposite end of the spectrum, right?
Because you have to, obviously part of your job is to like teach them what does and doesn't matter and what to care about.
But we, the other day, just two days ago, our son came into the kitchen and he was playing out on this little deck that we have.
It's a wooden deck and he says, Papa, I need a band-aid.
I got a boo-boo.
And I'm like, oh, show me.
And he like lifts up at his foot and it's clear that what he's actually got is a splinter.
And he has like some idea of what a splinter is, but not really.
And then Chastin and I start.
Chasten kind of was more on the ball than I was as usual and like starts preparing like a thing of warm water to soak his foot in to try to help work it out.
And then that doesn't exactly like do anything right away.
And plus it starts hurting.
And by the time we got to the tweezers, it was like, it was like a Civil War amputation.
Give him the whiskeys to kill me.
Oh, God.
I was such a baby about it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Deep in there, pull that stuff.
It sounds like comical now, but like to him, it's lonely.
Like he's three.
He doesn't know.
It's terrifying for him.
And like, I'm trying to hold him because he's also a moving target.
And Chassis got to tweezers.
And then we're both starting to feel this guilt about like, is one of his foundational memories going to be, you know, plus like holding him while he's like shrieking in pain and afraid.
And then as the splinter comes out and Chassis is like, I got it.
It's out.
He's like weeping, shrieking.
He goes, thank you.
And there's just these moments you just can't script.
Like you can't see them coming.
And every day it's like some new challenge.
Our daughter, like, our daughter loves asking me now about my work, which is actually a really healthy way to be forced to explain what I do all day.
So this started happening when I was secretary.
Like I put her down at bedtime.
There's a whole bedtime ritual.
This is coming your way.
If you're how old is your 14 months.
Okay.
So you're getting there where like the proceed, talk about like the Administrative Procedures Act was one thing when I was trying to build a bridge.
But like just to like extract myself from the room, it's like, did you tell the neighbors to be quiet?
Yes.
Yes, Penelope.
I told the neighbors to be quiet.
And then Gus is like, are you going to scare away the dinos?
I was like, yes.
If any dinos come here, I'm going to scare them away.
And there's this like whole like ritual checklist you got to go through, right?
But as part of it, she's like, tell me your work.
And I remember asking her, like, is after she said it two or three times at bedtime, like, does me talking about my job like help you go to sleep?
And she says, yeah.
And, you know, the first time, curiosity is such a good trait, though.
Yeah, you want to nurture that and you want them to relate to what you do.
So the first time I was thinking, like, well, tomorrow I'm testifying the appropriations committee and then I got to make sure that we get this regulation out.
Like, that probably doesn't make sense to her.
But then gradually I realized I could say, like, I'm going to make the airplane safer tomorrow.
Or like, there's a bridge that broke and I'm going to help make the bridge, get the bridge back together.
And she relates to, she's like, are you bringing tape?
No, actually, this one, like, this one's even too big for tape.
I'm like, oh, a hammer.
I was like, yeah, some hammers are definitely going to be involved.
And having to explain what you do to a three-year-old is actually a pretty good exercise in thinking about what really is important.
Talking about Americans.
It's hard to have that.
Like now, so I teach a day a week.
I teach at the University of Chicago.
And so I realized I could explain that to her.
She's like, tell me your work.
I'm like, well, I'm a teacher for grown-ups.
And she thought about it for a while.
And she said, but I thought you were our papa.
I was like, well, yeah, yeah.
I'm definitely your papa.
Like, that's my most important job.
And I'm also a teacher for grown-ups a little bit.
And then she says, it's hard to be both.
Yeah, worth life balance.
That's the thing.
Contractors suck.
You're like, I know.
Oh, man.
Our old guy, Gus, like a lot of boys, he's like all about heavy equipment and construction stuff.
And so he's super excited.
There's this massive road project going on in Traverse City and Michigan where we live.
Which I mentioned was funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and signed off by the Department of Transportation.
So that's what you're doing.
I was just saying.
Balancing Life Ambition00:09:18
So you say that.
Another example of caring about rules.
Like I sent that one back three times to be like triple checked because I saw it on a list and I knew that I live close to it.
I was like, I need to make sure that the career staff certify that this is a deserving project.
Otherwise, it looks like I sent a project to my neighbor.
He's like, that's the kind of stuff you worry about, or you should worry about in public office.
But there's all this heavy equipment.
There's excavators and bulldozers.
He's so happy.
But he's really monitoring them.
If it's ever after hours, he's like, why aren't the workers working?
I was like, well, it's almost like a day.
I'm wondering the same thing.
I don't want them working all of our time.
I'm like, Fubs, it's Sunday.
Like, they're not working.
And he's like, why aren't they working?
But it's the best, it's the best thing.
It's the hardest thing.
Have you thought about when your son gets older, his experience in the world probably different from yours?
Like, how would you have those combos with him?
Or even, let's say, your daughter, like learning to deal with her hair.
It's going to be a little difficult.
Like, how have you thought about these things?
Yeah, we think about it all the time.
It's not like we have it all figured out.
So we were in.
But if anybody knows how important identity is, of course.
So we were in what's called a surprise adoption scenario.
So we literally, I was at work.
I was traveling.
We got a phone call.
Chasten called me.
And the next day, we were in a rural Midwestern hospital holding them in our arms.
And they were like one day old.
It was like that.
Like just from normal life to like, and by the way, it's twins, which was amazing.
You didn't know those twins.
We were just on a list.
We said that we were willing to adopt, or we wanted to adopt.
We said that we wanted to adopt without regard for race.
By the way, anybody who says race is not a thing in this country should experience an adoption process where there are literally different lists if you say that you want a white kid only versus if you say that doesn't matter.
Like literally a different list.
What is that?
What do you mean by that?
The list for a white kid only is longer.
And not only that, there was actually a discount or you didn't have to pay a deposit on the fee.
This is like how it works.
I couldn't believe it.
So we didn't know anything about the racial identity of the kids until they started to look mixed race, which they are.
And like contending with the hair thing is already a thing.
And lots of advice, especially from black parents who like see stuff on Instagram or they're like, let me tell you how to do it.
A lot of advice.
And to begin with, the idea of being a girl dad and dealing with girl hair was pretty intimidating.
Like my hair is like very simple and straightforward.
Obviously, I'm a low maintenance kind of guy.
Like starting to learn about all the different products that are involved, him too.
Like we have a whole sequence with a conditioner and then essential oils, all this stuff.
And you're always asking yourself, how can I be, you're already constantly asking yourself, how can I be a good dad?
And now it's like, how can I be a good dad for kids who have a different racial identity than I do?
And how can I help them navigate that?
And what are the circumstances where there's nothing I can do to help navigate that?
And I need to connect them up to mentors and people in their lives.
Because the reality is, like, this is not a colorblind society.
And like their lives will be affected in some way by their racial.
All of ours are.
But one thing about being white is you don't have to think about the fact that when you're white, your racial identity is not something that you're reminded of all the time in a way that they will be.
And we live in a not super diverse, although it's getting more diverse part of Michigan.
But our hope is that they will, by the time they're old enough to even be wondering and thinking about these things, which I know is coming sooner than we think, that they know that they are loved and that they are safe and that they're growing up into a world that has so much possibility for them and that will be there for them any way we can.
But it's pretty humbling, like as a parent to know that you'll be navigating.
Are you, let's say, for example, in some like hypothetical scenario where you run for president?
Let's just say, right?
Obviously, nobody has plans for that, but let's just say, potentially.
You wouldn't be announcing that here, but you can as he takes a sip of water.
There must be concern about the potential scrutiny on not only you, but like your family.
Like all these people become public figures and unfairly so, you know?
How do you manage that?
Like what your kids can do?
Yeah.
Like, how do you process all that?
Yeah, it's tough because like they didn't sign up for this, right?
I mean, it's hard enough on Chasson, who's like an adult, but he didn't exactly sign up for this either.
He's on, you know, he's supportive.
Yeah.
But when we ran for president, obviously that was really hard on him and very costly for him in all kinds of ways.
And that much more so for little kids.
And one of the worst things about politics is how little regard it shows for people who go into public service and their family.
Even just the fact that when somebody leaves an office or decides not to run, if they ever say like, I want to spend more time with my family, that is immediately taken as code for like, I got caught in some scandal.
Like I did something wrong, right?
Yeah.
Versus like, we should celebrate that.
Like if somebody wants to spend more time with their family, like that's a really good way to spend your time.
Part of what I've really been leaning into just these last few months, being out of office, like working but not working at the pace, the extreme pace that I did is that like I'm usually the one to drop them off at school every day and I'm just like in their lives more and it's wonderful.
But yeah, the costs are enormous.
And one thing that makes you really think twice about running for any office and definitely, you know, the highest doing national politics is that lots of people wind up paying into that and not all of them had a say.
What is that?
What do you mean paying into that?
Well, they're sacrificing for your kids' sacrifice.
Your spouse is sacrificing.
They're paying a price, right?
So all these people pay the price for some might say your ambition, but if your ambition is to do something that would make the country a better place for your children, I imagine there's a way that you can justify, justify that sacrifice that they would go through.
Yes.
I don't want to be answering the question for you.
No, no, that's the whole thing.
I'm just curious how you balance all those.
No, yeah.
And I talked to a lot of, you know, I took a hard look at running for Senate just now because the Senate seat in Michigan where I live came open.
I decided not to.
But part, and there are all kinds of reasons why, but part of what was on my mind was that I really was looking to spend, you know, certainly this year, really putting family first.
And, you know, I talked to a lot of people who were in the Senate or in Congress and they talked about the price that their families paid, but also at a certain point, their kids were old enough to be really proud of what they did that made a difference and set a good example of public service and made their lives better.
But look, if you hold yourself to a tough standard, you have to ask yourself whether you're really not confusing your personal ambition with your ambition for the country, right?
Like when you run for president, you obviously reveal that you're an ambitious person.
Hopefully you do it because you have ambitions for the country.
But there's something selfless about it and there is something selfish about it, right?
There's something selfless about going through the extreme pace and the hard work and all of the bullshit and all the risk and the very real chance that you'll lose and all the other things that happen.
But like also, unlike the other people in your family who are coming along for the ride, like you get like your name is on the poster and you get to have all of these experiences.
And if it goes well, you get celebrated in all kinds of ways.
Right.
And you're always asking, or you should always be asking yourself, okay, why exactly am I doing this?
And it's really hard to separate those things.
I mean, nobody can perfectly separate those things.
But I do know that there are things that are not worth things that are more important than winning and things that are more important than running, which again is why I'm not running for Senate right now.
What drew you to public service in the first place, right?
Like you're graduating from Harvard, you're McKinsey, you have the opportunity, obviously a brilliant guy, to make millions of dollars and live your life in privacy.
But yet you sacrifice all of that for a more meager pay and more public scrutiny.
So I grew up in a family in a household that was, it was not politically connected.
Like I don't remember meeting any elected officials when I was growing up, but it was very politically aware.
Like my parents were the kind of people, especially my dad, who would be like always watching the news, always talking about whatever was going on on the news.
And kind of think built in me the idea that the most important thing out there was kind of what's going on in how decisions are being made about our country and about the world.
And so I had that in me even when I was a teenager and I thought I was going to be airline pilot.
Sacrificing for Service00:15:29
That was my real like first ambition.
And by the time I got to college, I was really, really interested in public service, but I didn't understand how compelling and exciting local public service was going to be.
And then we talked about my hometown a little bit, like everything that South Bend had gone through.
And I watched that over the years and thought about making a difference.
But even then, I didn't know it would mean running.
But by the time I was at McKinsey, which is very, maybe comfortable is the wrong word because you work very hard there, but like it's very nice job in a lot of ways.
It's good pay.
I'm definitely more money.
I was making six figures out of grad school.
It was good money.
And flying to all these interesting places, working on interesting stuff.
But within a year or two, I figured out that, like, I remember one time I was working on this kind of interesting, complicated set of problems about grocery pricing.
And I was running this database and doing my job.
And it was intellectually interesting, but the more I got into it, I remember this moment where I got up to get a cup of coffee and I just had this thought hit me that was like, I don't care.
And once I realized that, that like at some deeper level, I cared about doing a good job, but I didn't like viscerally care that like this company that we were consulting for would go on to do better than its competitors, right?
That was not what propelled me.
And I realized that even if there was less money in it, I was going to be both happier and more effective, more productive, working on something that I did care about, something that was important, not because a client was paying me to care about it, but because it just mattered in and of itself.
And then I don't want to get into the entire long story, but we talked earlier about Kokomo, Indiana, Howard County.
So that's got thousands of Chrysler jobs.
And while I was having this struggle at McKinsey over whether I really wanted to keep being a consultant or not, I saw that the state treasurer of my home state of Indiana was, for very ideological reasons, trying to block the Obama administration from saving Chrysler.
So the auto companies about to go under, all of them were, the administration intervened and they figured out a way to basically bail out and save these auto companies so they get back on their feet and keep employing thousands and thousands of people across the country.
And because I grew up in South Bend where an auto company had collapsed, and because I had visited Kokomo where there was an auto company that hadn't collapsed, but I knew what would happen if it did, I was really, really fired up about this guy, the Indiana state treasurer, going all the way to the Supreme Court trying to sue to stop those companies from being saved.
And there's a whole crazy legal theory of how he got to be the one to do it.
But what he was really doing was politically.
He, obviously, state treasurers are not very prominent, but he picked this big fight with Obama and it got him on TV and it was kind of a political maneuver.
And I thought like the state treasurer should be the most boring job in government, right?
You shouldn't be like out on crusades, especially ones that if you get your way, it would destroy auto jobs in a place that counts on them.
So I started asking who's going to run against this guy.
And this is 2010.
It turned out like nobody in my party was going to run against him.
Probably because everybody correctly figured out that a midterm election in a state like Indiana for a down ballot, like obscure race like running for state treasurer, like you weren't going to, you're probably going to get crushed.
And I ran and I got crushed.
But I learned everything there was to learn about kind of campaigns.
I went to all these chicken dinners in 90 counties in Indiana and shook hands and introduced myself and tried to explain why I thought that there needed to be a different approach in that office.
And then as soon as that ended and I got beat and I was figuring out what to do next, was I going to go back to the firm or get another job?
That was when the longest serving mayor in the history of my city said he wasn't going to run again.
And all those conversations that I've been having over beers, like buddies from high school after we'd grown up and mostly moved out because we all got the message that like success meant moving out.
We're always saying, what's going on back in South Bend?
Like, why can't they grow more?
Why can't we, like, why don't young people believe in that place?
And started to feel like we could maybe do something about that.
And so we had this crazy idea to have me run for mayor and just have a totally different message than any of the other people, Democrats mostly, who were running.
And then we won.
So that was kind of my path.
I always cared about this stuff, but I never would have guessed that I would run for state treasurer or that I would really find meaning in local government.
And obviously did not think when I was running for mayor that I was going to turn around and seek the presidency.
Like if it weren't for all of the unique things that were going on in our country in 2019, you know, at any other moment, somebody like me never would have run for president.
That's fascinating.
When we had Vivek on, and I'm naive, like living in New York, there was a moment where they asked him, you know, you can't be president because you don't believe, or they said to him, you can't be president because you don't believe in Jesus Christ.
Something to that effect.
Like, do you believe in Jesus Christ?
And they made it a moment.
Keep going.
I'm going to use the bathroom real quick.
Sorry, keep going.
So I guess I'm curious, and I hope this doesn't sound reductive, but from your perspective, do you feel like America is ready for a gay president?
And do you feel like that will be a major contention point if you were to run?
Yeah, it was definitely a thing last time around.
I'll think a lot of people were, I think in my party, especially people get ahead of themselves or they get really wrapped up in this, where there's only one way to actually find out, and that's to go to voters and see what they're ready for.
I don't think a lot of people thought that my Indiana city was ready for a mayor who was gay.
When I got re-elected after coming out, I had higher vote percentage than the first time around.
I would like to think that's because I did a good job, but also it meant people didn't care that much.
I was shocked when Obama won.
I didn't think the country was ready for a black brother.
And by the way, Indiana went for Obama.
And I think that's really interesting.
That state had not voted Democratic since LBJ.
And so the idea that the person who would flip it for the Democrats was not Bill Clinton, not John Kerry, it was Barack Hussein Obama, right?
Was not something if you were sitting around six months before he got nominated, saying, all right, who's the like safest choice who would even put Indiana on the electoral map?
You wouldn't have said Obama, right?
But I think the lesson from that is that you can overthink these things.
In the end, the only way to find out the answer is get out there and try.
And I don't want to compare, like, obviously this is very different.
But whenever there's some like artificial barrier people make up for why somebody can't run or can't serve, I think you just got to test it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm looking forward to it.
Go ahead.
Oh, you're Miles Miles.
Oh, it's on a different subject.
You're probably drinking.
Oh, mine's different.
So, China, you brought up an early interview.
I hate to pivot back to this, but I do want to get some clarity from this.
And I think one good thing the tariffs have done, the Chinese are, whether it's propaganda or not.
My Instagram now is nothing but Chinese electric vehicles.
I've been ranting to them for days now.
I'm like, oh, these guys are so far ahead of us.
They have people coming forward.
Andrew sent us an Instagram today of someone from China saying, hey, you know what happened?
These billionaires in America took all this money, kept it for themselves in China.
They built up the infrastructure.
I don't know if any of that is true, but it does seem like this is a very real threat.
And it does seem like they're ahead in certain ways that we might not be ready to catch up for.
What can we do?
As I'm asking you to think, because it's obvious you understand one-year, five-year goal-like needs very well.
10, 20, 30 years.
And when you said it's important for Americans to be number one, 30 years from now, how are we number one?
What's your ideas for that?
Yeah, I think it's going to be really tough for America to stay number one unless we do certain things right away.
First of all, it's back to basics.
It's taking care of our own infrastructure, our own education system.
It's making it easier and more affordable to raise a family here.
Just like all those core things that you don't think of as like international policy.
But if you do them right, then you get international primacy the same way that like part of how we won the Cold War and beat the Soviet Union.
It wasn't obviously like there was a military side of that, but like their military was formidable too, right?
The real inarguable, massive advantage we had was that there are way more people living in the Soviet Union who wished they were living American lives than anybody in America wishing they could live a Soviet life, right?
On some level, I think that was everything.
That was how America truly came to be number one.
So first of all, take care of the basics at home.
But also, we need to recognize that we're going into a ferociously competitive world stage here where we can't just keep trading off the glories of having won World War II, which is pretty much how we were able to build the international system the way we like it over the 50 years that followed.
And recognize that every country is not like just on its own finding its way toward liberal democracy.
That comes and goes.
I believe it's actually on the wane in our country, and I'm trying to do something about it.
But it's eroding in places like Hungary.
A lot of places were more democratic 10 years ago than they are now.
So we've got to recognize that this is going to require a level of investment in technology and a level of commitment to our values that both earns friends and establishes the kind of economic power that you need in order to, alongside your military power, in order to be number one.
I really worry that what we're in right now is a mode that's going to make it not so much America, America first has to be America in first place.
To do it right, if it's America first the way they're doing it, I think it means America alone.
And we become just like another country out there scrapping for advantage.
But to your point about China, like one of the things that the last administration did that I believe in is dealing with Chinese EV unfair competition from the Chinese EV market.
We should be making those here.
The other part of the story that I was telling you about about Indiana, Howard County, where those Chrysler jobs were, and St. Joe County, where I grew up, and a lot of places in Michigan where I live now, is the EV battery factories.
Like there is a $3 or $4 billion GM battery factory going up on the western edge of the county where I grew up that is bigger than any manufacturing investment that happened there in my entire life.
China is making big bets in EV.
It's not because they're, I don't believe the Chinese Communist Party is terribly concerned about first and climate change.
They understand the geostrategic implications of owning the 21st century vehicle market the way we did the last century.
So is that an example of where it could be appropriate to use tariffs?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
But again, we got to know what we're doing.
And maybe this is touching on what Andrew was saying earlier about build a wall.
Can you give me an idea of something you would want to do?
And this might be exactly what you were saying.
What's something you would do to make me feel better as a guy who's looking at them and being like, oh, 600-mile batteries and fucking floating on air or whatever?
What is an idea you would have?
It's like, just in the global scale, how America can compete?
You mean like a tech idea?
Or just, yeah, this factory can go up that would create these jobs.
Just kind of anything that I could grasp to feel some hope.
I mean, I think at the end of the day, we can do the clean tech stuff better.
But better than them or both.
Better than we have them.
What does that mean?
Anything like from electric vehicles to solar energy installations, all that stuff.
We can do it better, but we have to make a commitment as a country that we are going to invest in that.
It doesn't just happen.
There's this fiction that all of the things we see around us in the marketplace just came around without any policy choices.
But there were huge policy choices that made the automobile possible in this country.
Subsidies on everything from fossil fuels to the interstate highway system, right?
We need to make similar choices around owning the clean tech market for the future, owning AI.
I think we have a real problem with China could very well legitimately outpace us on AI if we let them.
And getting AI right is not just for the tiny proportion of people who understand how to code large language models and stuff that I can't even get my head around.
It's making sure that as a society, like part of our education is like people understand how to deal with AI the same way that you can't say somebody's educated and can graduate into the workplace if they don't know how to use email.
It's a competency more than like a technical expertise, which is why I was a little bit alarmed when I found out that our U.S. education secretary today thinks there's something called A1 and read a speech about how we need to do more with clearly not a lot of consensus.
Holy shit.
I think she's just like reading a prompter.
We're fucking Linda McMahon.
We're crazy.
Yeah, right.
I'm not making this up.
No, Linda.
It's over.
We need to make sure that it's a big deal.
We got to make a word A1.
A1.
We got to make it A1.
I mean, so, you know, you're right to be worried.
Yeah.
Me personally.
Oh, sorry.
Yeah.
No good.
I know you got to get out of here, Pete.
Here's my last one.
I think the biggest issue facing America is the wage gap.
Salaries have been stagnant.
CEO pays have skyrocketed.
How can we convince corporations to pay higher salaries when their responsibility is to stockholders?
Well, it can't just be pretty police.
I mean, this is where if the corporation, we have to either change the incentives on the front end so that there are tax advantages to taking better care of your people, or we have to be ready to do it through policy where this country says you're going to make $100 billion in wealth off of work that 100,000 people working for you generated.
More of that needs to be going to them.
And by the way, these things are actually related.
I think there's a way to deal in American citizens on kind of like a dividend off of the value that's being created from AI.
And from, I don't want to take you down a whole rabbit hole, but if you imagine like a universal basic income kind of thing.
It could be.
There's different ways to structure it.
But I think it's giving everybody a share in the overall value that's being created by technologies, which again, rest on technologies that the taxpayer paid for in the first place back in the 60s.
So why shouldn't we all get a share?
We're investing it.
Instead of it all going to this tiny handful of super, super wealthy people who are consolidating their own power, the same way the president's consolidating his political power, you got these, I don't even just like normal billionaires, but like mega mega billionaires consolidating their power, right?
We have to have tax policy that does that.
We have to have a system that requires people who amass that kind of wealth to be sharing it with citizens.
Because again, I know there's this myth.
I have a lot of respect for entrepreneurs who create things and they should be hugely rewarded when they create things that are valuable.
But they created those things based partly on infrastructure that all of us paid for.
And by infrastructure, I don't just mean roads and bridges.
I mean national security.
I mean things like inventing the internet or mRNA vaccine technology or whatever it is.
Fighting Income Inequality00:06:33
But more broadly, and this is both on the substance and the politics, I think you're naming something that's hugely important, which is the inequality in this country.
It doesn't get talked about enough.
It has gotten worse pretty much our entire lives.
And no republic has ever survived this level of inequality for long and remained a republic.
That kind of income inequality leads to inequality in power, which leads to political instability, which leads to some of the things I think we're experiencing right now as a country.
And if we don't get a handle on that, and it can absolutely be dealt with in a way that is consistent with a strong economy and business doing well.
We know that because there were times in our history, including the middle of the last century, when tax policy was asking more of the wealthiest.
And also, there was a lot of economic growth and a lot of productivity growth.
So it can be done.
The other thing that nobody talks about in either party much is poverty.
Like you may notice in political rhetoric, like middle class.
You're always supposed to say middle class.
You always talk about the middle.
Can't go wrong talking about the middle class.
But not a lot of folks are talking about like poor and low wealth people, which depending how you count is more than 100 million Americans.
And by the way, it's an experience that binds together a lot of people who are divided in terms of first-generation immigrants, white, black, and brown people and so forth.
And one of the things that should be the starkest wake-up call for my party is the idea of losing the vote of poor people.
Yep.
Because if we're not winning the vote of poor people, like what are we even doing out here?
And or what are you, we don't really talk about poverty or that kind of insecurity that people go through.
Yeah, we're like, what are you promoting or seemingly promoting or what are the Republicans projecting to you that you're promoting that they are so against that they will reject whatever you endeavor to do to help them with their poverty.
Meaning there might be another thing out there that is equally or potentially more important.
Right.
Which is why the way to not talk to low-income people or union people members or anybody else is to say like, oh, well, you're voting against your own self-interest.
It's like, how are you going to tell me what I'm interested in?
But also like, you know, you can picture like a like well-paid professional from, I don't know, somewhere near where we're sitting in New York City, like going up to a union member who is, you know, living near where I live in Michigan.
And if that person from New York says like, you're voting against your self-interest, that guy can turn around and say, so are you?
Yeah.
Yes, 100%.
So it has to be.
It goes back to this response.
So when that person, the coastal elite does it, we're doing it because we're benevolent.
I'm so heroic.
I'm voting against my own interest for little old you.
That's the idea.
Well, if it looks and feels like that, we're not going to get anywhere.
That could be the, there's, there's one thing, and then I know you got to go.
But so the guy who does all our partnerships here, one of my best friends, his name is Jamil, and he was working in England for a while.
And when he came back after working in England for a while, he found out the American government was like, yeah, but even though you worked over there, you still got to pay us tax.
And he was like, what do you mean?
I was working.
I wasn't working.
Yeah, but you're an American.
So even if you have a job abroad for a company abroad, you have to pay their tax.
But you still got to pay us tax because you're American.
If him as an employee has to do that, Apple got to do it.
Very good.
Google's got to do it.
Anybody else out there?
It just cannot be that unfair.
If there's that much transparency for the average, he wasn't working for an American company over there.
Actually, I'm not exactly sure what the company was, if it was an American company.
It was an American company.
But the idea that he had to pay tax out there and he also had to pay American taxes, then that company should have to do the exact same thing.
And I don't know how you implement that.
I understand it's tricky.
And I understand these guys are paying tens of millions of dollars to these like attorneys that are just tax code nerds that are trying to find the loopholes.
I've spoken to some of these guys and they've literally, I've spoken to some hedge fund dudes that were, that were literally like, listen, we could try to find ways to make money in the market.
It's easier to attack the tax code.
They literally told me that they're like, that's where the money is.
The money is attacking the tax code, not the market.
And not to repeat myself too many times, but this could be about, it might be that this is about to get much worse because there is a debate happening like right now, like through this summer in Congress, where I think there's a lot of people who hope that no one's paying too close attention to the tax changes and the tax cuts that they're about to put in.
So this is a great time to hold members of Congress accountable.
Because I do think, you know, even if you live in a very Republican area and you got a Republican member of Congress, like most people in that district don't love the idea of skewing the tax code even more toward corporations and wealthy people.
Like there's a real moment here, I think, to do something about that.
I mean, that's something that would, and I don't understand the wording, but to what we were speaking before, like speaking to people's feelings, like finding a way to effectively tax these corporations, which would reduce taxes on working class people, finding a way to turn that into one sentence, but letting a working class person know that they're going to pay 20% less because we found a way for these corporations to honor what their tax burden should be.
I mean, when Trump or when Doge or whatever was saying, maybe it was Lutnick was talking about the tariffs and they're like, yeah, well, yes, the goods are going to be more expensive and it's going to be more expensive for everyday people.
But with the money that the tariffs come in, bring in, we're actually going to remove the income tax for people making under $150,000 a year.
Whether or not they do that, that is fresh meat for somebody who's going, I make under $100,000 a year and that is a huge burden on me.
And I can provide for my kids so much better.
They can go to that camp that they're going to be able to do.
But what people got to understand is the reality is the tariffs are absolutely a shift of the tax burden onto the lowest income.
100%.
So like they're talking a good game.
But they're saying they're going to offset that burden with the money that comes in for the tariffs.
Regardless if they actually implement this or not, I hope that you guys come up with strategies that sound just as seductive and then intend to execute them.
And what a competitive advantage you would have.
If you're saying these guys are all talk, they say the nice shit, but they don't really do it.
Well, we're not all talk.
We're going to say nice shit and we're delivering on it.
And here's why.
Thank You and Farewell00:00:31
How can you lose?
You'll never lose, but give me some nice shit.
Sell me on something.
You know what I mean?
We need it.
Anyway, thank you so much for being here, man.
This is awesome.
It's really incredible.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to, I think we're all looking forward to seeing what you end up doing.
And yeah, I think that you're a really, really, you know, brave and amazing figure in our political sphere.