Jimmy Dore Show - 20180927_927_TJDS_Podcast

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Sept. 27, 2018 - Jimmy Dore Show

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20180927_927_TJDS_Podcast

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	Hey, I'm here to tell you about News Voice.
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	Download News Voice at newsvoice.com slash Jimmy.
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	Get ready for an outstanding entertainment program.
	The Jimmy Dore show.
	What fresh hell is this?
	Senator Sanders, it's Jimmy Dore.
	Oh, hello, Jim.
	How are you?
	What's shaking in Pasadena?
	Not a whole lot, Senator.
	You know, I've been traveling a lot with the Jimmy Dore show, actually.
	Oh, yeah, I hear that's going great.
	Congratulations, honestly.
	You fight.
	Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
	sad music
	Thanks.
	Hey, thanks, Senator.
	You should join us for one of our live shows.
	I'd love to.
	When's the next time you guys are going to be in Washington, D.C.?
	Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
	I was just there.
	I just got home today from Washington, D.C. Ah, fuck me.
	I'm sorry, I forgot to call.
	Oh, well, next time.
	Say, I'm actually going to be in Pasadena in a few weeks for a thing.
	Let me ask you a question.
	Shoot.
	Where is your favorite place to get eggs?
	Honestly, my favorite place is my house.
	No one makes eggs as good as I do, especially omelets or scrambled.
	There isn't a place to get.
	So as far as a diner or something, is there a good place to go?
	I'm not going to come over to your house and have you make me eggs.
	It's not going to happen.
	I can't, you know, I really can't even.
	Anywho, I assume you didn't call just to shoot the shit about eggs.
	No, no, I actually wanted to ask you about your rallies with Alexandria Casio-Cortez in Kansas this week.
	Ah, yes, of course.
	A lot of people showed up.
	We shared our progressive message, and it was well received.
	All in all, a very good deal over there.
	What do you think of her?
	Oh, Alexandria?
	Ah, she's fantastic.
	Just what's not the like.
	She's young.
	She's vital.
	She's energized.
	Her brand of progressive politics is really connecting with people.
	And perhaps most importantly, she's freaking out the Republicans and the Centrist Democrats.
	That's when you know you have a good egg, so to speak.
	Agree, but once she joins Congress, do you worry that she, a complete newcomer, will eclipse you as the face of the Democratic socialist agenda?
	Look, James, I'd be lying to you if I were to say that I am a man without ego altogether.
	I don't think such a beast exists.
	However, I can say that I do care more about improving the lives of Americans than my own position in that particular movement.
	I see.
	And let's be honest, I carry a lot of baggage now.
	Centrist Democrats, so wary of me.
	Hillary supporters fucking hate me.
	Hate me with the passion of a thousand sons.
	Anyway, my point is, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing for the face of the movement to now be a young woman of color.
	I see your point, Bernie.
	Now, don't get me wrong.
	They'll still go after her.
	Mark my words.
	But by the time they're reduced to arguments like that, everyone will have seen them for the embitted, squawking parmigans that they are.
	And hopefully they will leave the political sphere forever and do what they're meant to do.
	Ask to speak to the manager at Starbucks.
	Thank you.
	It's the Jimmy Dore Show.
	The show for...
	...up-minded, lowly-lovered lefties.
	The kind of people that are...
	It's the show that makes Anderson Cooper save.
	It's on popular TV.
	And now, here's a guy who sounds a lot like me.
	It's Jimmy Dore.
	Hi, everybody.
	Welcome to the Jimmy Door Show.
	We have a special guest with us.
	It's Tulsi Gabbard.
	She's the U.S. representative of Hawaii's 2nd District, a position she's had since 2013.
	She's a veteran, a public servant, and a progressive leader who's not afraid to stand up to the establishment.
	Please welcome the show.
	It's Tulsi Gabbard.
	How are you?
	Aloha, Jimmy.
	Well, to see you.
	Thanks for having me here.
	My pleasure.
	Thanks for making the trip to Pasadena all the way from Hawaii.
	That's a long commute.
	So you first became in everybody's consciousness when you decided to resign from the DNC.
	Can you just briefly tell me about what you were thinking when you did that and what are the consequences?
	So in early 2016, as the presidential primaries were starting to heat up, as an officer of the DNC, as a vice chair, I knew that officers of the DNC needed to remain neutral.
	And so I fully expected to kind of stand on the sidelines of the election and not make any endorsements.
	But as the race continued, I think it was after the first debate and some of the news coverage, I saw that almost no coverage or attention was being paid to the vast differences between the two major candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, and their very different foreign policies.
	It was almost as though people kind of said, well, Secretary of State Clinton is a foreign policy expert, and Bernie Sanders has these other issues without actually challenging both of them on their positions.
	So I saw a vast difference between Secretary Clinton's history and policies that were very hawkish and very interventionist and that have proven to very costly and counterproductive to our country over the years versus Bernie Sanders' general non-interventionist foreign policy perspective.
	So that's really what drove me to resign as vice chair of the DNC because I felt that as a soldier and a veteran, there was no way that I could stand on the sidelines during this really important race and not bring voice to those differences and speak on behalf of my brothers and sisters who had served and who understand firsthand the cost of war,
	how important this job is as commander-in-chief, and how critical it is that we examine what kind of judgment would these candidates have as commander-in-chief and what is their policies and where have those policies gotten us?
	And that's exactly what I did.
	So I resigned and joined Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail and spoke at just about every rally that I went and attended and had a chance to really bring light to those contrasts, to those differences, specifically on the interventionist policies of Hillary Clinton versus Bernie Sanders' non-interventionist policies.
	So, why is it that I remember some kind of conflict between the amount of debates?
	Didn't you make it?
	Oh, yeah, that was, I mean, that happened previously, previous to my research.
	You got invited to something, didn't you?
	Yeah, I was going to go, and actually, I was invited and was going to go and attend the first debate, which was held in Las Vegas.
	And, you know, I think tickets were bought and plans were made and so on and so forth.
	But, you know, I had made very clear, both in private and then later in public, about my differences with the decision that was made by then DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz about the fact that for the first time, the DNC was going to not only limit the debates to six sanctioned DNC debates,
	but that if any candidate participated in a quote-unquote non-sanctioned debate, then they would be barred from attending any future DNC-sanctioned debates.
	To me, that just defied the very principles of inclusion and engagement and democracy that we were trying to push.
	Okay, and that's when you so I kept, you know, I kept making this a point in the hope that it would actually change so that we could add more debates and not threaten to punish people who were trying to earn voters attention and support for actually engaging with them.
	And eventually that, you know, we got a message from her chief to my chief saying, well, you know, if she's going to keep making noise about this publicly, then she really shouldn't come to the debate.
	That's amazing.
	That's awesome.
	And then she had to resign from the DNC, correct?
	Because the WikiLeaks revealed that she was.
	I think it was like the day before the convention or something.
	Yeah.
	And of course, she was punished with a better position inside of Hillary Clinton's company.
	So what really excites me about you as a politician are two things.
	The first thing I want to talk to you, because it is 9-11.
	What is that?
	So I like that you've been calling for sanity in our foreign policy.
	And because our foreign policy now is just it's regime change, regime change, regime change, and we're still in Afghanistan some 17 years later.
	No one knows what the goal is, and we're controlling less and less of the country.
	So I just want to, let's just start off by saying, how does how do you I'm 9-11, you're a veteran.
	How do you experience 9-11?
	That's a heavy question.
	You know, there are thousands of men and women all across this country like myself who joined the military after the attacks on 9-11 to go after those terrorists who attacked us.
	And to think about how many lives have been lost since, how many American lives, how many first responders' lives were lost on 9-11 and since, and those who still suffer from major health problems because of their responding to that attack,
	their families, veterans who come home and suffer from visible and invisible wounds, and every single American taxpayer who have had trillions of dollars taken out of their wallets to pay for these interventionist wars that our country has waged since 9-11, looking at and understanding in a very personal way the cost of war.
	It is a true betrayal to all those who have sacrificed so much to now sit here on the anniversary of 9-11 and hear from our country's president and his administration about how they are essentially ready to wage war against Syria and Russia
	Russia in order to stop them from attacking al-Qaeda in Idlib, in Syria.
	We are in this situation today because of U.S. policies in Syria specifically as we're talking about this situation where you have 20 to 30,000 al-Qaeda and other jihadist terrorists who are in control of this city.
	There are a lot of civilians there.
	And Trump is now talking about going to war with these countries, with Syria and Russia, if they launch this attack that they've been talking about doing against those terrorists in Idlib.
	And he claims to be doing it to save Syrian civilians.
	However, if that were the case, then why did he not, why was he not then the first to stand up and support the UN's call for humanitarian corridor for civilians to evacuate from the city?
	Why was he not the first one calling for an actual solution to help reduce the amount of Syrian civilian casualties?
	And so this looking for an excuse that the Trump administration is doing, they're looking for an excuse to basically launch an attack against Syria and Russia.
	And my concern is I think they're doing it for two reasons.
	One is because if you look back over the last couple of years, the two times that President Trump has received vast positive reinforcement from the mainstream media, from Democratic leaders, from Republican leaders, have been the two times that he's launched military attacks against Syria.
	His poll numbers are dropping.
	So he's looking with a political calculation of what's the thing that I know will make it so people are saying nice things about me again.
	That's the first reason.
	The second reason is because there has been this long, slow regime change war happening in Syria.
	We've been waging this long war since 2011.
	And the main ground force in that war has been al-Qaeda and these other jihadist terrorist groups.
	And so there have been both direct and indirect support of these groups fighting on the ground to overthrow this regime.
	And so they're concerned that if these terrorist groups like al-Qaeda are taken out in Idlib, what happens to the ground force fighting to overthrow the Syrian government?
	And this leads us to the United States alliance with Saudi Arabia, who would like to see a Wahhabi extremist government replace the government that's in Syria.
	This leads to the United States alliance with Saudi Arabia and the atrocities that are occurring in Yemen.
	So when you look at what's happening and the fact that al-Qaeda is stronger today than ever before.
	It is a true disservice, a betrayal, and dishonoring the sacrifices that have been made by so many people, by every American.
	So two questions on that.
	Why does why does Saudi Arabia want to overthrow Assad?
	Because he's not their puppet.
	They want someone that they can control.
	Okay.
	Well, you know, Syria is aligned with Iran, which is aligned with Russia.
	So there's lots of interests in getting rid of Assad from Israel to Saudi Arabia.
	There's a pipeline.
	There's competing pipelines to bring natural gas to Europe.
	Now, Russia sells most of their natural gas to Europe, so they don't want that pipeline, which gives them, so they're not going to give up on this, right?
	So if Trump does start a war, it'll be a real war.
	Like that, I don't think that's what people realize.
	It's a World War III type proportion.
	Yes.
	So people don't really realize that that's what's happening and that's what's at risk right now.
	Everyone thinks that that'll never happen because it never happened before.
	But I just want to show really quickly, you tweeted this out today.
	You said, while President Trump and VP Pratt Pence give 9-11 speeches about how much they care about the victims of al-Qaeda's attack on our country, they are simultaneously acting as protectors of al-Qaeda and Syria Idlib, threatening Russia and Syria that if they attack al-Qaeda, we will punish them.
	That's just a plain fact that's true if anybody just takes an objective look at the situation.
	But you get pilloried for saying things like this all the time.
	Like, for instance, when you were asking, when you were skeptical of the gas attacks in Syria, when you were rightly skeptical, turns out, Robert Fisk has confirmed that those gas attacks weren't what they were said to be.
	Lots of British ex-foreign ministers and the head of their Navy had said the same thing.
	This doesn't make any sense.
	We need to see evidence.
	Well, when you asked for evidence, people like Naratandin said, people of Hawaii's 2nd District, was it not enough for you that your representative met with a murderous dictator?
	Will this move you?
	And it's you saying you're skeptical of the claims of this odd use.
	So, and then just piggybacking on that, former DNC chair Howard Dean said this is a disgrace.
	Gabbard should not be in Congress.
	Now, that's kind of super ironic because Howard Dean made his bones going against the Iraq war.
	In fact, when he was campaigning in 2004, he would start off his campaign speeches by saying, I'm from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.
	And then they smeared him because he was against a war, just like they're smearing you, just like that.
	Like somehow you're in bed with a murderous dictator.
	And that's the head of the Center for American Progress, which was started by the Podestas.
	So what is in it for someone like Narutanen to smear you for asking for evidence about Syria?
	I don't know.
	Maybe you should have her on your show sometime.
	She blocked me on Twitter.
	By the way, I would have her on.
	Let me just point out real quick.
	No one would lie.
	She's talking about the people of Hawaii's 2nd District.
	And I am truly grateful and honored to have just been reelected in our primary election in August by 84% of Hawaii's 2nd District in a race where I was challenged by two different people,
	one of whom was endorsed by the National Education Association as well as our Hawaii State Teachers Association because she disagreed with my anti-regime change war foreign policy and my strong advocacy, particularly in Syria.
	And so to have that kind of overwhelming statement of support by the people of Hawaii that they are seeing through these critics and the arguments that they're making and instead taking a stand for peace, understanding the cost of war, I think is something that I'm very grateful for, but I think it also shows that people are smarter, voters are smarter than some folks give them credit for.
	Well, it's just, I still just scratch my head, like, what's at Narutandon, who was behind the Iraq war, she's for Libyan war, now she wants more war in Syria.
	You can never be discredited in American politics if you're pro-war, no matter how many times you're wrong about it.
	And yet she wants more war, and she's smearing a veteran.
	You're a veteran.
	She's the head of a think tank.
	Why would she, which is, you know, nothing.
	That's like, you know, being born as Chelsea Clinton, you're not really earning.
	My point is, what would be in it for the head of a think tank to be so hard against a veteran and so pro-war in another country if she cares about people's lives?
	And the United States supports 73% of the world's dictators, right?
	Saudi Arabia is, this is just because, so I think this is a bigger thing.
	I think this is because you're against money in politics.
	That's true.
	And they're for money in politics.
	They're all about money in politics.
	They're about corrupting politics.
	They're not about helping people or responding to the electorate or even serving the people who vote for their representatives.
	They're all about keeping money flowing in politics.
	They don't end neoliberalism.
	Right.
	And that's why it's so important for people to actually look at what individuals, whether people are running for office or they're in office or they're leaders in politics, what do they actually stand for?
	Because you have these individuals and groups of people who call themselves progressive, but are some of the first to call for more war in the guise of humanitarianism.
	That look at these poor people suffering.
	And there are people suffering in other parts of the world.
	Let's go drop more bombs and try to take away their suffering.
	And when you look at example after example after example, our actions, U.S. policy interventionist regime change war policies have made the lives of people in these other countries far worse off than they ever were before or would have been if we had just stayed out of it.
	So what that really comes down to is people with a great deal of power in the United States to make these decisions, taking devastating actions really to make themselves feel better, because then they can say, well, we did something without ever actually looking through before taking that action, say, what will the consequences of this be?
	First set of consequences, the second set of consequences, all these different ripple effects that we've seen play out in places like Iraq, in places like Libya, where today, after we led the war to topple Gaddafi, we have open human slave trading going on in open market.
	In today's society, we have more terrorists in Libya today than there ever were before.
	We essentially have a failed state, and we see much of the, we see much of these detrimental, devastating effects also in Syria.
	So you think the United States would get tired of these wars, but we're not.
	We're in Afghanistan 17 years.
	We're still in Iraq.
	We're still doing stuff in Libya.
	We're trying to get, well, Trump announced we're never going to leave Syria.
	We're in Africa.
	We have 7,500 troops in Africa that we know of.
	We have officially somewhere around 900 military bases around the world, unofficially over 1,000 because lots of them are secret.
	Russia has eight.
	So when did we break through the war machines propaganda?
	I mean, people are against war in America, right?
	So a lot of people voted for Trump because he said he was going to be a non-interventionist.
	A lot of people on the left want the foreign policy you're talking about, a rational, evidence-based foreign policy and not to do regime change wars.
	For me, the proof that all these wars are, some people say they're bankers' wars.
	Some people say they're oil wars.
	It's always a money.
	It's always about a handful of people figure out they can make money.
	And so we go to war, right?
	So, you know, Colin Powell's chief of staff admitted that both the Iraq wars were over oil, right?
	So that Colonel Wilkerson, so he figured that out, that these are about oil.
	When do you think we get tired of these wars?
	And because we're ending our empire, ironically, the same way all empires end.
	We're overextending ourselves militarily.
	We have a $716 billion defense depending on budget, which is 40% higher than at the height of the Iraq war in 2005.
	We now increased our Pentagon budget 40%.
	Did we increase our education budget 40%?
	Did we increase our infrastructure spending?
	No, nothing.
	And nobody gets to, there's no debate over that.
	It just happens.
	So how do we do this?
	How can we pull this off before our empire ends?
	I think it might be too late, but can we do something about it?
	It's not too late.
	Really?
	We have to do something about it.
	Failure is not an option.
	Okay.
	And more and more people are becoming more educated, aware, and informed about these consequences of our actions.
	And I think fewer people are buying into those cheap arguments that are often made to sell a war to the American people.
	As you said, I mean, there's such a stark difference between the hawkish bipartisan environment in Washington and what I hear from people both in my home state of Hawaii, as well as people from many other states in the country,
	people who span the political ideological spectrum from very progressive to very conservative and anywhere in between, people who stand in agreement with us about the need to end these interventionist, costly wars that have cost us trillions of dollars alone since 9-11,
	where we see the need of how that money could have been spent right here at home on things like education, on making sure that our kids in Flint and Detroit and Hawaii and New York City and many other places in the country have access to clean water, on building bridges and infrastructure.
	I mean, there are so many needs that we have in this country, and yet we have spent trillions of dollars on these interventionist wars.
	So that's where a lot of my frustration in the 2016 presidential debate happened because, you know, when I was pushing, say, hey, bring up more, more of these foreign policy questions, oftentimes it was kind of brushed off by saying, oh, yeah,
	yeah, yeah, that's just one issue, but there are so many other issues, ignoring the fact that as long as we continue to spend these trillions of dollars, this issue on these interventionist wars, this issue of the cost of war is central to every single other domestic issue that we have to deal with as a country because we can't afford to do both.
	We have a finite amount of resources.
	And so I think the more people, the more people are paying attention, and I think more people are now thanks to shows like yours and others and social media.
	I think there's access to more information than just what they're getting through the three cable network news channels.
	And again, I think we saw a lot of excitement around these issues in the 2016 election.
	And so we need to keep this going.
	Okay, well, and that's why it's important today on days like 9-11 to not only honor those who have sacrificed and not only honor those who have been killed, but to point out the current state of affairs and the hypocrisy that exists within the top tiers of our government.
	Boy, it's just, I appreciate your optimism about ending the wars.
	Both we have two pro-war parties.
	I mean, the Democratic Party is pro-war.
	There's no doubt about it.
	And let me just show you this really quickly before we get into it.
	I wanted to show you, this is John Kerry.
	He was at a congressional hearing and he was letting people know.
	So people don't know what these wars are about.
	They don't understand about the petrodollar.
	They don't understand why are we in bed with Saudi Arabia, which is a brutal theocratic dictatorship.
	And we're against like somebody like Iran who actually has elections.
	Not that they're perfect or great or anything.
	Like people don't question, like, why is that?
	And people don't, well, why do we do all these wars?
	Well, we're doing them at the behest of Saudi Arabia.
	And Saudi Arabia, when we went off the gold standard, we went on the petrodollar, which is now, so when Saudi Arabia sells oil, you have to buy it in the American dollars.
	And what we offered them in exchange for that is that they could use our military wherever they wanted.
	And you think I'm kidding?
	Here's John Kerry talking about Saudi Arabia offering to pay for us to go overthrow Assad.
	Here it is.
	With respect to Arab countries offering to bear cost and to assist, the answer is profoundly yes.
	They have.
	That offer is on the table.
	So he says the countries have offered to bear the cost that offers on the table.
	And the congresswoman asked them to be a little bit more clear.
	And here we go.
	Secretary.
	And the details on the offer and the proposal on the table.
	What are the figures that we're talking about?
	Well, we don't know what action we're engaged in right now, but they've been quite significant.
	I mean, very significant.
	In fact, some of them have said that if the United States is prepared to go do the whole thing the way we've done it previously in other places, they'll carry that cost.
	That's how dedicated they are to us.
	So there's John Kerry, a guy who became famous standing up against a bullshit war.
	Now he is trying to sell us bullshit wars.
	And he just admitted in public that Saudi Arabia is willing to bear the cost of us to overthrow Assad and Syria, just like we've done previously.
	Just like we did in Iraq the first time, just like we did in Iraq the second time.
	I don't know how much they paid for Libya.
	So people aren't aware of this, are they?
	Do you think people are aware that Saudi Arabia is making offers and funding our interventionist wars?
	Most people aren't.
	Most people aren't.
	And that's the shady secret that people don't talk about in Washington.
	Not only are they paying for these wars and using our sons and daughters'lives to carry out their bidding, but they're also paying a lot of these think tanks in Washington a ton of money to issue opinions and ideas and plans and proposals that jive with their agenda.
	So when you say they, you mean the military-industrial complex?
	They meaning Saudi Arabia.
	Oh, Saudi Arabia.
	And the military-industrial complex.
	But in this specific instance of how Saudi Arabia is using their money to achieve their own objectives at the sacrifice of our own well-being.
	Wow, I thought it was Russia that was interfering in the affairs of the United States.
	Turns out there's other countries doing it, like Saudi Arabia.
	That is so weird to hear that.
	I didn't know that.
	So again, you're a veteran.
	And it's just amazing that your voice in the culture right now isn't elevated more than it is.
	In fact, it's denigrated by corporate tools like a guy like Howard Dean.
	Now, Howard Dean again became famous because he went against the corporate wing of the Democratic Party.
	And then he got his mind right because they smeared and slandered him as a maniac.
	And so now he works for one of the biggest lobbying firms in the world.
	And he has an office down the hall from Newt Gingrich.
	That's who he's rubbing shoulders with making money.
	And that's why Howard Dean, a doctor, is against single-payer because he's corrupt.
	And so that's why we have these wars.
	And if you say anything about the wars, you are in trouble.
	You get smeared.
	I got smeared by the media.
	CNN calls us names and smears.
	And you get the same thing.
	You get the same thing.
	And this all comes down to money and politics.
	Now, this is how it works.
	Dianne Feinstein takes money from health care lobby, rejects single-payer insurance.
	So that's how it works.
	And that's called corruption.
	That's called bribery.
	That's called not having integrity.
	And you decided to get out in front of this.
	And you tweeted out, When I was first elected to Congress, I promised that money wouldn't influence my decisions.
	I rejected money from Wall Street, Big Pharma, and others.
	Citizens United worsened the crisis of dark money influencing our country.
	We need to get corporate money and lobbyists out of politics.
	I've decided to stop accepting PAC lobbyist money.
	Bottom line, we can't allow our future to be driven and shaped by special interests.
	Now, that's an exciting position to take.
	And it really excites voters.
	Who it doesn't excite is the neoliberal corporatists.
	Here's Neera Tanden, again, head of the Center for American Progress, said, Well, I do think Assad using chemical weapons to murder children is worse than lobbyists.
	So maybe that difference me from you, Tulsi.
	So again, more smears from someone who's like, you know, a very influential player in the Democratic Party.
	Again, coming at a veteran.
	And she's not a veteran.
	She never served.
	She never served anybody except money.
	That's who Neera Tanden serves, is money.
	You actually served the nation.
	And then she's got zero integrity.
	So she smears you because you have integrity.
	And that's all.
	That's the only game they have.
	That's the only game she can play because she can't come out and say, taking corporate money is good.
	So she's got to make it look like somehow you're some kind of, even though you're a veteran, to me, Neera Tanden should not be allowed in polite society after doing something like that.
	But she will be because our society is completely corrupted with corporate money.
	Inside the Democratic Party, the Democrats still take corporate money.
	You don't.
	How long can you stay in a party that doesn't work for the people?
	We're working to try to change it.
	We're working to try to make those reforms within the party.
	There are, I think, something like 125 candidates running for Congress on the Democratic ticket this year who have refused to accept any corporate PAC money at all.
	I've talked with some of the folks who know how those races are going, and they're expecting a large number of those candidates to do very well, if not win.
	And so they're proving the point that Washington hates to talk about and that these lobbyists don't believe, which is that people can actually get elected to Congress without taking those corporate PAC checks from those lobbyists.
	And the power of the people is stronger than the power that this small group of people in Washington think that they have.
	And that's what's exciting to me, quite frankly.
	And we've seen some of these candidates already win in some races, and others are competing in a lot of challenges across the country.
	It does create an opportunity to be able to set a more progressive agenda, but the key question is, what does that even mean?
	As we have people, as we mentioned, who call themselves progressive, but who are some of the first to advocate for more interventionist wars.
	So we have to dig a few layers deeper as people are running for office, say, what do you actually stand for?
	What is your vision for this country?
	And that's the debate that we will have to have in Congress, should Democrats win over the House or win more seats in the Senate.
	Otherwise, it will be more of the same status quo, where you'll have lobbyists who have more of a seat at the table writing policies that affect health care and education and Wall Street and everything else, rather than having a truly representative government of by and for the people.
	Well, here, I just want to show you this.
	So this again, I mean, this is the establishment.
	This is what they do to progressives.
	They did that.
	The establishment did, Nero Tanden, Howard Dean, they did it to you.
	This is what the establishment newspapers do to Bernie Sanders.
	And so Bernie Sanders responds like you did.
	They say, well, let's take back the Democratic Party.
	And there's the headline.
	Sanders backers take over the California Democratic Party.
	I was part of that.
	I got out of a sickbed to go vote for my delegate and we voted for progressives and we overwhelmed the Democratic Party in California.
	We had way more progressive delegates, Bernie delegates, Bernie crowd delegates than corporate delegates.
	And then when we got to the state convention, we found out that that was rigged, too.
	The Democratic Party rigs a state convention.
	And what happened?
	We ended up getting a corporate lobbyist as the chair.
	They have superdelegates on the state level.
	Weren't those created at the last second?
	Those weren't even counted before.
	I heard there was just a whole new group of delegates that really kind of came out of nowhere.
	Yes.
	Lots of shenanigans.
	Again, right?
	And so the corporatists aren't letting go of the party.
	They've got control of both parties.
	It would be a lot harder for them to get control of three.
	But so that's why I always urge people to start another party because this reform is not happening inside the Democratic Party.
	And so someone like you who has integrity, someone like you who doesn't take corporate money, yet you see the DNC reverse their own rules to start taking corporate money.
	Now they're taking fossil fuel money again.
	We're in the middle of climate change that's going to wipe out this planet within a couple of decades.
	And the Democrats start taking fossil fuel money.
	So, like, to me, it's an emergency.
	And to reform the Democratic Party, that's called incrementalism.
	We don't have time for incrementalism.
	Bernie Sanders started every speech in 2016 by saying, sounds like you're ready for a revolution.
	And then he turns around and starts sheepdogging people into the Democratic Party, which does stuff like this.
	So when he said, are you ready for a revolution, doesn't sound that it was intellectually honest.
	Because now he's sheepdogging people into a party that's cheating progressives at any time.
	at every turn.
	They're cheating.
	They just smeared and slimed Cynthia Nixon.
	We can go over it and how many times the person, Jaffe, who ran against Pelosi, they screwed him over.
	They're screwing people over in Texas everywhere.
	The party is not letting this happen.
	So why is it?
	Now you're a Democrat and I know you're going to stay a Democrat.
	Why?
	Because at this point in time where I look at where I can make the most impact, that's where I'm going to direct my energy.
	I think as you look at this political revolution, I think there are a lot of ways to tackle that.
	I think that there, look, it's never enough.
	It's never as far as fast as we want to go.
	But I think if you look at the recent vote that the DNC membership took to get rid of superdelegates, at least on the first ballot, that was some progress.
	And that was very hard fought.
	And that would not have happened if a lot of folks had not run for those local county and state party positions after 2016.
	If they had not run for and won those seats, that would never have happened because it was some of the strongest, it was some of the strongest, most longtime Washington Democrat operatives who were fighting very, very hard against that change that was made.
	But that change happened and the vote was very, very strong.
	And so I think there is, it's frustrating.
	So earlier this year, or maybe it was last year, you put out a video where you were calling on the Democratic National Committee to reform itself.
	To reform itself by getting rid of superdelegates, by allowing for open primaries so that we stop a lot of the shenanigans that we saw in 2016, where people who turned out in droves to vote were not allowed to vote, and to allow for same-day registration for primaries and caucuses.
	Because if people make the effort to come out and vote, I believe they should be allowed to vote.
	Simple as that.
	Do you see Trump as Trump is a problem?
	This is what we say here.
	He's a problem.
	But he's a symptom of a larger problem, which is the destruction of democracy in the United States, that when both parties turn their back on workers, they're going to go to a right-wing demagogue.
	Do you see it anything like that?
	How do you see Trump?
	I would agree with that assessment.
	If we look at the lead up to the 2016 elections, and if we actually listen to and examine why people chose to vote the way that they did, it points to much bigger problems and a much bigger disaffection that voters that has been building for quite some time that voters have against the establishment of Washington, the political establishment of Washington that exists within both parties.
	And, you know, I think you saw a lot of the excitement that come around, that came around for Bernie Sanders because of that as well, because he was this guy who, you know, he spoke out for the principles he's been speaking about for decades, but he was a guy who came from outside of that political establishment.
	You look at the Republican lineup from all of those people who were running, Trump was the only guy who came at this from outside that political establishment.
	I think it's really unfortunate for the country and for the American people that there has not been a true effort to really to really listen to those who voted the way that they did about why they did that.
	What have they, what has caused them to lose confidence and make it so that they believe that this system is not working for them because it's not.
	And then how do we fix it?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it's not working.
	So, you know, Trump has taken that, like the pain inflicted on people from the economic meltdown.
	And then the government bailed out Wall Street and not the people.
	And so those people are still hurting.
	And then he takes that hurt and he redirects it at the people who are also victims of capitalism, poorer people, immigrants, people like that.
	What I see happening is that the Democrats want everyone to think, I mean, the Democratic establishment, want everyone to think that Trump is the problem.
	And as soon as we get rid of Trump, everything will be okay.
	You know, except the problem was when we had Barack Obama, they lost the union in Wisconsin.
	They had Occupy Wall Street got their head cracked in from coast to coast.
	We bailed out the banks.
	We didn't bang out, bail out the homeowners.
	He took the banks and made them bigger.
	He took two wars and made them so that so this idea that getting rid of Trump is going to make everything better.
	The problem was things are horrible right now in America.
	80% of all people who earn a paycheck live paycheck to paycheck in the richest country in the world.
	And the Democratic Party, the establishment, does not have a counter narrative to Trump.
	In fact, they're going along.
	They just fast-tracked his judges.
	They helped him deregulate Wall Street again and they just bloated his military budget.
	They don't have a counter narrative.
	They're just pretending the problem is Trump.
	So what do we do now when we have neither party providing us with a solution?
	The solution has to come from the people.
	The people know that the parties are not providing them with answers.
	And by getting more people actually engaged within this process to be able to support those who do present that counter narrative, who are speaking the truth, who are honest about the current situation and where we need to go is how we're going to have to make change because that's where the power truly lies if we choose, we the people choose to use it.
	Washington is very scared.
	People get very scared when they hear about how Bernie Sanders was able to raise money from individuals all across this country and turned his back completely on those corporate PAC donors.
	They get very worried when you hear about people like Beto Rourke in Texas, who is competing against Ted Cruz, raising money from those small dollar individual donors, because that threatens the power base that exists within Washington.
	And so that's where we need, I think that's where we need to focus on reminding people about the power that they have and that we the people need to take back our own country.
	When Bernie Sanders conceded in the primary and endorsed Hillary Clinton, she didn't then reach out to progressives.
	She did the exact opposite.
	She put a thumb in the eye of the progressives and picked someone to the right of her as vice president, Tim Kaine, and then they went on to lose to Donald Trump.
	Probably the only two people in the whole wide world who could lose to Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Tim King.
	Gallagher could have beat Donald Trump.
	So my point is that they take our vote for granted and they will continue to take our vote for granted until they are threatened.
	And you cannot threaten them from inside the goddamn party.
	If Bernie Sanders and you decided to start a third party in 2016 after the election, it would be the most popular party in the country right now.
	And we would be having a totally different discussion.
	It would be about how progressive you guys are going to be and how progressive our government's going to be.
	And so because what happened in the last election is that they sufficiently shamed people so that Jill Stein and third parties, they got like 1% of the vote, if that.
	But if a third party's polling at 10%, which you and Bernie would be immediately, now they can't turn their back on progressives.
	They know they won't win on a national level unless they have a coalition government.
	And if you don't have a third party, we're never going to have that.
	I promise this is my last question on that.
	But so there's no doubt the way to influence politics is from a start of third party with two of the most popular people in the country being Bernie and you.
	Yet Bernie, who has advocated for a third party his entire career, I have video after video that I've played on this show of him saying we have to have a rainbow coalition and it has to happen outside the Democratic Party until he gets into a position where he can actually manifest that.
	He decides not to.
	And no one can figure out why he's doing that.
	So what do you say to that?
	My theory that if you and Bernie started a third party, that would immediately transform politics in America.
	I don't know that that would necessarily be true.
	That it would have that immediate transformative effect that needs to happen.
	There's no question about that.
	The question of exactly how and the most effective and most efficient way to get there, I question the certainty of that.
	Okay, it's okay.
	I was hoping for something better.
	I know, I know.
	So you've introduced lots of great legislation.
	You introduced legislation called Stop Arming Terrorists or funding terrorists.
	Stop Arming Terrorists Act.
	How many votes did that get?
	Hasn't gotten a vote.
	Hasn't gotten a hearing in committee.
	People don't, you know, I bring this up when I go on other people's podcasts that you introduce this legislation and they say, why?
	I said, because we're funding terrorists, and people look at me like I'm crazy.
	Yeah.
	So talk to how is the United States funding?
	I mean, I just showed you the John Kerry video, but tell me, how is the United States government funding terrorism?
	Specifically in Syria now, since 2011, both overtly and covertly, the United States has been providing arms, intelligence, and equipment to fighters who are allied with, fighting alongside, working with al-Qaeda in this regime change war.
	So these very same terrorists who attacked us on 9-11, we have been supporting for years as this ground force to fight in this regime change war that we have quietly been waging now for seven years.
	This has been well documented.
	I have been met with that quizzical, puzzled look from people on kind of the mainstream cable news shows who've asked, like, that's illegal.
	Yeah, it is.
	But the fact that we've got to introduce legislation that states exactly that, that not a single U.S. taxpayer dollar will be used to provide any type of support to these terrorist groups or to those countries like Saudi Arabia who support these terrorist groups.
	Whether it's direct or indirect, we cannot allow taxpayer dollars to be used in this way, as they have been.
	So, Selsi, tell us about your environmental legislation.
	Is it called off-fossil fuels legislation?
	Fossil Fuels Act.
	And how many people have you gotten to co-sponsor that?
	Oh, gosh.
	I'm not sure what the latest count is.
	I think the last time we checked, there were over 25.
	We have the endorsement of over 400 environmental organizations from across the country.
	And slow and steady.
	We continue to try to pick up steam.
	This is one thing that a lot of good folks are challenging their candidates for Congress as they're going through this election to saying, will you support this legislation?
	Will you co-sponsor this legislation as a member of Congress?
	Which really the legislation is lays out a plan to get our country off of our addiction to fossil fuels by 2035.
	And by doing so, also addressing the thing that's not often talked about in environmental legislation like this, which is actually creating a green jobs economy and training and jobs for those who are often displaced when these fossil fuel companies or industries are shut down in certain parts of our country.
	That's often the argument that we hear for people who are within our party, but who are opposed to this kind of aggressive environmental legislation is like, what are you going to do with the workers?
	What are you going to do with the people and their families who depend on these jobs to make a living?
	It was important that we included that in this bill because as we make these economic decisions for our future, not only are they good for our environment, they are good and smart for our economy and people, their health and well-being and their ability to support their families.
	By 2035.
	2035.
	Okay.
	Well, fingers crossed.
	I predict Manhattan will be underwater by then, as will Vancouver, San Francisco, Miami, and Savannah.
	But we'll see.
	And most of the Eastern Seaboard.
	Anyway, drop that out there.
	It's way worse than people think it is.
	People have no idea.
	You know, all these hurricanes, you know, what's happening.
	You know, you almost had a category five hit Florida.
	I mean, Hawaii.
	We had Puerto Rico.
	And so this is now going to be, this is the new normal.
	This is going to be the permanent emergency.
	Yeah, no question.
	You have some great marijuana legislation.
	Yes, you do.
	Let's talk about that.
	Glad you're bringing that up.
	People often talk about our broken criminal justice system.
	What?
	I thought it's working fine.
	What?
	We're getting most of the brown people in jail, right?
	Black and brown people.
	That's what we're supposed to do.
	You know, go ahead.
	I'm sorry to interrupt.
	That's all right, Jimmy.
	Go ahead.
	It's your show.
	No, it's just where the.
	I brought this up at a Freedom Forum in Oslo.
	And it's run by this human rights organization, Gary Kasparov.
	And, you know, those guys are just big neocon scammers who are pushing using human rights to overturn or do regime change wars.
	And I sniffed it out.
	And he was talking about, and I said, you know, the United States is the world's biggest penal colony.
	Do you consider the United States a part of the free world?
	And so then he called me Putin's buddy.
	Yeah, you sound like Putin's body.
	And so it's interesting when people disagree with the substance of what you're saying, they resort to name-calling.
	If you can't argue the actual facts, then it goes straight to name-calling.
	So we know that the criminal justice system is broken.
	Not only is it racist, but it's broken.
	And now we're injecting corporate values into our prison because we're putting a profit motive behind it, which to me sounds the opposite of human.
	So what are your plans to help alleviate our criminal justice system?
	The broken nature of our criminal justice system has to deal with a whole lot of factors, one of which is ending private prisons, another of which is actually reforming what goes on in our prisons, reforming the people who are sent there in the first place and having those diverging programs to say,
	okay, if you're a nonviolent drug offender, maybe you need to go and just get some help somewhere else and not actually be sent and incarcerated and charged with crimes that are going to follow you around for the rest of your life, But help bring about an end to the high recidivism rates that we are seeing.
	That's one of the many problems with these private prisons is there's no incentive whatsoever to make sure that those who walk through those doors do not come back continually through this turnstile, as we've seen, in incredibly high numbers.
	And this is an area where we're at a moment in time where we see a bringing together of organizations like the ACLU and the Koch brothers supporting the same kinds of criminal justice reform programs from perhaps different motivations.
	I think some are coming from a social justice motivation and others are coming from a fiscally more concern for the fiscal cost and impact.
	But regardless, there's a joining of both progressive and conservative forces to bring about real criminal justice reform.
	We just passed a bill not too long ago called the First Step Act, which deals with prison reform, had some strong opposition within our own party, but was led by a Democrat and a Republican, a very progressive guy and a very conservative guy, both of whom I call friends.
	Who are they?
	Hakeem Jeffries from New York and Doug Collins from Georgia.
	And they fought pretty strong opposition, respectively, in their own parties and shepherded this bill through Congress through the House of Representatives to the point where it had over 300 members of Congress voting for it.
	This bill has ended the support of the administration.
	You have Van Jones working directly with Jared Kushner to try to get this bill through.
	So it's sitting before the Senate now where it appears there is opposition coming from people like Corey Booker and Kamala Harris, as well as Tom Cotton from Arkansas.
	And so, you know, there's something good happening there when you've got some strong opposition on both sides, but you have a more broad bipartisan coalition who sees the value and saying, hey, this is a meaningful piece of legislation that will help a lot of people.
	It may not go as far as we want it to.
	It doesn't fix all the problems with sentencing reform and bail reform and everything else, but this is a very strong first step.
	What is the bill called again?
	The First Step Act.
	First Step Act.
	Yeah.
	And what would it do?
	Broadly and generally, and I encourage people to look at it because there are a lot of different sections to this bill that I think are important to look at.
	But it aims to target lowering recidivism rates, providing various types of support to people so that as they're leaving their time in prison, that they're actually able to walk out and transition into a regular life where they're not looking at going back into prison.
	And it looks at different measures on how we can reduce the prison population by getting people out of prison who really have no business being there.
	Those are kind of the broad, the broad steps.
	It's kind of interesting that Kamala Harris is opposing this bill because when she was Attorney General here in California, she was taken to court a couple of times by the federal government because she was ordered to end the prison crowding in the prison system in California, and she didn't.
	And so they kept bringing her office to court and her office was arguing that they can't lower the population and the prison population in California because that would upset their prison work.
	So they have this big prison labor thing happening all over across the country.
	That was literally what they were arguing to the judge, that this will upset our prison labor system too much.
	And then when it made headlines in the LA Times, Kamala Harris was shocked that that's what they were arguing.
	Shocked.
	I'm shocked there's gambling happening.
	And so that's that there's like a lot of corporatists inside the Democratic Party.
	Why don't they just become Republicans?
	That's a good question.
	I know.
	Shouldn't ask you this question, right?
	But as we, like almost every one of these issues that we've talked about, Jimmy, you have done an outstanding job at continuously pointing the link back to corporate money, special interest money, and what a difference it could make if we cut off that tap and said you won't have a seat at the table as we're making these policies that impact the lives of the American people.
	So you're saying politicians take money from private prisons.
	They take money from corporations who use prison labor as slave labor.
	So they're getting, it's money, money, money.
	And that's why, so that's why we don't have democracy.
	I mean, we, we, but let's talk about more about, let's talk more about some of the stuff that you're actually trying to introduce.
	So there's two.
	We started talking about marijuana.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	This is also an area where we have bipartisan support.
	We also have bipartisan opposition.
	But we have two bills that we have introduced.
	One is very simply ending the federal marijuana prohibition act.
	And it simply takes marijuana off of Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act.
	Barack Obama didn't do that?
	No one has done it.
	No one has done it thus far.
	I know I was on a panel when Barack Obama decided not to do that.
	And people were saying, it's good that he's not doing it.
	It takes time.
	It's 2018.
	How much longer do you guys want to wait?
	Somebody was telling me that some of these battles within Congress were taking place.
	I think this was just before I got to Congress, but they were working to try to make industrial hemp legal.
	And there was an amendment that was passed that was a positive step in that direction.
	And so I think this was Congressman Jared Paulus from Colorado, who then went and got an American flag made from hemp and flew it above the Capitol and then talked about it.
	Spread all over the media.
	And this was under the Obama administration.
	But the DEA, the woman in charge of DEA at the time, said that when she read the article about an American flag made from hemp flying over the Capitol, it was the worst day of her entire career.
	Oh, she just went...
	I thought she might be moved by that.
	She went home and watched a marathon of Reefer Madness and then went to sleep.
	So as we can see, there's a lot of misinformation that is still being perpetuated around marijuana.
	And so just recently, I introduced a bill with Carlos Corbello, who's a Republican from Florida, called the Marijuana Data Collection Act.
	And basically, very simply, this bill requires data collection and study directed of the effects in states that have legalized either medical marijuana or completely legalized marijuana in every single area from an objective perspective.
	And as you know, because marijuana is still a Schedule I drug, getting any kind of objective study within the federal government is virtually impossible.
	So working with the group NORMAL, who've been strong advocates on this, we wrote legislation that would direct the National Academy of Sciences, which is an independent organization, to gather and compile these studies, present them publicly and to Congress so that we can have an actual official congressionally directed study that will provide the truth and the facts.
	Good luck with that one.
	I really hope that happens.
	Hello, Chuck Schumer.
	Senator Schumer, it's Jimmy Dore.
	Well, hello there, James.
	How are you this fine day?
	I'm doing well, Senator.
	Thanks for asking.
	Look, I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.
	Well, of course you can.
	I'm here to serve the people of New York, but I've still got 10 minutes for my friend Jimmy.
	What do you think of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's primary victory last night, Chuck?
	Who?
	Alexandria Casio-Cortez.
	Rick Okasich, I'm sorry, you're breaking up.
	Hey, you know there's a lot more to that phone call, but we don't have time in today's podcast.
	How do you hear the entire phone call?
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	Today's show was written.
	That's right, it was written by Frank Connoff, Jim Earl, Ron Placone, Steph Semarano, and Mark Van Landowicz.
	All the voices today performed by the one and the only the inimitable Mike McRae, who can be found at mikemcrae.com.
	That's it for this week.
	You be the best you can be, and I'll keep being me.
	Don't freak out.
	I'm not kidding.
	Don't freak out.
	Do not, do not.
	Do not freak.
	Do not freak.
	Do not freak out.

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