Tulsi Gabbard critiques U.S. foreign policy’s $4B monthly Afghanistan spending while cities like Flint and Baltimore face water crises, arguing trillions wasted on wars (Iraq, Libya, Syria) could fund healthcare and infrastructure instead. She exposes regime-change hypocrisy—false WMD claims in Iraq, oil-driven interventions in Venezuela—and warns AI weaponization risks mirror Cold War nuclear brinkmanship, with Trump’s tariff tweets escalating global tensions. Gabbard’s military and congressional experience contrasts with war-hawk administrations, pushing for transparency, whistleblower protections (like Assange), and systemic reforms to curb crony capitalism and automation exploitation. The solution? Redirecting power toward domestic crises and global cooperation before irreversible damage occurs. [Automatically generated summary]
You know, there's a lot of issues I think we're going to talk about about why I'm running for president.
But being out and connecting with people all across this country, bringing this message really of ending these wasteful, destructive foreign policies that have...
Been so costly on the American people for so long, costly on our troops, costly on our veterans, ending these wasteful regime change wars, ending this new Cold War and nuclear arms race, and taking the trillions of dollars that we've been spending on these programs and that we will continue to spend if the status quo is allowed to continue, and investing those dollars back into serving the people in our communities, serving the people of this country.
Things like healthcare, education, infrastructure, Protecting our environment.
My question is always, though, why do we spend so much time and money at such a titanic human cost?
For these regime change wars.
What do you think is the cause?
Like other than the obvious, if you have a dictator that's in place, there's an obvious outcry like Saddam Hussein post 9-11.
Other than that, What is the reason why we invest so much time and energy into regime change war, so much so that we've just accepted that this is a part of our gross economy?
If you're going to take all the money that the United States earns and all the money that goes to taxes, we just automatically put a gigantic chunk of that Into investing in these wars in other countries.
Six to eight trillion dollars is what's estimated that's been spent since 9-11 alone on these regime change wars without even taking into account what the cost will continue to be to take care of our veterans.
Those who have gone and fought in these wars and have come home dealing with visible and invisible wounds that they'll have to live with for the rest of their lives.
Let's start back.
You mentioned Saddam Hussein.
I don't think it was necessarily an obvious outcry.
Saddam Hussein and the toppling of his regime was done for oil, right?
It was done for financial reasons and the architects of that Iraq war sold it in the guise of, hey, Saddam Hussein is working with Al Qaeda, those terrorists who attacked us on 9-11, and he's going to give them his weapons of mass destruction, both of which turned out to be false.
False intelligence and lies that were sold to the American people, sold to soldiers, people like me, who believed what they said.
You know, I enlisted after 9-11, like so many people in this country, to go after the terrorists who had attacked us on that day, killing thousands of Americans.
And they sold this lie for financial gain, for oil.
You look at some of the architects of that Iraq war, guys like John Bolton, who today is President Trump's National Security Council director, and you look at what's happening in Venezuela.
Almost the very same playbook being used, where they're selling this regime change effort, threatening to use U.S. military force to go in and topple a regime under the guise of humanitarianism, when in fact, and Bolton has said this on national television, that, well, we really want to make sure that American oil companies are able to go in and access that oil-rich country in Venezuela.
I think the U.S. coming in and trying to insert itself into what is happening in Venezuela is what is the problem.
So they're doing that through very, very heavy sanctions.
They're doing that through various means and threatening to use our military to go in and topple the regime there, rather than taking the approach that I would take as president, which is to recognize that the people of Venezuela, like people in other countries in the world, need to be the ones to determine their governance and need to be the ones to determine their governance and their future, just like we wouldn't want any other country to.
To come in and threaten to use their military to topple our government or to tell us who should or shouldn't be the leaders in our country.
We shouldn't be doing that in their country.
There are serious issues that are causing a lot of suffering for the Venezuelan people.
If we really want to be helpful, we should be a force to help move towards reconciliation.
And peace rather than what this administration is doing, which is throwing fuel on the flames of a civil war that'll be devastating, devastating.
There's the people who are with the current government in Venezuela and there is the opposition.
Clearly, they have differences on what kind of future, what kind of governance and who should lead that government going forward.
Rather than threatening to use the United States, the United States coming in and trying to act once again as the world's police, which, by the way, throughout history has not had good results, not for the people in those countries.
What to speak of the cost that we, the American people, pay rather than saying, hey, let's let's work towards peace, try to push for diplomacy and find what are the conditions that would make some form of reconciliation going forward.
Is there an argument, and I really don't know the answer to this, but is there an argument that these regime change wars, although terrible, we would be way worse off if those weren't in place?
I think that's an argument that proponents for regime change wars try to make, but history shows and proves that the very opposite is true.
Look at Iraq.
You can look at Libya.
You can look at Syria.
You can look at Guatemala and Ecuador.
You can look at other countries, Iran, where in the past we have either overtly or covertly through the CIA gone in and toppled leaders of countries or dictators or regimes.
And the result has been more suffering for the people in those countries.
Their lives have been made worse off, not only in the short term, but in the long term.
And the cost, once again, to the American people has also taken a toll as we see more and more of our hard-earned taxpayer dollars going to pay for these wars, these regime change efforts that are counter to our national security interests, counter to the interests of the American people, and counter to the interests of the people in those countries.
So is this one of those things that's just a counterintuitive thing where you would think that getting rid of someone like Gaddafi would be a good idea?
He's a terrible, evil person.
But they get rid of him and now Libya is a failed state.
It's hard to imagine that an era of YouTube and slave auctions exists in a place that, you know, at least some part of the blame has to be on us supporting the rebels that went in and took out Gaddafi.
Like, it's not good to have...
See, it's one of those counterintuitive things, right, where it's not good to have an evil person in control of a country.
Yeah, it's that it's hard to accept sometimes the reality that there are bad people in the world.
There are leaders of countries who are doing bad things against their people.
What the real question is, is we recognize this is the world that exists in reality, not the world that we wish existed.
And then the question is for the leaders of our country is what role should the United States play?
Does it make sense to try to act as the world's police as we have been for far too long, both as we look at what is in the best interest of the American people, what's in the best interest of our national security, as well as what impact will our actions have on the people in these countries?
And with Libya, not only do we see strengthened terrorist groups, there are terrorist groups all over Libya now, failed state.
The Libyan people are suffering now far more than they were before.
But we see the ramifications of that in countries like North Korea, where, again, John Bolton and the Trump administration is talking about using the Libya model with North Korea as we work towards this objective of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.
One of the leaders in the North Korean government just said the other day, the United States government is talking about using the Libya model with North Korea to get them to get rid of their nuclear weapons.
They don't want to end up like Libya or Iraq.
Where in Libya, as you remember, the United States went in and told Gaddafi, hey, get rid of your nuclear weapons program and we're not going to come after you.
And he did.
He got rid of it.
And what happened?
A very short time later, the United States and other countries went in and took him out.
So that action and that decision, that policy is directly undermining our national security and our efforts to make us and the world more safe to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.
So would the argument for regime change wars being that, would it be that if we didn't go over there and if we didn't have a military presence and we didn't make them fight against us, that they would somehow or another gain more power and we would deal with this evil superpower?
Is this like the worst case scenario for the pro-interventionalist foreign policy?
I mean, the argument that's made by people who are advocating for these regime change wars is we've got to do something to help people who are suffering.
That's generally the argument that's made.
And they sell this to the American people knowing that, hey, we have good hearts and we want to help people if we can.
But what they fail to do is to tell the truth and be honest about what they are hiding behind this guise of humanitarianism.
I mean, if you look at Saudi Arabia, for example, and you look at the kinds of atrocities that that theocratic dictatorship is conducting against its own people, decapitating LGBTQ people, persecuting religious minorities, being the biggest propagator of this most extreme intolerant being the biggest propagator of this most extreme intolerant ideology of Islam that is fueling terrorist organizations like ISIS and al-Qaeda, waging a genocidal war in Yemen, killing tens of thousands of people.
You know, that murder of the journalist in Turkey, the list goes on and on and on.
Yet, what are we hearing from leaders in our government, both Democrats and Republicans?
Saudi Arabia is a great ally of the United States.
But then you look at what's happening in Venezuela, ready to launch our military to go in and take out another dictator, ready to go in and launch our military, ready to go and wage a war against Iran.
So this is evidence of the hypocrisy that exists between those who are waging regime change war in some countries, by the way, usually countries that don't have nuclear weapons, and usually countries where they have some other underlying interests and ulterior motive, which is not helping the people of those countries. and usually countries where they have some other underlying interests
And then when it's convenient for them, countries like Saudi Arabia sidling up to a country whose leadership directly and indirectly supports al-Qaeda, the very terrorists who attacked us on 9-11, who we are trying to defeat.
They've actually said that you are an Assad supporter.
I know this is not correct.
But is that one of those things where people just say that in order to sort of diffuse you, to categorize you as a ridiculous person right off the bat, where no one can take anything else you say seriously?
It's the usual tactic of trying to smear or vilify me and my campaign and what I'm advocating for because they don't want to engage on the actual issue itself that I'm pointing out about how devastating and costly their policies are.
Of continuing to wage these wasteful regime change wars, of choosing to support terrorist groups like Al Qaeda in Syria, directly in Syria, because they are the most powerful force on the ground who's fighting to take out the regime, Assad's government.
So they're so focused on toppling this government in Syria that they're willing to actually use taxpayer dollars to provide direct and indirect support to Al Qaeda terrorists in Syria.
When you think about how crazy this is, it makes me angry.
I think it makes most people angry.
It's why I introduced legislation called the Stop Arming Terrorists Act.
Why we would need to have such legislation is beyond me, but clearly we do, to make it so that we don't have any taxpayer dollars going directly to provide any kind of arms or support or anything to terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, but also to make it so that we are not providing support indirectly through countries like Saudi Arabia who are providing that support to terrorist groups.
I went to Syria to meet with Syrian people, to hear for myself from them about what was happening there.
While there, I was offered the invitation to meet with the president of Syria, and I took it.
I think it's important for us to have the courage to meet with leaders, whether they be friends or adversaries or potential adversaries, if our focus is on national security and on peace.
So I went and I had that meeting and I asked some tough questions.
I heard from him his perspective on what was happening and what he was doing in his country and took the opportunity while there to meet with religious leaders, college students, members of the political opposition, small business owners, You know, women who are working to start their own business to empower other women, Shia, Sunnis, Muslims, Christians, Catholics, people of all different religions.
It is because of that and that meeting and my staunch opposition to regime change wars in Syria and in other countries that political opponents and others have chosen to try to smear me, my reputation, and my campaign And to label me, as you said, you know, she's a supporter of this dictator.
Well, if that's true, then anyone who opposed the Iraq war is a Saddam Hussein lover, is a lover of dictators and loves Saddam Hussein.
So if you challenge their logic, you see how shallow it is, and there's really none there.
And what's exposed is their refusal to engage on the facts and to stand behind why they continue to put the American people through these costly regime change wars and why they continue to wage these wars that are causing incredible suffering for people in different parts of the world.
It also, when you're having these conversations, Which are incredibly important globally.
When you choose to distort people's positions like this, you're not helping anybody.
You're making the whole thing more confusing.
So for someone like me who's on the outside and has to watch all this go down, I have to go, why do you have reasonable people that make inaccurate statements about someone because they feel like if you do not If you don't refuse a meeting with Assad, there's something wrong with you, right?
Yeah, I mean, there's so much hypocrisy around this.
You know, a lot of these people are the same people who applauded President Obama when he first ran for president in 2008. When he, I mean, he did, he caused some controversy at that time saying, yes, he would meet with the leader of Iran without preconditions, that he would meet with leaders of other countries in that pursuit of national security and peace.
So why the double standard here that, okay, so in order to keep our country safe, in order to achieve peace, we're only going to meet with our friends and people who we agree with.
And he was, you know, he was open to any and all questions that I had, both about what was happening in Syria, you know, Syria's relationship or the lack thereof with Israel.
A lot of the turmoil that we're seeing in different parts of the Middle East of Sunni versus Shia, you know, chemical weapons being used, you know, criminal acts being conducted, a whole host of these issues.
How the Syrian government is dealing with the Kurdish population, the northern part of the country, what's going on in Turkey.
What's going on in Turkey?
There was a number of things that, you know, I asked and he answered and he shared his view and perspective.
There was a number of things that, you know, I asked and he answered and he shared his view and perspective.
And really what came out of that was he's very narrowly focused on his country and doesn't want other countries or other people coming in and meddling in their country and what they're trying to accomplish, which is actually the same thing that I heard from his political opposition when I met with them.
These are some of the leaders who led the protests that kind of began this whole conflict in 2011, people who are deeply opposed to the Syrian government, some of whom have been held in captivity by the Syrian government.
And they said there are constitutional changes we want to make.
Yes, we would like to see Assad removed from government, that they don't want to see it done through military means or through other countries coming in and toppling their government.
What they want to see is that change coming from the people of Syria saying, hey, this is the kind of leadership that we want for our future.
I think that's really what's missing here is, you know, for so long we've seen this imperialistic mentality that still exists in our government where some feel like, hey, well, we should go and tell this country who should lead their government and tell them what kind of policies they should have, but no other country should dare even attempt to do that to ours.
I think the problems begin when we go into other countries and try to create little mini Americas and impose it on the people there, whether they like it or not, whether they're ready for it or not, and we end up seeing what we're seeing across the Middle East.
And this is something that I realized very quickly during my first deployment to Iraq, where I was seeing firsthand the cost of war, serving in that medical unit every single day.
And I wondered how many politicians in Washington who voted for, advocated for, or championed that war in Iraq were laying awake at night Thinking about my brothers and sisters who were getting killed in combat, who were getting severely wounded, getting blown up by IEDs.
And I learned very quickly that they were not.
They weren't thinking about the real costs and the ramifications and the consequences of their decisions.
We were trying to say that we think that if you want to be the commander-in-chief, that you should probably have served.
Who was that?
It was a recent podcast.
C.T. Fletcher?
Yes, I believe that it was him.
Yeah.
Who was a veteran as well.
That's one thing that you have over them, for sure, is that you understand from firsthand experience and sacrifice what it means to actually be in war and to be in combat.
I mean, I still serve in the Army National Guard now over 16 years.
I've deployed twice to the Middle East.
And coupled with my experience in Congress, serving over six years on the foreign affairs and the armed services committees, working intimately on these issues related to national security and our foreign policy, meeting with leaders of different countries in the world,
it is these experiences and the understanding that I've gained from them What hurdles are you encountering that you didn't expect?
You know, a lot of what's happening are things that we kind of did expect.
You know, the smear campaigns, the misinformation campaigns.
Do you think that someone's doing this on purpose?
Or do you think this is team mentality in action, where people are supporting a particular candidate and they look at you as being competition in that candidate?
The establishment, challenging the status quo, challenging the foreign policy establishment, and challenging the political establishment in calling things as I see them, calling it straight and speaking the truth, whether that be calling out leaders within my own party or leaders of the other political party.
And, you know, I think that strikes fear in a lot of people who are uncomfortable with it, at a minimum, and who are concerned because when, you know, we the people rise up and say, hey, what's really going on here?
We're calling out...
Self-serving politicians in Washington from both political parties who are putting their own political interests or the interests of their party ahead of the interests of the people.
Or they're putting the interests of, you know, whatever greedy corporation and their lobbyists is writing the biggest checks to their campaigns ahead of the interests of the people.
So the more this awareness comes out, the more people stand up and speak out and say, hey, this is unacceptable.
This is unacceptable.
Then it's threatening that very power base that they have thrived and lived off of for far too long.
We take no PAC contributions, no lobbyist contributions.
Every single dollar that comes to my campaign for president is coming from individual people across this country, whether it's a dollar or a thousand dollars, people who are giving whatever they can and joining this movement.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment.
Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known of any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry.
American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well.
But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense.
We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.
Added to this Three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment.
We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.
Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience.
The total influence, economic, political, even spiritual, is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government.
We recognize the imperative need for this development, yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.
Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved.
So is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
You see that very directly through contributions that are being made to politicians by different defense contractors and the corresponding votes that are then taken.
But you also see this corruption that's happening before our very eyes happening within places like the Pentagon, where you either have people in uniform or civilians who are working in contracting, for example, in the Pentagon, laying the groundwork for writing up these contracts, laying the groundwork for writing up these contracts, major multibillion-dollar contracts with these big defense contractors, and then lay down the uniform or you retire from service, either as a civilian or in the military.
And then you turn around, leave that door, and walk into another door working for the very same contractor that you just wrote the contract for.
This is what we need to change when we're talking about both campaign finance reform, but also reforming this kind of corruption and this revolving door that's happening in different parts of our government.
You see it happening in Wall Street, too.
The SEC regulators.
People are supposed to be regulating Wall Street or coming from Wall Street and then going back to Wall Street to work for the very same companies that they were supposedly just charged to regulate.
You see when he's confronting these guys who are professors who then go and take these jobs and make millions of dollars with the very regulations that they helped put into place.
When you look at who are the main people who go and testify in front of Congress, coming from think tanks, very well known think tanks, global think tanks that specialize in foreign policy, they don't have a placard on their desk when they're testifying before Congress saying,
we receive funding from Saudi Arabia, from Qatar, from the United Arab Emirates, from all these different countries who are spending a lot of money Funding these think tanks that then come forward and push policies or push ideas to leaders in Congress that not coincidentally benefit the countries that are funding them.
I mean, obviously, as president and commander-in-chief, you set the tone for the kind of leadership that we have in this country that will put service above self.
And this is what I will bring as president, bring those soldiers' values up.
Of putting service above self, putting service to the American people and your country first and foremost ahead of everything else, ahead of the interests of a political party or a corporation or a foreign country, for that matter, and work to pass legislation in Congress that would close these revolving doors, that would require this transparency when you're talking about who is funding who and where is this money coming from.
I think members of Congress should not be taking PAC contributions, should be relying solely on contributions from people in this country so that they know exactly who is funding their campaigns.
It's something that's starting to happen organically as more and more people are calling for this kind of reform and saying, hey, look, if you want my vote, then I expect you to not accept those contributions and to run a people-powered campaign.
Now, one thing that exists now that really didn't exist when Obama was running for president is the impact of social media.
It's just tenfold what it used to be.
With that also comes this reality that we're living in right now where there's only a few companies that are controlling the discourse in this country.
Gosh, with Facebook and Google, for that matter, you know, they can set their algorithms, Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook, and set his algorithm to control what information is coming across our newsfeed in Facebook.
What are the stories that we're seeing?
Instagram, same thing.
With Google, they can control when you punch in something, what are the first stories that you're going to see on the first page that pops up?
When you think about that kind of power of influence that it has on the American people literally being held within the hands of a couple of people unchecked and without oversight or transparency, it's incredibly dangerous.
Let's talk about free speech.
There's just been news recently about Facebook banning certain individuals from having Facebook accounts because of their speech.
They disagree with the speech that they're using or the things that they're talking about, ideas that they're pushing forward.
Unchecked.
First Amendment rights going completely out the window.
Yes, but they're trying to get the best of both worlds.
The fact that they're claiming to say, hey, this is a free space for open communication for everyone, while at the same time going and saying, actually, you know what, Joe, I don't like what you're saying about this, so we're going to ban you and whoever your friends are from this conversation.
I think that's a big problem.
It undermines our First Amendment rights.
Then you look at privacy, the privacy concerns of all the information that they're collecting in Facebook from us, all the information that they're collecting from us with Google, and how they're monetizing that and selling or sharing that information with other people really without our knowledge or agreement.
So for many people, it's the things that piss you off the most.
Like if you have a real problem with Catholic priests getting away with having sex with little boys, you will think that that's happening every minute of every day all across the world because it's going to be in your newsfeed constantly because they know that's what makes you engage.
So your algorithm, the algorithm is your feed is going to be very different than my feed because I engage on different things than you do.
And the problem with that is even if they're not calculating, if it's not on purpose, they're not trying to get people outraged.
It's not like they're trying to rabble-rouse, but what they are doing is they...
Because they have an ad-supported model, they gravitate towards the outrageous because that's what people get excited about, and that's what people make multiple posts about, and that's how they make their revenue.
It's a bad ad model.
It's an ad model that inadvertently supports outrage.
And it makes people think the world's a worse place.
And the tribal boundaries between the two sides on these issues are more tense.
And you would think that discourse and the ability to freely communicate would kind of open that up and people would kind of understand each other better.
But it's not happening.
It's like Twitter is a garbage fire all day long.
It's just fire.
Like you can't post anything about anything and there's people just jumping on people and it's It's a crazy thing that has happened that we gravitate towards the outrageous.
I don't think that should be rewarded financially.
If this is just what people go to organically, that's one thing.
But when you're cultivating feeds, or at least your algorithm is cultivating feeds so that people get pissed off, you're making the country a shittier place.
Like Louis Farrakhan was one, Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson was like, what did that guy ever do?
I mean, people don't agree with them.
I think what's happening is there was some serious concern that Facebook was used to influence the last election, whether against their knowledge or in a way where they were negligent about the type of filtering they use that stops people from posting propaganda and particularly stops...
These things like the IRA, the Internet Research Agency in Russia, that literally creates thousands of profiles and pages, and they'll have a Black Lives Matter page that's just designed to fuck with cops, and then they'll have a pro cop page that's just designed to fuck with Black Lives Matter.
All they want to do is create anger.
And they're doing this, engineering these arguments.
This is a 100% proven fact.
Renee DiResta, who had been on my podcast, went over the details of how it's set up and how they do it and the memes and the memes that they create.
This is an organized effort that they channeled through Facebook in particular and then Instagram and a couple other social media sites.
This company, New Knowledge, that the DNC has tapped as one of their disinformation campaign experts and cyber experts, was the very same company that created false accounts and pretended to be Russian bots in order to influence a U.S. Senate election in Alabama.
Well, I've never met her, but I know that that company is one that is often cited as a so-called expert and was a company that was cited to try to smear my campaign as somehow being an engine for the Russians or something like that, which to me, again, just points to, well, let's look at the so-called experts that you're citing in this company, New Knowledge, and the kinds of actions that they've been taking.
The very same ones that they're criticizing others for doing.
It is a wild west in the sense that, I mean, I think there should be regulation.
Like, I mean, I don't think you should be able to put child porn everywhere.
I don't think you should be able to dox people.
But it's like, where does that border stop?
Where does that regulation border stop?
And I think it's a very good question.
Do you think that these social media platforms, whether it's Google or Twitter or whatever, Facebook, do you think that they should be treated as a public utility where everyone essentially has the right to use them?
You have the right to use water.
You don't have the right to take a hose and smash your neighbor's window and flood his house.
I do think that they should be regulated like that, and they should be subject to the very same antitrust laws that have been used to make sure that we don't have other monopolies in other industries or in other areas to break them up.
And I think that was something that Chris Hughes outlined in his article.
the very first step that could be taken is just to say, hey, you've got a, you've got a Facebook needs to let go of Instagram and WhatsApp.
Because that was some, that acquisition created an even stronger monopoly that really shouldn't have been allowed to take place in the beginning.
And so there are concerns about the kind of power being, you know, consolidated into the hands of a very few people, as well as how that's impacting Any kind of competition and squashing that competition from coming up and saying, hey, you know, you've got Facebook and then you've got this other new social media technology.
They've got better privacy standards and better service for the consumer than Facebook.
But anytime that tries to happen, you know, they're quickly squashed by companies like Facebook or Google for that matter.
The big concern is that there's just not enough variety.
And there's also a big concern that—I have a big concern—that there's a bunch of people that don't seem to understand the consequences of what they're calling deplatforming people.
It's basically censoring people.
Taking people out of the public discussion.
And when you do that and you create a bubble or you create a one-party leaning institution, one-party leaning conglomeration of human beings, you're going to develop some real anger on the other side.
And it does the opposite of what you want it to do.
What you want it to do is make the world a better place.
Let's take some of these angry voices out of the mix and let's make the world a better place.
Encourage these kinds of conversations where you can engage with people who might have a different view on an issue or might have a different experience that they bring to the conversation and to do so that actually helps increase the knowledge and understanding that we have.
Yeah, I think we have to reward civil discourse as well.
I think we have to be kinder to each other.
We have to be more upset at people that are acting like shitheads online for no reason.
You think that it's just online, but what it is is communication.
And if you're interested in shitty communication online, you're just a shitty communicator.
All this calling it being a troll and all these different things.
Labels that people put on to make it cuter and whitewash it.
It's not good.
It's not good for anybody.
And if people could figure out how to be less angry in their online lives and communicate about issues, I think we'd find that we meet more in the middle than we think we do.
I think there's also a problem that people have where they become married to their ideas.
And they dig their heels in and they support their ideology and they're very rigid about it.
And that is only strengthened when you silence people.
It does the opposite of what you're hoping it's going to do.
It makes the world a worse place.
Look, if people are saying things that you don't like, you don't have to read that.
But if you tell people that no one can read that, they're going to go, why do you get to decide?
And that is where this path ends up, this path that we're on of this hyper-partisanship, this extreme divisiveness, where it's either you're in my tribe or you're in the other tribe and the arrows are pointed at each other without any willingness to, once again, let's just have a conversation.
Let me hear where you're coming from, hear where I'm coming from.
We can disagree without being disagreeable.
We can even have a heated conversation and a debate.
And the American people are the ones who ultimately lose in all of this.
This has been one of the most frustrating things that I've seen and experienced throughout my over six years in Congress that really started when I first went up after I got elected.
Where after every election happens, the new members of Congress, they go and they have what's called new member orientation.
And they give you these books and here's the maps and here's where your office is and, you know, all the administrative and logistical stuff.
But very quickly, I would say within the first few days, you know, where we first come in together as Democrats and Republicans immediately.
OK, Democrats go this way.
Republicans go this way.
Immediately separated.
And what we're told right off the bat is, look, this is about getting wins for our political party.
And if you work with a Republican, then that's going to hurt the party, especially if you work with a Republican that the Democratic Party is trying to take out.
Forget the substance of the idea.
Forget the substance of the bill.
And this happens on the opposite side as well, Republicans with Democrats.
Both political parties are guilty of this, where they're really putting the interests of the political party ahead of the people who just voted for us to go and serve them.
And not just the Democrats who voted for me, but yes, the independents and the Republicans, both who voted for me or who didn't.
But who I serve as part of my constituency.
And I've continued to see this, where you'll have a bill that because it's a Democrat bill, Republicans will vote against it, substance aside.
Or a Republican bill, Democrats will vote against it just because it's a Republican bill.
But then, hey, if they come in and a month or a year later introduce the same bill or a similar bill, but now because it's a Democratic bill, okay, everybody, hey, let's go and support...
You can imagine why there is so much gridlock in Washington, why nothing really gets done, and ultimately how this divisiveness and this hyper-partisanship is hurting the ability for...
When you talk about people like yourself that are completely funded by the public and you have this very logical and objective way of discussing this gridlock, do you think that the future is in young people like yourself getting involved in politics, that they're not connected to this old world for 35, 45 years?
This world, it sounds like this is just what you do.
I mean, I watched House of Cards.
I get kind of.
I get it sort of.
That seems like chaos.
It seems like there's no way to fix that.
It's almost like these people have to stop being politicians.
Well, I think it's evident where we see those who are very entrenched in this broken system feel very threatened by the rise of people-powered campaigns, individual contributions coming in, and supplanting the big money that they get from the PACs and lobbyists.
And there's fear there because they see their whole world being disrupted by people like me or others who are coming in and saying, no, we're not buying into any of that.
And we're coming in to actually fulfill the mission that we've been charged with by those who voted for us to serve the people, all the people of this country.
I think that Trump plays a part of that because I think he was the first guy to come in basically self-funded or being funded through his own means and not listening to the rest of the Republican Party saying, hey, I'm going to take over and I'm going to do this my way.
And then knowing that he could do that and knowing that there were so many Republicans against him and knowing that there are so many Democrats against him as well, but yet he's still the president.
People are like, Jesus, this is a fragile system.
This system is—what they've done to acquire power is still very vulnerable, even though they have this deeply entrenched system of weird little relationships that it's not good enough.
That if the people do rise up and they decide, hey, we want to put Tulsi in as president— You're going to have a different situation.
And that's the message that we're carrying to living rooms and town halls and communities across the country is Washington continues to underestimate the power of the people.
And that's the thing is our founding fathers had this vision for our country that our government would be of the people, by the people, and for the people.
And instead, what we have is a government of the rich and powerful by and for the rich and powerful, of the special interests and corporations by and for the special interests and corporations.
It's evident of that huge disconnect between the bubble that is Washington and the reality of the lives that we live every day, people all across this country.
I would love to pretend to be a banker, to put a lizard skin face mask on and go sit with those bankers and listen to one of those conversations that Hillary Clinton got paid a quarter million dollars to talk to.
I would have him on the show and do it in Colorado because they decriminalize mushrooms.
It's just this role of being the person that is in control of this country has always been this impossible task.
And when I see a person like you who wants to do it, I say, listen, you have some of the best ideas and the most healthy perspective that I've ever heard from anyone that's ever running for president.
And it's not to be in control of the country and the people.
It's to serve the people and our country.
It's a continuation of this mission that I've chosen for my life to be of service, to find different ways to do that.
You know, it started in Hawaii with gathering my friends as a kid and going and picking up trash off the beach on the weekends and experiencing even then at a young age that that made me happier than than anything else.
Then, you know, going and playing video games with my friends or anything like that.
And that that mission that that was deeply ingrained in me further with my service in the military, serving as a soldier where, you know, I'm serving alongside people of all walks of life.
As you know, every race, religion, ethnicity, orientation, everything, every one of us wearing that same uniform, serving that same flag that represents the American people with that laser like focus on putting service above self and.
And that's what I seek to bring to the White House, to restore those values of integrity and honor and respect, to make it so that that White House is a beacon of light for the American people, to know that that White House belongs to them and represents them and their interests and their interests alone.
Does anybody, even a person like you who's on the outside, do you think anybody truly knows what it's like to run the country until they get in there?
Can you even have an idea of how impossible a task it is to be in control of the economy, the environment, the infrastructure, the military, our position in the world?
It seems like the most insane duty to require someone to run all those things, to be aware of all those things, to be responsible for all of the successes and all of the failures.
And you do get to change the way we spend money and stop spending money on these regime change wars, what would be the first thing you invested in in this country?
I'd want to give that some thought because there are a whole host of challenges that we're facing.
You know, I mean, healthcare is among the top of the list.
And, you know, we've talked a little bit about that the last time I was here.
Our crumbling infrastructure continues to be something that's not only just uncomfortable every time we're driving over potholes, it's actually threatening people's lives and well-beings.
I was in Iowa a few weeks ago and we visited a few communities that were completely inundated and devastated by the flooding that took place there, gosh, about three or four weeks ago now.
Many of them have not been able to return to their homes.
We went and helped out one family.
We were tearing down drywall and ripping up the floors and underneath the wood and the floors there was still like tons of water.
And they were talking about how even with the aid from FEMA and SBA loans, that they are unwilling to put a single dollar back into rebuilding their homes because they're hearing from the government and the Army Corps of Engineers that That it may take two to four years to fix the levees that broke down and caused that flooding.
So why would they go and try to pour their life savings back into rebuilding their homes when they could get flooded again in a year or in two years?
Because we're not making the kinds of investments in our infrastructure that we need to make.
So there's education.
I mean, there's a whole host of issues that I think we need to look at how we can best provide the resources that are necessary to improve those services to the American people and also look at how we're doing business and fixing the problems that exist within those different agencies.
There's always been a call to help countries in need in the world.
There's always been a call for the United States to step in and do something, but yet there's problems in this country that never change.
There's bad communities in this country that are impoverished and crime-ridden that have been the same way for decades.
There was a former Baltimore police officer named Michael Wood who came on my podcast, and he was talking to me about the time when he was in the Baltimore Police Department.
They found a piece of paper that was documenting various crimes from the 1970s, one of the years from 1970-something, and it was the same exact crime in the same exact area that they were having problems with now, whether it's homicide, Narcotics, whatever it was, they were having the exact same issue in the exact same places.
And then he realized, well, there's no effort put to change this.
If you're talking about decades and decades and decades, why wasn't there money funneled into this community?
Why isn't there some community centers that help children?
Why isn't there an emphasis on better education?
Why isn't there more police officers or at least Mm-hmm.
The weakest parts are the people that are born in a shit situation.
They don't get a good break.
They got a bad break.
They're born in a crime-ridden environment, and then they have to figure out how to be a better person while dealing with all this.
And then you've got people that are aloof to this that are like, hey, figure it out for yourself.
I did.
As if we all start from the same spot in this crazy game called life, because we don't.
Those people are in the worst spot.
Why can't we fix the worst spot?
It seems like we could.
If we can help Iraq, if we can invade Syria, if we can do some of the things that people either want us to do or we have done, why can't we do that?
Imagine what could be done with those dollars and those resources in communities like Baltimore, in communities like Flint, Michigan, where people are still being poisoned by their water, where they're being lied to and cheated by their leadership, where the governor sent in these inspectors and cleared the water saying, hey, everything's fine.
What he didn't tell people was that when those inspectors went in, they turned the faucet and let the water run for five minutes before they tested it to clean all the crap out of the pipes and create this false conclusion that somehow the water is clean when the people who live there know that it is still not they turned the faucet and let the water run for five minutes before And for some folks, they can't even take a shower in their own homes.
And so that's why you're not going to hear any other presidential candidates talking about the cost of war and where our money is going and how it is counter to our national security.
It's making us less safe.
It's counter to the interests of our people and the people in those countries.
But this is why I talk about this everywhere I go because it's central.
It's central to our ability to address these domestic challenges that we are facing, we in this country are facing in communities across the country, dealing with health care, affordable housing.
There's a homeless crisis.
In both urban cities and rural communities, people who are not able to afford to put a roof over their heads, people who are working full time, maybe one, maybe two jobs even, still can't afford to put a roof over their heads.
There are serious issues that we need to address here, but to think that somehow we'll have the resources to do so without addressing where trillions of our dollars have been going now for the last several years is a lie.
I think there's a, you know, I mean the cost of living here is higher.
And so what we are paying the employees who work in these industries and these service jobs has to match that.
It has to correlate with that higher cost of living.
It costs more to go out to eat here than it does to go out to eat in a restaurant in, I don't know, Alabama, for example.
So I think we've got to recognize people who are doing the work that correlates with the higher cost of living that we're seeing already.
I'm really looking at the universal basic income and seeing how that could be a tool to help deal with a lot of these poverty-stricken communities and people who've been struggling and still unable to dig themselves out of a hole there.
And seeing how that potentially could replace a lot of the bureaucracy, a lot of the money that we're spending on bureaucracy and a lot of social welfare programs, perhaps to both save money and to provide support directly to people who need it.
So I think that's an option that we've got to consider.
It's not simple, and so I'm doing the research and figuring out how exactly that would work and how exactly we'd pay for it.
But we also have to look at affordable housing.
I think not accepting the fact that the high cost of housing is what it is, is not the solution.
There's a lot of money that goes into our Housing and Urban Development Department, but is it really having the effect that we needed to have to make it so that, you know, whether it's cops or teachers or firefighters, people who are working in these public service jobs are able to afford to live in the communities where they're working.
We were in Malibu yesterday.
We had a town hall there yesterday and took a tour with the mayor, city council members, community leaders around a lot of the areas that were completely devastated by the fires.
And that was one of the things that they mentioned is that they pointed out a trailer park traditionally where a lot of those first responders live.
That's where the workforce in Malibu have lived in that trailer park.
And they said that it's not unheard of that one of those trailer homes go for a million bucks, a million bucks.
And you don't even get to own the land that your trailer sits on.
And so this is a real problem that they're facing is people who are teaching in that area, the firefighters who are working in that area, they're not able to afford to live in the community that they serve.
Well, some communities, I mean, there's land in the valleys and other areas, but some communities are dealing with this both in the private sector.
There's hotels in Hawaii, for example, who are recognizing that they can't attract workers to work in the hotels because they can't afford to live near where they work.
And they're starting to buy up properties to actually provide that workforce housing at an affordable cost to be able to attract those workers.
Some communities are doing the same thing for first responders, for firefighters and others.
So this is a problem that a lot of city councils and local communities are trying to deal with and solve.
But I think it also points to a bigger problem that we have nationally, that there is just not enough affordable, truly affordable housing for working people in the country.
That was one of the things they said that has been, you know, people look at Malibu and they're like, well, that's where a bunch of multimillionaire rich people go and buy their beach homes.
But there has always been, you know, the basis of that community was really founded on those who worked to build the community.
You know, middle class people who are increasingly being pushed out.
If you're not living in the home that, you know, your grandfather, your great-grandfather built, then you're not going to be able to afford to stay there.
So, you know, we didn't get into the details on what they're looking at, but this is something that the city council and the mayor are grappling with now, to be able to attract workers who want to work in the area, but who don't want to have to drive two hours or three hours just to get to their place of work.
Well, we have our forefathers to thank for their foresight, like Theodore Roosevelt saw this in advance and met with great resistance from a lot of big businesses that just wanted to put apartments up everywhere and start building factories.
And we created this incredible system of public land in this country that's unprecedented.
I mean, only Canada has something that rivals us.
I mean, I guess Australia's got a lot of public land too, but it's just, there's other countries that have it, but it's amazing what we have here.
And in terms of our diversity of scenery and where you could go too.
I mean, you could go to the desert or you could go to Idaho and, you know, go to Coeur d'Alene.
You turn on the news or you talk to politicians in Washington about, okay, we've got to protect our environment and it becomes like a political talking point.
But I'm so grateful to have grown up in Hawaii and that talking point is actually a way of life.
Like this connection that we have, you know, with nature, with Mother Earth is something that's real and it's cultural and it's passed down from generations.
And it's actually living out that saying that Mahatma Gandhi had, that the earth provides enough for everyone's need, but not everyone's greed.
And what a powerful thing that is when we think about both how we live our lives personally in being respectful and being thoughtful about our impact on other people and on our planet.
And then, of course, for policymakers who are making those decisions about how our natural resources are used, stopping them from being exploited or polluted or lost for, you know, short-term monetary profits or gains.
Which I want to give a shout out to one of the guys I met yesterday in Malibu, a guy named Keegan.
He organized, I don't know, 20 or 25 of his friends.
And they went and they just started fighting fires in people's houses all on their own, organized aid stations and food stations, getting generators in.
They did incredible work.
But I told him I was coming on your show today, and he just said that Joe Rogan and his show has made such a deep impact on my life because he went from somebody who was really triggered, was the word he used,
by people who were saying things that he disagreed with, and you inspired him to kind of open his mind and his eyes to And to recognize that we are stronger and we are better when we have this kind of respectful discourse and we're open to hearing from and trying to understand people who may have a different view rather than being triggered and running away in the opposite direction or reacting in a negative way.
I just wanted to pass that on because you made a big impact on him and on a lot of his friends and a lot of people in the country.
And that's having a positive impact on our culture.
I think that's something we can all learn how to do.
And I learned how to do it.
It's not something I was naturally...
I didn't naturally gravitate towards having good conversations with people.
I was a dickhead when I was young.
I was fighting all the time.
Most of what I did was I was involved with martial arts.
So I was always involved with competition.
It was always very intense.
And I was very competitive.
And I wasn't necessarily that nice all the time.
And when I examined my life over time, I realized that The things that always felt the worst were conflicts that were unnecessary, and particularly the things that I judged myself the most harshly weren't my mistakes or failures in my attempts at doing things.
It was my misbehaving, my just being a jerk.
Where it wasn't necessary or having an opportunity to be nice and not taking it or escalating things where I could have used diplomacy.
And I just learned over time that a lot of it is the way I was communicating with people where I was failing was how I was approaching their thoughts and that I was immediately trying to be right rather than listen to them.
And I was thinking about them differently than I think about myself.
One of the things that happened to me when I had children was I started thinking of people like babies that grew up.
I think of everyone like old people.
It freaks me out when I go to the...
I was in a casino yesterday.
I was passing by this old lady smoking cigarettes, playing bingo or playing roulette, rather, slots, whatever the fuck it is, whatever waste of money it is.
And I'm watching her do this and I'm like, God, that was a baby.
And as I've gotten older and then started this podcast, the thing that I realized was that I needed to get better at talking to people when I was doing the podcast.
I needed to get better at listening.
And then I needed to have less bias...
Perspectives.
Less biased points of view.
And just try to understand what someone's saying.
And if I disagree, disagree.
And try to be as nice as possible while also being accurate about how much something bothers me.
If you want to look at the left or the right, I share so much in common with so many people in both the left and the right that I almost want to put a graph down of like, how do you live your life?
Like, are you nice to people?
Are you friendly?
Do you have good friends that you care about?
Do you have buddies that could call you at four o'clock in the morning and say, you got to drive two hours and pick me up, and you would immediately do it?
And for me, it's like there was a lot of them that were bullshit.
I was like, what am I wasting time and effort and thinking about?
What do I care what people do?
I don't.
I don't care.
I want you to be nice and that's it.
And then it gets down to Political and social issues.
And it gets down to the heavy ones, things like abortion and war and freedom of religion.
And these things, I think, are the ones where we should all just be communicating as calmly and as objectively as possible.
And we should discourage this tribal perspective, discourage this idea of being married to your own ideas and trying to win these arguments, which you see in Congress, which you see In political campaigns, which you see in Television news is a fucking dumpster fire.
Every single time they have the panel with the three people, it's just...
They're less likely to just accept at face value what they're seeing on TV or what they're hearing, which I think is a positive thing.
And I think we do need to look at the leadership of this country to set this culture for civil discourse.
For making it okay and encouraging, actually, those kinds of conversations.
And that's where if you watch C-SPAN one night when you can't fall asleep, you'll see in the floor of Congress, you've got the Democrats who are all sitting on one side.
You've got the Republicans all sitting on the other side.
And Unfortunately, not often enough do you see intermingling in conversation and people going to the other side of the aisle and actually getting to know people.
That was something that when I first got elected, I was told, look, as a new member of Congress, serving in the minority with Republicans in charge, coming from a small state like Hawaii, you will never get anything done.
So just accept it.
Just accept that reality that you're not going to get anything done.
Wait several years or whatever.
But one of the first things that I did was I got to get to know people.
I got to make friends.
So my mom and dad, they're small business owners, and they have this macadamia nut toffee business.
And so I called home and I said, Hey, Mom, can you make 434 boxes of your toffee for every single member of Congress, all the Democrats, all the Republicans?
She's like, Wow, that's a great idea.
Yeah, sure.
I'd be happy to.
And then I said, oh, I got one more request.
Can you make a bigger box, 435 bigger boxes of toffee for the staff of every member of Congress?
Because they're the ones who make shit happen.
And she said, OK, that's going to take me a little bit longer.
But yes, I think that's a great idea.
So, you know, I started writing handwritten notes to every one of my colleagues, introducing myself.
And as we started delivering these little gifts of aloha to their offices, it was amazing how quickly I saw while on the House floor casting votes, have Republican chairmen of powerful committees making their way across from the Republican side to the Democratic side saying, thank have Republican chairmen of powerful committees making their way across from the Republican I really appreciate it.
It was delicious.
I need to get more from you because I ate it all.
I got to take some home to my wife or my husband.
And then saying, tell me what's going on in Hawaii.
Tell me what issues your constituents are worried about.
I'm the chairman of the Transportation Committee, the Agriculture Committee, or whatever it is.
Let me know how we can work together.
Just that one small thing.
Outreach of Aloha opened the doors to these relationships that enabled me to be able to pass my first piece of legislation, like my first six months as a member of Congress from a small state in the minority as a Democrat.
And it's because just treating people with respect, treating people with Aloha and saying, yeah, we can disagree even on nine out of 10 things.
It directly disproved what we were told in those first days as new members of Congress in Washington and further affirmed what I already knew, both from what I learned from Senator Akaka, what I knew from growing up in Hawaii with the aloha spirit, that this ability to transcend all of what I knew from growing up in Hawaii with the aloha spirit, that this ability to transcend all of this superficial divisiveness, whether it be based on politics, like you said, or religion or race or ethnicity or any of these other things, is what has
And the experience that I bring is different from any other candidate who's running for president, serving as a soldier for 16 years, serving in Congress on these committees of importance and national security.
I've served the state legislature and the city council.
And look, when you look back, we talked about our founding fathers.
Most of them who crafted the Constitution and who wrote the Declaration of Independence were under the age of 40. Many under the age of 30. But people who lived to be like 40 back then.
I think you could be president at 38. I really do.
I don't think it's a problem.
And at 40, for sure.
You're going to be 24 years older or 24 months older.
You're going to be wiser.
You'll have it nailed.
But we do wonder, right, like when has a person had enough life experience?
But then again, the question is, what is that life experience?
Is it life experience, like you said, that leads you to be an immature 70-year-old?
Or is it the life experience of someone who's served in combat and has been in Congress for six years and someone who understands how this government works and has a better perspective of human beings?
Yeah, it is that experience and it's what you draw from it and the conclusions and the judgment and the kind of leadership that you would exercise.
There were a lot of folks in 2016 who said Hillary Clinton was the most experienced candidate ever to run for president because of the jobs she had held or the experience that she had had.
My problem was with her judgment and the kinds of decisions that she would make as commander-in-chief, decisions that would continue to send people like me and my brothers and sisters in uniform to continue to fight in these wasteful regime change wars that actually dishonor the oath that we all take when we volunteer to serve, to serve to protect and defend our country and the American people.
And instead sending us on these missions that are counter to that promise, that undermine our national security, that undermine the great sacrifice that our troops and their families make.
So it's that judgment.
It's the experience and the judgment that I believe we need to look for in the next commander-in-chief.
It's what I bring to the table, and it's what I challenge voters to ask the other candidates and to hold them to account on both of those fronts.
Would they be ready?
To walk into that Oval Office on day one and to serve our country as commander in chief.
One of the messages that Trump was very successful in getting out was that he wanted to drain the swamp, that we all realize that there's just this tangled web of bureaucracy.
And that he did a good job of connecting Hillary to that bureaucracy and say, this woman is just completely entrenched in this world.
She's never going to get out.
She's not even a real person anymore.
She's just a professional politician and he would highlight all the different things that she did and lied and called her Crooked Hillary.
And that just got stuck.
What made him, one of the things that made him very attractive to people is that he seemed like a person.
Didn't seem like a politician.
He seemed like a person.
How do you avoid Communicating like a politician, when you're doing this in mass, when you're communicating with giant groups of people, when you're having these big speeches in these big places, how do you do it and still let people know you're just a person?
Because that's, I think, what people are longing for and what they don't see in many candidates.
You see this act, like, oh, he's pretty good at his act, but I see the act.
Being myself, speaking the truth, and standing up for what I believe in and why I'm offering to serve our country.
Really, there's no other way to do it because if I start like, okay, how am I going to convey myself as a real person?
The only way to do that is to actually be a real person and who's speaking truthfully and honestly and respecting The American people and the responsibility that I'm asking them to bestow upon me, that mission that I'm asking them to charge me with.
What does this feel like to you, this idea that you are going to be the commander-in-chief of the greatest army the world has ever known, the leader of the free world, in a sense?
The grave responsibility that that job carries and the seriousness with which I would bring my experience and my judgment to fulfilling that job.
You know, this is, I think, one of the problems that we have too often in our politics is that people, self-serving politicians, are more interested in keeping their job or in getting the next job or, you know, in lining their pockets, getting ready for the, you know, the afterlife or whatever when they leave their political office, that that somehow is important.
Is defining of who they are rather than recognizing that to be able to serve the people is a great honor and it's tremendous responsibility.
And that's how I approach serving in the local, the state level and at Congress.
And how I approach being able to serve the American people as president and commander-in-chief.
It is a grave responsibility.
And I will never forget for a single moment who I serve and who I work for.
What happened with his arrest and all this stuff that just went down recently?
I think poses a great threat to our freedom of the press and to our freedom of speech.
We look at what happened under the previous administration under Obama.
You know, they were trying to find ways to go after Assange and WikiLeaks, but ultimately they chose not to seek to extradite him or charge him because they recognized what a slippery slope that begins When you have a government in a position to levy criminal charges and consequences against someone who's publishing information or saying things that the government doesn't want you to say,
sharing information that the government doesn't want you to share.
And so the fact that the Trump administration has chosen to ignore that fact, to ignore how important it is that we uphold our freedoms, freedom of the press and freedom of speech and go after him, it has a very chilling effect on both journalists and publishers.
And you can look to both those in the traditional media, but also those in new media.
And also on every one of us as American.
It was kind of a warning call saying, look what happened to this guy.
And not only that, but I think it was Secretary Pompeo, Secretary of State, who said that they wanted to designate WikiLeaks and Assange as a foreign intelligence agency.
So once you do that, then you're talking about a whole different category.
So they're pushing out information once again that the government didn't want pushed out.
And if the government then says, oh, well, now we're going to reclassify you as a foreign intelligence agency, then there's a whole different set of rules of engagement that apply there.
Then you're no longer protected under the freedoms that we hold dear, the freedom of the press.
I don't think we—I remember the very day that I woke up in D.C., looked at my phone, started looking through the headlines, and saw those headlines about how the NSA was mass surveilling all of us.
In collecting our phone records, collecting our cell phone records, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and I was shocked.
So that was something that Snowden uncovered and released, something that I don't know that even as members of Congress we would have been aware of.
So now that we were aware of it, then, hey, we can take action to close those loopholes, to change those policies, to protect our civil liberties, to protect our Fourth Amendment constitutional rights as Americans.
But was the NSA going to disclose that information voluntarily on their own?
And you had, I think he was the director of the Department of National Intelligence at that time, James Clapper, who sat before a committee in the United States Senate and blatantly lied.
And I think that if you polled the American people and you asked us to vote on it, I think it would be a gigantic landslide victory for Edward Snowden to be exonerated and brought back to the United States.
They've got this guy, he's in Russia now, hiding.
It's crazy that he lives over there and he can't leave, and if he does come over here, they're immediately going to lock him up.
One thing that I think, I want to answer your question, but one thing that I think speaks to the dangerous nature of this culture that we're living in now, the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had done an interview on, I don't know, one of the major networks, and I think he was talking about Trump when he said, be careful, you don't want to challenge the intelligence agencies.
Basically putting out that threat.
I don't know if you can pull that exact quote up, but I was shocked when I heard him say that.
Because it basically makes out that these intelligence agencies are their own...
Separate branch of government and that if any one of us as Americans or elected leaders in this country dares to challenge or exercise oversight over them, then we will suffer the consequences.
So as president, I would change that culture of leadership.
That leadership starts at the top.
And when you have people in positions of leadership who continue to perpetuate that culture of unaccountability, of complete disrespect and disregard for the Constitution, of not understanding that yes, we need to keep our country safe, We also need to protect our constitutional rights.
This is not a choice between the two which is so often how it's framed.
Well, if you want to protect us against terrorists, you've got to give up all of your rights as Americans and your civil liberties and your privacies and just let these intelligence agencies run free and run roughshod over us.
And so that's the kind of change in leadership that I'll bring.
There's a whole host of policies that we can look at.
For example, with the Patriot Act, the Patriot Act is up for reauthorization in Congress this year.
There have been different sections of it that we have worked to try to change and reform to make it so that agencies like the NSA cannot collect our private information as Americans without a warrant.
But there is far more that has to be done to undo the damage that we've already seen, the abuse of our rights and privacies that we've already seen.
Did you ever listen to that Kennedy speech about secret societies?
Mm-mm.
Kennedy had a fantastic speech before he was assassinated where he was discussing this very thing, and he apparently had notions of disbanding the CIA, and he was very concerned with the power of people like J. Edgar Hoover.
And that this was all happening while he was president, and he felt like there were people that were involved in these secret societies and these secret Meetings and that there was a lot of conspiracy going on and he thought the very idea was repugnant.
But this has always been the real concern that people have that when you give someone the ability to surveil the general population, they're going to use some of that information to aid in their allies and to work against their enemies.
And I mean, this is what, unfortunately, we've already seen.
This is what has been revealed by some of that information that was released by Snowden.
And how, for example, the FISA court, as we have it now, is a secret court that has been abused for that purpose, allowing for that surveillance of Americans, violating our civil liberties and privacies.
Yeah.
And that's something that we've got to fix, that whole FISA court from top to bottom and how the different judges are appointed.
Can you explain that to people?
It's basically a secret court that was appointed, I believe, or created back in the 70s with the initial objective of providing oversight over the executive branch mass surveillance that was happening at that time or illegal surveillance that was happening at that time.
Unfortunately, especially since 9-11, now you have this FISA court that is both used to approve surveillance and surveillance programs on foreign targets, but also on Americans as well.
One of the many problems with this is it's a secret court where you have a judge and you have someone representing the government, whether it be one of the intel agencies or the DOD or whatever, coming before this court and making their case to try to get this warrant approved by the judge. coming before this court and making their case to try There is no advocate there for the people.
There is no civil liberties or privacy advocate there.
It's a one-sided conversation.
And the information being provided by the government is the only information that's being given to the judge.
So this is one of the big problems there.
And we've seen over decades now, and especially since after 9-11, that there have been very, very, very few applications for these surveillance warrants that have been rejected by the judges.
So, you know, a rubber stamping of these applications for warrants is really what appears to be happening.
You know, there's a few different ways that we're looking at trying to fix this.
There are some who are arguing to take away the FISA court completely.
One of the concerns about that is that if we do that, then there has to be some other entity in place to exercise oversight over the executive branch and not allow them to conduct this surveillance, you know, willy-nilly, as they please.
So it's figuring out exactly what are the best reforms to meet that objective of providing that oversight, making it so that those warrants are given, you know, as needed and making sure that all the information is being presented.
And again, that FISA court was initially put in place to get warrants to conduct surveillance on foreign targets, not Americans.
And that's been one of the biggest problems here with a lot of this mass surveillance is it's collecting our information as Americans illegally and unconstitutionally because you can't do that unless you go through this process and you actually get a warrant based on evidence.
And I think we've got to address why he did the things the way that he did them.
And you hear the same thing from Chelsea Manning, how there is not an actual channel for whistleblowers like them to bring forward information that exposes egregious abuses of our constitutional rights and liberties Period.
I mean, there was not a channel for that to happen in a real way, and that's why they ended up taking the path that they did and suffering the consequences.
There's a great Bill Hicks bit about what happens when you become president, that they bring you in a room filled with smoke, cigar smoke, and these industrialists, and they play a video of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you never saw before.
And he had this bit, and I thought about this bit when I thought about Obama, because Obama, when he had his Hope and Change website when he was running for president, one of the things they addressed is whistleblowers and how much they would provide a platform for whistleblowers to expose illegal activity.
That was still on his website while he was president and while Julian Assange was getting arrested and while all this was going down.
And they wound up taking it down off of the website once somebody pointed it out.
Like, hey, you had this...
What happens when you become president?
What do you think happens?
And why do these...
Do you think that they're full of shit and they're just saying what we want to hear so they can get elected?
Or do you think that there is something that happens to them once they get into office?
Do you think that it's possible that...
They're given information that shows the real threats that the world has.
And there's things that the general public is just not privy to, and these are what influences people's decisions to go against all the things that they were saying when they were running for president.
Look, I haven't been with them and been in those rooms, so I won't speak for that which I do not know.
But what I do know is this is what happens when you have people who are elected to serve in this job as president, whose most important responsibility is commander in chief.
And they lack the experience and the understanding to be able to make the right kinds of decisions that serve the American people and end up, even those going in with the best of intentions, end up being very influenced, whether it be by the military industrial complex or the foreign policy establishment, That as we've seen over decades has crossed both political parties.
Both political parties in these areas often end up making the very same decisions about continuing these wasteful regime change wars and acting as the world's police and therefore listening to them because they lack that experience or that backbone and understanding themselves and then just continue the status quo.
You know, Trump was somebody who during his campaign talked a lot about ending the stupid wars, talked about going after Saudi Arabia, that they're the biggest supporters of terrorism in the world.
And, you know, what happened now?
You know, in his administration, what he called draining the swamp, he's turned that swamp into a cesspool.
You look at the people he surrounded himself with.
Some of the biggest war hawks that our country has seen, guys like John Bolton, people like Mike Pompeo, people who've wanted to go to war against Iran for a very long time, people who have been cozy with Saudi Arabia for a very long time.
You see who he's nominating to be Secretary of Defense, longtime defense contract career man, like over 30 years I think working for Boeing.
You see the kinds of people who he surrounded himself by.
And so it doesn't take a lot to figure out how he has been influenced by them in continuing these regime change wars.
This regime change is still going on in Syria now, threatening regime change in Venezuela, threatening regime change and disruption in Iran.
And that's the difference.
That's the difference.
Quite bluntly, between me and other people who are running for president is that experience and understanding that I bring to be able to walk into that office, to do that job as commander-in-chief on day one, and to not succumb to the establishment that I have both felt the effects of as a soldier as well as seen in action as a member of Congress.
I'm going in with both eyes wide open and understanding the situation as it really exists, and most importantly, understanding who I work for, that I work for the American people.
Do you think when someone like Trump radically shifts his position, he's doing so because he's been influenced to change his position, because he's been given more information, or do you think they become compromised when they're in office and they, I scratch your back, you scratch mine?
But if you don't have the strength of your convictions and your understanding about what kinds of policies actually best serve the American people, then you can see how easily you'd be swayed and influenced by others.
You saw Trump's rhetoric on the campaign trail about Saudi Arabia, against Saudi Arabia, against United States support for Saudi Arabia, calling them out for what they are.
And now refusing to end U.S. military support for this genocidal war in Yemen that Saudi Arabia is waging that's created the worst humanitarian crisis of our generation because, he says, well, he doesn't want to risk a multibillion-dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia.
So, you know, you can see, at least in that respect, what he's really motivated by.
That he doesn't, he would rather continue to support the senseless and devastating deaths of innocent people in Yemen and using our U.S. military, my brothers and sisters in the military, to do that because he doesn't want to risk an arms deal with Saudi Arabia, a theocratic dictatorship that actually directly supports terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda.
It's hard for people to imagine that that's the case, that it's an arms deal and they want to make sure that this deal goes through and that it continues to be financially productive for both nations.
He's like, well, you know, that's American jobs, building those weapons that we're selling to Saudi Arabia.
That's what's at risk.
My challenge to him and to the American people is if the best our president can do to help support the creation of jobs in this country is to build weapons that are being dropped on innocent people in countries like Yemen, then we need a new president.
We need a new commander in chief that will actually help serve the best interests of our people and work towards the interests of peace, peace here at home and peace abroad.
You were talking about universal basic income earlier, and you were saying it in regards to dealing with impoverished communities.
But one of the big issues that people think we're going to need universal basic income for is automation, something that Andrew Yang has built his whole platform on.
Elon Musk has talked extensively about it.
We are in a situation where there was an article today about Amazon using these I forget exactly how they described it, but essentially robots that are packaging things and automation is going to start taking over many non-skilled jobs.
And this is true with the travel industry, with trucking, with moving things, shipping.
That we are going to see less and less of these unskilled jobs and we're going to see millions of people out of work and that universal basic income may be the only way to bridge that gap between them finding some sort of viable new source of income.
We've got to figure out how we pay for it and how it actually achieves that intended objective.
But also look at...
Making those kinds of investments in how do you train a whole new workforce and in what new areas.
So you're taking people who are working in really tough labor jobs.
You hear all these stories about people who are working at Amazon, very long hours, very stringent timelines.
And so if they're now being replaced by automation or robots or whatever it is, let's look at our economy and see how we can help train folks for jobs that pay more money and hopefully help offer a better quality of life.
And I think that's overall when we look at this, I think that's the way that we should be addressing this, is not just a job is a job is a job is a job, but really looking at the quality of life of people in this country.
That a job does not equal happiness or fulfillment.
But really looking at parents who have a child and who want to be able to spend some time at home raising that child or someone who wants to start a small business and work out of their home to be able to hang out with their kids more or whatever the case may be.
I think as we look at this and how we make this transition in a positive way in this country, we've got to look at it from this comprehensive approach.
Yeah, the idea of these people that are working in these fulfillment centers being happy seems pretty ridiculous.
They're not happy they have those jobs.
Those people are in back-breaking, incredibly stressful positions where if you read the reports, I mean, I don't know how accurate they're reports of what the job is like, but they literally run from one place to another.
It's part of the problem with the idea that companies are supposed to constantly make more and more money.
As you get ruthlessly competitive people looking at the bottom line, every single aspect of that business, and one of the things that suffers is human satisfaction.
Their sacrifice has to be greater because they have to find a way to justify their position in the company.
And so they get paid very little, they work very hard, and now they're getting replaced by robots.
And meanwhile, with a company like Amazon, not only paying no taxes, I think this is for the third year in a row, and also getting, I think this last year was over $125 million tax credit.
He's got $150 billion and he's going to give $75 billion to his wife.
The whole thing is ridiculous.
And it's what people who lean socialist point to when they talk about unchecked capitalism without any sort of regulation that can stop something like that from happening and stop workers from being exploited in that way.
And people say, hey, you don't have to have that job.
If you don't want that job, don't take it.
But no one should have to have that job.
How about that?
How about, if there's a job that makes you have timed bathroom breaks and run from one place to another, you should get paid a fuckload of money for that job.
That job should be something that, it sucks all day long, but dude, I make $5,000 a week.
And people are like, what?
Yeah, man.
Eight hours a day, five thousand, you gotta run.
But when, at the end of the, look, you save up your money, man.
You're making a lot of money that way.
People would go, oh, okay.
Amazon would still make a shitload of money if they did it that way.
So that's where I think this automation really changing our economy is something that I think we're behind the curveball on because it's already happening.
But let's try to see the opportunity in that, where if robots are going to start taking over those back-breaking jobs, then let's try to find new and innovative ways for people to work and to earn a living that's actually bringing value to them.
And I'm not saying, hey, there's a government solution to this and snap your fingers and it's all done.
No, I mean, government has a role, a private sector, private business has a role, and we've got to work together because this is all of our futures, ultimately.
I mean, it's making sure that we close these tax loopholes that allow companies like Amazon to get away with paying no taxes and to get this much money back as a tax credit.
It has to do with the write-offs and how many years and depreciation and all of these different things that they plan for and they exploit in order to pay no taxes and to get money back in return.
Well, this is one of the things that has come out about Trump over the last week or two, is that he lost a billion dollars over the course of X amount of years.
It turned out to be more than a billion dollars worth of losses over a period of something like a decade.
Yeah.
And people are like, what the hell is that?
And he's like, look, that's what I was trying to tell you.
He was basically trying to say, look, this is something that I was telling you people about when I was running for president, that the system is rigged.
I know because it was a part of the rigged system, and I paid these people off.
Sheriff with an army of people in this country mobilizing, saying this government was put in place to serve us, to serve the people.
And as much money and high-paid lobbyists as these guys have, ultimately it is the people of this country who cast the votes and it is ultimately the people in this country who have the power if we choose to use it, if we choose to make sure that our voices are heard.
We're doing our research to figure out exactly what that would look like.
But I think we do have to simplify the tax code because it is so many of these loopholes and massive corporate deductions that have brought us to the place where we are today where most folks are not getting any kind of meaningful deduction.
Most folks certainly are not getting the kinds of tax breaks that these corporations are getting.
Because it's these corporations are influencing how our tax laws are written.
And it's written to benefit them.
The ultra rich and the 1% and people who are working very hard every single day are struggling.
What kind of dirty tricks do you think they will pull out against you if you try to fix the tax code and try to make corporations accountable and make sure that they have to pay?
If they're coming after you now and you're just making waves and getting ready for 2020, it could be pretty gross.
But the idea that Amazon's figured out how to weasel that out, that's I mean, you hear stuff like Warren Buffett talks about this, about he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.
It's the famous line.
How is that?
Because he has, look, he's figured out all of these holes within the tax system that he can benefit from to pay lower taxes when most people don't have that ability.
Ultimately, what you're saying, as business owners, whether it's small business owners or these large corporations, I mean, look, it is these large multinational corporations that are exploiting the system and exploiting the people and represent the worst of these crony capitalist policies.
And so when I talk about changing this culture of leadership at the top, it's bringing...
These values of service above self.
This has to happen within our government, but we as a society need to encourage ourselves bringing these values of service above self to our businesses, to every sector of our community.
Because just because you run a business and you make a profit doesn't mean that you can't be a servant leader.
And to think about, hey, how can I make a positive impact?
Yes, for my employees and for their families, but on society, on our community, on our environment.
And when automation really kicks into focus in, you know, however X many years, when millions and millions of jobs go away, we're going to be confronted with this new world.
And this is what a lot of people are very concerned with when they talk about the next couple of decades.
They're very concerned with automation and they're very concerned with artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence and that it's not just going to take away skilled or unskilled labor, but it's also going to take skilled labor away.
There's going to be no one answering phones anymore.
It's all going to be computers.
They're very close to being able to do that right now, where a computer will have a legitimate conversation with you and you don't even know that you're talking to a computer.
Are you concerned with sentient artificial intelligence in terms of its military applications, in terms of there's a lot of concern that what we're experiencing now, particularly when you talk about Yemen, with drones, with these piloted things that what you're going to have is autonomous weapons in the future, where you're just going to be able to literally release killer robots.
I'm very concerned about artificial intelligence and how quickly this technology is evolving.
With very little oversight or even understanding at the highest levels of our government about both what the opportunities are that it presents and also the very real dangers of this technology being weaponized and how quickly that could spiral out of control.
I think this is one of those things that leaders in the global community have to recognize that just like with the nuclear arms race, Once you start on this race, there are no winners in a nuclear war.
Everybody loses in that scenario.
And I think there's a similar approach that needs to be taken to the dangers of artificial intelligence being weaponized and coming together as a kind of a global community to say, hey, this is something that could potentially, if put in the wrong hands, endanger all if put in the wrong hands, endanger all of us and find the best approach to deal with that.
Because my concern is, as we see with so many of these other weapon systems, if it's just one country that's doing it, then you have, well, my gosh, if everyone else is weaponizing, but we're the only ones who are doing the right thing, then is that creating a situation where our national security is at risk or our troops are at then is that creating a situation where our national security is
I think it's one of those things that, you know, this world is a small place and we would have a shared interest with leaders of other countries in the world to provide the right kinds of checks and balances on this technology so that it doesn't become something that's a danger to humanity.
In perception, a clear differentiation between business and government.
And one of the concerns that when I've talked to experts in China and their electronics and their technological innovation is that they're inexorably connected to their government in some way, shape, or form.
And that it's one of the main reasons that makes it incredibly difficult to compete with them on a global marketplace.
When you see that our State Department has told people to stop using Huawei devices because Huawei, which is the number two provider of cell phones in this world now, they're connected to the Chinese government.
You know, ultimately, you can't stop every single individual with what they're purchasing.
I think that, you know, you can regulate what is sold here in the United States.
I think there's a role that government can play, especially as we're talking about artificial intelligence and that kind of technology.
Again, first in understanding it, and then playing, being that responsible party.
To make sure that what is being developed is not something that's going to result in these unintended negative consequences.
So obviously our government doesn't have ownership over private business in this country, but we still do have sensible regulations and responsibility that government has to play in regulating what businesses can and can't do.
What's interesting to me is this competition aspect between dealing with essentially just the private sector here in America versus the private sector in China that's combined inexorably with the military and that they have much more influence over what gets done and how things get done.
Did you pay attention at all to the State Department's call for a boycott of Huawei products?
You know, I think there is a concern about that technology being used to get our information.
You know, so that can be enforced within the federal government, right?
So if the State Department is saying, hey, the federal government is not going to purchase any Huawei-produced products or cell phones or whatever the technology is and encourage other people in the private sector to do the same.
What people are worried about over here is that what they're trying to do is stifle the development of this gigantic company.
Of Huawei.
Yeah, of Huawei.
Because Huawei went from having a tiny share of the marketplace about five years ago to being the number two cell phone provider in the world next to Samsung who just surpassed Apple.
And that this is a Chinese company and that because this Chinese company is connected to the Chinese government, the worry is that they're making ungodly sums of money and it's enhancing the Chinese government's ability to perform surveillance or just to just compete, just financially compete on a global scale.
And tech nerds seem to be siding with Huawei, which is interesting to me.
I've read a lot of tech blogs from people that are experts, and they say that there's no evidence that these cell phones have anything in them or doing anything, but that there has been some evidence of network devices.
And some of these network devices do have some sort of a third-party input or some ability to extract information that shouldn't be there.
That's interesting.
It's like when you're dealing with a situation where you're competing with a country that also controls these companies that are the biggest cell phone and electronics providers on the planet.
You know, this trade war that, frankly, President Trump is escalating, I think, is really, really dangerous.
It's having a negative impact on domestic producers, manufacturers, farmers.
A friend of mine is a small business owner, and he saw the news this morning about China retaliating with Trump's escalation.
I think with another increase of their tariffs and how he's thinking, like, my gosh, that's going to impact my small business.
I've got, I don't know, probably less than 15 employees and trying to figure out how it's going to impact the pricing and production, manufacturing and everything, every step of the way.
What's so dangerous about what Trump is doing with this trade war that he's escalating is that these trade and economic wars can very easily turn into a hot war.
And we're talking about a nuclear-armed country in China.
So while there are trade differences and issues that we've got to address with China and issues with intellectual property and other things, the way that Trump is going about this, I believe, is very irresponsible and dangerous, creating a huge amount of uncertainty for American businesses while increasing tensions with one of the biggest nuclear powers in the world.
Well, I mean, you can point to probably a whole host of issues in trade policy.
I don't think it's any one single incident.
That has created that imbalance and that, you know, I'm in Iowa a lot these days and a lot of farmers have been struggling with that and would like to see it fixed a lot in the tech community, would like to see these issues fixed, especially related to intellectual property.
But the way in which Trump is doing it is having a very negative effect on On these American businesses and jobs that Trump is supposedly advocating for, both really in the uncertainty that is being set, where it looks like they're on the brink of a deal.
Just the other day, it looks like, hey, okay, the United States and China, they've been working through these issues.
They're on the brink of a deal.
And all of a sudden, Trump sends out a tweet saying, nope, we're going to increase these tariffs from 10% to 25%.
And now China is left like, okay, I thought we were close to working things out, and now left in a situation where they have no other recourse but to retaliate, as they did this morning.
So you can see quickly how this thing is spiraling so out of control and increasing these tensions between our two countries, not being done in a way...
That, to me, is strategic, providing us with the certainty of that path forward to reach a specific objective of correcting this trade imbalance, which is how this whole thing began.
It's hard to explain, because it doesn't make sense.
It doesn't actually serve us and our economic interests of meeting that objective.
I don't know if he thinks this is part of his masterful negotiation skills, but it's got a very dangerous effect.
And the fact that we have nuclear strategists in this country who remind us that we are at a greater risk of nuclear war now than ever before, it's because of these kinds of things that are increasing tensions between the United States and China.
Other things that are increasing the tensions between the United States and Russia, you know, a country that where we still have nuclear missiles pointed at each other that can be set off at a moment's notice, literally leaving us as people with just minutes before a nuclear holocaust, literally leaving us as people with just minutes before a nuclear holocaust, a nuclear disaster,
And you really think that this could be set off by these financial negotiations and by Trump saying something like that and just changing his offer in a tweet?
If you threaten a country's economy and their economic security, where does that logically lead?
You threaten their ability to provide for their people.
You threaten their ability to provide that stable environment, which China, so much of what they do is just like, hey, they look for that What other recourse is there other than the threat of military force?
And in this case, when you're dealing with two nuclear-armed countries, this is what's at risk.
And it's something, you know, it's hard for a lot of people to conceive of, like, okay, my gosh, nuclear war?
Really?
I mean, this is something that...
Back during the Cold War with the kids going under their desk, these drills, and, okay, where do you go?
Find a bunker.
But this is something that's a reality that we're facing today.
And it's something that we in Hawaii in January of last year went through with that missile alert.
That was the message that was blasted out to over a million phones all across our state, on the radio, scrolling across the television, and people immediately, like, seek immediate shelter.
Okay, where do I go?
Where do I take my kids?
Where do I take my family?
Right.
We had college kids sprinting across campus at the University of Hawaii trying to find shelter.
He said, seek immediate shelter.
But the sick insanity of all of this is that there is no shelter.
There are no nuclear bunkers, which really, I mean, and for people in this administration and politicians who are ratcheting up these tensions with these nuclear-armed countries, bringing us to this new Cold War...
They are not saying, okay, well, because we're doing this, we're going to invest not just trillions, but hundreds or thousands of trillions of dollars to make sure that every single American in this country has a nuclear bunker within 10 minutes of their home or their place of work or their school, because that's how much time we'd have.
That's what we would need in order to deal with the consequences of the decisions that they're making and the failed leadership that they're providing.
And so this is an issue that I'm raising awareness about because of what's at risk.
I mean, this is the greatest threat that we face, and it requires strong leadership to walk us away from this brink of nuclear war, to be able to work with other countries based on cooperation rather than conflict, de-escalate these tensions, work out our differences, And walk us back from the brink.
Stop this nuclear arms race that's making us and the world less safe.
This is an epidemic that is continuing to ravage the country.
And we are not doing enough.
Our government is not doing enough right now to solve it.
And I point to one very simple thing that could drastically help those who are dealing with opioid addiction and trying to walk down that path towards recovery, and that is ending the federal prohibition on marijuana.
There has been a correlation in states that have legalized either Medical use or adult use of cannabis, a direct correlation in a reduction of opioid addiction, as well as opioid-related deaths.
This is one thing that Congress can do now to help make progress in dealing with this opioid epidemic.
Another thing, we've got to put a lot more resources towards treatment and on all of the things that need to happen after that detox, that initial detox with folks who are dealing with opioid addiction and have lost everything in their lives, then are at the place where, okay, well, if they have gotten through that detox, now they've got no place to live, they've got no place to work, they've got no money.
And to be able to provide that helping hand up as they start to put back the pieces of their life is something that we as a society need to do better at.
And the third thing I'll say is we've got to go after the culprits responsible for this.
When you look at companies like Purdue Pharma, who have intentionally deceived and lied and cheated the American people into taking these opioids, saying, No, you know, they're not risky.
They're not dangerous.
Don't worry about it.
These highly addictive opioids creating this situation that we are in, they are still not being held accountable in the way that they need to.
I think it's the Sackler family has made tons of money off of selling these opioids that have ruined and devastated people's lives.
Our legislation, the Opioid Accountability Act we introduced in the last Congress, we're going to be introducing again soon, would provide our federal prosecutors with the tools they need to hold companies like Purdue Pharma and others responsible for this proliferation of opioids criminally accountable.
And it's not like we don't already have OxyContin, codeine.
We have all these pain medications.
Like, why are they insisting on letting these companies patent these superior and even more lethal versions of something we already have a problem with?