From Epstein Emails To Diaper Tax, With Congressional Candidate John Cavanaugh
Support the show on Patreon and unlock special content like our Weekender show every Friday. As a bonus, today's show is released in full in order to hear co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman's analysis on the newly released Epstein emails and what they might, and we stress might, mean for Trump.
Then, Nick interviews John Cavanaugh, who is running for Congress in Nebraska. Topics include banning congressional stock trades, repealing the diaper tax, ICE raids hitting Nebraska’s meatpacking towns, the costs of tariff chaos, redistricting reform, judicial term ideas, cannabis access, and how to actually rebuild public trust.
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Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Muckrake Podcast Weekender Edition.
I am Nick Halzman, your co-host, and I'm joined by Jared Gay Sexton, who is with us from the road, to do a quick little intro to a fantastic interview I have with John Kavanaugh, who you'll definitely want to stay and listen to because he is a two-time state legislator in Nebraska and is currently running for Congress and will have a lot of great ideas and showing us how someone like that will get into the race to try and get into the next level of federal office.
So, Jared, thanks for joining us out there out on the roads.
Holy shit, Nick.
Yeah.
Like, holy shit.
So, I've been out of pocket and I wasn't planning on coming on the weekender, but then we had this tranche of emails that were released from Jeffrey Epstein.
And let's just say the game has changed.
Oh, how has it changed?
And also, don't forget, if you want to listen to the full episode of this every Friday when we have our weekenders, it's patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
Join our wonderful community, be part of it, and you'll not regret it.
And yes, it was, I wasn't expecting the text, the late night text to jump on and record something.
And I don't know, is it shocking to you?
Are you shocked like people in Casablanca were shocked about these emails and what they're saying?
Gambling, Nick.
Gambling in this establishment.
That's what I will say.
Okay.
So I will say that the release of these emails, what they hint at, they are things that you and I have been talking about for years.
Ever since the Epstein scandal ever even broached the surface, you and I have been talking about all these things.
There is Israeli intelligence connections, which we knew were there.
There is Donald Trump obviously being a client of Jeffrey Epstein.
We also have, by the way, an email from Epstein before he was killed to Steve Bannon that includes basically a clients list.
But there are new things here.
There is the fact that the New York Times has sat on one story after another that would have implicated Donald Trump with Jeffrey Epstein.
There is the fact that Epstein advised the Russian government in how to handle Donald Trump.
And I don't think that that's an advisor role.
I don't think that that is simply like, oh, here's a psychological profile.
And, you know, everybody has been looking for, you know, what some people would call the piss tape.
But it turns out that Jeffrey Epstein was talking to the Russian government constantly about his relationship with Donald Trump, which helps explain some of the performances or anti-performances with Donald Trump in these Russian meetings.
And I have to say, man, yes, some of this is stuff that we have speculated on, but seeing it so clearly and having it released like this, this is a giant bombshell in this situation.
I do not want to like underscore this thing.
It is actually a big deal.
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean, I kept saying like these things are going to be scrubbed.
We're not going to have any kind of red flag, you know, smoking gun stuff with Trump and, you know, pedophilia.
But I will say it's already because we know that this is only a small section of the 20,000 pages they've released.
Apparently, there's at least another 20 to 30,000 documents that they have and emails that they can now, you know, we could wade through with eventually when they have a vote.
They're still trying to drag their feet on this vote, right?
They swore in Gribalda and she signed her petition.
I was, by the way, worried that one of the Republicans would get cold feet and take their name off of this list.
It turns out, as far as I could tell, once you sign that petition like they did already, it's locked in.
You can't take it off.
So we are going to progress to releasing these files now, but they're going to be able to delay this until December at the earliest now.
So I don't know when that's going to happen, but I don't even know what to make of it, really, because again, this is just more, it's embarrassing for Trump.
Do you think it's going to get worse than embarrassing?
See, I don't know.
And I think the more interesting story here, Nick, and you know, one of the things that you've been on for years, which is the fall of shame.
Yeah.
The fact, the fact that in the past, any of this, any sniff of this would have led to a resignation, would have led to a major scandal.
And so what we have here, and, you know, when we talk on this podcast, oftentimes we try and pull out from where we are because it can get so muddled.
It can get so confusing.
But like, let's look at this.
We have a president of the United States of America that has been not only accused of some of the worst crimes imaginable, but at least anecdotal circumstantial evidence that has now floated to the surface, right?
We have Jeffrey Epstein, who was advised by Michael Wolf, by the way, basically of how to blackmail a potential president of the United States of America.
And I don't know what's going to come of this, but for me as an analyst and a historian, I look at this and I say, my God, to reach this point where these things would come out.
But Nick, can you imagine if any of this shit would have come out in the 1970s, people would have spontaneously combusted.
They would have literally caught fire completely out of shame.
And now we are at this point where I, and I assume this is going to hurt the MAGA base.
It's going to hurt that giant contradictory tent.
But at the same time, for this much evidence and for this much smoke to be available at this point, and for the president of the United States of America to not resign or to not be impeached at this moment, I look at this and I say, wow, what a sign of the times.
Yeah.
I mean, let's get a little bit granular here because I feel like people listening to this might want, and maybe they miss some of the emails.
But, you know, there's no question that Jeffrey Epstein was pretty well connected, even after he was convicted.
It looks like people were still in, you know, in his circles.
The Michael Wolf thing is interesting.
He's done several biographies of Trump.
I don't know how reliable this person is, right?
He doesn't really seem like he's got journalistic integrity, to say the least.
But at one point, Michael Wolf emails Jeffrey Epstein to say there's an opportunity to come forward this week.
This is October of 2016, the end of October, right before the election.
He goes, there's an opportunity to come forward this week and talk about Trump in such a way that could garner you, Jeffrey Epstein, great sympathy and help finish him, Trump.
Interested?
And he obviously, I guess, wasn't interested, didn't do that.
But obviously, when you're speaking in such terms of finishing him, they seem to know that there is something that would finish him.
Well, and by the way, like the Michael Wolf aspect of this, that is not a journalist.
That's fabulous.
That's who that is.
And that's who Michael Wolf has always been.
I also like on that note, I'm sorry, but Jeffrey Epstein sent an email to a New York Times reporter in 2016 that was like, do you want photos of Donald Trump with a bunch of women in bikinis in my kitchen?
Like, I mean, like, it's just the more that this thing expands and the more that we get a glimpse of this, not only do we see the corrosive, putrid nature of power in the modern world, but we also see the ways in which people have failed.
Journalists, publications, mediums, whatever it is.
We basically see that this entire system is rotten at this point.
It has been overrun and corrupted.
And that's something that we have felt, but seeing it in so much clarity, I think is a completely different experience.
Absolutely.
And there's another exchange I found interesting because I wanted to figure out who he was emailing with.
And it's with Kathy Rumler, who was a deputy counsel to Obama in the Obama White House.
And remember, these guys are all connected to everybody, right?
It's probably more Democrats than Republicans, but everybody was a fair game for Epstein.
And she said in August of 2018, she's talking about Trump saying it makes no difference whether it was his money.
Issue is failure to disclose.
Plus, the fact that he has lied his ass up about it makes clear that he knew it was illegal.
So now I'm trying to remember exactly what that was in August 2018, what scandal, because again, there was so many at the time.
But Epstein's response is interesting because he goes, you see, I know how dirty Donald is.
My guess is that non-lawyers and New York business people have no idea and what it means to have your fixer flip.
So he's characterizing his relationship too as I guess this fixer, or unless the fixer could be, you know, Weiselberg or whatever in the Trump administration, Trump company.
But either way, here's a guy that's just, you know, casually emailing people who were of the highest stations in the Obama White House.
How many fixers do you have?
Oh, I've got, I got, I got one.
Okay.
If you've got a fixer on a speed dial, something's going on in your life.
Yeah.
Right.
And that's the whole thing.
It's like, how much of this is organized crime?
And you get to the point, like, you cannot have fascism or authoritarianism without organized crime.
Eventually at some point, it's what takes over state power.
And so if you take a look at all of this, and you know, we're talking about like medium level stuff.
The surface level stuff, Nick, it's like Michael Cohen.
I mean, my God, Michael Cohen is now a media personality with like podcasts and sub stacks and all of that.
He was a Trump fixer, but he was a Trump fixer on the surface, right?
We're not even talking about deeper level fixers here.
And at that point, I'm going to go ahead and say the thing out loud, Nick.
And I'm sorry, but I have to do it.
We're a reputable podcast.
We take this seriously.
You have one of the biggest criminals in modern American history who was absolutely running over in his mind how to blackmail a presidential nominee and eventually the president of the United States of America.
And what happens in organized crime when you do that?
You die.
You die.
And so we now have, and I'm sure we're going to cover this more at length.
We now have a situation where not only the president of the United States of America, is there anecdotal and circumstantial evidence that he has committed some of the worst crimes imaginable.
We now have to ask whether the president of the United States of America had somebody assassinated in order to cover up crimes.
And that's a wild place to be, Nick.
Like you're talking about fixers.
We don't even know fixers upon fixers upon fixers at this point.
Right.
Now look at it this way, because Epstein died in prison in the midst of the swirl of like, Willie, won't he, you know, release or talk about this?
Jillene Maxwell, Ghelaine Maxwell is alive, right?
I mean, she's enjoying a puppy last time I heard.
Yeah, puppy.
And by the way, eating, you know, five-star meals in prison.
What's the difference?
Why is she alive?
Not only why is she alive, why is she at some sort of country club version of a prison?
And why was Epstein thrown in this New York federal pen, you know, in the middle of the city?
Well, you'd have to imagine the answer is that from the beginning, Maxwell has shown that she will play ball and that she will say whatever they want her to say.
In fact, they already had this meeting, right, where they sent a member of the Department of Justice there to talk to her, which was completely unheard of.
And they're going to commute her sentence, I think, because of the deal that they were able to get going.
So it seems to me that that would then indicate that Epstein was not willing to play ball.
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Well, it sounds like Epstein was aggressively trying to blackmail the president of the United States of America.
I mean, and so I guess here's where I am.
And this is where we wrap up, Nick.
I have a question for you, my friend, my compatriot, my co-conspirator.
We have been on this gig for a long time.
You and I have been hyper-fixated on one thing after another our entire lives.
The answer is no, but go ahead.
Are we ever going to find out the truth about this?
Well, I thought your question is going to be, is he going to end up losing the presidency from this?
Well, I mean, that's a different question altogether because we live in an upside-down world.
But at this point, something like this, you know, you and I talked, God, what was it?
Two months ago, three months ago, what is time?
We talked and we said, oh my God, we're starting to see the beginnings of the iceberg.
Yeah.
Right.
Like, I feel like more of the iceberg got revealed today.
Yeah.
And sorry, in one of the Epstein emails, he says that, you know, Trump had spent hours with who we now know is Virginia Jeffrey in his house.
So you have to imagine there's probably more of those.
And you also have to imagine Epstein was smart.
Like, you know, he probably sprinkled this kind of stuff throughout random emails over a bunch of years to have some sort of a record, just in case something like this.
Nick, there was a victim who said that she didn't want to be around Trump and sort of insinuated being creaked out by Trump.
Like there is so much circumstantial evidence at this point.
The iceberg, it just keeps getting larger.
That's the thing here.
And I don't, like, I'm a cynic.
I'll be honest about it.
I'm a cynic when it comes to powerful white men being held responsible.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you that Donald Trump is going to be held responsible for what he did in this situation.
But the iceberg got bigger.
And I can't help but look at it and say, like, as a person on a boat looking at that iceberg, oh my God, that's a pretty big iceberg.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, there are MAGA out there that don't like pedophiles and they feel like, you know, that's a bad thing.
And they seem as interested as, you know, the opposition of the Trump in what these files are going to say.
But we've seen them bend over backwards time and again, and particularly, you know, the politicians to protect him no matter what.
And Mike Johnson is continuing to do that.
And again, we can go into, you know, if we're talking about blackmail, that has to be the reason.
This must be the currency that everyone's now dealing in as we explain how and why these people are enabling Trump over and over again.
You know, they could impeach him, right?
That said, this is stuff that happened way before he was president.
So this is what you're trying to anticipate what they're going to say, right?
Even if they, even if there was a smoking gun about something, they're going to be like, this is 30 years ago before he was ever, you know, in politics, and we can't hold him accountable for that kind of behavior.
Well, let's be clear, there are more than enough things to impeach Trump on.
Like, I mean, there's no end at this point to the number of high crimes and misdemeanors that this man has committed.
This situation, I mean, I look at this and, you know, you and I, we talk about history all the time.
Like Nixon in 1972 would blush at this.
He would blush at it, Nick.
Like it is such a massive, massive thing.
And I'm glad that this has come out.
I'm glad the conversation is going in this direction.
I don't think he's going to be held responsible, but I do think it is useful to start seeing the depth of the corruption and the rottenness.
Yeah, no, all that is useful for sure.
And if it has to, if that's going to put a dent in, you know, his facade, then good.
You know, and don't forget the other thing that's hanging over him are these NMRIs and these inexplicable multi routine discles he's having every year, which is not typical at all.
And all these things will come to bear and put a kind of pressure on him that he probably won't handle well.
Well, I mean, let's hope.
I mean, let's hope.
I'm so glad we got to talk about this because like I've been reading these emails.
I was going through this tranche and I was just like, my God, what a drop.
There's hardly anything like this and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
And the guy who's a bit silent right now is Bill Barr, who I believe, if you want to, you know, sort of point the finger at Trump for killing Epsom, I think Barr was the guy who did the, had the final, you know, listen, I've had a busy day.
Bill Barr has had an incredibly busy day talking to representation.
I'll just say that.
Okay, interesting.
We'll find out.
So, well, thanks, Jared, for being here.
And stay tuned, everybody, for a conversation I'm going to have with John Kavanaugh, who's running for Congress in Nebraska.
Don't want to miss that.
And we'll see you back next week for our regular scheduled podcast, right, Jared?
All right, buddy.
Can't wait.
And we're back with John Kavanaugh, who is a two-time state legislator in Nebraska and is currently running for Congress.
John, thank you so much for coming on the show.
I really appreciate it.
Yeah, Nick, thanks for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Well, let's get into it, shall we?
I mean, it's not every day we get to have a conversation with someone who wants to get into the insanity that we call Congress.
Are you aware of the kind of people that you might be sitting across the aisle from?
And why would you want to submit yourself to that kind of that kind of experience?
Well, I already serve in the Nebraska unicameral, where we are in the super minority.
So I already serve with 33 out of the 49 members are Republicans.
And they come in many different flavors, but there are some that very much remind me of the Marjorie Taylor Greens and Lauren Boberts that you see on national stage.
Ah, okay, interesting.
So you already have some experience.
I know your sister was on the show at some point describing some of that.
What was probably, do you have an instance of something that you can give us an example of like, you know, where they're coming from and why you characterize them as being way off base?
Well, I mean, I can't tell you where they're coming from.
I mean, a lot of folks are, you know, in politics for reasons that are different than the reasons I'm serving my community.
You know, I come from the position of that I'm here to try to make people's lives better and I'm trying to pass bills that actually improve people's lives.
There are a lot of people in elected office who seem to be there to do the bidding of whoever it is that is, you know, up above them contributing to their campaign or higher elected officials in their own party.
We've seen the AOSC come in and kind of document what it's like to kind of be a freshman congressperson and what that might be like and trying to maybe expose what that's, how you can quickly turn.
So I suppose, are you concerned about that?
Is there going to be some sort of big money interests that are going to suddenly, you know, are you aware of that happening and that you have to resist that somehow and maintain that focus on helping people?
Well, I mean, I think that there are all kinds of people that have come in with better intentions and maybe not stuck to those.
I'm somebody who feels very strongly.
I come from a very strong foundation.
I was a public defender before I got elected to the legislature, and I went into that work because I wanted to serve the people of this community and specifically people who are indigent or don't have money to afford a lawyer.
I went to law school to study environmental law and environmental policy and again, did that because that was where I thought my skill set lends itself to actually doing something that helps people.
I'm the only person running in this race that has taken the N Citizens United pledge, meaning that I pledge not to take corporate pack money, but also pledge not to trade stocks when I'm in Congress and vote for the bill to ban stock trading by members of Congress.
Well, I need that sound effect for like a big, big appreciation of that.
That's a big one we talk about on our show all the time.
And the other thing we talk about, I think, is a lot of times when we see the kind of the hatred and the rhetoric coming from the right, it's deep-seated.
I think it needs to be taught so you have to learn how to kind of feel that way about other people in your community.
It strikes me that you did not get that kind of lessons.
How were you able to understand the values that you're talking about in terms of helping people?
Well, I mean, I come from a family of public servants, but I also spent 16 years in Catholic school, got educated by the Jesuits, and I took that, you know, the Jesuits take a vow of poverty, education, and service.
And I took those lessons to heart and have lived my life by that philosophy of being a person for others.
I know that there's a lot of folks out there who espouse Christian doctrine or Christian beliefs in the interest of what you, as you just said, hateful rhetoric and hateful positions.
And I think that those people have taken the wrong lessons, of course, from the gospels and from their Christian upbringing and that they espouse that hatred out of themselves and not out of that religion.
But that's for me, it is about my family, history, commitment to service, but also that deep-seated religious belief that we should all be servants to our fellow people.
Well, full disclosure, I actually know your family.
I've actually been in the presence of your dad with a beverage that comes out of a bottle.
And, you know, I have to imagine, do you, you know, he was up in Congress.
He was in Congress in the 70s from Nebraska.
Do you remember that time and what that was like?
Were you around and old enough to remember?
No, I was born after he moved back, after he was done with Congress.
I was fortunate enough to be raised by someone who was not serving in Congress, who had walked away because of all of the things at that point in time of how Congress operated.
And he chose a life of time with his family and living back at home in the community.
That's something that, of course, is very admirable and I appreciate about him.
And of course, it benefited me in my life.
But we need folks who, you know, to step up and serve who come from that sort of perspective, which is it's not about a desire to be called congressmen.
It's not a desire to be, you know, held up above people, but it's about being in this position to actually accomplish something to serve people and to deliver on people, deliver on, you know, things that will improve people's lives.
So I spent a lot of time in this campaign talking about my accomplishments in the legislature.
And I've talked a lot about my favorite bill, which was one to repeal a tax on diapers.
I've got four young kids and come from a big family myself.
And I understand how expensive diapers are and that we should be working to find ways to make life more affordable for working families.
And so that was something that we were able to do at the state level.
It was something that I was able to get the votes to accomplish.
So very proud of the fact that I'm somebody who's actually delivered on lowering the cost of groceries.
That's kind of fascinating to me that somebody actually enacted a singular bill that focused on increasing taxes on diapers themselves.
Is that correct?
Well, I guess I can't tell you the history of when it got enacted, but all I can tell you is that I was able to repeal it as I brought a singular bill to repeal that tax.
Now, let's talk a little bit about some of the more important things that are going on in Nebraska that you have to be able to fight for that people are going to resonate with.
So is there one issue above all that you have to focus on most?
Well, I think like the rest of America right now, people are feeling the pinch of the increased costs as a result of Donald Trump's erratic trade policy of inflation and, of course, insurance prices going up.
So those are evergreen issues across the country right now, and they are acutely felt here in Nebraska because of Donald Trump's trade policy as it pertains to our agricultural industries.
You know, speaking of that, I was looking it up because there's a lot of focus right now on what they're doing in terms of immigration.
And Nebraska doesn't always come up in national news in terms of if that's an issue and they're dealing with that.
I have to imagine, though, in the agriculture industry that it is a thing.
And how much has that affected it with, you know, ICE, you know, around the country doing what they're doing?
Yeah, well, we've seen it right out of the gate.
There was an ice raid of a meat processing facility in Omaha.
They detained a bunch of people in a county jail in western Nebraska while they were pending determination.
And we've heard stories, I suppose anecdotal, that a lot of folks have not shown up to work at some of the other meat processing facilities.
You know, they're everywhere in Nebraska.
All of the small and medium-sized towns have the center of that community is processing of beef and poultry.
Now, what do you feel about the government's role in kind of helping prices like that?
I mean, a lot of times the solutions they'll say are, well, we're going to subsidize like we see for the healthcare.
And I think it's a big pushback on the right saying, we don't, that's not our role.
We shouldn't be doing that.
And we should somehow find other ways, which they never actually come up with to lower those prices.
So do you feel like that's going to be the sort of the model that the government needs to play in terms of helping those costs stay down?
Well, I mean, you're talking about agricultural prices.
Of course, the ideal would be to not have a president who is on one day putting in place tariffs on a major trading partner and the next day changing them to another trading partner.
Businesses want certainty and they want the government to stay out of their business as much as possible.
And what we've seen as a result of Trump's trade war with China, the soybeans in Nebraska do not, they lost their largest marketplace.
And it's been replaced by soybeans from Argentina and Brazil, which, of course, is Trump has bailed out Argentina with $40 billion from the United States and then, of course, promised to buy Argentinian beef, which then hurts Nebraska beef producers.
And so it's him giving special treatment to his sycophantish allies in other countries and hurting Nebraskans and Americans who are just working to make an honest day's living and are having real trouble doing that.
So we first need to make sure that we're not harming people before we have to focus on what actions we need to take to bail them out of the harm that we caused.
It'd be a lot easier to not harm them in the first place.
That is a great point.
And I'm kind of curious.
We're about a year out from the elections, from the midterms.
And is it safe to say you've been out there shaking hands and talking to the people?
Yeah, we are out knocking on doors already.
I'm, you know, as you said in the intro, a second-term state senator.
I like to tell the story about my last election.
I won with 70% of the vote, but I also went out and knocked doors every single day for 60 days straight after the Democratic convention and then up until Election Day.
And so I'm passionate about connecting with the voters on a one-on-one basis.
Just today, we had a coffee with about 20 folks.
So we're just getting out there, getting to connect with people in any way that we possibly can.
I strongly believe that elected representatives should know the people they represent.
And you can really only do that by meeting them and talking to them.
So, you know, this Trump fellow that you mentioned just a minute ago, is this the kind of guy that you pretty much have to center your campaign around opposing?
Or can you actually get through this without ever having to mention him at all?
Yeah, I think that's the eternal question.
And Democrats have gone back and forth on that, right?
Of whether we take the bait on every crazy, erratic thing that he's done, or if we move on and ignore it.
And I think the real answer is people want Congress to stand up to Trump.
They want him to hold Trump accountable.
And that is a threshold question.
You have to demonstrate that you have the fortitude, the strength, the experience to get into Congress, hold his administration accountable, stop these worst things that he's doing.
But people also want Congress that is going to do something and make a difference in their life.
So I think for me, this campaign is about my belief and laser focus on economic policy that improves people's lives, on things like repealing the diaper tax, finding ways, big and small, that we can lower costs for working people, make life more affordable.
People don't want government to run every faction of their life.
They don't want a government that's going to bail them out and everything.
But they do want a government that is considering them when policy is passed, and they want a government that is making their life easier.
People want to be able to pay their own bills by working 40 hours a week.
They want to be able to afford health insurance.
They want to put a roof over their kids' head.
They want to put food on the table.
And we have in Congress now and the president a group of people who are out for themselves, out to enrich the billionaires and soon to be trillionaires.
And they are not focused.
We had just in that HR1, the one big beautiful bill, whatever you want to call it, is a perfect microcosm where they passed permanent tax relief for billionaires and temporary tax relief for working people.
We should put that, we should turn that around.
We should be giving permanent relief to working people and focus on things that actually help them.
That's what this campaign's about.
But of course, you do have to address the erratic, irresponsible nature of the Trump administration, and we do need to hold him accountable.
I suspect that, you know, you might be aware that in the last couple of days, all sorts of emails have been being released here that deal with Epstein and with Trump.
And it's also safe to say that when you're doing your handshake and you're talking, you're interacting with people in your district, they are Trump supporters as well, right?
You have to deal with them.
Do you think that this scandal or whatever this is going to be called now will have an effect on people who had voted for Trump a couple times, but now see what these emails might end up saying about him?
Well, I mean, the emails that have been released as of today, which, you know, we're doing this on Thursday, the 13th today.
And so, you know, they've been released.
They are, you know, what you would expect to see, which is that Trump knew Epstein, had interactions with him, had a relationship, and that he knew about Epstein's behavior.
They're still, you know, Trump was calling in his allies into the situation room this week to try to get them to take their names off of the discharge petition before there was a 218th signature.
And so my takeaway is that he clearly is afraid to have released publicly what is in all of the Epstein files.
And the fact that he is using the levers of government, the Justice Department, and all of everything at his disposal to try and keep it under wraps is suspicious and an indictment of the folks who are helping him.
So I don't know what's going to ultimately be in all of it, but the fact that he's so concerned makes me think that it's going to be a very bad look for him.
But aside from all that, regardless of how much embarrassment there is for him, there are other people who are implicated in these files who the public deserve to know who was involved.
Yeah, what we've discovered with this Republican Party these days is that they don't really have shame.
So the concern for me is that like it doesn't matter.
And I don't, I mean, we're hearing some pundit, you know, who's got a very big platform trying to now downplay the age of these girls as if, you know, 15 is okay.
It's astounding what they're going to try and end up doing.
And so, you know, my concern then, and we've talked about this a lot in the pod, would be that these kind of politicians, Trump and everybody underneath him, they're not really acting as if they're worried about elections going forward.
And that leads to this notion of what they want to do with, you know, the National Guard coming into different cities and perhaps affecting the votes in either intimidation tactics or worse.
Are you concerned about having free and fair elections in 2026?
Well, I'm always concerned about the next election.
And I think that the one thing I would caution anybody, your audience or anybody that you talk to, is that these folks thrive and succeed in all the rest of us when we have desperation, right?
When we get so desperate, so depressed that we say, you know, screw it.
We're not going to participate.
We're not going to be involved.
That's what they want to do.
They want to make us all feel like it doesn't matter and it won't count.
And we have to double down.
We have to get more engaged, more involved.
We have to get people off of the couch.
The competition in elections is always not against the other person.
It's against the couch, right?
And so getting people engaged and making sure that they understand that their vote. does matter, it does count.
And that comes in lots of different ways.
And part of it is electing people who will actually stand up and fight for them and are not just engaged in self-enrichment through stock trading or like the Senate passed in the appropriation continuing resolution where they snuck in a part at the last minute to make sure that senators can get paid $500,000 if the Justice Department investigates them.
This is special treatment for elected officials, which undermines people's confidence in their representatives, makes people feel like it doesn't matter if they have one person or another there.
And so folks like Trump, the aspiring totalitarian dictator types, what they really want is people to be not engaged.
And so they are going to try to win at whatever cost they can through gerrymandering, through disenfranchisement, through making it harder for folks to vote by mail.
We're seeing that case coming up from Mississippi.
They're throwing the book at it because they know that their movement is intellectually bankrupt.
It is all about finding ways to enrich the richest and extract wealth from people who work for a living.
And they can only do that.
There's fewer of them than there are of people that they are taking advantage of.
And so we need all of those folks to engage.
We need people to get involved.
We need people to participate.
And so we need to continue to be positive about it.
But yes, vigilant, of course, right?
We need to ensure that we are calling it out.
We are standing up against it.
In the legislature, I have fought against bills that would change our system to a winner-take-all.
I fought against bills that would undermine vote by mail.
And I think at the national level, we need to make some serious changes.
The system is broken and Trump has exploited it.
And so we need things like a national bill that would prevent gerrymandering.
Absolutely.
I mean, to me, gerrymandering, like the districts should just be square, right?
Shouldn't it just be a grid that you fly, you put on top of a map.
Isn't that?
I heard you say that.
Actually, I listened to whatever Kipod when you mentioned that before.
And so I was going to comment on that.
So I've been involved in redistricting and I do think that there are ways you can do it.
You probably can't do a square because of the population distribution reasons and people are not, they don't live in squares.
But yes, I think we need a national, you know, a bill at the national level that says all states have to redistrict in a nonpartisan fashion.
And there are systems that work.
You know, Iowa has a decent system where they have a nonpartisan redistricting commission and then they have to accept it or reject it.
But these states where we are going to have, we're going to be, without a change, we're going to be in a system where states like Texas are going to redistrict every two years because they don't like what happened in the last election.
And that's a terrible system too, but it's terrible for many reasons.
And one of them is these hyper-partisan districts are what lead to this hyper-partisan Congress that is not being held accountable by their electorate because they only answer to 10,000 primary voters in their district.
And so we need to have more competitive elections, but we need to have districts that are more responsive to their voters.
You know, I'm kind of curious about your decision to get into this because one post from Donald Trump could put you in danger, right?
You could become a target when he does that stuff, right?
And now I'm also thinking that a lot of times people want to maybe get into politics and get into Congress because, well, they can make money off of this.
They can trade on the insiders' trading information.
And if you're opposed to that, are you one of those benevolent billionaires that don't need any extra money and are coming in there out of the kindness of their heart?
Is that what your background is?
No.
I was a public defender for seven years before I got elected to the legislature, which is a job that pays like $70,000, which is, you know, that was the most money I ever made in my life.
And I'm somebody who is willing to make the sacrifice.
And, you know, being a member of Congress is a sacrifice for many reasons.
It's not a sacrifice for what the pay is.
You know, members of Congress get paid $180,000, I think.
But that is the salary, and that's what the members get paid.
But there should not be those fringe benefits of being able to engage in self-enrichment through stock trading.
And of course, it's for so many reasons, but part of it is that members of Congress have the authority to regulate, to investigate businesses.
And if they have a financial interest in a business's success, their judgment is clouded.
And of course, the trust that the people have in them to engage honestly and in the people's interest is diminished.
And so Congress has a trust problem.
And it has to do with the fact that the electorate, the people that the members of Congress are supposed to serve, see members of Congress getting rich.
They see them trading stocks.
They see them passing bills that are special treatment to certain industries that they're part of.
And they say, why are they helping all of these other people but not looking out for me?
And that needs to stop.
We need a Congress that people can trust.
And we need people to run for that office who are invested in restoring that confidence in Congress.
It'll take a long time.
It'll take a while.
It'll take work.
And it takes people who are willing to put themselves out there in that endeavor.
Are the Nebraskans that you're talking to individually, are they responding to that issue specifically about getting rid of stock trading for Congress people?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, that issue is wildly popular.
And people, if they don't have an opinion on it, it's because they didn't know that members of Congress were engaging in stock trading.
But if people know about it, if they've seen the news stories about the members who trade millions of dollars, they can't believe that it's something that is legal.
Okay, good.
Now, anything, what else is really resonating with them when you're sit there in their living rooms talking to them about stuff?
Well, I mean, on the national level, people are very concerned about Social Security and Medicare.
They're worried about the just chipping away at that infrastructure for Social Security and Medicare.
And then in Nebraska, there's, you know, well, the affordability, the healthcare, Medicaid is another big one.
and then affordability of groceries.
But one that people talk about a lot on the state level, it's a big issue is marijuana or cannabis.
We legalized medical cannabis in Nebraska last year on the ballot, and it's being slow walked by our governor, basically making it almost impossible for people to gain access to it.
And another bill that was snuck in to the continuing resolution was a bill that will make it harder for people to get access to THC products in Nebraska.
And so people are very frustrated with a government that is disrespectful of the will of the voters, but is also just making it harder for people to, responsible adults, to engage in conduct that they want to do for themselves.
And they have voted to allow themselves to do.
And so they want a government that is responsible, responsive to them, is thinking about them, and is actually standing up for them.
Well, we talk a lot about the notion of a thaw and perhaps the Trump and MAGA movement at some point is going to have to be shaken loose from the country.
Do you see a way to get out of this, extricate ourselves from this?
And how long do you think it might take to get that trust you're talking about?
I know you said it was going to take a long time, but I think one of the real problems is that as long as he's around, right, we sort of have that influence that's going to permeate everything.
How long do you think it might take?
And in Nebraska specifically, I mean, how much has it permitted a few people's thoughts?
Yeah, well, I mean, Trump is everywhere, I think is one.
And there are other people who have taken the lessons from his behavior and applying it to their conduct at the local level.
We have a state senator who's got a sexual assault allegation that was filed by the state patrol a couple weeks ago, refusing to resign from Nebraska unicameral.
And so, you know, it's just same sort of behavior.
I often say with any problem, you know, it's taken however long to get to this situation, it takes about that long to get out.
But I think the first step and the most important step is the 2026 election and Democrats winning the House and hopefully the Senate and then riding that momentum, bringing an agenda that is actually pursuing something that will help people.
So things that will address costs, that will improve the job prospects for people going forward and make sure that healthcare is affordable.
So delivering on the messages that Democrats bring that resonate with people.
And then having a strong candidate for president in 2028 who's going to deliver on the Democratic vision of running this government and winning the White House in 2028.
But we need, when we take control of Congress in 2027, January 2027, Democrats need to bring a broad reaching agenda that's going to re, well, I would say, repair or start over on some of these institutions that we all thought were in place to defend us and protect us, but we have failed.
And so the one advantage of all the chaos that Trump has created is that he has elucidated the weaknesses in our democracy, but has not destroyed our democracy.
And so we have an opportunity to win these elections and to bring some aggressive improvements and changes to strengthen our democracy going forward for the next 250 years because we're at the 250th anniversary next year.
And if we don't take the opportunity, we aren't going to celebrate the 500th anniversary.
But as long as we still are in the game, we're still fighting, we're still moving forward, we have an opportunity to take corrective action.
And when Democrats win the House and I'm there in January of 2027, I'm going to be leading the charge on making those changes.
Wow.
I'm listening to that.
I'm trying to get between the letters here.
And I'm wondering if anything that you're talking about maybe starts with the letter I and then rhymes with Mitch Mitchman, perhaps.
Is that something that would be on the table?
And would that even be something you want to run on anyway?
Well, I mean, yeah, I'm not going to talk about that in particulars, but I mean, I think that there are very important institutions that people have relied upon.
The federal courts is one that we need to take a hard look at how the federal judiciary is structured, how the Supreme Court is, you know, I think it's time to take a consideration of the lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.
But again, the redistricting portion, I think a federal change on redistricting is in line at this time.
And then a hard look at the regulatory state, of course.
You know, we have institutions of the government that are supposed to be independent.
And Donald Trump has demonstrated that he can make dictates from the top that then all of the agencies are doing his bidding.
The Department of Treasury, the Department of Justice are just arms of Donald Trump Incorporated and not arms of the government of the United States anymore.
And so we need to take a hard look at all of these things.
Listen, I don't know if any people are talking about that.
And that's a really great point.
I feel like what you're kind of attacking is the notion of how we're appointing these judges.
It shouldn't just be one decision by one man in the White House, right?
And maybe perhaps that's gotten to be corrupted.
Is that sort of what you're talking about?
Well, I think there's a lot of good suggestions on that.
I personally lean more into the idea of the Constitution requires or provides for the federal judiciary as a lifetime appointment.
I think there's a good argument to be made that that's an appointment to the federal judiciary and not to a particular seat.
And so that we could look at appointments to the federal, to the Supreme Court as for a term of years and rotating such.
And that someone can be a federal judge and then sit on the Supreme Court and then go back to either the circuit or the district court.
And so that we don't have this, every judicial appointment to the Supreme Court is a lifetime existential conversation and can be a mistake that then sits with the rest of us for 40 years.
Wow.
That is out of the box.
I love it.
I think it's a really great idea.
And I suppose, can I make a suggestion too, is take the Constitution and just kind of, can you just rewrite it, rewrite the whole thing?
Because we don't understand what it's trying to tell us anymore.
And like, I would serve the Second Amendment, by the way, get rid of the commas or figure that whole thing out.
I know that might be tough for you in Nebraska because I have feelings Second Amendment, that's probably the strongest one in the state for you guys for you, right?
Well, there's a lot of fans for sure.
I'm a big fan of the First Amendment myself.
But yeah, I think that there's, I would very much be in favor of a constitutional amendment pertaining to campaign finance.
You know, I think they, like I said before, I've taken the end Citizens United pledge, which includes not taking corporate PAC money and includes not engaging in stock trading.
But I'm also very much in favor of ending Citizens United, which I think requires a constitutional amendment and getting money out of politics.
Our political system is just so rife with influence as a result of all of the money, but it also takes away from candidates and elected officials engaging directly with their electorate because they have to spend so much time raising funds.
Well, John, I can't thank you enough for spending some time with us and eliciting more on what you stand for and what's going to happen.
I am really excited about your campaign.
We're all here ready to help as much as we possibly can.
So don't hesitate to reach out if you need anything from us.
But we're behind you and we'll be watching your race.
