Raging Moderates: The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)

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0:01:55 (upbeat music)
0:01:59 – Welcome to “Raging Moderates.”
0:02:00 I’m Jessica Tarlev.
0:02:01 Scott is off today,
0:02:03 but I’ve got the great Anthony Scaramucci on the show.
0:02:05 Anthony, welcome.
0:02:06 How are you doing?
0:02:07 Thank you for joining me.
0:02:10 – Well, it’s very sweet of you to bring me on.
0:02:12 And I haven’t seen you in the flesh in a long time.
0:02:15 We used to work at Fox together.
0:02:17 People forget that, ’cause it’s probably a decade now,
0:02:20 but I hosted Wall Street Week for Fox Business.
0:02:22 And we used to be able to share the set together
0:02:25 on the Fox News channel and also Fox Business.
0:02:26 So it’s great to be with you.
0:02:27 – Yeah, those were,
0:02:30 I can’t believe how long ago that is,
0:02:33 but also how long I’ve been there.
0:02:35 Like, when I want to ask about it,
0:02:38 I’m like, it’s my entire media life has been at Fox,
0:02:39 but that was great.
0:02:40 And Wall Street Week was such a great,
0:02:43 and I don’t want to say serious.
0:02:44 It was obviously serious.
0:02:45 There was some levity to it,
0:02:47 but it was so substantive.
0:02:48 That’s the word that I’m looking for.
0:02:50 Wall Street Week was so substantive.
0:02:52 And look, Maria Bartiromo, a very good friend of mine,
0:02:53 is still doing that show.
0:02:55 She calls it Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street.
0:02:58 And so the show had legs,
0:03:01 and I got the education of my lifetime
0:03:05 ’cause I left Fox to join the Trump administration.
0:03:08 And so it’s been the education of my life.
0:03:10 – Well, we still talk about your tenure there,
0:03:15 Scare Mucci’s, or Oscar Mucci is a…
0:03:16 I don’t want to say daily use.
0:03:18 I mean, certainly on the internet, it’s a daily use,
0:03:19 but we think about it.
0:03:21 But you have a unique perspective.
0:03:23 – Yeah, listen, I’m just glad that the president,
0:03:25 when the president goes after me
0:03:29 on his Truth Social account, he does use 11 days.
0:03:30 And I think he should be the official scorer
0:03:33 because some of these journalists that don’t like me,
0:03:35 they use 10 days, and that hurts my feelings, Jess.
0:03:38 I don’t want to have my feelings hurt, right?
0:03:41 Why chip me at a 9.1% of my federal career?
0:03:43 – No, it’s interesting that he’s the one
0:03:45 that’s more generous about it, though.
0:03:48 – Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, he knows, he knows.
0:03:49 – He knows exactly.
0:03:50 There are some things he does know,
0:03:52 and he knows exactly how long someone worked for him.
0:03:55 – Exactly, he lies about a lot of things,
0:03:57 but he’s got my employment tenure, correct.
0:03:59 – All right, well, I’m always searching
0:04:00 for positive things to say about him.
0:04:02 So now you’ve given me one.
0:04:04 – Yeah, well, I could say other positive things about him.
0:04:05 – Yeah, well, wait for the show, I was kidding.
0:04:07 I have some good things.
0:04:09 I have a list that I always go back to.
0:04:12 I talk about the Abraham Accords, we’ll always do that.
0:04:14 But he’s not always the most generous.
0:04:18 He has tweeted and then post getting kicked off Twitter,
0:04:19 he has truth socialed about me,
0:04:23 but he never gives me an extra 9.1% of anything.
0:04:25 It’s always pretty brutal,
0:04:28 but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
0:04:31 – Hey, at least you’re in the space, you know?
0:04:34 I want to be in Trump’s headspace,
0:04:36 and I want to be one of his irritants.
0:04:38 – I think you’re pretty effectively doing that,
0:04:40 but let’s hope that we can continue
0:04:42 to push that goal forward in today’s episode.
0:04:45 So we are going to be talking about Trump’s explosive
0:04:47 meeting with Zelensky, the state of the free press
0:04:48 and free speech in the White House.
0:04:50 And later on, I have an interview with Governor Pritzker
0:04:52 to talk about how he’s standing up
0:04:54 to the Trump administration.
0:04:55 So Anthony, let’s get into it.
0:04:58 Last week, I think saying it got heated
0:05:01 as an understatement of what went on in the Oval Office.
0:05:02 Donald Trump and Zelensky’s meeting turned
0:05:04 into a full blown shouting match.
0:05:06 Trump aerated the Ukrainian leader
0:05:08 while Vice President JD Vance questioned
0:05:10 whether Zelensky had shown enough gratitude
0:05:11 for U.S. support.
0:05:14 Zelensky left early, the press conference was scrapped,
0:05:16 and Trump later posted that Zelensky can return
0:05:19 when he is, quote, “ready for peace.”
0:05:22 Where do you think this leaves U.S.-Ukraine relations?
0:05:24 And what’s your general response?
0:05:26 I’ve seen some of your posts on social media,
0:05:28 but for our audience, can you just talk about, you know,
0:05:30 your gut reaction to what happened
0:05:32 and where you think we are now?
0:05:35 – Well, first of all, I maintain that that was a setup.
0:05:39 And I maintain that the way JD Vance,
0:05:42 Vice President Branson, went after President Zelensky
0:05:45 was a setup and it was contrived.
0:05:48 And I, you know, I watched it now several times.
0:05:51 I think the one thing that President Zelensky did,
0:05:54 which I wish he didn’t do was he said, you know,
0:05:55 you’re protected by this ocean,
0:05:58 but you’ll see what will happen.
0:06:00 And that obviously antagonized Trump.
0:06:03 But the outcome of that would have been the same.
0:06:07 If Zelensky was Mother Teresa in that meeting,
0:06:10 and he was the combination of Keir Starmer and Macron
0:06:14 and other people that have been lauded by the press
0:06:16 for doing well with Trump,
0:06:18 it’s still that would have been the outcome.
0:06:20 They were trying to get that outcome.
0:06:22 They were trying to eject him.
0:06:25 For some reason, they’ve aligned themselves
0:06:26 with the Kremlin.
0:06:28 They use Kremlin talking points
0:06:30 when they’re talking about the Ukrainian situation
0:06:33 and the country, Ukraine.
0:06:35 And that’s fine.
0:06:37 I don’t agree with it, but that’s them, right?
0:06:39 So they went hard at them.
0:06:41 Trump is a television producer.
0:06:44 He even admitted that this is good TV
0:06:46 and reality television,
0:06:49 which Trump was a star of for many years.
0:06:50 You need conflict.
0:06:53 And so this is the conflict set up.
0:06:56 It was sort of like watching the real housewives
0:06:58 of the Oval Office when they were doing this
0:07:00 to President Zelensky.
0:07:03 And I think it has real ramifications
0:07:04 for the United States.
0:07:05 I just want to give you this analogy.
0:07:08 And I want your viewers and listeners to think about this.
0:07:10 Let’s say you have a blue collar kid
0:07:12 and he rises in his family.
0:07:14 He’s got a lot of poor people in his family
0:07:17 and he rises and he’s wealthy now.
0:07:18 And so maybe he buys a few cars
0:07:21 or maybe he helps out with some tuitions
0:07:23 or plays some emergency medical expenses.
0:07:25 That’s one family.
0:07:28 And then the other family, the same thing happens.
0:07:29 And the person builds this big, beautiful mansion
0:07:31 with a swimming pool.
0:07:32 And then they say to their family members,
0:07:35 okay, you can come over to my swimming pool today
0:07:38 on a Saturday, but I’m gonna charge you admission
0:07:40 into my swimming pool.
0:07:43 And America has to understand something about itself,
0:07:44 whether they like it or not.
0:07:47 The world sees America very different
0:07:49 than Americans see America.
0:07:51 And so how does the world, at least when I was growing up
0:07:54 in the world, the world saw America
0:07:56 as a benevolent country generally.
0:08:01 The world saw America as a peacekeeping country generally.
0:08:03 Not that we didn’t have failures in Vietnam
0:08:06 or Afghanistan and so forth, but in general,
0:08:09 we were trying to provide a security umbrella
0:08:11 for the free world.
0:08:13 And Trump doesn’t understand this
0:08:15 and I tried to explain it to him in 2016,
0:08:17 but he dismissed me.
0:08:20 Eisenhower didn’t want them to spend the 2%.
0:08:23 Eisenhower was the first head of NATO
0:08:27 and he told Marshall, don’t let him get to that threshold.
0:08:30 The less military spending around the world,
0:08:34 the better, we’re a benevolent democracy, we’ll spend.
0:08:39 He didn’t want Germany to rearm back in the 1940s and ’50s.
0:08:42 And so Trump wants them to, okay, world has changed,
0:08:46 I accept all of that, but let’s not pretend
0:08:49 that we didn’t have a thought process involved.
0:08:51 Yes, we unevened the trading system
0:08:54 with the general agreement of trade and tariffs.
0:08:54 Why did we do that?
0:08:57 We were 2% of the world’s population,
0:09:00 65% of the world’s output in the late ’40s,
0:09:03 and we were trying to create rising living standards.
0:09:07 So we accepted goods into our country unfettered
0:09:10 and we were willing to accept some form of tariffs
0:09:13 on our goods to protect those labor markets
0:09:16 so that we could protect freedom around the world.
0:09:19 Trump now wants to go to reciprocal tariffs everywhere.
0:09:24 A lot of his trade specialists,
0:09:27 I won’t go into which ones ’cause they’ll be mad at me,
0:09:28 don’t like it.
0:09:32 They think a more surgical approach would be better.
0:09:35 And so now he wants to hijack Zelensky.
0:09:38 Zelensky’s country was invaded.
0:09:43 1994, we entered into a security guarantee with Ukraine.
0:09:46 They had the sixth largest nuclear arsenal.
0:09:50 We’re trying to end nuclear proliferation.
0:09:54 Now we’re trying to increase nuclear proliferation.
0:09:55 We know that that can’t go well,
0:09:58 so we’re trying to slow it down.
0:10:01 And so then we had something called Operation Porcupine
0:10:04 where we were providing all this anti-ballistic missile
0:10:07 defense, anti-tank defense.
0:10:09 Trump slows down the arm shipments.
0:10:11 He creates space for Putin.
0:10:13 Look, we’ve got to be fair, right?
0:10:15 We’re raging moderates on there.
0:10:19 Biden mishandled the 2022 situation.
0:10:20 He mishandled it.
0:10:22 They’re too surgical.
0:10:24 They should have said to Putin, look, I’m sorry.
0:10:28 That is a neighbor you’re trespassing on their land.
0:10:29 You’re gonna get hit like what happened
0:10:31 with Bosnia and Herzegovina.
0:10:34 We’re not gonna hit you in your sovereign territory,
0:10:38 but as your troops cross into their sovereign territory,
0:10:39 you’re gonna get hit.
0:10:41 That’s our security guarantee.
0:10:43 So if you wanna negotiate something
0:10:45 and you wanna have a 10-year impasse on NATO,
0:10:48 or by the way, you wanna try to get back into the G8,
0:10:51 no problem, but you can’t come into that territory.
0:10:54 And he could have made a speech like Roosevelt made.
0:10:55 Remember when Roosevelt said,
0:10:58 well, I’m gonna lend, my neighbor’s house is on fire.
0:11:00 I’m gonna lend them my garden hose.
0:11:01 And then the people of the United States said,
0:11:04 okay, that’s Len Lise, we’re good with it.
0:11:06 Biden should have said, hey, look, I’m sorry,
0:11:08 they’re trespassing on our neighbor’s yard.
0:11:10 That goes well in Texas, by the way.
0:11:12 You know, you’re trespassing on your yard.
0:11:14 We’re gonna take the gun out and shoot the guy.
0:11:16 Okay, no problem.
0:11:18 Okay, but we didn’t do that.
0:11:21 And we set the seed for this equivocation.
0:11:24 And what we’ve done with our military the last 60 years
0:11:25 is exactly that.
0:11:28 We take measured steps, measured steps,
0:11:30 and measured steps never work.
0:11:32 And now we’ve got a good portion
0:11:35 of Ukrainian territory taken by the Russians.
0:11:38 And we have an American leader now that wants to,
0:11:39 I guess, let that happen.
0:11:43 I don’t know, but I’m against it.
0:11:47 And I think we have to get backbone in the country.
0:11:49 We have to get organized descent.
0:11:50 And we have to explain to the American people
0:11:52 why we’re against that.
0:11:56 We’re against that because we are for freedom.
0:12:00 We’re against that because 5.7 billion people live
0:12:02 under totalitarianism.
0:12:04 We’re against that because we understand our history
0:12:09 and we know if we band together, we can protect ourselves.
0:12:09 So we’re against that.
0:12:11 But if you’re telling me now, Trump wants a sphere
0:12:16 of influence and he’s gonna, I guess, annex Canada
0:12:21 and take back Panama Canal and buy or annex Greenland.
0:12:24 And he’s gonna have a North American sphere of influence
0:12:27 and Putin’s gonna have a partial Eurasian sphere
0:12:30 of influence with the Chinese.
0:12:32 And we’re going to be indifferent to Europe
0:12:35 and Eastern Europe and the Western European democracies.
0:12:36 Okay.
0:12:39 But if we’re doing that, we gotta litigate that, Jess.
0:12:44 We can’t just say, okay, we’re gonna let that happen.
0:12:46 How are we gonna let that happen?
0:12:47 – I agree with you.
0:12:51 I just also happen to think that the last few years,
0:12:52 we just had the third anniversary
0:12:54 of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,
0:12:57 there’s been ample time for people on both sides of the aisle
0:12:59 who feel the same way that we do
0:13:04 about protecting democracies and giving Ukraine the chance,
0:13:05 not only to be a sovereign nation,
0:13:09 but to even get into NATO and to be part of this group with us
0:13:11 have had the opportunity to litigate that
0:13:12 to the American public, right?
0:13:15 There have been, you know, everyone, you know,
0:13:18 high up on either side, the Chuck Schumer’s of the world,
0:13:20 Mitch McConnell’s of the world, President Biden,
0:13:23 President Trump used to be speaking a lot more fondly
0:13:24 about Ukraine, certainly than he has been
0:13:26 in the last couple of weeks.
0:13:29 It seems like some sort of switch has flipped,
0:13:33 but the American public is not as open to that argument
0:13:36 anymore, obviously Republicans more than Democrats,
0:13:38 but over 40% of the American public thinks
0:13:40 we just give too much aid to Ukraine.
0:13:44 And we are in an enormously selfish phase
0:13:47 in American history where people are saying,
0:13:49 well, what about me?
0:13:50 What about my life here?
0:13:52 And that’s a result of the fact
0:13:54 that our leadership has never been able
0:13:58 to properly explain why USAID is a good thing,
0:14:02 why it makes sense to keep people safe and fed abroad,
0:14:05 because it pumps money back into our economy anyway,
0:14:07 but being in a safer, more prosperous world
0:14:11 is better for a safer and more prosperous America.
0:14:14 And I fear that it is too late for that.
0:14:17 I was particularly struck by the scenes
0:14:20 out of the meeting in London on Sunday
0:14:23 with all the European leaders and the NATO leaders.
0:14:27 And you think while we were a major topic of conversation,
0:14:29 the US and getting us back to the table
0:14:32 and that maybe Zelensky just has to sign
0:14:36 that minerals rights deal, which seems like a big loser
0:14:39 for him since it has no security allowances,
0:14:43 but you see the rest of the world or our friends
0:14:44 or who I thought were our friends
0:14:46 going about their business without us.
0:14:49 And it doesn’t feel like at least for the next three
0:14:51 and a half years that the US is going
0:14:54 to want back on that ramp, right?
0:14:55 We are choosing a different path in it.
0:14:58 So do you actually think it’s possible
0:15:02 to make that argument to an American electorate
0:15:04 that doesn’t seem that interested in it?
0:15:08 – Okay, so I think you’re making a brilliant analysis
0:15:09 of what’s happening. – That’s why I invited you
0:15:12 on this podcast, Anthony, thank you.
0:15:13 – Well, but– – Just say I was brilliant.
0:15:16 – Okay, okay, I do think it’s a brilliant analysis
0:15:18 and I just want to go back a little bit
0:15:21 and I want to get your reaction to what I’m about to say.
0:15:26 So I think our failure has to do with political service
0:15:31 and public service indifference born
0:15:34 from the laxity of getting reelected.
0:15:35 And just hear me out for a second.
0:15:39 So Ross Perot enters the race in 1992.
0:15:43 He gets 19.9% of the vote as a third party,
0:15:47 scares the life out of the Republicans and the Democrats.
0:15:50 They strengthen the duopoly, they strengthen it.
0:15:51 How do they do that?
0:15:55 Tougher restrictions for third parties,
0:15:58 tougher operational procedures, more signatures,
0:16:02 lots more money, can’t form a third party the last three
0:16:03 decades.
0:16:06 Secondly that happens is they go after the gerrymandering
0:16:08 with a vengeance, both sides do.
0:16:10 And I submit to you, are we in a real democracy
0:16:12 if the politicians are picking the voters?
0:16:15 I thought the voters are supposed to pick the politicians.
0:16:19 And so now we have a 14% approval rating for the Congress,
0:16:21 just above Kim Il-Jung,
0:16:26 but we have a 95% plus re-election rate for the incumbent.
0:16:29 So it’s almost like having a chef
0:16:32 got horrific yelp ratings for the restaurant,
0:16:34 but the chef is still employed
0:16:37 because it’s the only restaurant in town.
0:16:40 And so what ends up happening is they become very lax,
0:16:41 very complacent.
0:16:44 Third thing that happens is Citizens United.
0:16:46 Lots of money gushes into these people
0:16:50 from big business, oligarchs, big pharma.
0:16:51 Go look at the legislative agenda
0:16:53 over the last 15 years.
0:16:57 January 2010 was Citizens United decision.
0:16:59 It’s all skewed towards them.
0:17:01 It’s not skewed towards a little guy.
0:17:03 And then let me weave in one more thing.
0:17:05 And Bush would tell you this,
0:17:06 George Bush made a mistake.
0:17:11 Nine, in 2008, we made a decision
0:17:16 to put a trillion dollars of tarp money into the banks.
0:17:18 What Bush would tell you is
0:17:21 he accidentally created Occupy Wall Street
0:17:23 and he accidentally created the Tea Party Movement
0:17:26 because there was nothing in there for the little guy.
0:17:29 So the little guy said, what the hell is going on?
0:17:31 You’re saving the banking executive’s job,
0:17:33 I’m losing my house.
0:17:37 And then those two movements morphed
0:17:38 into the MAGA movement.
0:17:40 What about me?
0:17:44 I was once in a blue collar aspirational family,
0:17:45 over 30 years of bad policy.
0:17:49 I’m now in a blue collar, despirational family.
0:17:53 Okay, and so everything you just said
0:17:54 at the top line is true,
0:17:57 but we have to understand how we got there.
0:18:01 Okay, and this is a politician’s laps.
0:18:03 You know, you’re raging moderates
0:18:07 who used to vote for Jack Kennedy,
0:18:09 Lyndon Johnson, their grandparents,
0:18:11 or their great grandparents, Frank LaRusaville.
0:18:15 There was nobody there, nobody there to help them.
0:18:19 And so in comes Donald Trump in 2016 with his message
0:18:22 and they’re like, hey, I’m a white, lower income voter.
0:18:24 No one’s speaking to me anymore.
0:18:27 He is, I’m with him whether he shoots somebody
0:18:28 on Fifth Avenue.
0:18:33 So unless you’re telling me you’re gonna find a leader
0:18:35 that can go to the American people,
0:18:38 explain to them what happened,
0:18:42 and then tell them why where we are now is wrong.
0:18:44 And we have to reset the table for ourselves
0:18:48 and reset the table for our lower and middle income people,
0:18:51 but also stay integrated into the world.
0:18:54 You know, we got a problem because Trump doesn’t care.
0:18:56 He’s very transactional.
0:19:00 Trump is using Putin’s talking points.
0:19:01 Why is he doing that?
0:19:02 Okay, I don’t know.
0:19:05 I’m not gonna say that he’s an agent for Vladimir Putin,
0:19:07 but he acts like one.
0:19:09 So why is he doing that?
0:19:12 And then what you’re saying is absolutely true.
0:19:16 50% of the country says, I’m done helping the world.
0:19:18 I need help in my own backyard.
0:19:21 And my response to those people is you’re right, you do,
0:19:26 but we also need to help the world
0:19:27 because if we don’t help the world
0:19:29 and a fire breaks out somewhere in the world,
0:19:31 we’re gonna get drawn into it.
0:19:33 You know, USAID, you mentioned that.
0:19:35 Let me just point this out.
0:19:39 When we were pumping USAID into Guatemala
0:19:42 and into the lower part of the Yucatan Peninsula,
0:19:43 we had less border traffic
0:19:47 because it’s like an ounce of prevention
0:19:50 is worth more than a pound of cure.
0:19:52 You put one, two, three billion dollars
0:19:55 into those economies and people have jobs
0:19:58 and they have some satisfactory living standards.
0:20:00 They don’t run with their newborn baby
0:20:03 800 miles to the border, right?
0:20:06 But we’re now gonna cut the USAID
0:20:10 and so you’re gonna cause more problems, more stress.
0:20:13 But by the way, if you’ve got medical illnesses
0:20:16 and you’ve got viral activity in Africa
0:20:18 or other place parts in the world,
0:20:20 are we breathing the same air?
0:20:21 Jessica, are we?
0:20:22 I think we are.
0:20:24 So what’s gonna happen?
0:20:25 What’s gonna happen?
0:20:28 You don’t wanna stop the illnesses in Africa.
0:20:31 You want them to transfer to everybody around the world.
0:20:32 Is that what you wanna do?
0:20:36 Okay, but again, it’s the rich mansion holder.
0:20:38 Is he gonna help the world
0:20:41 or is he gonna charge them to go to a swimming pool?
0:20:43 You gotta make a decision
0:20:45 and you gotta educate your people.
0:20:47 Yes, yes, we left you out.
0:20:51 We left you out due to our ignorance and our apathy,
0:20:52 but we’ve gotta integrate you back in.
0:20:53 Well, that brings me to a point
0:20:57 that Scott has been making for the last couple of weeks,
0:21:00 is that this all has to be framed around economics.
0:21:02 Everyone is sick of the moral argument.
0:21:03 They’re done with it.
0:21:05 They’re not interested in like, well, we’re nice guys, right?
0:21:06 And this is what nice guys do.
0:21:08 They see something terrible
0:21:10 and they wanna go and help someone.
0:21:13 You have to hear about the brass tacks of what’s going on,
0:21:17 like how our farmers are benefited by those USAID contracts.
0:21:18 And a lot of Republican senators
0:21:21 have been standing up and making those arguments.
0:21:24 Senator Wicker, Senator Moran, for instance.
0:21:25 Though I am in complete agreement
0:21:28 and you said so many things that were interesting to me
0:21:30 and I’m sure that I’m forgetting some of them,
0:21:35 but I wanted to add to the Occupy Wall Street
0:21:38 and Tea Party having a baby and we ended up with MAGA.
0:21:41 And you said, we need someone who can speak to this.
0:21:43 And I’ve been thinking a lot about Bernie Sanders
0:21:47 who I have never been a supporter of in 2016.
0:21:49 I was a big Hillary person.
0:21:51 That was who the base wanted.
0:21:53 The base of the Democratic Party
0:21:55 has consistently been black voters.
0:21:58 Bernie Sanders has never appealed to black voters
0:22:00 in any sort of consistent or large way.
0:22:04 But when you look at how the coalition got scrambled
0:22:05 in this election,
0:22:08 you say like white working class people like Donald Trump,
0:22:10 well, look at the 2024 results.
0:22:14 Now it’s black, Latino and white working class people
0:22:16 and some Asian as well,
0:22:18 liked what Donald Trump was selling.
0:22:21 Now, do I think that they are permanently Republicans?
0:22:25 No, I think Donald Trump is an incredibly special talent
0:22:28 and has an appeal that cannot be replicated.
0:22:30 But obviously they are open to someone
0:22:33 that is going to be making an argument along the lines
0:22:35 of the one, frankly, that Bernie Sanders is making.
0:22:37 And he has been out there.
0:22:41 He’s on and fighting oligarchy tour.
0:22:45 Packing arenas, his spillover rooms are sometimes even bigger
0:22:48 than the main room that he’s speaking in.
0:22:51 And you see, he’s going to Republican states as well,
0:22:54 that people are hankering to hear this message
0:22:56 from someone who isn’t Donald Trump.
0:22:59 There is an understanding that Donald Trump
0:23:03 has conflicts of interest built into him inherently
0:23:04 by being a business person.
0:23:07 Not to mention the fact that his grift is so obvious
0:23:09 and we’re going to get into this crypto strategic fund
0:23:11 later on in the conversation.
0:23:14 But people are very open to someone
0:23:17 who has that economic populism to the way that they speak.
0:23:18 Bernie is filling that void at the moment,
0:23:21 but Bernie Sanders is not a sustainable option
0:23:22 for the Democratic Party.
0:23:25 He’s 83 years old and he’s already tried this
0:23:25 a couple of times.
0:23:29 So I’m very focused on who can possibly fill that void.
0:23:31 And a very smart friend of mine
0:23:35 who works in Democratic politics wrote an op-ed
0:23:37 over the weekend that he put on Fox,
0:23:38 which I appreciated because you should be talking
0:23:40 to people who disagree with you.
0:23:43 And he’s arguing for us to stop talking
0:23:45 about rebuilding the Obama coalition.
0:23:46 He’s like, it’s done.
0:23:49 We have to find a growth strategy at this point
0:23:52 and looking backwards to what worked
0:23:55 for a generational talent in 2008
0:23:58 is not going to get us anywhere in 2028
0:24:01 when we have to fight this fight again.
0:24:03 Oh, using the Kremlin talking points,
0:24:08 I cannot even imagine how good they feel in Moscow.
0:24:12 Right now you see Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesperson
0:24:17 out saying, the rapidly changing US foreign policy
0:24:19 configurations coincides with our vision.
0:24:22 You had Medvedev saying something similar,
0:24:25 Putin probably thinking, how did I get this lucky?
0:24:29 And you’ve said, I don’t know why he’s doing it,
0:24:33 but I need someone to be able to tell me why, honestly.
0:24:37 I get it that he wants to pick on the small guys.
0:24:41 He thinks he can control Canada and Greenland and Panama
0:24:45 has, I think more respect for the big powers in this,
0:24:49 you know, China and Russia, Iran, maybe North Korea,
0:24:51 but it feels as if we are now living
0:24:53 in a full on gangster state
0:24:55 where there is no moral code to it.
0:24:57 And I look at someone like Marco Rubio
0:25:00 and he has been a meme many times before,
0:25:05 but now that picture of him sunk into the couch, right?
0:25:07 During the meeting with Zelensky,
0:25:10 his suit boxing up basically over his head
0:25:13 where you think, has a man ever wanted to disappear
0:25:16 from somewhere more than what’s going on with Marco Rubio?
0:25:20 And then you hear reporting that he and Mike Walts,
0:25:22 who has a similar view of the world,
0:25:24 the National Security Advisor were the ones
0:25:28 that executed the kicking Zelensky out of the White House,
0:25:31 right, and essentially saying we’re done for the day
0:25:32 on all of this.
0:25:34 And what do you think has happened
0:25:38 to these traditional neo-conservatives
0:25:40 that have found their way into the Trump administration?
0:25:42 Because I do not believe, and I know some of them,
0:25:46 that they have just wiped the slate clean
0:25:48 of everything that they have believed for decades.
0:25:50 Some of them who sacrificed, you know,
0:25:53 have veterans that have gone to fight for us
0:25:55 and protect this New World Order.
0:25:57 I don’t think that they had a lobotomy.
0:26:01 So what is going on with the people who are working for him?
0:26:06 And do you think there’s anyone that is going to stand up,
0:26:08 like there was in the first administration?
0:26:10 – Okay, so there’s so much to unpack there,
0:26:15 but let’s talk about Trump and the Russians for a second.
0:26:20 So Curtis Jarvan, who is a philosopher out on the West Coast,
0:26:24 who believes that the democracy is obsolete,
0:26:29 and Curtis Jarvan believes that we should no longer
0:26:30 have a democratic process.
0:26:35 There should be some type of oligarchic monarchy.
0:26:37 Very smart people should run everything
0:26:39 and leave everybody out.
0:26:40 And obviously you may remember this
0:26:42 from the remains of the day, right?
0:26:43 There was an allegory there
0:26:45 where they were asking Anthony Hopkins
0:26:46 to Butler questions.
0:26:48 He didn’t know the answers.
0:26:51 And then the aristocrats scoffed at him
0:26:53 and said, well, why would we give him the vote?
0:26:55 In the meantime, they’re bringing the Nazis
0:26:56 into the front door, right?
0:26:59 And the allegory was, even though you may be rich
0:27:00 and think you’re smarter than Anthony Hopkins,
0:27:04 the mundane Butler, you need everybody.
0:27:07 You need the democracy to have this sort of wisdom
0:27:08 of the collective crowd, right?
0:27:11 So there was a allegory, there was a warning there.
0:27:14 But let’s give Trump the benefit of the doubt.
0:27:16 This is a Curtis Jarvan thing.
0:27:19 This is Peter Thiel, Acolyte of Jarvan.
0:27:21 J.D. Vance, Acolyte of Jarvan.
0:27:25 Elon Musk, the same, a follower of Jarvan.
0:27:28 And Trump, who’s less organized than them,
0:27:32 more transactional, they’ve bandied together with him
0:27:35 and they wrote something called Project 2025.
0:27:38 And they’re gonna dismantle and weaken
0:27:40 the checks and balances in the system
0:27:45 and expand the executive power due to this ideology
0:27:48 that the democracy is obsolete and Thiel’s publicly said
0:27:49 that to people.
0:27:52 So that could be the best case.
0:27:55 The worst case is that they’ve laundered money through Trump
0:27:58 and they’ve laundered money through the Trump Organization
0:28:02 and he’s tied to the Russians and he owes the Russians
0:28:06 something and he’s trying to deliver to them what they want.
0:28:07 That’s the worst case.
0:28:09 Okay, so that’s Trump.
0:28:11 As it relates to Walsh and Rubio,
0:28:15 I understand that perfectly ’cause I lived that.
0:28:18 And it doesn’t reflect well on me as a human being,
0:28:19 but I did live that.
0:28:23 I was a George Bush, Mitt Romney,
0:28:25 Garden Variety Establishment Republican.
0:28:28 Actually, more to it than that.
0:28:30 Jess, I was a Rockefeller Republican.
0:28:33 I was agnostic to social issues
0:28:36 and I helped Andrew Cuomo with the gay marriage initiative
0:28:40 in 2008, but I was sort of a right of center Republican
0:28:43 as it came to business and free markets.
0:28:47 And so now Trump wins or Trump is about to win
0:28:49 and people like winning.
0:28:53 And so I start to shade myself to accept Trump’s point of view.
0:28:56 Trump is messaging something to blue collar people.
0:28:58 I grew up in a blue collar family.
0:29:00 I relate to that.
0:29:04 And then Trump wins and then six months into his office,
0:29:08 he offers me a job and then my ego kicks in.
0:29:11 And my ego and my pride, my wife hates Trump
0:29:13 almost as much as Melania hates him.
0:29:16 And I’m telling you, that’s like way up here, okay?
0:29:20 And she begged me not to do it, but I did it.
0:29:24 Okay, and that was ego-based.
0:29:25 That was egocentrism.
0:29:27 That was pride-based.
0:29:30 And Marco Rubio wants to be the secretary
0:29:33 of state of the United States,
0:29:36 second or third most important job in the world
0:29:38 or most important job in the country.
0:29:42 Mike Walt wants to be the national security advisor.
0:29:46 He served in the US military and he wants to be that.
0:29:47 And so what ends up happening,
0:29:50 you start shifting your views
0:29:55 because you want the power over your principles.
0:29:57 I did it.
0:29:59 I’m embarrassed to admit that to you.
0:30:02 Now, we were fighting in the White House.
0:30:05 I got summarily fired.
0:30:06 I remember there was one day
0:30:09 and I got fired about 24 hours after that,
0:30:12 Trump called me a deep stator and I laughed.
0:30:14 And I said, “I haven’t even been to Washington
0:30:16 on a field trip from like elementary school.
0:30:18 I mean, how could I be a deep stator?”
0:30:20 But he was implying because I was saying to him,
0:30:24 “Hey, we work for the Constitution.”
0:30:26 You know, he told Paul Ryan that he worked for him.
0:30:27 Paul Ryan looked at him and said,
0:30:28 “I don’t work for you.
0:30:33 I’m in a totally separate article of the Constitution
0:30:35 and these checks and balances are in place
0:30:39 to preserve the sanctity of the system.
0:30:42 It’s the reason why we’re so free and prosperous.”
0:30:43 Trump didn’t want to hear it.
0:30:47 And so Rubio and Walsh are now there.
0:30:50 They’re now there, they are in the barrel
0:30:53 and they are going over the waterfall.
0:30:58 Now they could say, “Hey, my personal power,
0:31:01 my personal ego, I’m going to subordinate that
0:31:03 to the greater good and I’m going to get out
0:31:06 and denounce what Donald Trump is doing
0:31:09 or I’m going to twist myself into a pretzel.
0:31:12 I’m going to speak to Caitlin Collins on CNN
0:31:15 and my tongue is going to come out like a twisted bow tie
0:31:18 and I’m going to lie on behalf of Donald Trump.
0:31:19 That’s what I’m going to do.”
0:31:21 And they have to make a decision if they want to do that.
0:31:24 Now, if you’re telling me Rubio in eight years
0:31:27 is completely morphed into Donald Trump light,
0:31:29 I don’t believe that.
0:31:33 But I believe that he is selling pieces of his soul.
0:31:37 McCarthy did it, McCarthy wasn’t there.
0:31:39 But McCarthy said, “You know, I got to be
0:31:41 the speaker of the house.”
0:31:44 He lasted 24.5 Scaramuchis.
0:31:45 That’s it.
0:31:48 But I got to be the speaker of the house.
0:31:51 Uber Alice, it doesn’t matter.
0:31:54 Okay, no, we should, he was calling Trump
0:31:56 and saying, “What the hell are you doing?
0:31:57 We need help up here.
0:32:00 There’s an insurrection that you premeditated.”
0:32:03 McConnell and McCarthy could have impeached
0:32:06 and convicted Donald Trump.
0:32:09 They blinked and McCarthy told his buddies,
0:32:10 “Well, he’s finished, he’s finished.
0:32:13 After a fiasco like this, he’s finished.
0:32:14 We don’t need to do that.
0:32:17 Let’s stay in our partisan bucket.”
0:32:19 Did Barry Goldwater do that?
0:32:21 Did Bob Dole do that?
0:32:22 No, they didn’t ’cause they were
0:32:23 from the World War II generation
0:32:26 and the Constitution was more important to them.
0:32:30 These guys’ power is way more important
0:32:31 than the principle.
0:32:35 And by the way, I get it because I did it.
0:32:39 I have to live with that for the rest of my life.
0:32:44 I moved my principles to serve Donald Trump.
0:32:46 And then I said, “Okay, that’s a bridge too far.
0:32:50 I have to tell people the truth about what I’m seeing.
0:32:52 And I have to explain to people.”
0:32:54 Now, will Rubio do that?
0:32:55 I don’t know, but he’s a politician.
0:32:58 Politicians want power.
0:32:59 You remember what Jack Kennedy said
0:33:00 about the profiles of courage?
0:33:02 They said to him, “Congratulations,
0:33:03 you won the Pulitzer Prize.
0:33:07 Yo, thank you, but the book is so thin,”
0:33:08 Senator Kennedy.
0:33:10 Why is the book so thin?
0:33:14 He said, “Well, there’s not a lot of courage out there.
0:33:18 I could only find 10 or 14 situations.
0:33:20 The book profiles of cowardice
0:33:23 would have been the Encyclopedia Britannica.
0:33:25 But I could only find a few stories
0:33:27 and that’s why the book is so slim.”
0:33:28 I love that, and I didn’t know that.
0:33:30 I wanted to pick up on something
0:33:33 ’cause you mentioned the separation of powers, right?
0:33:36 And Paul Ryan, essentially being told
0:33:39 that he worked for Trump.
0:33:43 And what’s going on with Elon Musk and Doge
0:33:45 and watching that cabinet meeting play out,
0:33:48 where you could tell that at least half of the people
0:33:53 in that room were doing a dying Marco Rubio inside,
0:33:56 watching Musk parade around in the tech support shirt
0:33:59 and having an understanding
0:34:03 that not only do the American people not want this,
0:34:05 they want waste, fraud, and abuse cut,
0:34:09 but they don’t want an unelected billionaire
0:34:12 serving himself over serving the American people,
0:34:16 but that they might not be able to do anything about it,
0:34:20 which I think is folks who have gotten into public service
0:34:23 that should at least be part of the concoction
0:34:24 of what motivates you to do it,
0:34:28 even if you are someone like a Linda McMahon,
0:34:31 or Howard Lutnick, et cetera.
0:34:36 I think that they understand that public service,
0:34:38 at least in its prior form,
0:34:42 used to be about making the country as good as possible
0:34:45 for the widest amount of, the largest amount of people.
0:34:50 And so where do you think the Musk of it all shakes out?
0:34:52 People say they’re gonna have some huge fight,
0:34:53 they’re gonna break up,
0:34:56 Trump doesn’t like not being in the spotlight,
0:34:59 and it feels like Musk is increasingly taking it
0:35:02 as someone who was on the inside of all of this.
0:35:03 How are you viewing it?
0:35:06 – Well, so I have this contrarian view on the situation
0:35:09 because Musk is the richest person in the world
0:35:13 and lit Trump up with $300 million during the campaign,
0:35:18 and he has a $44 billion megaphone known as Twitter or X
0:35:21 or whatever you wanna call it.
0:35:24 And I think Trump is afraid of Musk,
0:35:26 if I’m just being brutally honest.
0:35:28 You can even see it in the tentativeness
0:35:29 when he talks to Musk.
0:35:32 Now, he wants Musk to burn out.
0:35:34 He’s told people inside his inner circle
0:35:36 who I still speak to that Musk will get bored
0:35:40 and Musk will burn out and go back to his job.
0:35:42 Let’s let him burn out on his own
0:35:44 without us pushing him out.
0:35:46 And Trump, I know his personality well
0:35:48 was projecting in the cabinet room.
0:35:50 Anybody that doesn’t like Musk,
0:35:54 speak out or forever holds your peace, that’s him.
0:35:55 He don’t like Musk.
0:35:58 He’s trying to tell you that with his projection.
0:36:01 And so Musk will burn out.
0:36:04 You’ll find that the doge thing may save some money
0:36:06 here or there.
0:36:08 A lot of that USAID will get restored
0:36:11 in a follow-up democratic administration.
0:36:13 It’ll have to be because it’s just good sense
0:36:14 for the American people,
0:36:17 the American people have to understand it.
0:36:18 But Musk will flame out.
0:36:23 He’ll return to Tesla and X and SpaceX, et cetera.
0:36:28 And Trump will not have a Pyrrhic debacle with him
0:36:33 like he had with me or Kelly or Mattis or Mark Esper.
0:36:38 He won’t because he’s afraid of him.
0:36:42 He’ll want it and it’s in their mutual best interests
0:36:43 not to do that.
0:36:44 You see what I’m saying?
0:36:45 Yeah.
0:36:48 But that will end and I predict it’ll end quickly.
0:36:50 I see Musk as Bannon.
0:36:53 And Bannon was President Bannon.
0:36:56 Bannon was co-president with Donald Trump.
0:36:58 And Bannon lasted eight months.
0:37:02 He actually got fired on the same day that I did.
0:37:03 He’s such a baby.
0:37:05 He didn’t want to leave the White House with me.
0:37:06 So he asked General Kelly,
0:37:09 could he spend two more weeks in the White House
0:37:11 before he walked out the front door?
0:37:14 And so I think that this will fizzle
0:37:17 sometime by Labor Day,
0:37:19 Musk will be back at his job.
0:37:23 And Musk has hurt himself here.
0:37:24 He hasn’t helped himself.
0:37:27 He’s hurt himself because by inserting yourself in pop,
0:37:29 by the way, I’ve hurt myself.
0:37:30 This is your job.
0:37:31 So this hasn’t hurt yourself.
0:37:32 I’ve hurt myself.
0:37:32 You insert yourself.
0:37:36 Warren Buffett was on CBS Sunday Morning News this week
0:37:38 and they asked some political questions.
0:37:40 He said, “I’m sorry, diplomatically,
0:37:42 “I’m not gonna answer those.”
0:37:44 Okay, George W. Bush said, “Hey, no, I’m good.”
0:37:45 Yeah.
0:37:46 Okay, so you hurt yourself
0:37:49 because if you tell somebody what you think,
0:37:50 50% of the people don’t like you,
0:37:54 they stop buying your sneakers, quote, Michael Jordan.
0:37:55 Right, but Musk is hurting himself
0:37:58 because people are slowing down their Tesla sales
0:38:00 or doing certain things now
0:38:02 because of his political leanings.
0:38:06 And so I believe this ends, it doesn’t end purically.
0:38:10 And Doge, like the Grace Commission under Reagan,
0:38:15 like the something under Obama, it was a,
0:38:18 you know the guys, it was a Alan Simpson bulls,
0:38:20 it was a Simpson bulls.
0:38:22 Okay, it didn’t go anywhere.
0:38:24 Okay, this won’t go anywhere.
0:38:27 It turns out we do have some fat and double spend
0:38:30 and maybe even possibly some fraud in the government.
0:38:32 There’s possibly some Medicare or Medicaid fraud.
0:38:33 I get it.
0:38:36 There’s fraud in lots of different things
0:38:40 and we can trim it and maybe we will trim it.
0:38:42 But the best thing we could do
0:38:45 is to go back to what Bush and Clinton did,
0:38:46 which was pay as you go.
0:38:48 We had pay as you go legislation in place,
0:38:50 the regard rails put up.
0:38:52 This is the amount of money you can spend.
0:38:54 If you’re going to attack somebody, that’s fine.
0:38:55 You got to cut spending.
0:38:57 If you’re going to increase social expenditures,
0:38:59 you got to raise taxes.
0:39:01 And if we do that and we hold the line,
0:39:04 the economy will outgrow the deficit.
0:39:06 Okay, Bush and Clinton adhere to that.
0:39:10 We were running a budget surplus by the end of 2000.
0:39:13 George W. Bush unclipped us from pay as you go
0:39:16 because of what happened with the Iraqi war.
0:39:20 And by the way, he cut taxes in March Bush
0:39:22 and we went to war in October.
0:39:24 It was the first time in US history
0:39:27 that we went to war without a tax increase.
0:39:30 In fact, we had a tax cut
0:39:33 and that really started the wild trajectory
0:39:35 of deficit spending.
0:39:38 So, it’s all healable, it’s all solvable
0:39:40 but you need a long-term approach.
0:39:43 You need a 15 or 20 year plan to right size the deficit.
0:39:46 You’re not going to do it in two minutes.
0:39:50 Okay, but your points are Musk is there.
0:39:52 It’s a good idea to cut things.
0:39:54 It’s a good idea to cut waste
0:39:58 but the way they’re going about it is hurtful.
0:40:00 It’s not going to help anybody.
0:40:02 It’s that Trump was right about the border.
0:40:04 I know this is raging moderates.
0:40:06 Trump was right about the border
0:40:10 but he did it in such a vicious way
0:40:12 that it turned off a lot of Democrats.
0:40:16 So, when Biden got the job, he reversed the decisions.
0:40:19 We’re not Trump, we’re more humane than Trump
0:40:22 but it was wrong and the people poured over the border
0:40:23 and the Americans got upset.
0:40:24 Go look at the exit point.
0:40:25 Yeah.
0:40:27 Okay, so we got to be very careful.
0:40:28 Like they talk about crypto.
0:40:31 If it’s a Trump crypto reserve,
0:40:34 then when the next Democrat gets in,
0:40:36 they’re going to rip it up and throw it out.
0:40:38 It’s got to be bipartisan.
0:40:40 And we got to stop with the left and the right
0:40:42 and look at what’s right or wrong.
0:40:46 And just say, okay, is this right or wrong for our society?
0:40:50 And what Trump is doing right now with the UK is wrong.
0:40:53 It’s wrong for our society.
0:40:55 It’s wrong for the average American.
0:40:57 Well, why is it wrong?
0:41:00 It weakens the cause of freedom
0:41:02 and liberality around the world.
0:41:05 It’s bad for our markets.
0:41:06 It’s bad for the risk profile
0:41:10 of the American capital market system.
0:41:12 It’s wrong.
0:41:16 We don’t want to live in an imperialist world.
0:41:17 We don’t want to do it.
0:41:22 Living in an imperialist world will lead to a disaster.
0:41:24 And what have we learned about the imperialists?
0:41:28 Great Britain got hurt, India got hurt,
0:41:30 Africa got hurt.
0:41:32 Nobody benefits from colonialism.
0:41:35 Trump wants to take Canada and Greenland.
0:41:37 Okay, let’s take Canada and Greenland.
0:41:39 Let’s see how that goes for the United States.
0:41:43 I think you are already hearing it at the hockey games
0:41:46 about how it’s going to go for the United States.
0:41:48 No, it’s absurd, Jess.
0:41:51 And so for me, I get it.
0:41:53 Got a lot of riled people.
0:41:55 Your network does a good job at riling those people.
0:41:59 There’s a good chant about nationalism and us first.
0:42:01 And we’re tired of carrying the world.
0:42:03 But whether you like it or not,
0:42:05 Roosevelt said it better than anybody.
0:42:06 We’re integrated with the world,
0:42:08 whether we like it or not.
0:42:10 We are integrated.
0:42:12 It’s connected.
0:42:15 It’s the rich person with the house.
0:42:18 You’re going to charge people to come into the swimming pool
0:42:21 or you’re going to help them with their college tuitions.
0:42:24 Which family is going to do better?
0:42:27 Well, what about your son here in the United States?
0:42:28 Can you help?
0:42:30 Yes, we have to help him too.
0:42:31 But we have to think like that.
0:42:34 We’re 4% of the world’s population,
0:42:36 26% of the world’s output.
0:42:41 Okay, the more benevolent we are,
0:42:42 the better it’s going to be.
0:42:46 When I was growing up, when I was in Europe in the 1980s,
0:42:48 people were buying me drinks.
0:42:53 Ask American servicemen in Germany in the 1980s, Ramsted.
0:42:55 They were getting drinks for them.
0:42:57 Thank you for helping us.
0:43:01 Thank you for being part of the cause of freedom
0:43:02 and protecting us.
0:43:04 Now you go to Europe and say,
0:43:07 are you guys okay over there?
0:43:09 Why have you lost your minds?
0:43:14 Why have you flipped into this proto authoritarianism?
0:43:16 Why have you done that?
0:43:20 And the answer is, well, we have shitty democratic leaders
0:43:23 and we had a really bad intergenerational transfer
0:43:25 of leadership.
0:43:28 And so the orange man bad,
0:43:29 but a lot of people held their nose
0:43:32 and voted for orange man
0:43:34 because of what the Democrats were doing.
0:43:36 You gave this poor woman 107 days
0:43:38 to try to figure it out.
0:43:42 You know, Joe Biden and Barack Obama caused this.
0:43:45 Barack Obama said to Joe Biden, no,
0:43:48 you can’t run against Hillary Clinton in the primary.
0:43:51 Okay, so Hillary Clinton wins.
0:43:53 She doesn’t go to Wisconsin.
0:43:56 She goes one time to Michigan, twice to Pennsylvania.
0:44:00 Trump outworks her and beats her in the electoral college.
0:44:03 Okay, now we’re gonna let Joe Biden run.
0:44:06 Okay, he beats the sitting president,
0:44:09 but he’s 78 years old, not 78 years young.
0:44:12 He needs to drop out in September of 2020.
0:44:17 Joe Biden is the Marco Rubio of the Democratic Party.
0:44:18 You say, well, what do I mean by that?
0:44:20 He let his ego get to him.
0:44:22 I got the job and wanna stay in the job.
0:44:25 Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare.
0:44:28 Well, Joe, you can’t remember people.
0:44:30 If Jessica Tarlov walks into your office,
0:44:31 you don’t remember her.
0:44:32 Okay, well, that’s okay.
0:44:35 I wanna stay in the job anyway.
0:44:39 Okay, and so they embarrass themselves with the June debate.
0:44:41 Now the party’s in flummox.
0:44:45 They could have resolved that in September of 2023,
0:44:47 had a formal primary process
0:44:50 and had a young he or she Democratic candidate
0:44:52 wipe the floor with Donald Trump.
0:44:54 Think about how close that election was.
0:44:55 I know, yeah.
0:45:00 Okay, and it was, they had an unmitigated disaster
0:45:01 in terms of intergeneralism.
0:45:04 So when I’m in Europe, we got two things going on.
0:45:07 Yes, we have a Bozo movement of proto-fascism
0:45:09 that we need to put down
0:45:11 and we need to just help people economically.
0:45:13 Galloway is right, Professor Galloway.
0:45:16 It’s an economic thing and we need to make sure
0:45:19 that these people feel restored and aspirational
0:45:21 and then they won’t care about fascism.
0:45:24 And we need to fix the democracy.
0:45:28 We need to end gerrymandering, end Citizens United,
0:45:30 right size to deficit,
0:45:33 do really smart, powerful things
0:45:34 to help the American people.
0:45:37 I’m totally with you and I, you know,
0:45:38 I was young during the nineties,
0:45:40 but I talk a lot about the Clinton years
0:45:44 and how it feels like we are ripe
0:45:45 for something like that to happen again.
0:45:47 If there is a charismatic leader
0:45:50 with that kind of common sense approach to everything.
0:45:53 I just want to say, and I want to move to a conversation
0:45:54 about the free press,
0:45:58 but what you’re describing as what happened here in America,
0:46:01 which it certainly did is happening all over the world.
0:46:04 I mean, the liberal order is failing, you know,
0:46:08 across Europe, far right parties are getting larger shares
0:46:09 than I certainly ever envisioned.
0:46:14 I lived in London from 2006 to 2012.
0:46:18 So, you know, peak Obama years was there to your point
0:46:21 about, you know, during the Bush era,
0:46:23 everyone kind of banding together, but thinking,
0:46:25 you know, you guys need somebody else.
0:46:28 I was there on election night in ’08
0:46:31 and London was as jazzed about Obama being elected
0:46:33 as they were back home, but something has shifted.
0:46:37 I know the AFD underperformed what Elon Musk and JD Vance
0:46:38 wanted in the German elections,
0:46:40 but they still got a bigger share.
0:46:43 And this conversation specifically about immigration
0:46:44 is really what’s fueling it
0:46:47 because everyone has lost any semblance of an idea
0:46:49 of what borders or national character
0:46:51 means to the average person.
0:46:54 And while they might be benevolent in so far as thinking
0:46:58 that we’re pro-immigration and that people should, you know,
0:47:01 have rights to some goods and services,
0:47:05 we all basically laid down and just said, you know,
0:47:09 come on in, that will be Angela Merkel’s legacy,
0:47:11 which is sad for her and everything
0:47:12 that was accomplished during that time.
0:47:13 But that’s what I’ll be remembered from.
0:47:16 And you just have to look at what the CDU looks like now
0:47:19 to understand how badly she messed that up
0:47:22 and the lessons that that sent through Europe.
0:47:26 But we need to take a quick break, so stay with us.
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0:50:05 Welcome back.
0:50:07 I wanted to quickly talk to you about the state
0:50:10 of the White House press and free speech
0:50:11 under the Trump administration.
0:50:15 You were there for your 11 days during his first term
0:50:17 and we need your inside sources.
0:50:19 The AP filed a lawsuit against the White House
0:50:22 after restricting access to the Oval in Air Force One.
0:50:23 Following this, the White House announced
0:50:25 that they’ll choose which journalists
0:50:26 have access to the press room.
0:50:28 All of this is happening while Jeff Bezos
0:50:30 told the Washington Post staffers
0:50:31 that he’ll be making changes to the publication
0:50:34 that align more with the right leading
0:50:37 to opinion editor, David Shiffley’s resignation.
0:50:39 What do you think is happening
0:50:42 with the free press issue vis-a-vis this White House?
0:50:44 I’ve heard people on both sides of it.
0:50:46 Fox News has been steadfast in standing up
0:50:48 in support of keeping things the way that they have been
0:50:52 with the traditional press pool and with the AP.
0:50:54 But what do you think the game is here
0:50:56 for the Trump administration?
0:50:57 – Chill the press.
0:51:00 Trump hates it and chill the press.
0:51:03 You know, we were talking about Victor Orban
0:51:06 and J.D. Vance has a love affair with Victor Orban.
0:51:08 He was very happy with the way Victor Orban
0:51:11 took over the schools and the press.
0:51:13 And they want to chill the press
0:51:16 and they want to intimidate people into not speaking.
0:51:17 And you have Cash Patel has openly said
0:51:18 he has an enemies list.
0:51:21 A lot of the enemies are the press.
0:51:25 I got into trouble with Donald Trump in April of 2019.
0:51:27 I wrote an op-ed for the Hill
0:51:29 and I said it was an open letter to the president.
0:51:31 I said, dear Mr. President,
0:51:34 the press is not the enemy of the people.
0:51:35 And obviously I went into the rendition
0:51:38 of it being the forced state and checking people in power.
0:51:41 But there’s something else that’s elemental
0:51:43 to the free press and that’s our economy.
0:51:46 We teach our second graders to speak and think freely.
0:51:50 They go on to think creatively and they create Facebook
0:51:54 and Apple computer and they create things like Bitcoin
0:51:58 and other technology and great ideas and entrepreneurship.
0:52:00 If you tell somebody in the second grade
0:52:03 that they can’t talk about certain things
0:52:05 and you’ll put them in a reeducation camp,
0:52:08 if they talk badly about dear leader,
0:52:09 then they can’t create.
0:52:11 They got to steal our intellectual property.
0:52:13 And so I said the press is very important.
0:52:16 Trump called me on Easter Sunday, 2019.
0:52:18 Last time I spoke to him,
0:52:19 I thought he was calling me to wish me happy Easter.
0:52:22 He was not, he was calling me to berate me.
0:52:24 And he said that I was wrong.
0:52:26 The press is the enemy of the people
0:52:28 and he wants to chill the press.
0:52:32 My first meeting as White House Communications Director
0:52:36 in the Oval Office was, can we break up Amazon?
0:52:37 Excuse me?
0:52:40 Well, you went to law school, can we break up Amazon?
0:52:43 I hate Jeff Bezos and I hate the Washington Post.
0:52:44 – Thought anymore.
0:52:46 – I don’t want to break up Amazon, okay?
0:52:46 And I looked at him and said,
0:52:48 actually you can’t break up Amazon.
0:52:50 It doesn’t meet the checklist
0:52:52 that’s in the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
0:52:55 Not the thing that he wanted to hear.
0:52:57 So he don’t like the free press
0:53:00 and his team doesn’t like the free press
0:53:01 and follow Victor Orban.
0:53:05 What Victor Orban is doing, Trump would like to do.
0:53:09 And so now you’ve got guys like Bezos
0:53:12 who, you know, Khashoggi got lost at the Washington Post.
0:53:14 Democracy dies in darkness.
0:53:18 Something that Bezos’s team came up with that he sponsored.
0:53:20 And he’s like, wait a minute.
0:53:22 These guys could threaten my lifestyle.
0:53:23 They could threaten me.
0:53:25 They could threaten my family.
0:53:27 And you know, there’s threats going on everywhere
0:53:28 in Washington.
0:53:29 You’re not, you’re part of the press.
0:53:32 So you know that the senators are getting threatened
0:53:33 if they don’t vote for certain cabinet members
0:53:34 and stuff like that.
0:53:35 – Right.
0:53:36 – And so Bezos, I got a great life
0:53:37 and we’re $200 billion.
0:53:39 What the hell am I doing?
0:53:42 Let me lock and load on Trump and spend some money on him.
0:53:44 Let me show up at the inaugural, have dinner with him
0:53:46 and let me tone down the Washington Post.
0:53:48 I don’t need this headache.
0:53:51 And so, but that’s the reason why he’s a billionaire.
0:53:52 And that’s the reason why you and I
0:53:53 are never going to be billionaires.
0:53:57 Okay, because, because, you know, he’s transactional
0:54:00 and he’s decided that the principles of the democracy,
0:54:05 not dying in darkness are not as important as him
0:54:07 maintaining his lifestyle and keeping himself free.
0:54:08 – But then why doesn’t he sell it?
0:54:09 – Oh, maybe.
0:54:11 – Because I mean, he has enough money
0:54:13 and it doesn’t make money for him, right?
0:54:14 And subscriptions are way down.
0:54:17 So there are plenty of people who want to buy it.
0:54:18 Why doesn’t he get rid of it
0:54:21 versus compromising his principles to this level?
0:54:23 – Well, maybe he will, but maybe he won’t.
0:54:26 And maybe, maybe, you know, people are,
0:54:27 people are funny in their own brains.
0:54:30 You know, when I was compromising my principles
0:54:31 to work for Donald Trump,
0:54:35 do you think I thought I was compromising my principles?
0:54:36 You know, maybe in his own–
0:54:37 – Maybe like, in your, you know,
0:54:38 like in the shower, right?
0:54:39 When you’re standing there
0:54:41 and you’re like doing your deepest thoughts.
0:54:41 – No, no, no, no, no.
0:54:43 I was, I was bullshitting myself.
0:54:45 Let’s just be honest about it, okay?
0:54:47 And maybe Jeff St himself,
0:54:50 I’ve really had a change of heart politically
0:54:52 and the woke-ism.
0:54:53 – That’s a huge piece of this though.
0:54:58 I mean, the, the reaction to the left going too far left
0:55:00 has been massive.
0:55:03 The amount of times in regular conversations with my friends
0:55:05 we’re all pretty normie Democrats,
0:55:08 where they talk about the Charlemagne the God ad, right?
0:55:10 About, you know, she’s for they, them, I’m for you.
0:55:13 And all the stuff that Bill Maher is talking about
0:55:16 all the time, you know, that’s pretty deeply felt.
0:55:18 – Yeah, you know, Bill, you should get him on your show.
0:55:20 He, Bill is a raging Maher.
0:55:22 – That’s where Scott and I met Bill Maher.
0:55:23 That’s our meat cute.
0:55:25 Bill, you know, I’m a huge fan.
0:55:27 I’ve been on a show many times
0:55:29 and I would say that Bill gets it.
0:55:33 And I would say that, look, if I were the Democrats,
0:55:35 I’m not, and they would never accept this,
0:55:37 ’cause again, it’s all ego-based,
0:55:40 but I would team up with the former Republicans.
0:55:42 I would, I would go to the Christie’s
0:55:43 and the Kissinger’s and the Cheneys.
0:55:44 – Isn’t that what we did though?
0:55:46 I mean, we’re sitting there with Liz Cheney, you know,
0:55:49 Kamala’s with her the day before the election or whatever.
0:55:50 – They really haven’t though,
0:55:53 because the hard left didn’t accept it.
0:55:54 They derided it.
0:55:56 And there were certain trips
0:55:58 that were supposed to be on the campaign plane.
0:56:01 And the hard left was says NFW can’t bring Christie’s
0:56:03 or can’t bring this person or he can’t bring Paparazzi.
0:56:05 You know that and I know that.
0:56:08 But what I would say is that democracy is at stake.
0:56:13 So let’s have a pro-American, pro-democratic,
0:56:18 pro-democracy party and let’s expand the tent.
0:56:20 And even though you may not like Chris Christie,
0:56:22 I do, I was one of his donors.
0:56:24 But even though you may not like Liz Cheney,
0:56:28 hold your nose and even if you don’t like AOC,
0:56:32 hold your nose, get in the boat together
0:56:34 and take out the Whig Party.
0:56:36 Let’s go over to who the Whigs were.
0:56:41 The Whigs were taken out by a new party formed in 1856
0:56:44 known as the Republicans.
0:56:48 And they went after the abolitionists in the Whig Party
0:56:49 and they went after the abolitionists
0:56:51 in the Democratic Party
0:56:53 and they formed a new party
0:56:58 and their first Republican elected president was Abraham Lincoln
0:57:00 and they destroyed the Whig Party.
0:57:04 They weakened it to the point where it disintegrated.
0:57:07 You could do that to the MAGA party.
0:57:10 You know, this party known as the Republicans
0:57:14 was a hostile takeover by an insurgent third party
0:57:16 known as MAGA or Trumplicans.
0:57:18 They call themselves the Republicans.
0:57:20 See, Trump couldn’t run as a third party
0:57:22 because he knew he couldn’t win
0:57:26 but he had to take over one of the two traditional parties
0:57:27 which he did.
0:57:29 There’s been a full decapitation
0:57:33 and a full hostile takeover of that party.
0:57:36 But the other people, the Lincoln pride,
0:57:40 whatever they are, merged them into the other party.
0:57:42 They’re all pro-democracy people.
0:57:45 They all understand that the Constitution
0:57:48 and that the democracy is more important
0:57:50 than any one individual policy.
0:57:53 I may disagree with AOC on XYZ
0:57:56 or the Amazon situation along on Island City.
0:57:57 I may disagree with her.
0:57:58 But so what?
0:58:00 She’s pro-democracy.
0:58:02 I’m pro-democracy.
0:58:05 Let’s team up like we did in the 1850s
0:58:07 and knock these guys out of the boxing ring.
0:58:08 – I like it.
0:58:09 That’s a good slogan.
0:58:11 Let’s make the 1850s cool again.
0:58:12 – Well, maybe.
0:58:13 – No, maybe.
0:58:14 Listen, I’ve always felt that way.
0:58:15 – The 1850s were a terrible time.
0:58:18 James, listen, James Buchanan, terrible president.
0:58:20 It caused a civil war.
0:58:21 A lot of things could have happened
0:58:23 to not have that happen.
0:58:26 You know, we could kill 600,000 Americans.
0:58:31 The backlash, the John Wilkes Booth assassination,
0:58:34 totally botched the reconstruction.
0:58:38 I mean, we’ve gone through very tough times in this country
0:58:39 as we’re reordering the country
0:58:43 to try to make it a more perfect union.
0:58:46 But you know, so this time we’re going through right now,
0:58:48 pales in comparison to the civil war
0:58:50 or the advent of the Second World War.
0:58:52 But let’s fix it.
0:58:54 But we gotta stomach each other.
0:58:56 Oh, I can’t work with Anthony.
0:58:58 He was once with Trump.
0:59:00 You know, my 32-year-old son has a great line.
0:59:03 He’s like, hey, Dad, you’re killing me.
0:59:05 Republicans hate you because you left Trump.
0:59:06 The Democrats will never accept you
0:59:08 because you were with Trump.
0:59:11 You’re just killing my networking opportunities, Dad.
0:59:14 Oh, maybe I’m getting close to the truth, you know?
0:59:16 – And I would say, I feel like the Democrats
0:59:19 are very happy to have you talking the way
0:59:22 that you’re talking about being pro-democracy.
0:59:24 – They don’t put me in their tent.
0:59:26 Trust me, they won’t put me in their tent.
0:59:29 They let me help Vice President Harris on the debate
0:59:30 ’cause I understood Trump
0:59:33 and I was able to get some fun lines into the debate.
0:59:36 But they won’t bring me in
0:59:38 because I’m not a Democrat.
0:59:42 – Well, I used to even have that much so less
0:59:44 since I started co-hosting the five,
0:59:46 but Democrats are suspicious of me
0:59:48 because I work at Fox.
0:59:48 – Right, exactly.
0:59:51 – Like it makes no difference what I’m saying
0:59:53 or to how large of an audience.
0:59:56 – You’re helping Fox prosper.
1:00:01 But by the way, I applaud Fox for supporting AP.
1:00:03 I applaud them for that.
1:00:06 And again, there’s opinion people at Fox,
1:00:11 there’s journalists at Fox, and that’s a point of view.
1:00:13 And we should have that point of view
1:00:16 and we should have a healthy, rigorous debate about it.
1:00:20 But the Trump stuff has taken it to a different level.
1:00:22 Trump thinks like a Victor Orban.
1:00:26 He doesn’t think like a traditional American president.
1:00:29 Okay, the president since Roosevelt
1:00:32 were grounded in some bipartisanship
1:00:35 and grounded in some Democratic principles
1:00:40 and were committed to the idea of containment
1:00:43 and the promotion of freedom
1:00:46 and raising living standards around the world.
1:00:50 Okay, they weren’t, hey, it’s my swimming pool
1:00:53 and I’m now gonna charge you to come into the swimming pool.
1:00:56 – Yeah, I think the defining distinction
1:00:58 between what’s going on right now and in the past,
1:01:00 and I’m certainly not combing this
1:01:04 to the way that we were split during the Civil War,
1:01:07 but is the information game in all of this
1:01:08 and the disinformation. – No question.
1:01:13 – Because it used to be people looked at maybe one paper
1:01:15 and odds are that you and your neighbor
1:01:17 were looking at the same thing.
1:01:22 And today people are living in diametrically opposed
1:01:24 information cesspools.
1:01:27 And we do not have a common language
1:01:30 as to what truth is, what right or wrong is.
1:01:33 Is the sky blue?
1:01:36 I got 10 people within 50 feet of me
1:01:38 who feel differently about that.
1:01:40 – And to compound that our adversaries
1:01:41 are doing that to us.
1:01:43 – Oh, they’re thrilled by it
1:01:44 and they’re doing it to their own people.
1:01:45 You know, they’ve got a plan for us.
1:01:46 – They’ve dumped in lots of disinformation.
1:01:48 Yup, 100%.
1:01:50 – Thank you so much for joining me.
1:01:51 – No, I appreciate it.
1:01:53 You’re great to have me on.
1:01:55 Please give Professor Galloway my love.
1:01:57 You know, I’m a huge fan of his as well.
1:01:58 – I will.
1:01:59 – Thank you.
1:02:00 – Okay, after the break,
1:02:01 my conversation with Governor Pritzker.
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1:03:12 That’s Polly.AI/PROVG.
1:03:19 We’re taking Box Media Podcast on the road
1:03:20 and heading back to Austin
1:03:22 for the South by Southwest Festival,
1:03:24 March 8th to the 10th.
1:03:26 What a thrill.
1:03:28 We’ll be doing special live episodes
1:03:29 of hit shows, including Pivot.
1:03:32 That’s right, that dog’s going to the great state of Texas.
1:03:34 Where should we begin?
1:03:35 With Esther Perel,
1:03:38 a Touch More with Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe,
1:03:41 not just football with Cam Hayward and more,
1:03:43 presented by Smartsheet.
1:03:46 The Box Media Podcast stage at South by Southwest
1:03:49 is open to all South by Southwest badge holders.
1:03:51 We hope to see you at the Austin Convention Center soon.
1:03:56 Visit voxmedia.com/sxsw to learn more.
1:04:00 That’s voxmedia.com/sxsw.
1:04:04 This week on ProfG Markets, we speak with Mike Moffitt,
1:04:06 founding director of the University of Ottawa’s
1:04:07 Missing Middle Initiative
1:04:10 and a former economic advisor to Justin Trudeau.
1:04:12 We dive into the state of Canadian politics
1:04:15 and we get his take on the biggest challenges
1:04:16 facing Canada’s economy.
1:04:19 Canada’s economy is like three oligopolies
1:04:20 in a trench coat.
1:04:22 We have a lot of inequality that way.
1:04:26 We have high levels of market concentration
1:04:29 because we have this tension in Canada
1:04:32 where we want things to be Canadian.
1:04:33 We want Canadian ownership.
1:04:35 But when you do that, you create a moat.
1:04:38 And whenever you create barriers to entry,
1:04:42 you’re going to naturally create oligopolies.
1:04:43 You can find that conversation
1:04:46 exclusively on the ProfG Markets podcast.
1:04:52 Today, we’ve got Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker with us.
1:04:53 He’s been waking up in the morning
1:04:56 with Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker with us.
1:04:58 He’s been waking waves, pushing for more jobs,
1:04:59 affordable health care,
1:05:01 and taking on Trump’s immigration policies.
1:05:03 He’s also sounding the alarm on what he calls
1:05:05 the GOP’s growing authoritarian streak
1:05:07 and even joined a multi-state lawsuit
1:05:11 to block Trump’s federal funding freeze last month.
1:05:13 Plus, he’s backing a screen-free schools plan,
1:05:16 which I love, to ban cell phones in classrooms.
1:05:17 We’ve got a lot to cover.
1:05:19 Governor Pritzker, welcome to the show.
1:05:21 – Thanks for having me.
1:05:23 – No, it’s so great to have you.
1:05:25 You have been one of the strongest democratic voices
1:05:27 against Trump in general,
1:05:30 but certainly since he won reelection.
1:05:32 But there are some people who are saying
1:05:34 that the party is still not pushing back hard enough.
1:05:36 What do you think is the right strategy?
1:05:38 Should we just be on offense all the time?
1:05:40 Is there a risk of overplaying it?
1:05:42 How are you thinking about this?
1:05:45 – Well, first of all, I think we ought to be focused, right?
1:05:47 It’s clear they’re trying to flood the zone.
1:05:49 They want us to pay attention to Greenland
1:05:52 and Panama Canal and all these things
1:05:53 that really don’t have anything to do
1:05:56 with the lives of ordinary Americans every day.
1:05:59 And so at least we Democrats ought to be focused on,
1:06:01 frankly, what we auto have been focused on
1:06:04 in the last election too, which is affordability
1:06:07 and just making life a little easier for people.
1:06:11 How about healthcare where Democrats have the right solutions
1:06:12 and the Republicans are just trying
1:06:14 to take healthcare away from people?
1:06:17 So I think we should talk a lot about that
1:06:18 and focus on that.
1:06:21 But I think you can’t overlook the fact
1:06:24 that they’re tearing down the institutions of our government,
1:06:27 the institutions that have been established
1:06:28 under the Constitution.
1:06:31 And it’s vitally important to all of us
1:06:33 that we preserve those things.
1:06:35 But again, average folks out there,
1:06:40 if you knocked on 100 doors and talk to people at the doors
1:06:42 and I’ve knocked on a lot of doors,
1:06:45 nobody’s gonna say, oh yeah, democracy,
1:06:46 that’s the number one issue.
1:06:50 Even though it is something that is,
1:06:53 affecting people’s daily lives,
1:06:54 it just doesn’t feel like that.
1:06:56 It’s when you buy your groceries,
1:06:58 when you go to buy your automobile,
1:07:02 as soon as these tariffs go in with Canada and Mexico,
1:07:04 which make no sense at all to me,
1:07:07 unless you’re trying to provide a large tax cut
1:07:10 to the wealthiest Americans, of course.
1:07:12 But ’cause they’re trying to collect
1:07:14 from the American public those tariffs,
1:07:15 that’s who’s gonna pay.
1:07:17 So anyway, we’ve got a lot of work to do
1:07:19 to make sure that we’re communicating
1:07:21 with the public in the right way.
1:07:24 But sounding the alarm is something
1:07:25 that I think is hugely important.
1:07:26 It’s what I’ve tried to do.
1:07:31 It’s why I gave the speech that I gave last week,
1:07:34 talking about the death of a constitutional republic.
1:07:37 And I wish more people were out there
1:07:41 and out front, raising attention.
1:07:43 – Why do you think that they aren’t?
1:07:46 – Because it was a very clear message on November 5th
1:07:48 that that type of messaging did not work, right?
1:07:50 The Liz Cheney’s of the world
1:07:52 did not compel that many people,
1:07:56 or really compelled the same percentage of moderates
1:07:57 that voted for Biden in 2020.
1:08:01 It was a mirror image, essentially in 2024.
1:08:03 So there are a lot of Democrats who are concerned
1:08:05 about adopting that strategy,
1:08:08 but you seem fairly unconcerned.
1:08:10 – Well, you mean the strategy of which–
1:08:13 – Going out there when you talked about comparisons
1:08:16 to 1930s Germany in your state of the state?
1:08:18 – Yeah, but that wasn’t a campaign message.
1:08:20 I mean, that is my personal belief.
1:08:21 I helped to build a Holocaust museum.
1:08:24 I’m Jewish, I’ve been fighting anti-Semitism.
1:08:26 Well, it seems like my whole life now.
1:08:30 And so I really felt compelled to talk about
1:08:32 what’s happening in the country broadly.
1:08:37 It wasn’t about what I think the message for 2026
1:08:39 ought to be or 2028.
1:08:42 And that’s why I really think we ought to be focused.
1:08:44 If you want to talk messaging,
1:08:49 it needs to be around the challenges
1:08:52 that people are facing every single day.
1:08:55 Going to the grocery store and can’t afford eggs
1:08:59 or tomatoes or avocados or anything else
1:09:01 that you’re looking to buy,
1:09:02 knowing that you want to go buy a car
1:09:03 and now prices are going up.
1:09:06 And by the way, they promised
1:09:09 that they were going to lower prices on day one.
1:09:10 That’s what they said.
1:09:13 I don’t know how they intended to get that done on day one,
1:09:15 but that’s what they said they would do.
1:09:19 We’re on day 39 now and prices have only gone up, not down.
1:09:22 And they’re making it worse with the tariffs,
1:09:25 which again are taxes on middle-class Americans
1:09:27 and working-class Americans.
1:09:29 So I think that’s the message.
1:09:32 If you want to talk about what matters to people,
1:09:34 it’s their daily lives.
1:09:37 Can I send my kid to college affordably?
1:09:38 Can I save for retirement?
1:09:42 Is there a way to get a better wage and a better job?
1:09:43 That’s another one.
1:09:44 Let’s talk wages.
1:09:48 You want to start contrast between the two parties?
1:09:53 We Democrats, we think $7.25 as a minimum wage
1:09:56 and $14,000 a year, that’s what that yields,
1:09:57 isn’t enough to live on.
1:09:59 And we’re for raising the minimum wage.
1:10:04 Republicans, they’re either okay with the $7.25 minimum wage
1:10:06 or some of them want to do away
1:10:08 with a minimum wage altogether.
1:10:11 I’d like to fight that fight in 2026.
1:10:13 I think that ought to be a central focus
1:10:16 of at least one part of the economic message.
1:10:19 So that’s what I think we ought to be talking about.
1:10:24 Meanwhile, as you know, I do think that many of us
1:10:27 need to, as leaders, remind people
1:10:29 that the institutions of government
1:10:32 are why you’re able to get the things that matter to you.
1:10:34 And when they get torn down, in other words,
1:10:35 if you care about healthcare,
1:10:37 if you care about veteran services,
1:10:40 if you care about being able to get a rise
1:10:41 in the minimum wage,
1:10:43 you need a representative democracy
1:10:45 that actually is representative.
1:10:49 And you need to make sure that the courts
1:10:53 are forcing the administration and the Congress
1:10:55 and everybody else to follow the law.
1:10:59 But if the administration ignores the courts,
1:11:01 then boy, we’re all done for in this country.
1:11:03 We’re not gonna have a democracy
1:11:05 two or four years from now.
1:11:08 – That does seem to be the main vulnerabilities so far
1:11:13 in the first 39, 40 days of the Trump administration,
1:11:15 which is centered around what Doge is doing,
1:11:17 the kind of cuts that they’re making.
1:11:18 There have been several judges that have said,
1:11:19 “This is illegal.”
1:11:22 Elon Musk’s popularity has been plummeting.
1:11:23 Well, Trump’s gone down a little bit,
1:11:25 but not nearly the change that we’ve seen with Musk.
1:11:28 Voters two to one aren’t comfortable
1:11:29 with what Doge is doing.
1:11:31 Do you think that that is a central point of focus
1:11:35 where Democrats can play it safe in opposing Trump
1:11:37 without seeming like they’re out of step with their voters?
1:11:40 – Yeah, I was asked this earlier today
1:11:45 at a press conference, what should we do to amplify this?
1:11:48 Look, it’s happening on its own.
1:11:52 I can tell you that we’ve seen polling data
1:11:57 in the state of Illinois where back in December and January,
1:12:00 voters out there wanted leaders in Illinois
1:12:04 to work with Donald Trump to get things done.
1:12:07 We’re now a month and a half after that.
1:12:10 And I’ve seen polling data very recently
1:12:12 that says, actually, instead,
1:12:15 now they want you to resist Donald Trump.
1:12:18 So that’s the beginning of the fall of his numbers,
1:12:23 and it’s gonna be a challenging, I think, spring and summer
1:12:26 for him because people’s lives are being affected
1:12:27 in a negative way.
1:12:30 I do think that one of the things
1:12:32 that we need to be doing is talking about
1:12:34 not only preserving important institutions
1:12:37 that preserve people’s way of life.
1:12:39 By the way, do you wanna get on an airplane
1:12:42 and know that there aren’t air traffic controllers
1:12:44 in the tower that can do the job?
1:12:48 Elon Musk letting go air traffic controllers,
1:12:51 and then, I think, yesterday tweeting,
1:12:54 oh no, we need hundreds of them to come back, please.
1:12:58 The Ebola scientists that they fired and then discovered,
1:13:00 oh, I guess we do need to actually react
1:13:04 when there’s a deadly disease that needs to be addressed.
1:13:08 So those institutions, and NOAA,
1:13:09 I don’t know if you’ve heard about the,
1:13:13 they’re shutting down the National Oceanic
1:13:15 and Atmospheric Administration.
1:13:17 Remember, that’s the thing that helps you know
1:13:20 whether the hurricane is coming to Florida
1:13:23 or to Georgia or to Texas.
1:13:25 And so these are the things,
1:13:27 they tear all that down.
1:13:29 Your daily life is gonna be affected,
1:13:30 and that’s what’s happening now.
1:13:32 So what should we be doing?
1:13:36 Well, first we need to highlight what they’re tearing down.
1:13:39 Medicaid, if we’re not talking about Medicaid
1:13:42 and healthcare for people, we’re missing the boat
1:13:45 because seniors, children in my state,
1:13:49 half of children are on Medicaid, half.
1:13:54 And seniors, you know, everybody either has a grandma
1:13:57 or has a friend with a grandma who’s in a nursing home
1:14:00 because she has Medicaid and won’t be in the nursing home
1:14:02 if she loses her Medicaid.
1:14:04 So these are the things I think, again,
1:14:06 that we ought to be focusing on.
1:14:09 And I think that’s why you’re gonna see
1:14:10 those poll numbers dropping.
1:14:13 You are right about Elon Musk.
1:14:16 Those numbers have been dropping like a rock.
1:14:20 And it’s certainly a feature of talking points
1:14:23 to point at this person who is literally
1:14:26 the wealthiest person in the world
1:14:30 and who is now essentially running the US government.
1:14:31 You know, it used to be that government
1:14:34 was actually the check on too much power.
1:14:36 And particularly, you know,
1:14:40 remember Teddy Roosevelt and antitrust laws.
1:14:42 You know, that’s why there are antitrust laws.
1:14:45 You don’t want any one company or any one person
1:14:48 to have too much economic power in this country.
1:14:52 You’re absolutely free to go out and earn like heck
1:14:55 and become a millionaire and a billionaire.
1:14:57 But you shouldn’t be put in charge
1:15:00 of the reins of government,
1:15:04 which are supposed to be regulating your business.
1:15:07 – Well, especially if you don’t even have a real role.
1:15:09 And I think all of us were a little bit surprised
1:15:11 to hear that Amy Gleason is actually
1:15:12 the administrator of Doge.
1:15:15 I think she was on Mexican vacation
1:15:17 when she heard about that one.
1:15:18 But I do agree with you that that seems
1:15:20 to be the soft spot in all of this.
1:15:21 And you brought up Medicaid,
1:15:24 which I wanted to talk to you about this spending bill
1:15:26 that the Republicans have pushed through narrowly
1:15:27 through Congress.
1:15:30 Looks a bit dead on arrival in the Senate.
1:15:33 Even hardcore conservatives like Josh Hawley
1:15:34 are saying they are not going to sign anything.
1:15:38 That cuts Medicaid, like that 21% of his constituents
1:15:40 are on Medicaid.
1:15:44 But you’ve seen Hakeem Jeffries centering his messaging
1:15:46 around these cuts specifically to Medicaid.
1:15:51 What will Illinois do to protect Medicaid beneficiaries
1:15:53 if these cuts do come through?
1:15:54 Or are you guys going to back them up
1:15:56 and make sure that they still have their healthcare
1:15:59 or what can people do on an individual state basis?
1:16:01 – Well, let me be clear up front
1:16:03 that I believe in universal healthcare.
1:16:06 And that doesn’t mean that we have to have one system
1:16:08 that covers everybody.
1:16:10 It does mean that we’ve got to have systems
1:16:12 that cover everybody.
1:16:15 And Medicaid is part of that patchwork of systems
1:16:16 that we want to put together.
1:16:21 But Medicaid, I mean, I can’t even tell you
1:16:25 how important it is that we preserve that
1:16:28 and that that’s a central part of a message.
1:16:31 But what will we do in the state of Illinois?
1:16:33 Well, let me make clear what we’re talking about.
1:16:37 If they do away even just with the expansion of Medicaid,
1:16:39 and I expect based on the budget that was passed
1:16:42 in the house, if that were to become law somehow,
1:16:43 the only way they could make that work
1:16:45 is to cut Medicaid even further
1:16:48 than just the Affordable Care Act.
1:16:49 But let’s talk just about the Affordable Care Act.
1:16:54 770,000 people in my state would lose healthcare.
1:16:58 And if we were to try to make that up,
1:17:01 it would be $7.4 billion.
1:17:04 Now, our whole budget for the state is $55 billion.
1:17:07 That’s what I proposed, $55 billion.
1:17:09 We don’t have $7 billion to try to make up
1:17:12 for the federal government, not sending us those dollars.
1:17:15 So it would be devastating.
1:17:17 And what would we do?
1:17:18 Well, we’d have to, first of all,
1:17:22 we’d lose our rural hospitals and our safety net hospitals,
1:17:24 rural hospitals across most of my state,
1:17:27 safety net hospitals in Chicago.
1:17:29 And we can’t afford to lose those.
1:17:32 So we would have to shore up those hospitals.
1:17:36 We’d have to make sure that there’s as much free care
1:17:40 as we could provide, which, without having $7.5 billion,
1:17:43 it’s gonna be very difficult to do.
1:17:47 But the $700 million, $750 million
1:17:51 that the state provides as part of that Medicare expansion,
1:17:53 we would probably have to turn that
1:17:57 into subsidies for hospitals and for clinics.
1:17:59 So it’s not good enough.
1:18:01 Honestly, I mean, it’s what we would be able to do,
1:18:03 but it’s not good enough.
1:18:05 And that’s why we’ve gotta go out all of us
1:18:06 and fight like heck.
1:18:09 One more thing, the people who will lose their healthcare
1:18:11 as a result of what they’re trying to do
1:18:15 in the House budget, many of them are Republicans.
1:18:18 Indeed, I think about half in Illinois.
1:18:21 And we’re not a 50/50 Democrat-Republican state,
1:18:23 but half the people who would lose Medicaid
1:18:25 as a result of that would be people
1:18:27 who live in Republican districts.
1:18:30 And they’re, typically, they are Republicans.
1:18:35 Rural Americans who have most often voted for Donald Trump
1:18:38 didn’t know when they voted for him this last time
1:18:41 that they’d be losing their healthcare.
1:18:43 So I don’t know what to say.
1:18:45 I mean, I’m frustrated as heck by this
1:18:47 because if I had the resources available,
1:18:49 of course I would put that back in place
1:18:52 and make sure that people are not harmed
1:18:54 by what the Congressional Republicans
1:18:56 and Donald Trump are doing.
1:18:59 Last thing on this topic, which is, or at least for me,
1:19:02 Donald Trump says, he keeps saying,
1:19:05 “Oh no, he’s not gonna hurt,
1:19:08 he’s not gonna cut Medicaid, Medicare,
1:19:09 or Social Security.”
1:19:12 Well, meanwhile, indeed,
1:19:16 he endorsed the Republican plan in the House
1:19:18 that would cut Medicaid.
1:19:21 So he’s lying.
1:19:22 I mean, I don’t think that’s a surprise
1:19:24 to a lot of people, he’s lying.
1:19:26 But if he’s lying about Medicaid,
1:19:30 is he lying about Medicare and Social Security?
1:19:31 Probably, we don’t know yet,
1:19:35 but you ought to be awfully suspicious.
1:19:36 – Absolutely.
1:19:39 I think that they often rely on the fact
1:19:41 that some of their own supporters
1:19:43 aren’t necessarily going to actually look
1:19:45 at the language of the bill or connect the dots for them.
1:19:47 But I think the Democrats have actually done
1:19:49 a very good job of drawing that line
1:19:51 straight to the Medicaid pot.
1:19:54 And I’m glad to hear that you do have a backup plan,
1:19:57 though obviously these things will not be adequate
1:19:58 to compensate for it.
1:20:00 And it’s a tough position to be in,
1:20:03 to be championing what the federal government
1:20:04 is doing for you.
1:20:06 ‘Cause I think people, generally speaking,
1:20:09 are suspicious of it or aren’t taking account
1:20:10 of the things in their daily lives
1:20:12 that are from the government.
1:20:14 But it seems like the smartest way forward with us
1:20:16 to say there are inefficiencies,
1:20:19 but you get a hell of a lot out of the federal government.
1:20:21 – Yeah, and I think it’s okay
1:20:23 to talk about the inefficiencies.
1:20:23 – Yes.
1:20:26 – I admit that government, listen, I’ve seen it,
1:20:29 I was in business before I became governor.
1:20:31 I, now I’m in charge of a government.
1:20:34 And I can tell you that there are inefficiencies everywhere
1:20:37 and waste fraud and abuses people like to talk about it.
1:20:41 It exists for sure and we’re always trying to root it out.
1:20:44 But unlike using a chainsaw,
1:20:46 the way that Elon Musk talks about
1:20:50 and just cutting programs entirely,
1:20:52 instead what you need to do,
1:20:54 and this is the hard work of governing by the way,
1:20:56 is you need to go into the agencies
1:20:59 and task the people who are running the agencies
1:21:04 with finding the areas of inefficiency and ineffectiveness.
1:21:07 And I wanna focus on that last part
1:21:10 because effectiveness is the important part
1:21:11 of these programs.
1:21:14 People need healthcare, they want efficiency,
1:21:17 but most of all, they wanna deliver it effectively to them.
1:21:20 And that involves efficiency.
1:21:23 So I say that because delivering,
1:21:27 making our institutions work is really important
1:21:30 for reinstilling trust that people have in government.
1:21:33 ‘Cause I get it, people don’t trust government.
1:21:36 And you know, I’m, again, I came from outside of government.
1:21:39 I can tell you, you know, when I saw, for example,
1:21:43 that in Illinois, when I showed up,
1:21:47 my predecessor, the Republican who preceded me,
1:21:52 had left 140,000 Medicaid applications
1:21:53 that they hadn’t looked at.
1:21:55 And they were basically just delaying
1:21:56 giving people their healthcare
1:21:59 because he didn’t wanna pay for it, right?
1:22:02 That’s ineffective and inefficient.
1:22:03 You need people to get healthcare,
1:22:06 otherwise they’re gonna end up in an emergency room,
1:22:07 it’ll cost you a lot more.
1:22:09 And then there are a whole lot of things
1:22:12 that happen in government that take too long.
1:22:14 And so we’ve gotta just acknowledge those things
1:22:17 and recognize that, of course, there’s inefficiency.
1:22:18 If people are all excited about,
1:22:20 oh, a department of government efficiency,
1:22:22 that sounds great.
1:22:25 But I have to say, not if they’re taking away
1:22:26 the things that really matter to you,
1:22:30 like childcare, like meals on wheels, like Medicaid.
1:22:31 – Absolutely.
1:22:32 I wanna switch gears a little bit
1:22:34 and talk about immigration,
1:22:36 which was such a central piece
1:22:38 of the presidential election, obviously.
1:22:42 And what happened under the Biden administration
1:22:45 hurt candidate Biden and then candidate Harris,
1:22:49 a lot more than maybe some expected it to.
1:22:51 You have discussed the fact that you will cooperate
1:22:53 with ICE and so far as they are coming
1:22:56 to pick up convicted criminals.
1:22:58 Tom Homan has shown up, the borders are,
1:23:02 in Chicago is talking about rounding up people.
1:23:03 Where does all of that stand?
1:23:05 And what are you doing in Illinois to make sure
1:23:08 that you can be responsive to the way that people voted
1:23:11 and that they believe there is a migrant crisis going on
1:23:13 and also protecting people?
1:23:14 – Yeah.
1:23:16 Well, we’ve gotta have an immigration policy
1:23:18 that actually makes some sense.
1:23:23 They showed up in Chicago, Tom Homan did,
1:23:26 and ICE with Dr. Phil in tow.
1:23:30 – What do you have against Dr. Phil?
1:23:34 – It’s, listen, I think everybody in government
1:23:38 could use a therapist, but the fact is that showing up
1:23:41 with a television personality, I mean,
1:23:45 it really tells you it’s all for show.
1:23:49 And they want to parade in front of the cameras,
1:23:53 the undocumented immigrants that they’re finding.
1:23:55 When it turns out that first of all,
1:23:58 quite a number of the people that they rounded up
1:24:00 are actually US citizens.
1:24:03 And they just didn’t, like none of us,
1:24:05 walk around with our citizenship papers, right?
1:24:10 That sounds an awful lot like Germany in the 1930s.
1:24:13 And that’s not something that,
1:24:16 so people got rounded up and taken to Guantanamo
1:24:19 and you’ve read some of the stories about that.
1:24:25 So it’s been a terrible show for everybody
1:24:29 first of all.
1:24:32 And second of all, you have to have a coherent policy.
1:24:33 You can’t just say we’re going
1:24:36 after all the undocumented immigrants.
1:24:38 Let’s start with the most violent,
1:24:41 the people who’ve been convicted of a crime.
1:24:44 I think none of us out here, governors,
1:24:47 anybody believes that someone who’s been convicted
1:24:49 of a violent crime who’s undocumented
1:24:51 deserves to stay in this country.
1:24:53 So fine, come get ’em.
1:24:54 That’s great.
1:24:57 We’ve always wanted help trying to arrest people
1:24:59 who are violent criminals.
1:25:01 But they’re not showing up at our prisons
1:25:06 and our jails with warrants from a court,
1:25:08 which is all you need, right?
1:25:10 And it would be easy to get to say
1:25:13 this person’s undocumented, we should deport them.
1:25:14 Why aren’t they doing it?
1:25:15 It’s one of two things.
1:25:18 Either they’re smart enough to recognize
1:25:22 that if you take people who are undocumented
1:25:26 out of prison and then deport them and let them free,
1:25:28 that they might end up coming back
1:25:30 to the United States, these are violent criminals.
1:25:34 We caught them, we convicted them, we put them in prison.
1:25:38 So you don’t really wanna let them go.
1:25:42 That’s, perhaps they understand that, perhaps.
1:25:44 But they’re not showing up at our prisons
1:25:47 and our jails with warrants to take them away.
1:25:51 The second thing I think just to point out
1:25:54 is that there are a lot of undocumented people
1:25:58 who live in Illinois and all across the country
1:26:03 who are law-abiding citizens or residents, rather,
1:26:06 who hold down jobs, they pay taxes.
1:26:08 They’re actually pillars of their community.
1:26:10 There are neighbors and our friends often.
1:26:12 And these are the very people
1:26:15 that if you had a good immigration policy,
1:26:16 you’d want to come into the country.
1:26:17 So if they’re already here,
1:26:20 how about we give them a path to staying here?
1:26:23 Again, these are people, law-abiding good people,
1:26:26 some of them own businesses or they’ve been,
1:26:28 they’ve started businesses in this country.
1:26:31 So, and then the last point I’ll make is that,
1:26:33 ’cause again, I’m a business person,
1:26:35 I, you look at the Fortune 500,
1:26:40 46% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants
1:26:42 or their children, their first generation children.
1:26:44 We want immigration in this country.
1:26:46 It’s good for our economy.
1:26:49 It’s good for the future of the country.
1:26:50 And with birth rates going down,
1:26:52 we’re the one country in the world
1:26:56 that is founded in many ways on immigration.
1:26:58 And so we ought to take advantage of that
1:27:01 when you look at all the other wealthy countries in the world.
1:27:04 We’re the one that really has the opportunity
1:27:06 to take advantage of our history
1:27:08 and our belief in immigration
1:27:11 to help ourselves in the world economy.
1:27:14 – I agree with you on the point, the larger point,
1:27:18 but I can’t escape the fact that here I’m in New York City,
1:27:20 people in Chicago felt exactly the same way
1:27:22 that the migrant crisis got wildly out of control
1:27:25 and that we essentially had an open border policy.
1:27:27 And then once some Republican governors
1:27:31 started busing migrants up to our cities,
1:27:34 that we realized what life is like in Eagle Pass, Texas
1:27:36 for our fellow Americans there.
1:27:39 And there were a number of city council meetings in Chicago
1:27:40 that were widely covered.
1:27:43 We did here at Fox where residents were showing up
1:27:45 and talking about how their resources
1:27:48 were being diverted to people who were here illegally
1:27:50 and that that wasn’t okay,
1:27:52 that it had to be in this sense, America first.
1:27:53 And that’s been a key contributor
1:27:57 to Mayor Brandon Johnson’s low approval rating.
1:28:00 I believe it was 6% in an M3 poll that came out
1:28:02 earlier this week.
1:28:06 What can be done about that to make sure that,
1:28:08 people who love the cities that they live in,
1:28:11 who love immigrants the way that you’re talking about,
1:28:13 but feel like we’re not on there,
1:28:16 or people in elected office are not on their side,
1:28:19 feel like they’re more responsive to them.
1:28:23 – Well, I was a critic of the Biden administration’s policy.
1:28:27 In fact, I reluctantly, I wrote a public letter,
1:28:30 I sent it to the president and made it public
1:28:33 about the mistakes that I think were being made
1:28:35 at the border and the ways in which
1:28:37 the federal government needed to step up
1:28:40 and do a better job on immigration,
1:28:42 particularly around the migrants.
1:28:44 Meanwhile, just to be clear,
1:28:45 and I know there were a lot of people,
1:28:47 not just in Chicago, but around the country,
1:28:50 who were upset about migrants showing up
1:28:54 in their communities, and it cost our state
1:28:57 quite a lot of money in our city of Chicago.
1:29:01 But let me be clear, this was a humanitarian crisis
1:29:02 from my perspective.
1:29:06 I didn’t create the crisis, but all of a sudden,
1:29:07 as you’re pointing out, buses showed up
1:29:09 and they were aimed at Chicago.
1:29:12 It wasn’t like people just naturally decided
1:29:14 in the middle of winter, they’re gonna get on a bus
1:29:18 from Texas and go to Chicago, and indeed,
1:29:20 people showed up here with t-shirts
1:29:22 and sandals on when they arrived.
1:29:26 So it was an enormous challenge.
1:29:31 The policy wasn’t right, but when people show up,
1:29:35 we’re Americans, at that moment,
1:29:38 when someone is without shelter,
1:29:42 without the proper clothing and needing to be fed,
1:29:44 you do all those things, and we did those things
1:29:46 because it was the right thing to do.
1:29:48 But yeah, the policy was wrong,
1:29:53 and we need to have border security,
1:29:57 and I love, by the way, that Ruben Gallego,
1:29:59 I think, says it best.
1:30:03 You don’t have a country if you don’t have a secure border.
1:30:04 So let’s have a secure border,
1:30:08 but let’s also have robust immigration,
1:30:10 and immigration that isn’t just about people
1:30:12 who are willing to pay $5 million,
1:30:15 or have $5 million to pay for a gold card
1:30:17 to get into the country and take advantage of
1:30:19 whatever tax breaks they might be given,
1:30:23 but also immigration that allows people like my family,
1:30:27 who came here three generations ago, and had nothing.
1:30:29 We were refugees from Ukraine,
1:30:31 would have been killed had they stayed,
1:30:35 as many Jews were, and were allowed to come
1:30:38 into this country and had nothing,
1:30:42 but the most driven people that are in our country
1:30:43 are often the people who show up
1:30:46 from somewhere else escaping something,
1:30:49 wanting to make a better life for them themselves
1:30:52 and their families, and so that’s the,
1:30:54 it’s a challenge, there’s no doubt,
1:30:57 but it doesn’t seem, frankly, all that complicated
1:31:01 if you secure the border, which we can do.
1:31:03 It seems like it’s happening now,
1:31:05 but you can secure the border,
1:31:07 but also think about the economic future,
1:31:09 the country is dependent upon
1:31:11 having more immigration at less.
1:31:14 – Absolutely, I want to stick on Chicago for a second
1:31:17 and talk about the public school education problem,
1:31:19 which is not just an issue for Chicago,
1:31:20 it’s happening nationally,
1:31:22 but particularly pronounced there,
1:31:26 bad testing rates, you have low enrollment,
1:31:27 kids not showing up to school,
1:31:30 teachers unions want a new contract.
1:31:31 How do you think we can revive
1:31:33 the American public school system?
1:31:36 – Yeah, invest in it, let’s begin with that.
1:31:41 But also I’d like to just challenge
1:31:44 at least a couple of notions you put forward.
1:31:47 The NAEP scores, which are the English,
1:31:52 the reading and math scores that are done nationally,
1:31:55 these are the tests that are given all across the nation,
1:32:00 just came out and our eighth graders in Illinois
1:32:02 came in second in the nation,
1:32:03 number one was Massachusetts,
1:32:05 number two was Illinois.
1:32:10 Our eighth graders in math came in fifth in the nation.
1:32:12 So we’re actually doing pretty well,
1:32:15 I’m talking about the state of Illinois
1:32:18 is doing reasonably well.
1:32:20 There are always challenges in big cities
1:32:23 versus other places like suburbs, for example,
1:32:26 but that doesn’t mean we got to give up on those kids
1:32:29 or give up on investing in those schools,
1:32:31 but they do need to be managed well
1:32:33 and we do need to attract teachers.
1:32:37 We don’t have enough teachers and we’re gonna need more
1:32:41 and we have put in programs I have to attract teachers
1:32:45 to provide signing bonuses to help them get housing
1:32:47 and so on and we have the ability to attract them
1:32:50 because we pay reasonably well
1:32:52 if you wanna be a teacher in Chicago
1:32:54 or anywhere in the state of Illinois.
1:32:56 So it’s an attractive place to teach,
1:33:00 but we got to invest in these schools.
1:33:03 We’re not fully invested in the state of Illinois,
1:33:04 we’re trying really hard.
1:33:09 I inherited a fiscal situation that was terrible in 2019
1:33:13 when I came into office and we’ve gotten nine credit upgrades
1:33:15 and we’ve finally got a rainy day fund
1:33:18 and we’ve increased funding for education
1:33:21 by more than $2 billion since I came into office
1:33:23 and we’re continuing that with the proposed budget
1:33:25 I put in place.
1:33:30 But the fact is that our kids are worth investing in
1:33:36 and I would say the wraparound services
1:33:38 that you need for their families
1:33:42 is also hugely important in order for our kids
1:33:43 to get ahead.
1:33:46 Last point I’ll make on this, early childhood education,
1:33:49 I’ve been involved in this arena for 25 years
1:33:50 long before I was governor,
1:33:54 is perhaps the most important arena for us to invest in.
1:33:57 It’s a universal preschool,
1:34:02 but it’s also everything from early intervention services
1:34:06 which can make the difference between a child growing up
1:34:09 with challenges and autism their whole life
1:34:14 or perhaps being able to actually join a classroom
1:34:19 in a public school and graduate and go to college.
1:34:21 Those early intervention investments
1:34:25 make a big difference, so do home visitation programs.
1:34:29 We’ve seen that nurses or professionals showing up
1:34:31 and helping parents do a better job
1:34:33 and answer questions for them
1:34:38 and providing them a healthcare check.
1:34:39 Makes a big difference.
1:34:42 So I mentioned all that because I think people think
1:34:46 that well, children are not doing well in school
1:34:47 if our school isn’t doing well.
1:34:50 Well, maybe we ought to divest from schools
1:34:51 and just let it kind of happen
1:34:53 on its own private market.
1:34:55 And the reality is that public education
1:34:57 is the foundation of our democracy
1:35:01 and we need to invest in it, not divest.
1:35:01 – Yeah.
1:35:04 I wanted to, as an extension of the school conversation,
1:35:06 could you talk a little bit about your push to ban
1:35:09 cell phones in school and some of what you’re hearing
1:35:11 also from concerned parents
1:35:12 that they won’t be able to reach their kids
1:35:14 if, God forbid, there’s an emergency.
1:35:15 – Yeah.
1:35:18 And that was a very important thing that I considered
1:35:19 as I put the policy together.
1:35:25 First, we need kids to be focused in class.
1:35:29 We need teachers to not have to fight the fight
1:35:35 with students about their devices in class.
1:35:39 And if you ask teachers and ask most parents,
1:35:42 and I have done that.
1:35:45 I’ve talked to an awful lot of people about this.
1:35:47 Most parents will tell you they would rather
1:35:50 their kids didn’t have those devices in class.
1:35:52 They do want them to have them in school though.
1:35:54 They want, in other words, it’s okay with them
1:35:56 if it’s in their locker
1:35:58 or if they check them in outside the classroom.
1:36:01 They want their kids though to be able to focus in class
1:36:03 and they want their teachers to be able
1:36:05 to focus on their kids in class.
1:36:09 So parents, generally speaking, very much in favor.
1:36:14 How do we take care of the problem where their parents,
1:36:17 remember, there are some kids who actually need
1:36:21 to have a device because there are a variety of reasons why,
1:36:24 but one is just anxiety.
1:36:28 So that’s just one example.
1:36:30 But what we’ve done is proposed a policy
1:36:34 where the schools get to work on their individual policies,
1:36:37 but they’re designed to have exceptions.
1:36:39 Again, there are also health needs.
1:36:42 I mentioned a mental health need and anxiety,
1:36:43 but there are other health needs,
1:36:45 diabetes, for example.
1:36:50 And we’ve got automatic readers for people who have diabetes.
1:36:51 So these are all things
1:36:52 that are taken into account in this policy.
1:36:56 Broadly speaking though, this is hugely popular.
1:36:57 There’s just no doubt about it.
1:36:58 And it’s the right thing to do.
1:37:01 And I have kids who graduated just two, three,
1:37:06 four years ago, two of them from high school.
1:37:09 And I went and asked them about how distracting is it?
1:37:14 And also, did your friends experience cyberbullying
1:37:16 in classes?
1:37:18 And the answer is yes.
1:37:21 That there was that going on just in a single classroom.
1:37:23 People are getting bullied on their device.
1:37:28 So I think the trade-off is actually a really positive one.
1:37:31 Just leave the device outside the door.
1:37:34 There’s a way to lock them up.
1:37:37 And you can get it when you leave class.
1:37:40 And for the most part, it’s not gonna be a problem
1:37:43 and schools get to make those decisions for themselves.
1:37:46 – Last thing, and I do this with all of our guests.
1:37:49 What’s one thing that makes you rage?
1:37:49 And what’s one thing
1:37:52 that you think we should all just calm down about?
1:37:53 – Yeah.
1:37:57 You know, one thing that makes me rage is,
1:37:59 and this is a funny thing to say in the context
1:38:04 of that question is I watch our public officials
1:38:06 and what’s happening in our political life.
1:38:11 And it’s like people have forgotten how to be kind.
1:38:13 And it seems to me that the whole purpose
1:38:17 of public service is to deliver
1:38:18 what people need to make their lives better.
1:38:21 And that seems like a part of the answer
1:38:24 to the question of how can you be kind?
1:38:26 And we ought to be kind to one another.
1:38:29 And what makes me rage is to look at the political arena
1:38:33 and see that that seems to have gone out the window.
1:38:36 And so it drives me crazy.
1:38:38 It’s not something, I’m not a person
1:38:40 who will rage in public,
1:38:43 but you saw the speech that I gave.
1:38:44 – Yeah.
1:38:48 – About the death of a constitutional Republican.
1:38:51 And obviously my experience,
1:38:55 my own family escaped the pogroms in Ukraine.
1:38:57 I helped to build a Holocaust museum.
1:39:00 So you can imagine that watching our constitutional democracy
1:39:05 be torn apart is enraging to me.
1:39:07 – Absolutely, and calm down about something?
1:39:10 Or should we just stay?
1:39:12 – I’m not sure what to calm down about right now.
1:39:15 That’s an answer, I totally get it.
1:39:18 – But I do think we’ve got a lot of work
1:39:21 to do, all of us to refocus ourselves
1:39:23 on the direction of the country.
1:39:27 And again, on the most vulnerable people in our society,
1:39:30 working-class Americans, middle-class Americans,
1:39:32 that’s where we ought to be focusing.
1:39:34 And not letting the richest man in the world
1:39:37 dictate the policies of the US government.
1:39:39 – Amen to that.
1:39:40 All right, Governor Pritzker,
1:39:41 thank you so much for your time.
1:39:43 I left getting to interview.
1:39:44 – Appreciate you.
1:39:47 – Thank you all for listening to “Raging Moderates.”
1:39:50 Our producers are David Toledo and Shanayne Onike,
1:39:52 our technical director is Drew Burroughs.
1:39:53 You can now find “Raging Moderates”
1:39:55 on its own feed every Tuesday.
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