SENATOR CHRIS MURPHY Talks Loneliness Epidemic, Internet, Democratic Coalition

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm pro-football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins, and I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of: major depressive disorder. I carried sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I want to make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit MDDAllies.com to watch my story.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta lumateperone, proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone, building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Caplyta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis. Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.

• 1:30Speaker 00

  I'm pro-football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins, and I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of: major depressive disorder. I carried sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I want to make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit MDDAllies.com to watch my story.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  I needed more from my antidepressant. So my doctor added Caplyta, lumateperone, proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone, building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Caplyta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis. Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.

• 3:01Adam Friedland?

  Ruth Bader Ginsburg, am I correct in remembering this? She said she didn't want to retire because she wanted a female president to replace.

• 3:08Speaker 04

  I don't remember that. Maybe there were reports that she said that behind the scenes.

• 3:11Adam Friedland?

  How little was she?

• 3:13Speaker 04

  I mean, we don't hang out with the Supreme Court justices.

• 3:15Adam Friedland?

  But you see her at the State of the Union.

• 3:18Speaker 04

  I mean...

• 3:18Adam Friedland?

  She's got...

• 3:19Speaker 04

  But I wasn't like measuring... I wasn't like measuring her.

• 3:21Adam Friedland?

  She was like 3'5", maybe? 3'6"? That's what it looked like.

• 3:25Speaker 04

  She's taller.

• 3:25Adam Friedland?

  I hated those T-shirts, though.

• 3:27Speaker 04

  They're still out there.

• 3:28Adam Friedland?

  The notorious RBG.

• 3:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:30Adam Friedland?

  What the hell are they talking about? She's just some blade.

• 3:34Speaker 04

  It is true, like a laugher.

• 4:05Adam Friedland?

  Hello and welcome to the Adam Friedland Show, guys. Adam Friedland here. Of course, I want to thank our members here on youtube.com. This show may very well be a profitable enterprise any day now. If you want to support the show, support what's happening on the show, if you're a fan of the show and you want to get the show early, you can sign up in the link in the description below or by clicking "Join" at the top of your page here on youtube.com. And of course, we also have a Patreon. If you prefer supporting the show through Patreon, there's a link in the description. Also, if you want to shop our merch, the hats will be restocked very soon. We have t-shirts up on our site and coming very soon for fall, for layering season, we

• 4:49Adam Friedland?

  have hoodies coming up and they look fucking sick, so I'll let you know when those are out. adamfriedland.show if you want to shop our merch. My guest this week is United States Senator from Connecticut, Chris Murphy. Murphy's made a name for himself in the Democratic Party as an outspoken advocate against Donald Trump during his second term. Now, I know what you're thinking. Connecticut? Seriously? The 48th largest state? Like, big whoop, you know? And, folks, I'd be lying if I didn't have many of these prejudices in my own heart at various points in my life. I thought people from Connecticut were drunks, Neanderthals, criminals. We all know the saying, you know, "Watch your wallet, here comes a Connecticut-ution."

• 5:34Adam Friedland?

  We've all heard the joke. Should I say? I don't want to... Okay, I'll say that. You know the joke. What do you call a man from Connecticut with a sheep under one arm and a goat under the other arm? A bisexual. It's not funny. But I implore you, dear viewer, not to look down on Senator Murphy just because of where he's from. My conversation with Senator Murphy taught me an important lesson about the power of dialogue, and hopefully it does the same for you guys as well. Connecticut holds an important place in history and culture. For instance, it was the site of the world's first helicopter and the world's first hamburger and, of course, the world's first condom, which was made out of sheep intestine.

• 6:16Adam Friedland?

  And, of course, people not from Connecticut improved upon it by taking the intestine out of the sheep first.

• 6:24Adam Friedland?

  So guys, please enjoy my conversation with Chris Murphy. This guy is from Connecticut. He might be the president one day. It'd be good for the show. If you want to be the president, come on the show. Ladies and gentlemen, Senator from the great state of Connecticut, the OK state of Connecticut, Chris Murphy, everyone.

• 6:46Speaker 04

  Hey, everybody.

• 6:47Adam Friedland?

  Hi. Yeah, clap, please.

• 6:49Speaker 04

  Everybody.

• 6:50Adam Friedland?

  Hi, thanks.

• 6:51Speaker 04

  I walked out a little early.

• 6:54Adam Friedland?

  It's been constant disrespect since this guy came here.

• 6:57Speaker 04

  I wanted to know if it was inspired by Dick Cavett or a direct reproduction.

• 7:01Adam Friedland?

  It's ridiculous that this is my job. But it's really awesome.

• 7:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's fantastic.

• 7:07Adam Friedland?

  I mean, it's a kind of... Does it feel demeaning for you? Do you feel like how far?

• 7:11Speaker 04

  This is a new part of the job. This is a new part of the job.

• 7:13Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, you have to show your personality and authenticity, right?

• 7:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, like I gotta be a real person.

• 7:19Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, it used to be that you could just do two cable shows. Maybe if you were a big deal, you'd show up on late-night TV. And now, you know.

• 7:28Adam Friedland?

  Now you have to talk about like...

• 7:29Speaker 04

  You used to do a show called Cum Town.

• 7:30Adam Friedland?

  Right.

• 7:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:32Adam Friedland?

  All right. So you were... You used to be from the red onion capital of America.

• 7:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's right.

• 7:39Adam Friedland?

  So we both have a checkered past. Connecticut, I know it's your home state. I know you're gonna... Listen, you love your state.

• 7:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:47Adam Friedland?

  But it's a little bit bullshit. It's a little bit bullshit to me.

• 7:49Speaker 04

  Just because you sort of view it as being the obstacle between Boston and New York?

• 7:53Adam Friedland?

  The drive, the trap. I've never not had traffic.

• 7:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a popular... But it's a popular place.

• 7:58Adam Friedland?

  Can you...

• 7:59Speaker 04

  I mean, places that no one wants to be don't have traffic.

• 8:03Adam Friedland?

  I understand. I... It's not like a real fucking city over here in New York. No. I mean, first of all, it has the Jersey thing where it's like either... It's either New York or New England, Boston, right?

• 8:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, like we're both tri-state.

• 8:16Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:17Speaker 04

  And we're New England.

• 8:18Adam Friedland?

  Was the red onion place, was that a New York zone or was that a New England zone?

• 8:22Speaker 04

  New England zone. So like I grew up, Weathersfield, Connecticut is like Hartford area. So I grew up in the center of the state.

• 8:28Adam Friedland?

  So you... So your socks... You're Sox Celtics?

• 8:32Speaker 04

  I'm Sox Celtics, but New York Giants.

• 8:34Adam Friedland?

  So, why not Patriots? I respect that.

• 8:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, I root for whoever my father rooted for when he was growing up. The Patriots didn't exist. So, if you were like, growing up in central Connecticut, you were Boston fans, but for football, you were New York. So, yeah, I've got both New York and Boston.

• 8:50Adam Friedland?

  Wait, your colleague is, was from the New York side, the other senator from Connecticut?

• 8:58Speaker 04

  The Blumenthal.

• 8:59Adam Friedland?

  Blumenthal. So, do you guys kind of have like, you guys cover a different size of the state?

• 9:03Speaker 04

  I mean, you don't really need to.

• 9:04Adam Friedland?

  He covers the insider and trading side of the state.

• 9:06Speaker 04

  The state's like that big. You don't really need, you don't need to divvy it up in half. So, Blumenthal is like, one of these relentless politicians who goes to everything, right? He works like Saturdays, Sundays. So, in some ways, he does the job for both of us.

• 9:24Adam Friedland?

  Really? So, you don't have to do crap?

• 9:26Speaker 04

  Well, I mean.

• 9:27Adam Friedland?

  You do your hot dog tour of Connecticut.

• 9:29Speaker 04

  I do my hot dog tour of Connecticut. But that's personal.

• 9:32Adam Friedland?

  I was mean to you guys on that call. Can I apologize real quick? I mean, it was.

• 9:37Speaker 04

  They said, they told me that you weren't going to say that you were not impressed by the hot dog tour and that you weren't going to bring it up.

• 9:41Adam Friedland?

  I said like, I was like, you know, like, I've been doing a lot of research. I was like, does he play guitar? Like, is there anything? And they're like, listen, he is a, he does a hot dog tour, and I think framing him as a hot dog aficionado might be good.

• 9:55Speaker 04

  It's super embarrassing that that was like the go-to.

• 9:57Adam Friedland?

  And I'm like, I feel actively depressed after hearing that.

• 10:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's what makes me interesting.

• 10:02Adam Friedland?

  I feel like you ruined my day. And listen, you guys are professionals. I don't like, and I just want to, I want to take accountability for that, but that was one of the worst things I've ever heard.

• 10:12Speaker 04

  It's not a reflection on them. It's a reflection on, they have like very, no, they have like very little material to work with with their boss.

• 10:17Adam Friedland?

  Bruce Hornsby fan?

• 10:19Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 10:19Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, you took, you took your staff to Bruce Hornsby?

• 10:21Speaker 04

  I'm going to take them to Bruce Hornsby. He's playing in DC next week, so.

• 10:26Adam Friedland?

  None of them know who he is?

• 10:27Speaker 04

  No, nobody know. And actually, if you, like, I sort of assume that everybody knows his signature song, The Way It Is.

• 10:33Adam Friedland?

  Boys, what were we listening to before? Is that what we were listening to?

• 10:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:39Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 10:39Speaker 04

  Fewer people know even one of Bruce Hornsby's songs than I think.

• 10:43Adam Friedland?

  Well, he played in the Dead, right?

• 10:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, he toured with the Dead for like 10 years. And he does like really kind of like interesting avant garde stuff now.

• 10:51Adam Friedland?

  He tickles them damn keys.

• 10:53Speaker 04

  He does tickle the avarice. He's a great pianist.

• 10:55Adam Friedland?

  Here's what I got on you. Hot dog aficionado, he likes walking around, and Bruce Hornsby.

• 11:01Speaker 04

  Walking around, I think that's...

• 11:03Adam Friedland?

  As a fact pattern, that's the BTK killer. We gotta do like, I don't know, you gotta get a tattoo, a snake, I don't know.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  I walk across the state from one end to the other. I don't just enjoy walking around.

• 11:17Adam Friedland?

  Oh, they made it sound like you were some sort of hobo searching through trash like a raccoon.

• 11:22Speaker 04

  There was a guy, and I don't remember when it was, but like 100 years ago in Connecticut, no, called the Leather Man. And he dressed in full, complete leather, head to toe, and walked the state nonstop continuously. And so you would get really excited when you heard rumors of the Leather Man showing up to your town. And like people would rush down to see him.

• 11:43Adam Friedland?

  You know, in New York, they have a couple of nightclubs for leather guys.

• 11:48Speaker 04

  It would be much more interesting. My walk across Connecticut would be much more interesting.

• 11:52Adam Friedland?

  So like, growing up in the Red Onion town.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 11:57Adam Friedland?

  It's a mark of pride. I saw the mascot you guys have.

• 12:01Speaker 04

  Do we have a Red Onion mascot?

• 12:02Adam Friedland?

  Oh my God, you don't even know about your own place, dude.

• 12:04Speaker 04

  I mean, I grew up there. I haven't lived there for a long time.

• 12:07Adam Friedland?

  So you went to public high schools, growing up?

• 12:09Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 12:10Adam Friedland?

  What was your vibe like growing up? Like, you were a cool guy?

• 12:13Speaker 04

  No.

• 12:13Adam Friedland?

  You got girlfriends?

• 12:14Speaker 04

  No, I would be. I'm who you would expect. I would be.

• 12:17Adam Friedland?

  Straight government.

• 12:18Speaker 04

  President of the class. Started a Young Democrats Club when I was 16 years old. I know. I was like, listen, I was a born organizer, right? So like I organized the, you know, touch football games in the neighborhood. And I, you know, organized the student protests against the dress code. So like, that's just who I was.

• 12:36Adam Friedland?

  Radical.

• 12:37Speaker 04

  It wasn't much of a dress code, it was just that we couldn't wear baseball caps.

• 12:41Adam Friedland?

  And you took it to the band?

• 12:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:43Adam Friedland?

  You fought all the way to the top?

• 12:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was justice.

• 12:47Adam Friedland?

  You were elected at 29 to the state senate, is that correct?

• 12:50Speaker 04

  I was 25 when I was elected to the state legislature.

• 12:54Adam Friedland?

  So you just never had fun?

• 12:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I've been doing this since I was, yeah, since I'm an adult. It's a weird, yeah, it's definitely a strange life, right, to live like your entire life in elective politics. I mean, I wasn't really in the public eye when I was a state legislator, but yeah, it kind of fucks with you to do this job and only this job.

• 13:15Adam Friedland?

  It's kind of like a pejorative these days, right? Career politician. The Republicans like to say that having experience, like, that means you're bad.

• 13:23Speaker 04

  Yeah. No, and when I first ran for the Senate, I mean, that was the primary knock on me that I hadn't, you know, I was a lawyer and I practiced law.

• 13:30Adam Friedland?

  Against Linda.

• 13:31Speaker 04

  Against Linda McMahon.

• 13:32Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. Having experience and having talent should be something that's celebrated for a position, like, in any career field. And these days, it's like, we need, like, private equity, evil business thing, and that makes you better than someone that's like, knows how to do the job, you know?

• 13:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:50Adam Friedland?

  And so, it's just like, I think, do you feel like that mirrors, like, kind of like the decay of, like, trust in, like, our elected officials or institutions? Like, it's a bad thing that you, like, do something for 30 years?

• 14:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, there's not a lot of evidence to people that, A, democracy is working at large, or that that experience does anything other than bind you to the status quo and to the powerful people in Washington. So, there's a lot of evidence that the longer you stay, the more complicit you become in the project of just enriching the folks at the very top. But I've always opposed term limits, largely because I think it's kind of, you know, just this big act of surrender, like, you're giving up on democracy. You're basically saying, democracy can't sort out who amongst those who have been there 10 years are good or bad, and so, we're just going to be arbitrary about it. Why not instead fix the problems with democracy? Fix the rules, so it's a lot easier for somebody to run, and we just don't elect telemarketers,

• 14:49Speaker 04

  which is kind of what we're doing now, right? Like, you are...

• 14:51Adam Friedland?

  Or someone that has a meltdown at CBS on Facebook Live about masks.

• 14:55Speaker 04

  Right.

• 14:56Adam Friedland?

  You can be in the House of Representatives, like, six months later.

• 15:00Speaker 04

  Right, so, if you know how to sort of engage in clickbait politics, or you know how to raise money, or you're super wealthy.

• 15:06Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 15:07Speaker 04

  Those are the three things that can qualify you for office right now, and maybe we should kind of diagnose that and try to change it.

• 15:13Adam Friedland?

  You ever chill with Marjorie, or no?

• 15:15Speaker 04

  No, I've never met her.

• 15:16Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:17Speaker 04

  The House and Senate are like-

• 15:18Adam Friedland?

  What if she's like really cool? What if she's like, you're like, that chick's crazy, but like, she's, honestly, she's, she's kinda funny.

• 15:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, but like, I mean, we all had like, super crazy friends that we would not necessarily want to represent us in Congress, but were, right, interesting to hang with.

• 15:32Adam Friedland?

  She's like that guy, yeah, that friend you have in 7th grade who's like, has no attachment to morality, but that makes them like, the funniest guy in the world.

• 15:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, lots of my friends are totally unqualified to be in public service, but super awesome to get a beer with.

• 15:46Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, those guys always go into rehab at like, 16, right? They always like, fall off, they're not funny anymore. My friend David, I'm, this won't go in the episode, okay?

• 15:55Speaker 04

  Let's talk about David.

• 15:56Adam Friedland?

  David gave a presentation in class, and he like, whispered to me, he's like, "I have a boner right now." And, I'm like, you're, he's an insane guy, in 8th grade. And I'm like, like, you're a maniac. And then, yes, of course, his parents sent him to emotional problem school, 3 years later. He really, I don't know where he is. You were elected to the House, I, I saw a campaign ad from your, you know which one I'm talking about?

• 16:21Speaker 04

  No, I don't, I don't know.

• 16:22Adam Friedland?

  From your first run at, at the, you'd be some old, an old lady?

• 16:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, she's been there for-

• 16:27Adam Friedland?

  What's her name?

• 16:27Speaker 04

  Nancy Johnson.

• 16:28Adam Friedland?

  Nancy Johnson.

• 16:29Speaker 04

  She'd been there for 24 years, longest-serving congressperson in the history of Connecticut.

• 16:32Adam Friedland?

  She freaking hated you, too.

• 16:34Speaker 04

  She did not like me.

• 16:34Adam Friedland?

  She didn't like you.

• 16:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:36Adam Friedland?

  Did you see the ad where it's like, you're like-

• 16:38Speaker 04

  The fake, the fake me?

• 16:39Adam Friedland?

  You're, yeah, the fake you, and you're like, high-fiving a drug dealer?

• 16:42Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 16:42Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, a white, a white guy that's dressed like a black guy.

• 16:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, she hired an actor to portray me going door to door, in which, at the final door, I am welcomed in by a bunch, by a bunch of drug dealers, because I had voted in the state legislature to equalize the penalties for crack and cocaine, which meant that I guess I lowered the penalties for crack.

• 17:02Adam Friedland?

  She kinda made you look cool, maybe, accidentally?

• 17:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, the actor, I think, was, you only saw the back of him, but he sort of, he projected as better-looking than me.

• 17:09Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:10Adam Friedland?

  And you were dapping him, you were like, I'm good, like, uh-

• 17:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:13Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, people-

• 17:15Speaker 04

  He looked a guy, yeah, he looked, I, I looked a little dangerous, you know?

• 17:18Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, it's like, when, uh, when I was growing up, I'd hear like, a rapper say like, "My Jewish lawyer beat the case for me." I'd be like, that's, that's right. We got him off of, he committed a crime. Made me feel great.

• 17:30Speaker 04

  That ad, yeah, that-

• 17:30Adam Friedland?

  As a 12-year-old.

• 17:32Speaker 04

  That ad didn't do well for, for her.

• 17:34Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. Where, where, she's passed, probably? No?

• 17:36Speaker 04

  No, no, she's still alive. I just-

• 17:37Adam Friedland?

  She is?

• 17:38Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 17:38Adam Friedland?

  Nancy?

• 17:39Speaker 04

  Nancy Johnson.

• 17:40Adam Friedland?

  Where's she at?

• 17:40Speaker 04

  She's living in Connecticut. I don't know if New Britain, West Hartford, Connecticut.

• 17:45Adam Friedland?

  We gotta hit her up.

• 17:45Speaker 04

  I, I ran into her. I saw her at a church service, uh, like a year and a half ago. She-

• 17:50Adam Friedland?

  You go to the same church?

• 17:52Speaker 04

  What's that?

• 17:52Adam Friedland?

  You go to the same church as Nancy?

• 17:53Speaker 04

  Well, I was like trying out churches, like, so I was like trying to find like, like a new church. And, uh, I, I just happened to be at hers one Sunday morning. But she, um, you know, she was like a true 1980s era moderate Republican. She was pro-choice. She was pro-environment.

• 18:09Adam Friedland?

  She's a Connecticut Republican.

• 18:10Speaker 04

  She's a Connecticut Republican. And so, like, I don't want to speak for Nancy Johnson, but my impression is, is that she would be, you know, a classic kind of never-Trump Republican. There's just like no home for her now in the party. And even back then, increasingly, there was no home for her, so.

• 18:26Adam Friedland?

  Who's your, who's your first enemy in politics?

• 18:28Speaker 04

  My first enemy?

• 18:29Adam Friedland?

  Who's the first guy that was like, "I'm gonna fuck with Murphy," and you're like, "Ah, you, you don't, you don't got this."

• 18:33Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, the, the first time I ran for the state legislature, I ran against another guy who had been there for a very long time. And I think he was equally pissed that, uh, at the time, a 24-year-old had beat him, that he moved out of town, I think, within about 12 months of the race.

• 18:50Adam Friedland?

  Whoa.

• 18:51Speaker 04

  It was like a Wild West showdown. It was a Wild West showdown.

• 18:54Adam Friedland?

  You drove him out?

• 18:55Speaker 04

  Angelo Fusco.

• 18:56Adam Friedland?

  Oh, he's, oh, an Italian guy?

• 18:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's Italian.

• 19:00Adam Friedland?

  Maybe, maybe with the fishes.

• 19:02Speaker 04

  He, he-

• 19:03Adam Friedland?

  Maybe with the fishes.

• 19:04Speaker 04

  I'd never made peace with him. I never saw him, uh, again. Uh, but, uh, yeah, he didn't stay in town for very-

• 19:09Adam Friedland?

  You fucking hate Angelo.

• 19:11Speaker 04

  So.

• 19:11Adam Friedland?

  Was there an undercurrent of like, uh, kind of ethnic white, uh, tension in that?

• 19:16Speaker 04

  There was no ethnic undercurrent in my race.

• 19:17Adam Friedland?

  Lower East Side, kind of Ellis Island?

• 19:19Speaker 04

  Zero.

• 19:20Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, I was almost, I was, I'm supposed to be from Connecticut. You know that?

• 19:24Speaker 04

  How so?

• 19:24Adam Friedland?

  My deep shit ancestor from Lithuania, Shetland, got literally on the wrong boat.

• 19:30Speaker 04

  Was supposed to go to Connecticut?

• 19:31Adam Friedland?

  It was eight brothers moved to, uh, New Haven. And one brother was like, just got off the boat and he was like, "Where is this New Haven?" And they were like, "No, it's Afri-" "You're in Africa right now." I'm in Cape Town, South Africa right now.

• 19:44Speaker 04

  And now it's it.

• 19:45Adam Friedland?

  My parents are from Cape Town.

• 19:45Speaker 04

  And he gave, and he gave up. He didn't make a second attempt to get to me.

• 19:48Adam Friedland?

  What, he could maybe, what, he can get another boat trip all that way? No, it must have been crazy, actually, for those, like, because they were very uneducated. They were like, they didn't have color photography. They didn't like, to like, to like...

• 20:00Speaker 04

  I wonder when he realized, like, you think when he actually got off?

• 20:05Adam Friedland?

  I think he was like, yeah, like, like Herschel or Yankel or his brother was supposed to meet him at the place. And he's like, where the fuck is...

• 20:13Speaker 04

  So you could have, you could have...

• 20:14Adam Friedland?

  This is Africa?

• 20:15Speaker 04

  You could have been a, a Connecticut.

• 20:17Adam Friedland?

  All right, so I first, um, I think you first came to, like, national prominence during Sandy Hook. And I remember in 2013, you did a, you did filibuster.

• 20:27Speaker 04

  2016.

• 20:28Adam Friedland?

  2016, sorry.

• 20:29Speaker 04

  Right after the Pulse shooting.

• 20:31Adam Friedland?

  Right after the Pulse shooting. And, um, gun violence is like, that's a shit fight. Like, or a gun, like, uh, trying to fucking, it's, you guys got one during Biden, right? You got one thing?

• 20:43Speaker 04

  First, yeah, we got the first bill in 30 years.

• 20:46Adam Friedland?

  Where it's like 1,200 guys now can't, or like, have to get checked or something? What is the, what was the bill?

• 20:52Speaker 04

  Well, no, there's like, the, the bill is like a comprehensive bill. It put like $13 billion into

• 20:56Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 20:56Speaker 04

  mental health and community safety, and then it made like five changes in gun laws. Um, all of them small, but none of them insignificant. I don't, one of them, closing the boyfriend loophole, so if you, you know...

• 21:08Adam Friedland?

  Your boyfriend could get gun?

• 21:09Speaker 04

  No, so if you beat up, it used to, the law used to be that if you beat up your wife, you couldn't get a gun. Your guns were actually taken away from you, but if you abused your girlfriend, um, you could keep your guns. So we closed that loophole. We said that, like, we said if you're under 21, you have to have a waiting period before you buy an assault weapon. We should just not sell assault weapons to 18-year-olds, but at least now we've got a 10-day waiting period. But it's not a coincidence that since we passed that bill, gun violence has come way down in the country. So we kind of proved that if you change the laws of the country and you're a little bit more careful about who gets guns, you actually can save lives.

• 21:45Adam Friedland?

  Duh, yeah, I mean, it's just like...

• 21:47Speaker 04

  It's not rocket science.

• 21:47Adam Friedland?

  It's, it's, uh, I looked up the length, you did, it was 15 hours, you did your filibuster.

• 21:54Speaker 04

  Oh, the filibuster was 15 hours, right.

• 21:56Adam Friedland?

  Okay, and that, you were, you're, you know what ranking you are?

• 21:59Speaker 04

  I mean, I'm going down in the rankings, right, so I assume I'm my outside of the top 10 now?

• 22:03Adam Friedland?

  I think you're 10.

• 22:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:04Adam Friedland?

  How's that feel?

• 22:05Speaker 04

  I'm top 10.

• 22:05Adam Friedland?

  It hurts.

• 22:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I'm top 10.

• 22:07Adam Friedland?

  Double digits.

• 22:08Speaker 04

  Well, so here's what happened with the filibuster is that we got what we asked for. So I had to stop the filibuster because we had a demand and normally filibusters are truly performative.

• 22:18Adam Friedland?

  What are the rules? Yeah, like you can't pee?

• 22:20Speaker 04

  You can't, well, you can't sit down or leave your desk. There are rumors that when Strom Thurmond-

• 22:26Adam Friedland?

  Was in a wheelchair.

• 22:28Speaker 04

  Well, there were rumors that when he did his filibuster, or first of all, there were no cameras, so who knew what the fuck you were doing in your filibuster? There were rumors that he was leaving regularly to go to the bathroom and coming back.

• 22:40Adam Friedland?

  To go be racist.

• 22:41Speaker 04

  To go to the bathroom and come back. But no, for mine, I had to stand at the desk for 15 hours.

• 22:48Adam Friedland?

  You pee your pants?

• 22:49Speaker 04

  I did not pee my pants.

• 22:50Adam Friedland?

  How, you had to hold it?

• 22:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, you got to hold it. It's like your adrenaline is running and like your body's telling you, don't pee your pants.

• 22:57Adam Friedland?

  What shoes do you wear?

• 22:59Speaker 04

  Regular black shoes. It wasn't that-

• 23:02Adam Friedland?

  Like a-

• 23:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, like dress shoes.

• 23:03Adam Friedland?

  Adult shoes?

• 23:04Speaker 04

  Dress shoes.

• 23:04Adam Friedland?

  You do like running shoes?

• 23:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, Booker, when he did his, he wore sneakers, which is-

• 23:07Adam Friedland?

  You think that's pussy?

• 23:08Speaker 04

  Which is kind of cheating.

• 23:09Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, which is kind of cheating.

• 23:10Adam Friedland?

  Kind of cheating. Strom Thurmond in a wheelchair? That's bullshit.

• 23:13Speaker 04

  He was in a wheelchair at the time, I don't think he was in a wheelchair at the time of the filibuster.

• 23:16Adam Friedland?

  I-

• 23:17Speaker 04

  Later in life.

• 23:18Adam Friedland?

  He wasn't. Because when I saw that he did 24 hours, if it's a wheelchair, it shouldn't be, like, it's an asterisk.

• 23:25Speaker 04

  No, I agree with that, but I don't think that's actually, but I don't think that's an accurate-

• 23:28Adam Friedland?

  It's not a wheelchair.

• 23:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't think it's an accurate historical representation of what happened.

• 23:30Adam Friedland?

  Okay, so I'm sorry, I disrespected the racist filibuster of Strom Thurmond.

• 23:34Speaker 04

  I'm glad, I think-

• 23:35Adam Friedland?

  Thank you for your honor of your- As a member of the Club of 100, you've done the honorable thing.

• 23:43Speaker 04

  It was very moving to be on the floor for Cory's filibuster.

• 23:47Adam Friedland?

  To have him stop the rec-

• 23:48Speaker 04

  No, no, when he broke, when he broke, when he broke the record. And so Booker, so Booker was on the floor for my entire 15 hours. And so when Cory did his 20 something hour filibuster, I stayed on the floor with him for the whole thing.

• 24:02Adam Friedland?

  Do the Republicans try to like distract, like laser pointer maybe, or?

• 24:06Speaker 04

  No, no.

• 24:07Adam Friedland?

  They're like boo. What if you get scared? It's such a stupid thing that you're describing.

• 24:13Speaker 04

  Stand, yeah, standing and talking.

• 24:15Adam Friedland?

  You can't sit-

• 24:16Speaker 04

  For a long time.

• 24:17Adam Friedland?

  It's literally like you're like something from Survivor where you're trying to get immunity.

• 24:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, but they like it.

• 24:23Adam Friedland?

  But it's the rules of the government.

• 24:25Speaker 04

  But when but when but so mine again had it mine was not just performative because what I was saying is that I'm not going to sit down and let you move on to any other business until you schedule votes on gun measures. And the idea was we weren't going to win them, but at least we'd sort of show the country that Republicans were against common sense things. One of the things we were demanding was saying that if you're on the terror watch list, like if we think you might be a terrorist, you should not be able to buy a gun. And so we got Republicans to vote against that, which is part of what helped unelect at least one of them in the next election. So that's why I had to stop was that the Republican majority said, okay, we'll give you your votes on what you want.

• 25:02Adam Friedland?

  You had to take a shit.

• 25:03Speaker 04

  No, I got what I wanted. I got what I wanted.

• 25:06Adam Friedland?

  Paul Pierce too, we all know, in the finals, when he went in the wheelchair, we all know what that was.

• 25:12Speaker 04

  He had to go, did he had to go take a crap?

• 25:13Adam Friedland?

  He pooped his pants.

• 25:14Speaker 04

  No, he was he was he had serious he had serious injury.

• 25:17Adam Friedland?

  Have you what? How many times have you met our our president, our number 45 and 47?

• 25:23Speaker 04

  I met him a handful of times in the first term. I have not talked to him in the second term.

• 25:29Adam Friedland?

  Is he just Trump?

• 25:31Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, I did.

• 25:32Adam Friedland?

  Just like on camera, off camera, it's he's just Trump?

• 25:35Speaker 04

  Just Trump. So I did a 45 minute phone call with him after one of the horrible mass shootings during his first term. Because he was at that time pretending like he was going to, you know, do a bill that changed the gun laws.

• 25:44Adam Friedland?

  Oh, good on him.

• 25:45Speaker 04

  And for that 45 minute call, all he talked about was.

• 25:50Adam Friedland?

  Rosie O'Donnell.

• 25:51Speaker 04

  No, it was what the name of the bill was going to be. All he wanted to talk about was the name of the bill. Didn't didn't want to talk about the substance of the bill, how it was going to be passed. All he wanted to talk about for 45 minutes was the name of the was the name of the bill.

• 26:02Adam Friedland?

  The name, it matters.

• 26:03Speaker 04

  So, yeah, so, yeah, he's Trump. I don't even remember what we came up with.

• 26:07Adam Friedland?

  So you were like, we're chopping names with Trump?

• 26:10Speaker 04

  We're chopping names of the Trump gun control bill. And we never went any further. We never went any further than that.

• 26:17Adam Friedland?

  Did he have any good ones? Do you remember like, Mr. President, that's all right?

• 26:21Speaker 04

  I don't remember. I do remember he didn't want gun control to be in the title, which was kind of patently obvious to anybody on the call.

• 26:26Adam Friedland?

  That's kind of smart.

• 26:27Speaker 04

  You're probably not going to put that in the title, but I don't. I think he liked. Oh, I do remember. I think he liked. He did like the term gun safety.

• 26:35Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, Trump, you know, that's not bad.

• 26:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, but that was it. Like, that was the sum total of our...

• 26:41Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 26:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was it, just the name.

• 26:43Adam Friedland?

  Why does the first term, from my perspective, it feels different? It felt different than this. I remember during the first term that the terms fascism, you know, Nazi were bandied about. And, you know, the Steele dossier and the Mueller report, like, we were like waiting on like the smoking gun and like, you know, Rachel Maddow convinced my dad that Vladimir Putin was trying to kill him and like, you know, like, but like, it seemed like he was more interested in just going to Buckingham Palace and like, going to dinner, doing the sword dance in Saudi Arabia. He just wanted to like, go like, be treated like he's the best guy.

• 27:25Adam Friedland?

  When COVID broke out, my assumption was like, if he wants to enact fascism, global health crisis, he could just declare martial law, assume absolute power.

• 27:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:34Adam Friedland?

  And I'm like, I think he's too lazy for fascism.

• 27:37Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 27:37Adam Friedland?

  Right. So what is, in your estimation, I know there's a Supreme Court decision that has equipped them with the ability to liquidate the civil service. The guys he had the first time are different than the guys he had the second time. What's the difference here? Why does this feel different?

• 27:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I think that's part of the answer, but you're sort of short-handed. This is right. I mean, he just was not ready to do, I think, what was in his gut in the first term, which is to try to seize a whole bunch of power for the executive branch, but he was not surrounded by people who knew how to do that, and he hadn't thought at all about how to do that. So in the four-year interim, the Republican Party kind of becomes dominated by two underlying dangerous ideas. One is that democracy is kind of outdated and antiquated. That becomes kind of a mainstream Republican idea, that like, you can't keep up with China or Russia with the inefficiency of democracy, so we need something more nimble, like a CEO style.

• 28:35Speaker 04

  And then the second idea that becomes mainstream in the Republican Party is that the left, Democrats, are like an existential threat to the country, that America is really a white, Christian country, and that Democrats who, you know, believe that multiculturalism is our strength are a threat, and they need to be disposed with at any cost. So even if we have to get rid of democracy, which may be what we need to do to keep up with China anyway, it doesn't, it's justified if it's what...

• 29:02Speaker 04

  Eliminates Democrats and the sort of mainstream left from our politics. So when he becomes president, you just have a whole bunch of believers that are ready to populate the administration, who are actually enthusiastic about the project of destroying democracy for a host of different reasons. And they put together a plan to do it, and from day one, they start operationalizing it.

• 29:25Adam Friedland?

  Is that Project 2025?

• 29:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think, listen, I think Project 2025 is part of it, but I think a lot of their plans, you know, were so insidious that they weren't dumb enough to actually write them into Project 2025. I think they have always envisioned using the DOJ in order to try to hunt and silence their political enemies. They didn't write that into Project 2025, but that clearly has been part of their plan.

• 29:48Adam Friedland?

  I think because of the Russiagate stuff, my assumption when Project 2025 was coming up during the election, and we were told that this is the most important election ever, and then, you know, we saw that debate performance, and we're like, if it's the most important, then why, the Democrats don't seem to think, be taking it very seriously. And so when I heard Project 25, it sounded conspiratorial, and it didn't sound like a real thing. And it took me a while for, to actually like realize, and very shortly before the actual election, that, oh, this is actually like substantive, because it's coming from the Heritage Foundation. And effectively, the American conservative project has been, I don't know, is this right?

• 30:32Adam Friedland?

  But like since Reagan, to liquidate elements of the federal government and kind of sell them off to the private sector.

• 30:40Speaker 04

  Correct. And then whatever is left, turn it into essentially mechanisms for enrichment of the corporate crowd and the economic elite crowd. So, you know, you might not liquidate all the regulatory agencies, but they just get turned into places that continue to flow money and resources to the very powerful.

• 31:00Adam Friedland?

  My assumption was always like... We can get through whoever's the president because we have a robust civil service. So there are enough like little old ladies that go to the Department of Health and Human Services.

• 31:12Speaker 04

  And like running the vaccine program to make sure that our kids don't die.

• 31:15Adam Friedland?

  And that's why planes don't crash into each other. And that's why like America can kind of function if, you know, if Bush is the president, or Obama's the president, or Trump's the president the first time. What is Doge now after Elon's gone? Have there been more liquidations of, of, you know, like departments in the executive branch? Or, I mean, I remember hearing that they were going to give it to Palantir. Is that what happened? Like, we don't hear about that anymore.

• 31:45Speaker 04

  The fight, no, the, yeah, I think you're right. You don't hear about it as much because you don't have a celebrity running the process of terminating public employees. But they are still laying people off at HHS, for instance, and NIH. There continue to be mass layoffs. A lot of it stopped because the courts stepped in and said they couldn't do much of it. So the courts have slowed down the process of mass firings. But they're certainly not hiring anybody, anybody new. And some of these agencies, you know, are effectively gutted and ceasing to exist in functional form.

• 32:16Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. It's, it's, it's just funny. It's like, I feel like there are things that happen that are in the public eye and then they disappear so fast, right? And we're like appalled by the, when Los Angeles happened, right?

• 32:28Speaker 04

  Right.

• 32:29Adam Friedland?

  When we saw human beings being taken from their families, like just, you know, and in the abstract, I understood that due process had been suspended and that we, people that are the most vulnerable members of society are being taken from their families and put in effectively cages. You guys are up against so much right now. And like, how do you, how do you, there's like 18,000 different things that you have to like fix.

• 33:00Speaker 04

  Correct. Yeah, so, listen, I think this is the biggest struggle for all of us is to understand, you know, what is real and a persistent threat? What is Trump just trying to change the news cycle? And so I think we're starting to figure out where our power is. But it does affect how I spend my time.

• 33:18Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 33:18Speaker 04

  So I spend a lot of my time these days just trying to help stand-up mobilization all around the country. So I, for instance, like stopped raising money for, you know, my own political campaign. And I only raise money right now, I only raise money for protest groups all around the country. And I've given out probably, you know, close to a million dollars to protest groups, just trying to help people organize around things like Jimmy Kimmel being taken down off the air, so that we can give people some hope that if we mobilize around, for instance, the boycott of Disney, that we can actually start to save some of our constitutional rights.

• 33:54Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. I want to try something, but I need my cellphone for this. It's a, I have an idea.

• 33:59Speaker 04

  All right.

• 33:59Adam Friedland?

  Okay. I left my cellphone over there.

• 34:01Speaker 04

  All right.

• 34:05Adam Friedland?

  Okay.

• 34:08Adam Friedland?

  So, I'm sorry about this, this is unprofessional of me.

• 34:11Speaker 04

  Props.

• 34:14Adam Friedland?

  Okay. So...

• 34:22Adam Friedland?

  Okay. We're gonna try something.

• 34:25Speaker 04

  All right.

• 34:27Adam Friedland?

  Okay, so...

• 34:28Speaker 04

  You making me nervous?

• 34:29Adam Friedland?

  No, no, no, no, I'm not, it's fine, dude. Don't worry, dude. Fucking don't worry. Okay.

• 34:36Adam Friedland?

  Okay. Let's, I'm from a foreign country, okay?

• 34:40Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 34:41Adam Friedland?

  And I'm also stupid, okay?

• 34:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:44Adam Friedland?

  This is, in this hypothetical situation. Not because I'm from a foreign country, just because I happen to be a stupid guy. Just to be clear.

• 34:52Speaker 04

  Got it.

• 34:52Adam Friedland?

  Okay. Could you please explain to me, I just arrived in America. Could you please explain to me, what is the Democratic Party?

• 35:02Speaker 04

  So... You ready?

• 35:04Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 35:04Speaker 04

  Right. So the Democratic Party stands for the idea that everybody in this country should have the opportunity to succeed, and that the economy today is rigged to favor billionaires and corporations over everybody else. Democratic Party also believes that our democracy is rigged right now to support the powerful and not the powerless. What we stand for is giving more power to workers and making sure that the people are in charge of democracy, not the economic elites.

• 35:30Adam Friedland?

  Thank you. Okay.

• 35:33Speaker 04

  How long was that?

• 35:34Adam Friedland?

  It's good.

• 35:37Adam Friedland?

  Play it. Can you play it? No, pause. Sorry, I thought this was gonna be really funny. Thomas, no, now they want me to translate it? Just, okay. How do I do the, how do I make it play?

• 35:53Speaker 04

  What are you using? What app are you using?

• 35:55Adam Friedland?

  Google Translate. Thomas! It's gonna be a hilarious bit. How do I make it play in my language? Dude, this is so embarrassing.

• 36:08Adam Friedland?

  This is just so fucking embarrassing right now.

• 36:09Speaker 04

  This is what editing is for, right?

• 36:11Adam Friedland?

  This is the biggest opportunity of my life. It's a member of the Club of 100. Your friend, you know, uh...

• 36:16Speaker 04

  And this is...

• 36:17Adam Friedland?

  You know Lindsey Grant, dude. You're like fucking, you're...

• 36:19Speaker 04

  Royalty?

• 36:22Adam Friedland?

  This is so embarrassing. I told him I'm a tech aficionado when I booked him.

• 36:28Speaker 04

  I gotta, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta hard out.

• 36:31Adam Friedland?

  What time's your hard out? Where do you have to go?

• 36:37Adam Friedland?

  The island?

• 36:40Speaker 04

  Come on.

• 36:40Adam Friedland?

  I'm sorry, dude. I'm nervous and I deflected.

• 36:44Speaker 05

  Or do it again.

• 36:45Adam Friedland?

  What do you mean, do it again?

• 36:46Speaker 05

  On my phone.

• 36:47Adam Friedland?

  It's mean to do, but he's...

• 36:49Speaker 04

  But I gotta do it again?

• 36:50Adam Friedland?

  Okay. Allow access? Yeah, so what's the Democratic Party? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, you put it in Greek, dude. I want, I want it Chinese.

• 37:03Adam Friedland?

  Okay, and also it's Greek, oh shit. Dude, Thomas, he's speaking English, I'm speaking...

• 37:10Adam Friedland?

  This is so embarrassing, dude. This is one of the biggest moments of my career.

• 37:16Speaker 04

  What's supposed to happen here? I'm...

• 37:17Adam Friedland?

  This guy knows, he knows, uh, John Thune. This guy, he knows, uh, come on.

• 37:24Speaker 05

  So what's the Democratic Party?

• 37:26Adam Friedland?

  I'm the host.

• 37:27Speaker 04

  I'm doing it again. All right. The Democratic Party stands for...

• 37:34Speaker 05

  What is the Democratic Party?

• 37:36Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 37:38Adam Friedland?

  It's gonna be hilarious, guys.

• 37:39Speaker 04

  Okay. The Democratic Party stands for the idea that everyone in this nation should have an opportunity to succeed, not just billionaires and millionaires.

• 37:46Adam Friedland?

  That's good, okay, that's pretty good. And now play.

• 37:51Adam Friedland?

  I got it. Thanks a lot. Guys, let's give it up for that bit. How funny was it? I see that there are like a lot of, like when you look at the popular sentiment of your voting base, you see 8% of Democrats support, you know, what's happening in Gaza. You see that like, you know, ICE has a 13% favorability amongst you guys. And then like, then we can link that to like, child separation policies were happening under Biden. And like, Obama did take a small DHS program and expanded dramatically. And like, beyond all that, like,

• 38:32Adam Friedland?

  it kind of seems to me that the Democrats' voting base is not reflecting the actions of the party more often than not.

• 38:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I think there's two things going on right now. One is that people are just pissed off that we haven't been more effective in stopping Trump's authoritarian takeover. So you've got our approval ratings in the toilet, in part because our own folks want us to be fighting harder. But second, I think to your point, you know, we over time became a technocratic party that advertised we could just run government well, and we could make some adjustments to the market to make your life better, instead of being a moral party, right, which talked about the economy and the world in moral terms. And that means that we have looked illegitimate in the eyes of many when our solution to

• 39:20Speaker 04

  a fundamentally morally broken healthcare system was to just send more money to the insurance companies, and that we looked like we didn't understand what was happening in Gaza, when we talked about trying to manage behind the scenes, the number of Gazans who are being killed on any single one day, instead of just saying, no, for the time being, the United States cannot continue to sell weapons to Israel until this carnage stops.

• 39:42Adam Friedland?

  Why hasn't the party, what we're seeing is in terms of favorability ratings, Trump is more, has a higher favorability than the Democratic Party, even with everything happening right now, with, you know, like a rise in political violence, of like a, just him stoking the flames, you know, and say, like, you know, blame it. On the other side, instead of saying calm down, everyone like it seems like there's to me like there's a grappling and like you guys are fucking fighting each other like in the party to define what the message is and it's um they're really good at falling in line, you know, they're like, okay, we're MAGA now, except for like Mitt Romney and and you know Cheney's daughter.

• 40:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, you basically get kicked out of the the party anyway.

• 40:24Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 40:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're a cult of personality right now, and so of course they're going to have more sort of solidarity in terms of how popular the party is. Um, listen, people want to see us fighting and they have not seen us draw that moral line in the sand about what Trump has done. We've had opportunities to do it back in the spring. We could have chosen not to fund the government unless there was some commitment that there was going to be a little bit less totalitarianism. We maybe shouldn't have all showed up to the State of the Union speech to have provided a nice bipartisan backdrop for, you know.

• 40:56Adam Friedland?

  To hurt his feelings, to hurt his feelings.

• 40:59Speaker 04

  And now we are, you know, two weeks away from another moment where the party could say, we have no moral obligation to pay the bills for the destruction of our democracy. Uh, and so if you want our votes for this budget, then you've got to build some protections into this budget so that there's less of a chance that we lose our constitutional rights.

• 41:19Adam Friedland?

  What what are the discussions like within your caucus? Because it seems like, you know, like why here in New York City, the biggest city in America, like um we've like, why haven't we seen party leaders endorse the Democratic nominee for mayor?

• 41:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, I I mean, I can't, I can't speak for them, but it's sort of the same feeling that the party has historically had about Bernie, right? That Bernie's politics are are fringe, they're dangerous, when in fact Bernie's politics and Mamdammy's politics, to an extent, are the pathway to a crossover into Trump's base, right? Legitimate populist, people that are actually talking about plans to take power from the corporatists and give it to regular people. That's the only way that you're going to reach into Trump's base and steal some of his voters who are coming to the conclusion that he's not a legitimate populist. So I just have always drawn issue with this idea that that populism, hostility to market

• 42:17Speaker 04

  fundamentalism is a danger inside the party. I think that's our corporate crowd. Selling us a lie. And I think the only way that we're ever going to be competitive again in a place like Missouri or Ohio is being a true populist party that attacks corporate power. And that's the sort of route and the path that both Bernie and Zoran are showing us.

• 42:41Adam Friedland?

  Two things. One is like, to what extent is it his political message versus him being a young charismatic talent that threatens entrenched powers that be? And the second thing is like, what do you do about the corporatist side of the party? Like, how does one, how do you, like, within your caucus, you have a tremendous amount of people that are opposed to that vision of a path forward. How do you coalesce behind that? Like, you, Chris Murphy, is trying to enact this. Like, how do you convince Chuck Schumer? Like, you know?

• 43:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I think, you know, part of it is taking a look at, you know, candidates who are running in swing states as populists and show that they can win. Part of it is to show that Zoran can get a very big majority in this upcoming election, to show that these are actually candidates who can win in general elections. I know New York City is not the same, you know, as Minnesota, but I think that's part of the, that's part of the test.

• 43:38Adam Friedland?

  Are they threatened by young talent?

• 43:40Speaker 04

  I think they're threatened by the idea that people don't pay their dues. Right? I think the whole system is, you know, generally built on this idea that you sort of wait your time until you run. I didn't do that. I ran when I was 25. But yes, I think that folks who have waited their time, moved through the ladder, don't like the fact that somebody can just show up at 24, 25, 30 years old, run and win. That is a recipe for disaster for our party if we don't welcome new young candidates in. But, um, yeah, I think that's sort of a, I think, you know, you would feel that way if you were middle management at a corporation. You wouldn't love the young hot shot coming in and sitting at the desk next to you, and that happens in politics, too.

• 44:21Adam Friedland?

  But what if he's like, he could like, beat Trump, or like, he's like, good? Like?

• 44:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:27Adam Friedland?

  I mean, is it more important that, like, he's not threatening to, like, Dianne Feinstein, or like, whoever, like, people that have been there? I know she's not there anymore.

• 44:34Speaker 04

  She's not there anymore.

• 44:35Adam Friedland?

  She's not around.

• 44:37Speaker 04

  I'm not defending it. I'm just trying to like plug it. I'm just trying to like put it in context. It is not a unfamiliar human emotion, right? To be envious of somebody that is younger and perhaps smarter than you, and perhaps being openly or subconsciously hostile. That doesn't mean that it's right, and that means you've got to build a party apparatus that actually welcomes in young people, which is why, you know, what David Hogg has been doing is really, really important, like directly confronting this idea that we are hostile often as a party to young people, more hostile, I would argue, than the Republican Party has been.

• 45:13Adam Friedland?

  I guess, like, do you get that treatment as like, you're a young bull, you're like 52-year-old senator?

• 45:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:19Adam Friedland?

  You know, you're a sprightly young man.

• 45:21Speaker 04

  Right.

• 45:21Adam Friedland?

  They're like, what is this frickin' millennial coming through with his cell phones and his TikToks? I mean, like, I think by the...

• 45:30Speaker 04

  I'm still in the young half. I still think I'm in the younger half of the United States Senate.

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• 53:13Adam Friedland?

  You're recently separated from your wife for the last couple of years.

• 53:17Speaker 04

  Yep, last year.

• 53:19Adam Friedland?

  Jesus, like last year. Right, like, dealing with this right now and like dealing also with, I would imagine, like a marriage, you know? Like, how the fuck do you? It's got to, like, that's got to fucking suck.

• 53:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, it does. Yeah, I mean, it's a weird.

• 53:34Adam Friedland?

  How do you handle it?

• 53:35Speaker 04

  It's a weird job. I mean, the fact that you have to send out a, you know, public statement about your...

• 53:40Adam Friedland?

  You have to just stop the end of the world.

• 53:41Speaker 04

  Marriage breaking down and then you have to be in the middle of trying to save democracy at the same time.

• 53:46Adam Friedland?

  You're a real freak, though. You're built different?

• 53:49Speaker 04

  It's a lot. Yeah, but I have two, I have two kids, you know, who are teenagers and they are going to inherit one world or another world depending on what happens in the next, you know, two years. And so I feel an obligation, you know, not just as a human being, but as a father, to stay in this, stay in this fight. And I mean, I had, for a lot of my career, I think I said this to you on the phone, I had a lot of sort of gray. I could sort of see both arguments in terms of like what the strategic direction should be for the party. I don't have that gray any longer. Like, I see this guy as a present threat and I believe that if we don't draw a moral line in the sand right now, we're screwed as a nation.

• 54:31Speaker 04

  I see our party screwed if we continue to march down this neoliberal, market fundamentalist path. We have to be an aggressively populist party that talks about breaking up concentrated corporate power. So I also feel blessed that for one of the first times in my career, I don't have any question.

• 54:50Adam Friedland?

  You feel free.

• 54:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, I know, I don't, I'm not, I'm not arguing with myself about the direction the country needs to go in or the direction the party needs to go in. And so, you know, no matter what's happening in my personal life, I'm definitely not walking away at this moment of peril and at a moment where I feel like I have something to say.

• 55:06Adam Friedland?

  I mean, I remember the last time I went through a breakup, I had, like, most of my friends, I realized most of my friends had girlfriends or wives, so I had to start hanging out with my single friends. Do you start chilling more with the single senators? You and Lindsey going out to get some, some tail?

• 55:21Speaker 04

  I have not gone out with, I have not gone out with Lindsey Graham before or, before or after.

• 55:26Adam Friedland?

  That was just right there, it was tempting. Is he chill? He's gotta be a real-

• 55:31Speaker 04

  He's not, yeah, he's not. Chill, chill would not be-

• 55:34Adam Friedland?

  I wouldn't say chill, but-

• 55:35Speaker 04

  Would not be the word to describe him.

• 55:36Adam Friedland?

  He's got chops.

• 55:37Speaker 04

  He's intense.

• 55:38Adam Friedland?

  He's got chops, that guy.

• 55:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, he's a talented politician.

• 55:41Adam Friedland?

  He's Frank Underwood. He's like, got like, he can make moves. Merrick Garland I want to talk about because you guys, wasn't, you could have gone nuclear?

• 55:51Adam Friedland?

  Isn't that right?

• 55:51Speaker 04

  No, we, no, we had no-

• 55:53Adam Friedland?

  The nuclear option?

• 55:53Speaker 04

  No, we had no power to stop what they were doing. They were in the majority at the time. And the majority controls the floor of the senate. And they just chose not to bring a vote on Merrick Garland. We have no ability or powers, the minority, to force a vote-

• 56:09Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 56:10Speaker 04

  On the senate floor.

• 56:11Adam Friedland?

  So, was there also some sort of like hubris that like Hillary's about to beat Trump? And we'll just get it next time?

• 56:19Speaker 04

  I mean, I think in retrospect, like, we did not fight hard enough. We didn't sort of bring that case to the American people.

• 56:25Adam Friedland?

  Kind of the end of the world.

• 56:26Speaker 04

  No, I think that was why. I think we, we did have hubris that we thought there's no way Trump was gonna win. And so, you know, ultimately, we were gonna solve this through an election. We did not raise that issue at the crisis level we should have because we were overconfident about the election.

• 56:41Adam Friedland?

  Ruth Bader Ginsburg, am I correct in remembering this? She said she didn't want to retire because she wanted a female president to replace.

• 56:48Speaker 04

  I don't remember that. Maybe there were reports that she said that behind the scenes.

• 56:51Adam Friedland?

  Obama should have yelled her.

• 56:52Speaker 04

  But I don't remember that. She certainly wouldn't have said that on the record. But yeah-

• 56:56Adam Friedland?

  How little was she?

• 56:57Speaker 04

  I mean, we don't hang out with the Supreme Court justices.

• 57:00Adam Friedland?

  But you see her at the State of the Union.

• 57:02Speaker 04

  I mean-

• 57:03Adam Friedland?

  She's got, she seems like-

• 57:04Speaker 04

  But I wasn't like measuring, I wasn't like measuring her.

• 57:06Adam Friedland?

  She was like 3'5 maybe? 3'6?

• 57:07Speaker 04

  I don't think she's 3'5.

• 57:08Adam Friedland?

  That's what it looked like.

• 57:09Speaker 04

  She's taller.

• 57:10Adam Friedland?

  On TV, maybe. Yeah.

• 57:11Speaker 04

  She's a big personality.

• 57:12Adam Friedland?

  A big personality. Which, yeah, she used to like work, like lift weights, like, like, remember that? I hated those t-shirts, though.

• 57:19Speaker 04

  Uh, they're still out there.

• 57:20Adam Friedland?

  The notorious RBG.

• 57:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:23Adam Friedland?

  What the hell are they talking about? She's just some lady.

• 57:27Speaker 04

  It is true, like, if you remember, I mean, at the beginning of that campaign, none of the sort of mainstream media people even covered Trump as a presidential candidate.

• 57:36Adam Friedland?

  I mean, they covered him, those debates. Those are box office.

• 57:40Speaker 04

  They were. No, and that's, and that's in part why he's getting away with this corruption at scale, because he's doing it in front of everybody for people to see it.

• 57:50Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 57:50Speaker 04

  And I hate to say it, but there does seem to be an element of the country that is more forgiving of the corruption as long as they're watching it, which is wild to me. But I even think my party sometimes feels that way, because if this was uncovered, you know, the crypto scheme, that he was doing it behind the scenes.

• 58:10Adam Friedland?

  Shitcoin, yeah.

• 58:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, we would, we would, we would be talking about it every day, but because it's happening in front of everybody, because he's admitting to the corruption, just like he was admitting to giving to both sides, everybody seems to wave it away, which we shouldn't.

• 58:22Adam Friedland?

  Or he could lie, and his guys are like, of course he's lying, but he's our guy. He's lying for us. That's like, that's why the media, every time they'd be like, excuse me, fact check, like, it never worked, because they're like, his fans were like, yeah, we like, he's lying. He's a liar.

• 58:36Speaker 04

  And again, it comes back to this, this thing that the right wing believes, not everybody, but a lot of them, that the left is this existential threat to the nation. And so, we need to do whatever is necessary in order to defeat him, including electing somebody that we, you know, know is likely a fraud, who we know is lying. But if he's the guy that is going to rid us of the Democratic Party, then we're on board.

• 59:00Adam Friedland?

  I think he was more like just a virus that they couldn't control. Because I remember Ryan's, where we were saying everyone had one week. Ryan's would just throw another one out there. Because at first it was Jeb, and then like, he'd be like, just try. And then they get smacked down in a debate. But like, what it was, was like, the, the structure of the RNC was like, kind of crumbling. Like, the, the kind of, Ryan's previous as their, you know, the leader of, of their party, whatever. What is the DNC? Like, what is the DNC at this point?

• 59:31Speaker 04

  Well, but the other thing that was happening was that he was on to this message that the Republican Party couldn't understand the power of, which was this anti-China, anti-outsourcing message, right? So, he actually, it wasn't just that he had a brand. He actually did figure out that the sort of big middle of the country wanted somebody who was going to aggressively attack the old rules that allowed for the outsourcing. And no other Republican was willing to do that. And the Democratic Party, frankly, wasn't willing to do it at the level that we should have.

• 1:00:01Adam Friedland?

  I saw, you've talked a lot about how you've gone to like the middle of the country. You've gone to Missouri. You've kind of spoken to people that are Republican voters. And it's kind of clarified your populist economic vision for the party moving forward. I saw, real quick, I saw you on Hassan Minhaj. He did this game that really pissed me off with you. Like, the island thing. And you were about to be like, can I like...

• 1:00:27Speaker 04

  Not do it.

• 1:00:28Adam Friedland?

  Well, you were like, can I critique the premise of this? But like, he was saying like, well, you know, would you allow people that don't take the vaccine into the tent if they like support your economic populist message? It kind of, to me, represented kind of how Democrats talk about electoral politics. Really, instead of you saying, I'm going to lay out, this is my case, right? You vote for me. I'm sure like a racist has voted for you before, right? You don't, but what are you going to do about it? He thought you were the better candidate, right? Like, every time there's a postmortem of an election, it feels like the Democrats treat the electorate as like,

• 1:01:13Adam Friedland?

  treat themselves like victims of the electorate. Like, this last time with Kamala, Kamala, she was like, we were screwed over by Latino men. And it's just like, there's a vision of electoral politics as like, you owe me, and not like, we owe you. Is that right, or am I missing something? Because that's what it looks like to me.

• 1:01:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, listen, I just think we need to be in the business of winning elections rather than being super particular about who votes for us. And so that's why I, my argument is that the party simplifies its message. That we become a party that stands for unrigging the economy. So that it works for regular people, not corporations, and unrigging the democracy.

• 1:01:53Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:53Speaker 04

  And then, we're not as particular about who comes in and joins our coalition if you believe in those two things. And guess what? Like 75% of the country would sign up for those two projects. But because we've applied all these litmus tests as a party. I mean, on issues that I really care about, like guns. We have forced a lot of people out. Who otherwise, based on their belief in a fair economy.

• 1:02:19Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:20Speaker 04

  And a better government would sign up for our project. But because, you know, they aren't with us on choice, or they aren't with us on climate, or they aren't with us on guns. They vote for a fraud, for a charlatan.

• 1:02:30Adam Friedland?

  Is that the, I feel like it's a little backwards. I think it's like, to me, it feels like you guys only have that, right? You guys only have like, let's be nice to gay people because there's no substantive, like, like a transactional offer. Like, you can go to the hospital. Like, if you're sick, you can go to the doctor.

• 1:02:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's gotta be, you're talking about a moral core. There's gotta be a moral core to the party.

• 1:02:53Adam Friedland?

  Of course, we should be nice to gay people, right? But like, but that's like, it feels like it's papering, papering over like a lack of substance.

• 1:03:02Speaker 04

  So it's like, no, like what we didn't, like our, like what was our position on prescription drugs for a decade? We had this plan where we were gonna put the Medicare in charge of renegotiating prices with the drug companies on the top 10 drugs to try to get a better bulk price. Like, you lost people, right?

• 1:03:18Adam Friedland?

  Shut up.

• 1:03:19Speaker 04

  Cap the, cap, cap the cost of all drugs in this country. Cap the amount of profits that any drug company can make. Simple, big ideas that transfer power from corporations to regular families.

• 1:03:29Adam Friedland?

  You can go to the doctor. It's, I mean, it's like, just, it works.

• 1:03:33Speaker 04

  Yes, that nobody should be, should get sick or die in this country because you are poor, right?

• 1:03:39Adam Friedland?

  People like, people lose their life savings because they have cancer. I mean, it's just like, it's fucked up.

• 1:03:44Speaker 04

  Yes, and, and listen, I, I actually would argue that if you create that bigger tent party that for instance, brings people in that don't agree with us on. Transgender rights, that at least they're like in the tent now and like they have a commonality with us in economics and now we have an opportunity to talk to them about why transgender kids or gay kids aren't a threat to them personally, but when they just sit in this Fox News closed ecosystem and we don't make any effort to bring them in, you know, we're just continuing to sort of put up the walls.

• 1:04:20Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, you've investigated a lot of like online conservative culture as well and you talk a lot about loneliness and the loneliness epidemic and I want to get into that. You've read conservative writers like Yarvin and Deneen.

• 1:04:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, Curtis Yarvin, who's kind of more radical conservative.

• 1:04:41Adam Friedland?

  He's like a monarchist.

• 1:04:43Speaker 04

  He's the monarchist, yeah. Patrick Deneen is, you know, is an author who sort of just critiques liberalism more broadly from a Catholic conservative perspective.

• 1:04:53Adam Friedland?

  Oh, yeah. You've listened to a couple of conservative podcasts, Red Scare. What is, I've heard a lot about that one.

• 1:05:00Speaker 04

  Have you heard about Red Scare?

• 1:05:01Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, what's it about?

• 1:05:02Speaker 04

  Red Scare?

• 1:05:04Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, what is it? I've heard, people talk about it all the time. What? You talk a lot about loneliness. It's been like a topic that you've been highlighting. And I saw, I saw somewhere that you wanted to have a minister of loneliness.

• 1:05:20Speaker 04

  I don't want to have a minister of loneliness.

• 1:05:23Adam Friedland?

  I saw that, which is, but first of all, that's English. We have secretaries.

• 1:05:26Speaker 04

  It might have been characterized as a minister of loneliness. No, I want, I have proposed that you should have an office at the White House and the federal government that thinks about how policies make it easier or harder for people to connect to other human beings.

• 1:05:38Adam Friedland?

  And is it just one guy sitting there?

• 1:05:40Speaker 04

  No, not one guy. It was going to be, it was going to be a committee. I'm not saying it was going to solve the problem. I just think that you should have some place where you talk about the fact that the thing that matters most to us when it comes to our happiness is not our job or our career, how much money we make, but our relationships. And it's a little weird to me that we spend no time in government talking about how our policies increasingly make it hard for people to find companionship. So, yeah, there was like a headline that was like, Chris Murphy wants the government to help you make friends. Okay, that sounds like a bullshit, that sounds like a bullshit use of government power, but

• 1:06:11Adam Friedland?

  I'm a great guy.

• 1:06:12Speaker 04

  It is true that we should probably think more about the way in which government is making it harder for people to. To connect with each other.

• 1:06:21Adam Friedland?

  Did you ever think about who you would make the Minister of Loneliness?

• 1:06:24Speaker 04

  There's no Minister of Loneliness.

• 1:06:26Adam Friedland?

  I was thinking, uh, Ex Tentacion, but he's dead.

• 1:06:31Adam Friedland?

  Jeb Bush would be good.

• 1:06:33Speaker 04

  Jeb, he seems like a nice guy.

• 1:06:37Adam Friedland?

  Apparently, I was looking up, I was looking up good ideas for Minister of Loneliness. Apparently, Dwayne The Rock Johnson has been very open about his struggles with depression.

• 1:06:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm, I'm open for applications for this position that doesn't actually exist and I haven't proposed.

• 1:06:51Adam Friedland?

  I could do it.

• 1:06:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, you could do, you could do a hat.

• 1:06:55Adam Friedland?

  I'll do that and Ambassador of Brazil.

• 1:06:58Speaker 04

  And do the show.

• 1:06:59Adam Friedland?

  And the show, Jewish YouTube talk show, Ambassador of Brazil, Loneliest Man in America.

• 1:07:04Speaker 04

  But when I, when I, the first time I ever wrote anything about loneliness was like this short little article called The Politics of Loneliness, basically saying the government should pay attention to how lonely people are today. I had more feedback to that article than maybe anything else I had written because like in their daily lives, especially parents, are seeing how catastrophic it is that we spend, in some instances, 50% less time with friends than we did just 30 years ago. And that has consequences for our health, for our politics. A lot of those folks who showed up on January 6th were pretty lonely, lonely people.

• 1:07:38Adam Friedland?

  They didn't have any friends?

• 1:07:39Speaker 04

  I mean, some of them, I imagine.

• 1:07:41Adam Friedland?

  Come on, dude.

• 1:07:42Speaker 04

  Some of them, I imagine, had some struggles, some struggles socially.

• 1:07:48Adam Friedland?

  You're saying that they're absolute losers.

• 1:07:49Speaker 04

  I'm saying, I'm saying that loneliness, that when you feel lonely,

• 1:07:52Adam Friedland?

  I heard some popular guys were there too.

• 1:07:52Speaker 04

  When you feel lonely, you feel sad, but then you feel angry and you're looking for an outlet.

• 1:07:56Adam Friedland?

  Well, I think beyond loneliness to me, I think they're, I think it's a seminal issue of our time, genuinely. And, but I think that it's, needs to be viewed as a symptom, perhaps.

• 1:08:08Speaker 04

  Data will tell you that people have been retreating. From companionship since another seminal event, which is the invention of the smartphone. I mean.

• 1:08:17Adam Friedland?

  I think it was trending that way, and I think it fell off the cliff when people were at home for two years.

• 1:08:23Speaker 04

  No, 100%. I mean, so I experienced it as, you know, a human being and as a parent, and I saw the damage did to my kids and their friends. So when we wrote the sort of COVID rescue bill right after Biden was sworn in, I really spent all my political capital pushing for one thing, and it was a fund for summer camps.

• 1:08:44Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:44Speaker 04

  Just to put as many kids as we could that summer of 2021 into summer camps, especially as many poor kids as we could who had really been home alone.

• 1:08:53Adam Friedland?

  And their families were dying.

• 1:08:55Speaker 04

  And their families were, their families were sick, or their parents were essential workers, so they, you know, the kids were home alone.

• 1:09:01Adam Friedland?

  Their grandparents died.

• 1:09:02Speaker 04

  Right? So that's all I was focused on, was like, get kids into summer camp.

• 1:09:06Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:07Speaker 04

  So it's a, and I remember talking right after the pandemic to these kindergarten, first grade teachers who are getting kids back from the pandemic, and they were just like, we will never be able to make up for the lost time that like, a three, four, five year old lost.

• 1:09:24Adam Friedland?

  A third of your life.

• 1:09:25Speaker 04

  Social, right? They basically showed up at school without basic socialization skills, which meant they couldn't learn, and they were just behind without really the ability to catch up their entire career. And that's the reality for millions of kids in this country.

• 1:09:39Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, so I think like, the way we discuss a lot of these problems is, like, we're trimming leaves, and that we, there's something at the trunk. And I think like, when we talk about incels, or like, when we talk about basement dwellers, or we talk, we, we're talking about people that are kind of squeezed out of the economy. You know, the economy can't absorb labor at the same rate that it used to. And we're talking about people that have kind of been squeezed out of society by various circumstances. And like, I think it's like, a little bit like, we're just addressing the, you know, the result, and we're not addressing like, in a kind of human way, or like a, you know, moral way, you know, like, what people have, what has led people?

• 1:10:21Speaker 04

  But don't you think it goes even deeper than that? I mean, I do think that there's this transition that happens from the middle of the century to later in the century where, you know, we cared much more about our neighbors and the community and the common good. And we eventually got taught that really the only thing that mattered was profit and efficiency and our personal achievement. And we started to sort of separate as a, as a, as a culture as we became obsessed with our own individual achievement. This is not helped by kind of like the self-help revolution where we're told that if you're feeling bad, what you need to do is just retreat into yourself instead of joining with others. And we just over time become a culture that is, that is really self-obsessive and, and

• 1:11:05Speaker 04

  we don't see as much health, personal health in socialization. And so I think you, and then you layer smartphones and the pandemic on top of that, that cultural shift that happens and we're screwed.

• 1:11:19Adam Friedland?

  We need China, we need China to take Twitter away.

• 1:11:20Speaker 04

  I don't know that.

• 1:11:21Adam Friedland?

  I think Xi. So just say it to him right now when he's watching, Xi, just come over and take the phone away.

• 1:11:28Speaker 04

  We'd be much better if it, if it went away, but it will be replaced by something else. So the only solution here ultimately is for, I hate to say it, but for government to come in and say, here are the rules, right? I mean, here's who can be on social media, here's how kids can interact with it, here's what it can deliver to kids. Give at least young people a fighting shot so that they're not addicted when they become 18.

• 1:11:47Adam Friedland?

  You've been in Congress 20 years, the legislative branch 20 years, right? And the perception of that institute, as an institution is that it's, it's decayed or crumbled in that period. Does it feel that way for you as someone that goes to the office there? Like, does it feel like it's, you know?

• 1:12:04Speaker 04

  Sure. Yeah, we very rarely pass legislation. Much more of my life now is about critiquing the other side and sitting down and actually passing things that make people's lives better.

• 1:12:15Adam Friedland?

  How does it feel like as a guy, like to be part of like something like that?

• 1:12:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, it's not what I signed up for.

• 1:12:23Adam Friedland?

  You feel like we suck?

• 1:12:24Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, I, a couple of years ago, I mean, I really deliberately decided to bend over backwards to try to get in those rare rooms where the deals get cut. And I, and I did that for a handful of years and I got good at it. And for that period of time, whether it was on the gun bill.

• 1:12:38Adam Friedland?

  The cigar place that you go to the cigar, those things? Back room?

• 1:12:42Speaker 04

  They're not, yeah, there, there are legitimate still back rooms in that place.

• 1:12:45Adam Friedland?

  And you do cigars?

• 1:12:46Speaker 04

  No cigars, but there's booze.

• 1:12:48Adam Friedland?

  Booze.

• 1:12:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:49Adam Friedland?

  And you McConnell are like, this is.

• 1:12:51Speaker 04

  McConnell was not in any of the rooms that I was in, but no, there are still places, they're much more rare, where deals get cut, and I decided to very deliberately try to get in those rooms for a period of time, and then Trump got elected, and those rooms completely disappeared, and it felt like the job was just to try to protect democracy. But yeah, I made the decision to be more purposeful about that work, because the job was feeling pretty empty.

• 1:13:16Adam Friedland?

  Do you feel like it's the hardest era? You know, like in the NBA, they're saying, like, there's a lot of debate between the eras, like Jordan versus LeBron?

• 1:13:24Speaker 04

  No, there was an era.

• 1:13:25Adam Friedland?

  You feel like you're playing in the hardest era?

• 1:13:26Speaker 04

  There was an era where, like, senators were getting caned over the head, right?

• 1:13:31Adam Friedland?

  Was that, yeah.

• 1:13:32Speaker 04

  I would imagine, I would argue that.

• 1:13:34Adam Friedland?

  Have two senators ever hooked up, or like congressmen or anything?

• 1:13:37Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:13:37Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 1:13:38Speaker 04

  There were two congresspeople that were, that were married.

• 1:13:40Adam Friedland?

  They got married? They met at Congress?

• 1:13:43Speaker 04

  I think this is right. I think, didn't, right?

• 1:13:46Adam Friedland?

  Who? Sonny, Sonny Bono?

• 1:13:48Speaker 04

  Sonny Bono and Mary Bono.

• 1:13:50Adam Friedland?

  Oh.

• 1:13:50Speaker 04

  Right?

• 1:13:51Adam Friedland?

  Oh, and he died in the, in the skiing accident. I got you, babe. I want to kind of get into some, what, like, the bigger, kind of existential questions, like, it's breaking.

• 1:14:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:03Adam Friedland?

  Right? Do you think, can you, can it, can you fix it? Is it really, you, I know you're, you're gonna say yes, but like, actually, like.

• 1:14:14Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:14:15Adam Friedland?

  It must be impossible.

• 1:14:16Speaker 04

  You can actually fix it, right? So.

• 1:14:18Adam Friedland?

  What is the first structural thing that you would, that you would, like, change about?

• 1:14:22Speaker 04

  Okay, so you're not talking about how do you defeat the, sort of, slide to totalitarianism? You're talking about how do you fix the actual.

• 1:14:29Adam Friedland?

  There's, there's shit that.

• 1:14:31Speaker 04

  Project of democracy.

• 1:14:32Adam Friedland?

  There are a ton of things in the rules that, that are implemented that fuck shit working in the legislative branch or the executive branch now.

• 1:14:41Speaker 04

  So there are some things that you can do internally, right? So I, I am a believer that the Senate should be a majoritarian institution, ultimately a place where 50 votes passes a piece of legislation, so you can't blame.

• 1:14:54Adam Friedland?

  Should the Senate even exist?

• 1:14:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:56Adam Friedland?

  It seems kind of bullshit.

• 1:14:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think the Senate should probably still.

• 1:14:59Adam Friedland?

  But Wyoming gets as much as California? That's not fair.

• 1:15:02Speaker 04

  We decided, right, the founders decided to make it really hard to pass legislation in this country, right?

• 1:15:08Adam Friedland?

  To free the slaves.

• 1:15:09Speaker 04

  And the design, the design was.

• 1:15:10Adam Friedland?

  They made it really hard to.

• 1:15:11Speaker 04

  The design was likely to make it hard to free the slaves.

• 1:15:15Adam Friedland?

  But they didn't have toilet paper.

• 1:15:16Speaker 04

  But the design was also because they believed that a faction could very easily corrupt a single parliamentary system and transition democracy into autocracy. So by setting up a really complicated system of government with two houses and a president, they thought it was actually protective of democracy. And I think 250 years into the experiment, you have to come to the conclusion that they were right, no matter how inefficient having a house and a senate and a presidential signature is.

• 1:15:44Adam Friedland?

  But haven't we seen, especially during the McConnell reign, like it kind of be a bottleneck?

• 1:15:51Speaker 04

  Yes, which is why, which is why ultimately you should get rid of the filibuster and allow for 50 votes in the senate to be able to pass something. But really, the foundational reform is the way the campaigns are financed.

• 1:16:03Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:04Speaker 04

  So, and you've got to pass a constitutional amendment to do that. And I think the only way the Democrats are going to be able to interest people in this country in saving democracy is to be really specific about what we're going to change. And I think that requires either a constitutional amendment or a constitutional convention to essentially allow the legislature to ban private money, corporate money, lobbyist money, anonymous money from politics. I think if you did that, that's probably the most sort of significant balm on the system.

• 1:16:34Adam Friedland?

  I agree with you. It seems to be the first order of business, but like it seems like, you know, could you even convince the Democratic Party as a whole, like your caucus in Congress? Because I think a lot of Democrats are kind of entrenched in that system.

• 1:16:49Speaker 04

  There's still a ton of billionaires who fund our party. There's still a ton of Democrats who take and rely on corporate contributions. I mean, I'm lucky, and so it's easy for me to sort of talk about getting rid of corporate and PAC money because I am one of these candidates now who has, you know. Thousands of people will give me three, five dollars at a time. But what I found was that when I swore off PAC money, more people, regular people, were willing to give me money because they wanted to reward me for not taking PAC money.

• 1:17:18Adam Friedland?

  They can trust you, too.

• 1:17:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, they trust me. They trust me more and they want to get behind somebody who's going to say, "I'm not taking PAC money." I think that would be the case for other candidates who did it. But yes, yes, our party has become reliant on that sort of corporate PAC and billionaire trough and it's what makes us a little sclerotic when we try to rally around efforts to change the campaign finance system. That's just the truth.

• 1:17:43Adam Friedland?

  What is it, like, just walk me through, like, when you're trying to fundraise, like, you're talking to a billionaire, like, what's the vibe?

• 1:17:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, when-

• 1:17:52Adam Friedland?

  He's like, "I'm gonna give you this chair just 'cause, but..."

• 1:17:55Speaker 04

  Well, so, so I'm talking to, so, I don't have to do that-

• 1:17:58Adam Friedland?

  But, like, I'm saying-

• 1:17:59Speaker 04

  I don't have to do that anymore, but I used to do a lot of it, right?

• 1:18:02Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:03Speaker 04

  I used to sit in a cubicle in the Democratic National Committee when I was a House member for three, four hours at a time, just, right, calling people for money. Who are you calling? You're not calling people who are making thirty thousand dollars.

• 1:18:16Adam Friedland?

  Of course.

• 1:18:17Speaker 04

  You're calling somebody who's making three million dollars.

• 1:18:18Adam Friedland?

  The monopoly, man.

• 1:18:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. Now, you're calling Democratic donors, by and large, so they, so they're, you know, they're not, they're not racist and they do believe in a progressive tax code, but not that prog- but not that, they're not, no, they're not.

• 1:18:33Adam Friedland?

  Yes, they are.

• 1:18:34Speaker 04

  But maybe not that progressive.

• 1:18:35Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:36Speaker 04

  And maybe these donors are not super excited about labor unions getting a lot stronger.

• 1:18:41Adam Friedland?

  Right.

• 1:18:42Speaker 04

  And maybe they don't want everybody to have healthcare through a single payer system because they make a lot of money from their investments in the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry.

• 1:18:51Adam Friedland?

  It's transactional.

• 1:18:52Speaker 04

  Therefore, it's, it's, it's not like you think it's transactional. It isn't like House of Cards in the sense that a donor says, "I'm only going to donate to you if you support this, if you support this policy." It's not.

• 1:19:02Adam Friedland?

  It's a lot like-

• 1:19:03Speaker 04

  But, it's not as much as you think.

• 1:19:04Adam Friedland?

  It's pretty much exactly that.

• 1:19:06Speaker 04

  But, it's different. But it is-

• 1:19:08Adam Friedland?

  And I will have the power.

• 1:19:10Speaker 04

  But it is just corrupting to be on the phone with billionaires-

• 1:19:16Speaker 04

  And millionaires.

• 1:19:16Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:17Speaker 04

  Instead of being on the phone with, you know, janitors and, you know, teachers.

• 1:19:23Adam Friedland?

  You talk to a lot more janitors now that you don't take, take.

• 1:19:26Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, I didn't, I didn't start like, so you were.

• 1:19:29Adam Friedland?

  How the floor works.

• 1:19:30Speaker 04

  But I walk, but I, you know, I do this thing where I, you know, walk across the state every.

• 1:19:35Adam Friedland?

  How long does it take?

• 1:19:36Speaker 04

  Takes a week.

• 1:19:36Adam Friedland?

  A week?

• 1:19:37Speaker 04

  You know, I don't know that I had, I don't know that I had the time to do that back when I was spending all my time raising money.

• 1:19:42Adam Friedland?

  Dude, I bet you that lady that you beat your first run at Congress, what's her name?

• 1:19:47Speaker 04

  Nancy Johnson.

• 1:19:47Adam Friedland?

  She can beat that. I bet you Nancy could get it.

• 1:19:51Speaker 04

  Do it in less than a week?

• 1:19:51Adam Friedland?

  Five days.

• 1:19:52Speaker 04

  Do it in less than a week?

• 1:19:53Adam Friedland?

  No, that's, I mean, like, I, I think that, um.

• 1:19:56Speaker 04

  I don't want to like make it more than it is, but it's just, I think in this job, what I realized is that you have to like actually make efforts to get out of the bubble and to like not just think of the people who call your office or the people who donate money to your campaign.

• 1:20:10Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:10Speaker 04

  Are the voices that matter. So I know like the walk across the state looks to a lot of people like a gimmicky thing, but it is actually useful to me to like. Make, like, I'll tell you, like, you were talking about this before, the summer that the Mueller investigation was like everything that MSNBC was talking about. I walked across the state right at the height of that Mueller fervor and I probably talked to a couple hundred people on that walk. One person brought up Mueller to me, one, like, nobody bought it, nobody was plugged into it.

• 1:20:40Adam Friedland?

  And he was actively using the office to make himself richer, which is like clearly like out in, out in the open.

• 1:20:45Speaker 04

  Well, and it was.

• 1:20:45Adam Friedland?

  I mean, it was clearly, and also against the law, they had to make it about James Bond shit.

• 1:20:49Speaker 04

  It just, it just, it distracted us from actually being connected into the stuff that people really were talking about and caring about.

• 1:20:56Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:56Speaker 04

  Not that, I'm not saying it wasn't important because I actually do think that there's a pretty awful story there, whether or not there was like daily coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians, the Russians clearly had an impact on the election. But the fact that we obsessed over that, instead of actually learning our lessons as a party, as to why we lost to this guy was, um, you know, is a big part of the reason why we're here today.

• 1:21:17Adam Friedland?

  I guess like, uh, I mean, like, I really appreciate it sitting down with you and like, uh, it makes sense why you have this vision for, you know, economic policy because the most popular person in the party right now is Bernie, basically. Right? And this is like, it reflects popular sentiment. How can you get the rest of the Democratic Party to fall in line?

• 1:21:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't know that I'm winning this argument right now. Again, that sort of, that legacy of connection to the party, to that corporate crowd is real.

• 1:21:47Adam Friedland?

  You have Chuck's number? Let's, let's hit him up.

• 1:21:50Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, I, I, I think we should. I don't know why we don't pay attention to the fact that the only people that can command 50,000 people are Bernie Sanders and AOC. And I, I, I just think it's there for the taking that there are these Republican voters today, people who support Trump, who are seeing him for who he really is, but are waiting for the Democratic Party to offer them something meaty. So, I, I guess I don't have the secret sauce in terms of how to make this argument. I do think it will be important for us to nominate a handful of those candidates.

• 1:22:22Adam Friedland?

  You ever, you chilled Bernie?

• 1:22:25Speaker 04

  Bernie, again, like, again, he's not, he doesn't, he doesn't hang.

• 1:22:28Adam Friedland?

  Do you think, have you gotten a laugh from him?

• 1:22:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:22:31Adam Friedland?

  Really? What'd you say?

• 1:22:32Speaker 04

  I know, I know you're gonna ask me what I said.

• 1:22:33Adam Friedland?

  What'd you say?

• 1:22:33Speaker 04

  I don't remember what I, I don't remember what I said. I think I've, Bernie, Bernie laughs. Bernie, so you talk about like, what is, um, uh, what are these people like behind the scenes? Bernie is like-

• 1:22:43Adam Friedland?

  He's Bernie.

• 1:22:44Speaker 04

  He's Bernie. Like, he's Bernie, yes, that's why it works, because he's super authentic everywhere. And Trump is Trump behind the scenes. So, you know, people can smell insincerity a lot more, a lot better than they could-

• 1:22:58Adam Friedland?

  So, yeah, you're doing authenticity right now. How do you feel about authenticity?

• 1:23:03Speaker 04

  I mean-

• 1:23:03Adam Friedland?

  You have to talk to this fool?

• 1:23:05Speaker 04

  But this, I mean, this, this job does, this job does mess with you, right? Because, especially if you started before Trump, when you were taught that you're not supposed to be authentic-

• 1:23:15Adam Friedland?

  It's a different game.

• 1:23:16Speaker 04

  That you're supposed to be practiced.

• 1:23:16Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:17Speaker 04

  And so, if you're kind of, if you're kind of my generation, or a generation before me-

• 1:23:21Adam Friedland?

  West Wing.

• 1:23:23Speaker 04

  It's a hard pivot, like, from, you know, don't say anything unless it's been vetted by 16 communications professionals, to say whatever the hell you want, even if it's not popular-

• 1:23:34Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:35Speaker 04

  Or not PC, because people wanna see the real you.

• 1:23:37Adam Friedland?

  So, just say it. Bruce Hornsby is the best musician of all time.

• 1:23:40Speaker 04

  I do say it, all, I, I do say it. I'm not gonna apologize for it.

• 1:23:44Adam Friedland?

  You shouldn't be ashamed-

• 1:23:44Speaker 04

  He's a brilliant musician.

• 1:23:45Adam Friedland?

  By your staffers-

• 1:23:46Speaker 04

  He didn't stop making music in the 1980s, like most people think he did. He's got a just killer-

• 1:23:54Speaker 04

  Catalog of music that continues to this day. And that's why I am bringing my entire staff of mostly 20 year olds to go hear Bruce Hornsby in DC next week. Because if they hear him, they are going to be opened up to the genius that is.

• 1:24:10Adam Friedland?

  Bruce Hornsby.

• 1:24:11Speaker 04

  And I'm gonna meet him.

• 1:24:13Adam Friedland?

  What do you mean? Because you're in the Congress?

• 1:24:15Speaker 04

  I know. I like, I, I, I got his manager's info and I asked if I could meet him.

• 1:24:20Adam Friedland?

  Who's manager?

• 1:25:08Speaker 06

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