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All right, everybody. Welcome back to the All-In podcast. We are super pleased
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to have with us today Senator Joe Mansion is joining us today here on the All-In Interview. And Chamath and I will
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be interviewing him uh on his new book, Dead Center in Defense of Common Sense.
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A great book. Welcome to the program, Joe Mansion. I know you like to be called Joe. So, Joe, welcome to the program.
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Jason, thank you. And it's great to be with you and Shamath and and I've followed you all and you've been unbelievable what you've put out and
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some of the people you've had on. It's been very entertaining, very interesting and very thoughtful. So anxious to be
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here. Thanks. And we we have a tradition here. I don't know how often you watch the interview show, but we always try to get a personalized gift for each of our um
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our guests. And so I in the book you talked about your first car, your 19. Oh, if I could if you could find that if
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you could find that thing for me, it was a bullet back. I can't find the car. Well, there it is with the white
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interior. Oh my god. Where can we buy it? No. No. We got it. It's in your driveway right now. When you get out of your office
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there, it'll be waiting for you by your yacht. Let me tell you that. Oh, by my yacht. Yeah, I got a big Oh my god. Has a $200,000 trwler.
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It's a fishing trwler. Correct. And it's a trwler. Joe, listen. Joe, what what Jason has just proved is he has not read the book,
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but he looked at the pictures in the middle. That's all he's done. No, I did the He's ripping off the pictures in the
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middle. No, I don't have the physical book. I did the audio book. But Joe, you did the right thing. You read it yourself, which a lot of authors, you
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know, they get try to get talk out of doing it, but it makes it so much more personal. Hey, Jason, I didn't know I was supposed to do that. And I And all of a sudden,
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my daughter Heather says, "Dad, you got to show up at the studio and start reading your book." I says, "How how?" I said, "Why do I have to do that?" She
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says, "It's in the contract." I said, "I didn't see that." She says, "I didn't show it to you." It's part of the contract.
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It's like six or seven hours of reading. It took 20 hours. 20 hours.
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So, three days. Three, four days. Four days. And let me tell you, it's the best thing I've ever done. The make me
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reminisce everything we put in the book. It's just Chamati. You haven't done this yet because you haven't written.
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I don't I'm not really into audio books. I read the book. Look, I have it. I I like to have the physical pages. I mark
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them. I Okay. I'm old school. Yeah. I mean, I sometimes I do both, but you know, when you're in the session,
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I'm sure you had this where the producers got the button and then you're like and you know, and then I got my
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Maserati and I came out of the garage and they're like, um, a garage. You're
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like, yeah, I came out of the garage. Like, a because you have to do every word perfectly to sync it on Amazon,
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right? So, they have to correct you over and over again if you just miss one. The most unbelievable thing is the first I
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the first day I start doing it and I'm sitting there, you know, and all of a sudden I'm just talking and reading the
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book and I cross my legs. They said, "Stop. Cross your legs, didn't you?" I said, "What?" They said, "We heard you
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cross your legs." I said, "My god, I'm in trouble. You're basically in like a Faraday cage." Like, if you literally, you know,
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hit anything. Yeah. Oh, wow. But, you know, the the book's fantastic. Everybody go pause the uh podcast here
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and I just absolutely go buy it because it's so important and you know I
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mentioned um when we were just on the pre-show Irish Catholic Boy Scout and
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you start the book out with an Irish Catholic boy scout getting in a brewhaha
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Donnie Brookke with an Italian Irish boy scout. You an Eagle Scout?
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No former president. What? You were an Eagle Scout? That's what the internet said. Where'd you get to? First class.
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No. No. I got up to I got up to life. Oh. And what happened? I was right next to it. Let me tell you what happened. 1959.
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Never forget it. The coal mines the coal mines got automated in West Virginia. I lived
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within I lived in little coal mining community, 400 people. And there was three of the largest coal mines you've ever seen. And everybody worked in the
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coal mines. Okay. And all of a sudden, I come home one day and my dad had a little furniture store. My grandfather
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had a grocery store. And there was all these guys sitting on the on the curb. They got laid off because it got automated. They lost their job. Pat
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Keenir was my scout leader. The best of the best of the best. If you have a good scout master, scout leader, you're going
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to make it. If you don't, you don't make it. And what happened? He had to go to Lordstown, Ohio to get a job in the auto
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factory. And we lost it. And I was done. You left scout master. Yeah. I lost my guy. Oh, well, this part of
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the of of your story, I think, is the crucible moment for you because I've I'm
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Catholic and Irish, and I know the Italian Catholics, that's that's quite a fight.
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An Italian Catholic and an Irish Catholic get in a fight. Just step back is what I my best advice everybody.
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But you got in a heater with Joe Biden over the the bill back better bill. Yeah. to the extent that like I believe
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the Democrats or operatives were sending people to your trwler, your your house boat that you're living on, they're
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sending people, you know, a little bit out your family maybe everywhere. I was and I had the death threats were unreal, Jason.
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Your own party. So maybe you could take us to maybe tell that story because it
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feels to me and correct me if I'm wrong that this is a se seinal moment in your political career or perhaps the
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I don't recommend anybody getting caught in a 50/50 Senate in the United States because the United States Senate is
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supposed to be the the the uh most u deliberate body in the world. And the
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reason it's deliberate because you have to have a 60 vote threshold for closure to get on to get on a bill. And with
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that, that was intended from our founding fathers is that the house is going to be simple majority. 218 out of
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435. Don't even talk to the other side. You don't have to just shove it through. And George Washington said, you know,
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it's just going to be like a hot cup of tea and it goes over to the Senate. Should cool itself off so we can drink
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it. Well, that's the whole premise. And people keep saying, get rid of the filibuster. That's the holy grail to
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democracy as we know it. Because without it, we wouldn't be the country we are now. It forced us to sit down in one of
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the bodies to s cal calm things down and talk to our friends over in the House and say, "Guys, this is how it's got to
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be. We've got to moderate this some." And that's what that's what it was
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that's what I'd always known from Bob Bird, Senator Robert C. Bird, our senator forever, 50 years plus in West
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Virginia. when I became governor, he kept I think he kind of knew in his mind that I would probably run for the Senate
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and he was getting to the end of his career or, you know, his age was creeping up on him pretty pretty hard.
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Anyway, he kept telling me all the different things of why he did certain things, why the rules were the way they
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were. So, I had a real understanding of the purpose of the Senate and my responsibilities. So, here we go. And
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then the the whole the whole thing on reconciliation, there's a reconciliation. It's it's a
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movement. It's a that we operate under. And it's basically stopping it stops anybody from preventing us to make sure
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we can take care of our financial responsibilities. And so reconciliation only takes a
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simple majority. Well, in the Senate, that's the only vehicle that you can have a 51 vote threshold without a
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closure vote of 60 votes getting to the bill. So then Joe Biden gets elected and
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I think the story in the book it starts out Schumer kept calling me that all every hour on the hour the night of the
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election and I'm thinking why is he so worked up? Because in the Senate in all honesty whether you're in the m if
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you're one of if you're not the majority leader but you're one of the senators in the caucus or the Dem Republicans you
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have the same power you have the same you know you can participate every senator can participate. They're all important 100 of them. So he keeps
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saying, Joe, he says, you know, understand this Georgia thing could really, you know, it could happen. I'm thinking, well, I don't think we're
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going to win Georgia. We hadn't and then wasn't predicted, but Donald Trump put him in play to be honest with you. Him
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going down there and getting into a tiff with everybody. He did. And so all of a sudden, you know, we got uh uh two
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senators that are running from there. And boom, the first one calls Raphael
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Waro. He wins. Osafs later on that night. Boom. They call that and Schumer
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says, "You know what this means, don't you?" And I said, "Well, Chuck, I think it means you're the majority leader." He says, "No, it means that you can
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probably have anything you want." And I said, "I just want my country to do well. If my country does well, my state
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will do well. That's all I care about." What do you think he meant when he said that? I know exactly what he meant, Schmoth. I
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know exactly. Chuck Schumer basically coming from where he comes from. It just whatever you can take back home. And of
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course, Bob Bird was always criticized for taking so much what they call pork back home.
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And that was the the situation he thought, well, I'm in a cat bird seat now. I could outdo Bob Bird. I just
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never thought that. I just never thought of tipping the scale so unfavorably to where we all should be doing well if we
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can move our country forward. But that's what he thought. Okay, what do you want? I just want my country to do well. When
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that happened, there was a lot of thought that the filibuster and and maybe just to take a step back for the
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audience, the whole point is that as you explained, basically laws can get passed in one of two ways. The real way, which
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is that you have to find some sort of compromise with folks on the other side, get to 60 votes, or the other way, which
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is a more of a budgetary process called reconciliation, which is a simple majority. And there's been a lot of talk
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that one party at some point will try to eliminate the filibuster so that when
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they have a simple majority, they can pass any law they want. And there was a
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moment, I think, in that point where you came under a lot of pressure to get on board with trying to eliminate the
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filibuster. Can you just give us a window into that and what happened and how you made the decision and what the
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what the reaction was from party loyalists? Well, let's go back to 2013 when Harry Reid because of Barack Obama
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couldn't get his appointments done for his for his cabinet and things of that sort and and some judges. So, the
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majority party can change the rules. If they want to blow it apart, they can blow it apart. Well, Harry Reid decided that he wanted
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to get rid of the filibuster. And uh I just said, Harry, I'd never do that. I mean, my goodness, you can't
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just because you can't work with someone. I said, "You and Mitch don't even sit down and talk. You don't have a
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cup of coffee, let alone discuss what should be important for both sides." And
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at that time, I even told Harry, I said, "Harry, the only thing that the president's wanting
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that he got he won re-election 2012, gets reappointed 2013, reinaugurated, and here we go." He wants to put his
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team together. That's will and pleasure. And I always believe that will and pleasure that will and pleasure means
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you're you get elected. You're the executive Shimoth and you said, "Joe, I want you to be part of this. I'm going to come and go. It's your will and
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pleasure. I'm not staying over. Once you're gone, I'm gone. Why not let you have your team unless I then they can do
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a FBI background check, find out if I'm of sound character and moral values and
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no criminal records and boom, let me go." So I I begged Harry just go over and cut a deal with Mitch and say,
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"Mitch, let's together do this unanimously. That 51 vote threshold for all of the president's appointment,
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people that'll be will and pleasure, no holdovers whatsoever. But you can't do it to judges that get lifetime
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appointments. You can't do it for other other uh different agencies that have a
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six-year or a nine-year term. Just will and pleasure." And I I thought that
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would be very simple. And he wouldn't do it. They said, "Oh, no. We got to get the judges. I says, "You're going to
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basically change the confirmation process to 51 votes for a lifetime? Are
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you crazy?" But they did it. And then guess what happened? They did it for the They did
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it for district and circuit judges. Okay? Didn't do it for Supreme Court.
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Guess what happened as soon as Republicans took over? They were in control. Mitch McConnell says, "Fine,
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we'll do it for Supreme Court. Now we have a 63 court." didn't work too well before he did it. You know, whether it
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be Harry or that. And during this, Chuck Schumer's just come out directly and has said he wanted to get rid of the
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filibuster. That's how they were going to run it with Joe Biden. Well, Joe Biden had always been a defender of the
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filibuster. How can you flip on your values when all of a sudden now because you're in charge and you want to just
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shove things down people's throat? I said, I'm not going to do that. So, myself and Kirsten Cinema voted against
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the filibuster, which stopped all that. I was all for the voting. I mean, all the concern the voting act, voting
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rights act, all that. But I said, we have to find a pathway that we have some Republicans, 10 Republicans that will
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work with us. I want to go and ask you a very specific question that's that's framed in the book about Obama. But before I do that,
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let's just stay on Biden for a second. I'll get to where where uh Jason asked me how we got to because it really how
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it led up to what happened is unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. I think maybe finishing that big battery. Go ahead. Yeah. because
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it's it's gets spicy. Yeah, it gets spicy because what happened, Jason, uh the first thing they did was a ARP.
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The American Rescue Plan was his first bill. Soon as Joe Biden gets elected, boom, he gets sworn in and in February,
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he comes out with the ARP, American Rescue Plan, which is this big overhaul. Okay, we had just done, you all know the
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finances better than probably anybody observing. We had put $3.2 2 trillion
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dollars into the market as co in 20 in 2020 March of from March 2020 up until
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the end of the year and then Joe Biden takes over. So we already put 3.2 trillion. He comes out with the American
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Rescue Plan. They want to put another 1.9 minimum 1.9. Now we're at 5.1. Well,
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our cash flow is about a little over $5 trillion a year that we run the country on. They're doubling the amount. You
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can't digest that. that the market can't take it. But they were doing it. And I says, "Are you people crazy right now?
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We don't even know what what the 3.2 is going to do, let alone but they wanted it was they
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were be chasing a social reform." And I told him, I said, "Mr. President, they
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heard me grumbling uh in the hallway and one of the senators called the White
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House immediately and says, "Mansion making trouble already." Well, it was 50/50. They had to have me. say, "Call
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me right over to the White House." And I'm sitting there. I said, "Mr. President, I'm begging you, please don't
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do the don't do reconciliation on this bill. If this is your bill, which I know
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it's not, this is a Bernie Sanders and this is Elizabeth Warren cuz I'd heard them respectfully. I, you know, I can
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agree in some and I disagree, but it was just too big a bite coming right out of
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co and we had a vaccine that was working." So I said, "Please don't, sir." And I said, "You're the only one on the stage running for president with
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all that big lineup that says, you know how the place work. You can work on both sides. You can make a deal." And I always known you to be that person.
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And now all of a sudden, you're throwing, you know, the nuclear bomb out. You're saying, "We can't work with
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the Republicans. We got to do it." And I said, "Sumer's got you all fired up thinking that's how you're going to run it." And I knew in my mind they
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wanted to run that what we call the 117th Congress. The Congress is a two-year stint. Every two years you have
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an election. So, Congress, we were in 117th, just starting it. My
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my uh thought process was is that Schumer had convinced the president that
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we could run this Congress for two years with four reconciliation big bills, two
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in two in 2021 and two in 2022. And I says, over my dead body, that's
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not going to happen. That's not what we're here for. And that's not how this place is supposed to work. So they
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called me over in the White House and they grabbed you always Jason. You're sitting there and you see it on television. They made everybody leave
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the room and we're sitting there and then president reaches over and grabs your arm and he says, "Joe, your country needs you."
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I'm thinking, "What the hell do I say now?" And I said, "Mr. President," and I grabbed his arm. "Country needs you,
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too. It needs us all." And I said, "Sir, I'm begging you not to. Why don't you just put this bill that you call your
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American Rescue Plan? Put it in the jurisdictional committees and let us
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work it. Give us a shot clock. Say, "Guys, I'm going to give you 60 days to work this these bills." Then if you They
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don't because they just don't want you to have any success at all. Do what you got to do then. Oh, no. Got to do it
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now, Joe. Got to go. Got to go. Okay. So, we go. And then we shut it down
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there for about 12 or 14 hours one day cuz I thought they lost their mind. They wanted to expand the unemployment
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benefits. I said, "Do you understand what you're dealing with now? you got inflation coming at you so hard because
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people have been cooped up. We've sent everybody a check. And I told him this, he kind of giggled. I said, I said, "Mr.
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President, we've sent everybody a check. And if we've missed anybody, it was by mistake cuz you intended to send
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everybody a damn check." And I said, "They want to go spend money and there's
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nobody working. The supply chains are shut down. There's nothing. They're going to pay exorbitant amounts to get what they want. You're just fueling it,
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sir." Oh god. We went through all of that and he that's when he got pretty vulgar and just told me I'm going to
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you're going to you know if you you kill my effing bill I'll never talk to you again. I said if
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I could kill this if I could kill this effing bill you shouldn't talk to me again because if I
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could I would but I can't the way you things is moving but I can tell you we're never going to go this way route
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again. So this is how we work kind of work things out. Then sure enough one month they come back with BBB.
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Yeah. build back better. Now they're talking $6 trillion. That bill was 10
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trillion if it was a penny with all the revamping. I couldn't get there, guys.
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And I told him, I said, "Mr. President, I'm sorry, man. I can't get there." And they tried for eight months, beat up on
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me. I mean, I had to have security. What is that? What is that like? Like, what does the pressure campaign look
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like? It's because it's not just the president exactly as you write in the book. It's people showing up at the house. It's people with little kayaks
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with protest signs around your boat. It's pretty intense. It's pretty intense. But I can tell you
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one thing. When every day uh the Capitol police call you and says your death
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threats are serious enough right now, so we have to have, you know, we'll meet you down at where you live and we'll
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bring you to work and we'll take you back home. You know, things are pretty serious. I never wanted to know the extent, but I knew they were serious.
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And then one time they said, "This is really getting serious now because now we got things. They know where your children go to school. They know where
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your grandchildren are, where your kids live." And I'm thinking, "Oh my god, this is crazy." And then I had a bunch
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of Boers come down, canoers. I had I got attacked by canoes. And I just said, "Guys, listen. We just disagree." It was
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all climate people. And I said, "Listen, I I want a clean climate. I just know we
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need energy to run our country, and there's got to be a balance." And uh so I said, "Come up to my office." They
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said, "What?" I said, "Come to my office tomorrow. We can sit and talk. You don't have to be out here in the water." But they thought that was the show they put
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on. But they came the next day. We talked. We agreed to disagree on some things and we agreed on some things.
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But Joe Joe, I just want to understand though, like do do you think that these are just random acts or do you think
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that it's it's an organized pressure campaign? I think it was organized. They were paid Shamath because a lot of my friends who
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live on the down at the river on the PTOIC River with me on the boat they
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they played like how can I get a job with you? How can I do this if I want to protest? They say oh just sign up and
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get $15 an hour. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. They were telling me that. But doesn't the message have to go from
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the White House? Like doesn't Biden's team somebody has to say like oh no Ron I'm going to be honest with
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you. strong claim, okay? Smart guy, good guy and everything, but he had gone so far to the left and he pushed Joe left
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cuz I kept telling when I first went over to the White House, I said, "Mr. President," I says, "You have the most liberal staff that
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I've ever seen." First time I went over. And he said, "Well, Joe, they tell me I have the most diversified staff." I
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said, "We're not talking about diversity, sir. We're talking about bat crazy. We're talking about people I've known, I've worked with in the hallway
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forever, and I know where they came and where they worked before. These are people real far left. And Ron put that
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team together. And I I know that because I kept saying that your staff is pushing you too far left, Mr. President. You've
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never been that far left. Right. And I just Someone says about, you know, I've I've always liked Joe Biden. We
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always got along well. Good man. I just don't think he lost the will to fight.
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Okay. Do you think it's that or can I can I just ask you all of these rumors, the comments about the autopen, the
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mental faculties? Never saw that. Never. and I've been with him a lot. Okay, we always had good
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conversations. Now, with that said, I just said, I know how much energy it takes if you've got to fight with your
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staff every day to do the things you want rather than the staff saying, "We'll take care of that, Mr. President." Because I would ask him, we
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agree on something, and I'd ask him a week or two later, and nothing had happened. So, I know there was no followup. You follow? So, I knew Ron was
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kind of driving the train. And and uh with that, I'll tell you how this thing came to to a head. They didn't. I said,
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"I'm not voting to get on the BBB." And this goes on for a while. There's just pressure and pressure me and they need
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my vote to even get on reconciliation. Right. Right. So, it finally came down to I said, you
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know, you've got some good things in that BBB bill. The one thing you really need is infrastructure. Remember the
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bipartisan infrastructure bill? Yeah. I said, this country, we haven't done anything for 30 years. I said, why don't
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you just let's pull that bill out. So, Schumer being the person he is, he said, I'll tell you what I'll do, Joe. I'll
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pull that bill out. And I said, "Let me work that bill, Chuck." And I said, "We'll get you a good bill and it'll be
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bipartisan. I'll show you can be done bipartisan." He says, "I'll tell you what. I'll do that and pull that out if
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you'll vote to get on BBB." So, the reason I'm leading up to this, that's when people say, "Well, Joe
00:22:01
promised to vote for it." I never promised to vote for BBB. I says, "I'll get on and let you work the bill. I'm
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never going to be for this bill." So anyway, we get we we get the be we
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get the bipartisan infrastructure bill. We work it and we pass it and the night we're passing the bill sitting on the
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Senate floor, Bernie Sanders says, "Come over and talk to me, Joe." And I sit down. He said, "Joe, are you going to vote for this BBB bill?" And I said,
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"Hell no, Bernie. You know, I was never been for that bill." And he says, "Well, at least you're being honest with me." I said, "I've been honest with everybody."
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I said, "You guys want to work it until the cows come home? That's fine. I can't do this." And he says, "You know, I've cut it down
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from six some from 6 trillion to three Detroit. I says, Bernie, you and I know
00:22:43
the game that's played here. You didn't cut it down. All you did was cut the timing down from 10 years to 5 years or
00:22:50
3 years to make it look like you were cutting them out. You know, they're never going to get rid of any of this once you start giving everything away,
00:22:57
right? Went through all of that. So, he says, you know, I can kill this bill. And I'm thinking at first when he said that, I
00:23:03
says, "Well, Bernie, if you're saying you can kill the bill here in the Senate and and
00:23:09
you're and and Vermont doesn't need any infrastructure, your bridge, roads and bridges, internet connections, your your
00:23:15
water and sewer line, everything's great, then you should vote against it." He said, "No, I'm not talking about here, Joe. I'm talking about on the
00:23:20
other side in the House with all the liberals or the progressives over there." So, I didn't think of anything.
00:23:26
We passed it that night and boom, the bill gets held up. You remember that? They kept getting held up and they kept
00:23:33
sending the president up there to talk to him and pass the bill and they wouldn't pass it and they kept saying Mansion lied to us. And I said,
00:23:38
"Shumer, you better tell them the truth. You know exactly how you got on this bill and you know I never ever said I
00:23:44
would ever vote for this bill." Let me Joe, if it's possible, I want to just go a little bit back and I want to
00:23:50
start with Obama. So you wrote in the book that Trump was the most engaged president you ever worked with and that
00:23:58
in the first I said two of them two two two of them okay and then Clinton Bill Clinton if you told me people that are engaging
00:24:04
with you and talk Bill and uh and President Trump and then you said in the first two years
00:24:10
you spoke with Trump more than you ever did under eight years of Obama.
00:24:15
Correct. Correct. contrast and compare Obama and Trump for us and just help us
00:24:21
understand the positives and negatives of both as you saw it. I think pres President Barack Obama is a very good
00:24:28
man, you know, and and but his politics, I knew him when he was a US senator
00:24:35
representing Illinois and he knew about the coal industry and I you of course I come from the coal industry being
00:24:41
governor of West Virginia and growing up in in the coal fields and we talked about fossil and why we needed this that
00:24:46
and everything. He wanted me to help him and vote for something that would help his called uh uh future gen, which is
00:24:53
the new uh coal fired plant that was going to be uh CO2 capture and all this and that. They called it back. That was
00:24:58
a billion. It was a billion dollar project. The government was sponsoring and I told him I couldn't participate. I
00:25:04
was one of the four states I pulled out and put my support behind and they got it. Never built the plant, but they got
00:25:10
the the award. So, I knew he knew it. And then all of a sudden he becomes a
00:25:15
number he becomes the the nominee from the Democratic party and switched everything to to renewables.
00:25:21
And I'm thinking, well, what are we going to do with all the things that the coal miners have done and all we've done
00:25:27
for our country? Does that mean you're going to bring new jobs or this or that? There was no plan to replace any
00:25:33
opportunities to live the quality of life and to live where they wanted to live with it their culture and and and
00:25:39
who we are and family oriented in the Appalachia. And boy, I'll tell you, we had a meeting
00:25:45
about one year afterwards and I was uh in the National Governance Association leadership and we had Democrats and
00:25:52
Republicans. I finally got a meeting with him in the Roosevelt room and I'll never forget that.
00:25:59
and uh and we were going around the table and different governors were speaking. He came to me and I says, "Mr.
00:26:05
President, you've done one hell of a good job at villainizing Cole." And he jumped up and it went nuts on me. I'm
00:26:12
thinking, "Woo boy, here we go." And he said, "Why would you say something like that?" And I said, "Because it's true."
00:26:17
I says, "You have basically put benchmarks that we can't make because there's no technology that we can get
00:26:24
our industry to meet those that gives you the right to shut it And he made a statement, if you recall, go ahead and
00:26:31
build a coal fired plant and we'll break you. He knew that we technology wasn't there. So I'm thinking, Christ, what
00:26:37
happened? You're leaving us behind. These people have nothing. They and they they said, "What happened to the West
00:26:42
Virginia Democrats?" I said, "I tell you exactly what happened. They ran them off. Now all of a sudden they've done
00:26:48
everything like a returning Vietnam veteran. We've done everything our country's asked. Now all of a sudden we're not good enough, clean enough,
00:26:54
green enough, or smart enough. They hell with them. Just don't." by the wayside. So you remember the slogan don't leave
00:27:00
anybody behind. At least Joe Biden picked up that slogan in 2020 and he has
00:27:06
did done a lot of things there trying to have incentives to bring businesses into
00:27:11
coal country if you will. So is it that Obama is just a an incredibly
00:27:16
strategic political calculator? He was elusive. He's elucid. What does that mean as a politician?
00:27:23
I don't know. I mean, I just, you know, when I talked to Bill Clinton, you know,
00:27:28
it's always, it was always what about this and he was always so inquisitive about this and that, what I was thinking
00:27:33
about this and that. Then we always had a couple good jokes to tell each other and kind of broke eye, you know, we had a lot of fun. And with with and with
00:27:41
President Donald Trump, you know, you go meet him, he's charming as can be. Sits down, talks with you. He says,
00:27:46
"Hey, Joe, what about this? What about that?" No. And you know, we talk about a lot of things. And then one
00:27:51
time I told, "Mr. president, just call me last. I was the only Democrat he was talking to. Come over, have breakfast,
00:27:57
come over lunch or do whatever, come to a movie. And uh had a lot of fun and and I said, "Just call me last." He said,
00:28:03
"Why you say that?" I said, "I don't know who in the hell you talk to last, but that seems what happens. I'd like to
00:28:08
have one of those dates." less stuff. So, a lot of your this
00:28:14
profiling courage around spending and entitlements
00:28:20
in the book you talk about comes from this rugged individualism, personal responsibility.
00:28:26
Accountability. Yeah. And this accountability that you grew up with. Yeah. As a as a Catholic as well. You I
00:28:34
had that as well. A little bit of guilt if you don't work hard as well sprinkled in there to as a back stop. We're
00:28:39
looking at a country now where it seems uh the the operating principle is how do
00:28:45
I get mine? Hey, you got something. I need to get something. And now you've got Mandami in New York.
00:28:51
He's going to give free pizza and bagels and bus trips and whatever it is,
00:28:57
whatever people want, he's going to give it to them for free. Yeah. You have not been able to failed
00:29:03
in some ways to turn this around in the country this entitlement as many of us have who have been screaming from the
00:29:10
rooftops like ask not you talk about this in the book ask not what your country can do for you what can you do for your country you bring it up and
00:29:16
over again so I think we failed in the last two decades and socialism's on the rise why
00:29:22
is that how do we turn it around let me just say the last at the BBB the last time President Trump President uh
00:29:28
Biden I had met where He calls me up into the White House and he takes me up in stairs to the living quarters and boy
00:29:34
but when you go up there that's really going to the woodshed if you will and we were talking and everything and I said
00:29:39
Mr. President I can't get there. I really can't get there sir. And I said you know you and I are both at the same vintage. You're a little bit
00:29:46
older but not that much. I said we're we're in the same vintage. And I said, I remember very vividly as a 13-year-old
00:29:52
kid watching television, inauguration 196 of John Kennedy asked not what your
00:29:57
country can do for you, what you can do for your country. If we pass this piece of legislation,
00:30:02
you're asking me to vote for the BBB, you're changing the psychic to the nation of how much more can my country
00:30:08
do for me? I wasn't born that way. I wasn't raised that way. I don't believe that way, and I can't do it. You could put a gun to my head and say, "I'm gonna
00:30:14
pull it pull the trigger. I can't vote for it." And then all hell broke loose after that. So how it happened is this.
00:30:22
My my grandmother took everybody in. Okay? We lived by the railroad tracks between the creek and the railroad
00:30:28
tracks in a little three- room garage apartment. And my grandparents had a little home right beside us. She took
00:30:33
everybody in. I never knew. I just watched and I I was eldest of the of the
00:30:38
boys of about 20 of us grandkids. We had to whitewash her basement, keep it clean
00:30:43
and a nice place for people to stay. There was no social social network back in the 50s.
00:30:49
We had people that would ride the train. You can call what you want to. These were people that fallen out of society.
00:30:55
They were all intelligent, smart craftsman, this and that. And they they and alcoholics probably most of them.
00:31:01
And they'd come down. They knew he could go off and go to a mama and she'd take care of them. She said, "I got three rules.
00:31:07
Can't you can't uh you can't drink. You can't swear. and you've got to work.
00:31:15
So my first introduction was there was rules and they were all good rules.
00:31:21
Pretty basic operating system. Okay. So you know what after about a while they'd be we had some of the best
00:31:26
painters and carpenters you ever seen but we'd lose them every now and then. I said okay we had names for everybody. We
00:31:32
had Willbar Willie Pegle Peggy. You name it we had them. They were all characters.
00:31:37
Oh peg leg peggy especially. He had a peg firecracker. He had a peg leg, a wooden peg leg,
00:31:43
and he got caught in the was in my building. He got caught in the tracks one time. We had to pull him out. Anyway,
00:31:49
so I said, "Mom, okay, what happened to Dloid? Where'd Lloyd go?" "Oh, honey, he's on a toot again." And you know the toot was always the bottle. And when you
00:31:56
see the old-timers on the tooth, they go like this. Uh and I says, she said, "Don't worry, honey. He'll be back in
00:32:02
six weeks." And he just the cycle. That was it. So I learned that my grandfather
00:32:07
people come in and papa, my grandfather never kept books. He just kept all his money in his pocket. He worked. That's
00:32:13
how he worked. Immigrant from Italy. And papa say, "Uh, they come and say, "Hey pop, no matter who they were, "Hey papa,
00:32:19
can I borrow five? Can I have five?" He said, "Sure, honey." Called everybody honey. He said, "Here's a broom and shovel. Go up and clean the parking lot
00:32:25
and I'll give you the five." I understood you had to do something for the five. Okay.
00:32:31
Right. He he says they say, "Papa, I'll be right back." He looked at me and he smiled. He said, "Don't worry, Joe." He
00:32:36
said, "Only about half of them take me up on it." So I knew I knew you had to
00:32:41
do something. Now that's that's a filtering mechanism. Yeah. And it relates directly to your belief
00:32:46
though in having a work requirement. I wanted a work requirement for anybody
00:32:52
capable able-bodied to work. And here's the thing. They got on me said MMsion's killing child tax credits. I says I'm
00:32:59
killing child tax credits. Right. First of all, you have child tax credits up to $400,000 of income. You really
00:33:06
want to know who needs the child tax credits? people right above the poverty guideline, mostly single females, above
00:33:11
25,000 a year up to about 75. They need it, okay? And they're working. Please
00:33:18
help them. Okay? And I'd go into all of this, Jason and Shimoth, and then and then they and they said, "Oh, no. We got
00:33:24
to do this, that, across the board." I said, ' Don't you think that rather than just sending checks to people that have
00:33:31
children that don't work and won't work and sitting at home, why would they need
00:33:36
child care money when they're sitting home with their ch children? I said, that makes no sense to me at all. I
00:33:43
can't go home and explain it. And my northstar has been this as long as I've been in political life. if I can't go
00:33:49
back to my little hometown of Farmington or the people I grew up with and explain it cuz I knew they wouldn't let me get
00:33:54
by with anything. They'd hold your feet to the fire and that's where that's how it is and never changed.
00:34:01
Do you think that we're now in sort of this intractable period where there can't be any centism? There can't be
00:34:08
this idea that you work and then you earn something that there's that dignity of work. Instead, it's these extremes
00:34:14
that are constantly about what giveaway can I give to people to get them on my side. Is that where we are?
00:34:20
Let me give you the other thing about me and Bernie one time talking and Bernie wanted free tuition, right? Always wanted free tuition and then they
00:34:26
finally they thought, well, we got we'll get it free if we go junior colleges. I
00:34:32
says, I'm not for anything free. I'm for earning it. Here's what I'm going to tell you. If first they talked about
00:34:38
free college. I says I says Bernie my son's at that time 40ome years old. I
00:34:45
said my son's 40 years old. If you had free education, free tuition, he'd still
00:34:50
be in school. He liked it so much. I said he liked it so much he'd still be
00:34:56
there later. So anyway, I said no, I'm not for that.
00:35:01
And I so I said, let me tell you about free. If we if we identified skill sets that we're need and we can teach them in
00:35:06
junior colleges, have them sign up, get a Stafford loan, guaranteed federal loan, they don't pay
00:35:13
it back until basically, you know, until they finish their education. So, if they
00:35:19
finish in two years, they took a Stafford loan, they took what they needed to get educated on, they took a Stafford loan in a two-year community
00:35:25
college, they get a degree in a skill set, we forgive it. They've earned it.
00:35:31
You didn't give it on the front end. Because let me tell you what happens on the front end. Only half of them ever get through maybe a 25%. You know, they
00:35:37
go for four years, you know, and you I don't know if you know how they give money. There's no financial literacy
00:35:43
required at all. You all have to do is show the income of your family and you're they have a a
00:35:49
scale they go by or you can get 12,000 a year. You might only need four. I'll guarantee you. You tell a kid that comes
00:35:56
from poverty and you tell them they can get 12,000, they'll take it all. They're going to take it all. They don't know what they don't know what acred
00:36:02
interest is. They don't know about paying this back. It's a death trap. They don't know any of that. They drop
00:36:07
out in two years for one reason or another. Then it all comes due. They had had a payment up until then.
00:36:12
No one's explaining anything. And I said told Elizabeth Warren, I says, "Liz, can't we just change the Stafford
00:36:19
program to where you have to have financial literacy? You cannot get a loan without financial literacy."
00:36:24
What was her answer? I It didn't happen. Let's just put it that Yeah, put it that way. What what's
00:36:31
driving I mean I understand populism, I understand trying to buy votes, but what
00:36:36
at the core in your opinion drives these individuals who think that not learning
00:36:42
to sustain yourself in society and to get all of these freebies?
00:36:47
What's in their mind? What are they missing about just the basic human condition that we have to work for
00:36:53
stuff? the the human operating system is we need challenges and when you don't have purpose in life it's it's a road
00:36:59
it's that's the primrose path it's not a a good place to go you know I don't mind it's devil's playground as my
00:37:04
grandmother would say rest in peace let me say to both of you all about what has happened in this political process
00:37:10
and I've come to the conclusion we need to have term limits and I'm going to tell you how I came to that conclusion
00:37:16
when I was a governor I was doing a town hall meeting in southern west Virginia a little lady got stood up in the back and
00:37:21
she said Joe I wish you were for term limit And I said, "Well, tell me why, Suz." I I knew her and Susie, I said, "Tell me why." She says, "Well, I just
00:37:28
think this would be it'd be better for us to have turnover." And I says, and I
00:37:33
wasn't for it. And I I gave her all the reasons. I said, "You're going to lose your most experienced people with the talent and know how." Boom, boom, boom.
00:37:40
I went through everything. She said, "Joe, think of it this way. If we had term limits, maybe we get one good term
00:37:46
out of you." I had no comeback. She convinced me right there. And from that point on,
00:37:53
I've been for term limits. And I'm more for it today than I've ever been for it. And I'm I'm And the reason I'm telling
00:37:58
you, yeah, maybe we'd get one good term where you'd have the courage to do the
00:38:04
conviction with the oath you took to defend and protect the Constitution, do the job, put country before party, quit
00:38:10
playing this game, quit worrying about getting reelected. And it's gotten to the point now public service truly when
00:38:17
he said John Kennley says the most noblest of all profession public service that's gone. It's fame and fortune now.
00:38:25
I get in there I can keep turnurning it and churn it and churning it. And I've just said that basically the Senate two
00:38:30
six-year terms is enough. 12 years is enough. Let's actually look inside the political
00:38:35
parties for one second. Oh boy. Let's start with maybe an easy one, but it's actually quite maybe a nuanced
00:38:41
answer. Tell us who you think are the two most
00:38:47
dynamic senators, one Democrat, one Republican. I was thinking about that because if I
00:38:53
was you, I would have been asking the same question. I I can I can name six or seven on both sides.
00:38:58
Oh, please. Yeah, let's take Yeah, let's go. And when I'm saying that, people that I've worked with, I know I know their
00:39:04
DNA. Okay. Yeah. First of all, I'm going to always be always be u differential to former
00:39:12
governors. A governor can't afford to be a governor of one side. And I'll give you the most
00:39:19
perfect simplest answer to that is that pothole that busted my tire and
00:39:25
basically bent my rim and messed my car up did not have a Democrat or Republican name on it. But I was responsible for making sure
00:39:32
the repairs on the roads didn't do that. Okay. So you like Senator King, Angus King from Maine, former governor. You
00:39:40
have Mark Warner, Virginia, former governor. Tim Kaine, former governor.
00:39:45
You have Jean Shaheen, former governor. Maggie Hassan, former governor. You have Mike Rounds, former governor. John
00:39:51
Hovind, former governor. Lisa Marowsky and Susan Collins were always my go-to people on the Republican side. And Mitt
00:39:57
Romney, two of three of the best of the best. You could always work with them because they were always looking to do
00:40:02
the right thing. They didn't care about politics. And then I always had you got Senator Cortez Masto, you have uh you
00:40:11
know there's so many Jackie Rosen on the Tom Tillis on the on the Senate side on
00:40:16
the Republican side. Bill Cassidy is one of the best of the best. Bill Cassidy is
00:40:21
bright, sharp, always wanting to do the right thing, always very very articulate and he will get down to the nitty-gritty
00:40:27
and go into the depths of it to find out an answer. And you got Mike Rounds, former governor, great guy. South
00:40:33
Dakota. These are people that I know have the ability to do it, to make it
00:40:39
happen. You just got to push, push, push. I was asked a question the other day, uh, Shamath, about what would you
00:40:45
do, Joe, if you were still there? If I was king for a day and I had the ability to use the Roosevelt room in the White
00:40:52
House, I'd bring him over. I'd put him in the room. I'd put Schumer and put
00:40:57
John Thun and put his their teams together and say, "Guys, you're not getting out till you come to a deal. This is not that hard." Here's what
00:41:04
we're not Everybody's wanting to blame. Who's whose fault is it? Let's let's look at whose responsibility it is. Not
00:41:11
fault. Whose responsibility? My friends in the Republican party have
00:41:16
the trifecta. President's Republican, House is Republican, Senate's Republican. You
00:41:23
have the mantle. You have the agavel. You've got to keep the keep the train
00:41:28
running. You got to keep this place open. And I've said this, I know that the president has the ability to do
00:41:35
that. But you you can't always have politics driving the end result to do your job,
00:41:42
and that's to keep it open. But I've never voted for a shutdown. I've gotten caught in a couple shutdowns, but I
00:41:48
never voted for them. and they're tough to get out of because people get ingrained and get they get in like
00:41:53
there's se feeder and cement can't get out. So I think the president has to
00:41:58
move this and I've said this our great country and the president with his leadership over in the Middle East is
00:42:03
able to get Hamas and the Israelis to sit down and make a deal. Surely to God
00:42:08
I know the president can get a Democrat and Republicans to make a deal. I know that. But everybody's got to quit
00:42:14
playing the politics because of what the what the outcome of the 26 election. It'll take care of itself.
00:42:21
Which group hates each other more, Democrats, Republicans, or Oh, that's a good question. Yeah,
00:42:26
I was going to say like which one hates each other more in your opinion. It's a shame. Let me tell this is such an easy lift. You know what happened
00:42:31
with this healthcare thing? I was right in the middle of this whole thing. I know exactly when they did the Affordable Care Act and you remember in
00:42:38
2017 that um John McCain made the famous vote voted down. Okay. Yep. Yep.
00:42:44
I was in the back hallway when all that unfolded back of the Senate before John came out and made his vote and John been
00:42:50
getting pressured heavily by the White House President Trump and his staff by that at that time. John finally walked
00:42:56
out and getting ready to walk out and he was sitting there and I came through the hallway and I said, "John, listen. I'm
00:43:02
not crazy about this Affordable Care Act the way it you have to be forced to buy a product whether you like it or not.
00:43:07
You can't shop it and you're fine if you don't. The penalties makes no sense. I said, "But John, if the Republicans have
00:43:14
anything they can give us, I probably support it and vote for it. They don't have anything to replace it with." And
00:43:20
what it did do, it helped it helped poor working people that that were that were
00:43:25
using the emergency room and were using workers compensation for the only deliveries that they had for uh for
00:43:31
their health care. So, and then pre-existing condition, we stopped that from being eliminated from the process.
00:43:37
So, people could get for the first time any type of care. So, that was good, but somebody had to pay for it. So, they
00:43:43
switched it. Once you got above the 150 percentile of poverty, then you were hit
00:43:49
pretty hard to pay for what we're giving away on this end. That means you have a broken system. Sooner or later, you got
00:43:54
to fix the system. And no one was willing to fix it. They're just moving it around. So the Democrats when COVID
00:44:00
hit, hot dog, that's our time to shine now. Let's go ahead. And man, they went
00:44:05
to 400% and even greater, right? Republicans are saying, can't we just get back, which is a normal thing. Can
00:44:10
you get back to precoid? Well, it's hard to take something back, Jason and Shimoth, once you you got up there
00:44:17
because now what you can do is say, "Okay, for one year, we're going to extend this for one year. We're going to
00:44:24
come from 400 to 200. We're going to gradually get back and we're going to try to fix our delivery system of health
00:44:30
care. The insurance companies, insurance companies are running health care. It's not the professional doctors, the
00:44:35
professional healthcare. It's insurance telling you what you can, what you can't, what you're paying for, chasing the dollars.
00:44:42
That has to change, but someone has to be willing to do it. So, that's where we are. There's a an issue, Joe, which is
00:44:48
that they're also talking about the unintended consequences of the cost we have to bear for folks that don't have a
00:44:56
legal immigration status, right? That there's a burden that that includes. Can you
00:45:02
give us your opinion on and you can expand immigration whatever immigration and but maybe you can start
00:45:07
with the healthcare because I think that's the that's the wedge issue that seems to be slowing everybody down and
00:45:12
maybe give us a Well, the Democrats are telling you that that that it's that's not in there that
00:45:18
im that illegal immigrants who've come to this country are not getting the benefits of of of uh the citizens of our
00:45:26
country when they hit hard times. And people will say, "Well, why did you write this this this in in your uh in
00:45:33
your um declaration of what you want done as far as to bring the, you know,
00:45:39
to bring it back and let's get going again." You put that in one of your demands.
00:45:44
There's some reference to that in the demand. So, it kind of showed what their intentions were. The bottom line is is
00:45:50
that no, there's no way immigrants that come here illegally and don't have a
00:45:56
pathway forward or we've been, you know, into a working pathway forward. Uh that
00:46:02
should ever happen. You should never be able to have benefits coming here. That should not be attraction for that. And
00:46:08
that's what they're saying had happened. I beg the Democrats, are you crazy about doing asylum at the border? We've never
00:46:14
done that. Mhm. We had a 2013 piece of legislation by bipartisanship at that time. It was a
00:46:21
bipartisan gang of eight to put it together and we passed it with 68 or 69 votes in the Senate. Senate to the
00:46:29
House. John Boehner, I beg John Boehner to put it on the floor. I like John Boehner. He's a friend of mine. John
00:46:34
says, "Joe, I can't put it on. Eric Caner just got defeated in Richmond because a person from the far right
00:46:41
accused Eric Caner for supporting this immigration reform." and they said it's
00:46:46
amnesty and by God, anybody that came here the wrong way has got to get out of here. We got to send them back. That
00:46:52
bill that we put together in a bipartisan way that basically gave you so many days, let's say 60, 90 days or
00:47:00
more, I forget the the term right the amount right now to go to the courthouse and turn yourself in, pay a fine for
00:47:07
misdemeanor. Let's say it was $750. And then you would get in the back of the queue. Well, once you turned yourself
00:47:13
in, we would know if you had any criminal record or not. Then we knew how who to go after because those people
00:47:19
been here for 10, 20, 30 years. They brought little children here now who are adults serving in the military and
00:47:25
basically professing teaching in our schools. These are productive,
00:47:30
supportive. They love the country as much if not more than Americans that were born here. So, this is what gets
00:47:37
me. We had that bill and couldn't get it because they were afraid that he would
00:47:42
lose the right. He lost them anyway. The far right wasn't going. Tea Party at
00:47:47
that time wasn't going to go. But John could have put it on the floor and it would have passed. And I think if you talk to John,
00:47:52
do you think Americans would be shocked if we really knew the inner workings to understand that at the end of the day,
00:48:00
bipartisan coalitions and reforms literally stop on a dime on all number of issues because a person one day
00:48:07
interprets and reads the tea leaves and says yes, no, yes, no. Is that mean is that really basically what happens? Well, let's let's look at here. Let me
00:48:14
give you the most the easiest thing we could have done with uh uh there's two things. Don't ask, don't tell. And then
00:48:21
you have uh the DOBS act as far as on on uh uh
00:48:27
abortion. Okay. With the Supreme Court. Sure. Well, the Supreme Court, you know, on
00:48:32
that we've lived uh with Roie Wade for 50 years of unprecedented law. It was
00:48:37
unprecedented law. I mean 50. We never codified it through the legislature, but
00:48:43
the courts it was precedented. Now all of a sudden that blows apart and everybody gets torn apart. All they had
00:48:49
to do was just codify Roe vie Wade. That's all we had to do. And I I teamed
00:48:55
up with Lisa Marowsky and and Susan Collins and we had a bill that all we did simply codify. It wasn't it wasn't
00:49:03
pro-life enough and it wasn't pro-choice enough. But it's something we learned to navigate for 50 years. Well, guess what?
00:49:09
Our Democrat friends wanted to open up wide wide open abortions up. Okay, they
00:49:14
can tell you what they want, what they intended, but that's exactly what they were trying to do. And I told him, I
00:49:20
says, I called him out. I says, "Are you going to try to explain to people to make them believe what you this piece of
00:49:25
legislation you're trying to put through on the freedom of choice is going to be
00:49:30
uh just codifying Roie Wayade? That is so insincere and I will not have any
00:49:36
part of it." And then the Republicans want to just double down. I mean, make
00:49:41
it crim criminalizing abortions. We couldn't because of politics and and
00:49:46
I've seen things like that that we had it right in the palm of our hand and let it slip through and we could have done
00:49:53
that and that's on the we could have done the immigration uh and right now you'd never be in this immigration fact.
00:49:59
A lot of this history gets swept under the rug because nobody really knows what was possible because people like you
00:50:04
typically don't leave and then write a book like this to kind of just share all of it. And then part of it is then when
00:50:12
you do share unless people like us help amplify these stories, it's never said and it's never it's never really well
00:50:19
understood. The biggest problem, Shimarth, is this. Very few people who have been in political life and had any notoriety at
00:50:26
all have a they they have almost an impossible time of saying, "I got it wrong. I made
00:50:33
a mistake. I tried. I thought I had the answers, but I didn't. I misread that one." You
00:50:40
How many times have you heard anybody in politics today or have been in politics can still say that I screwed up royally
00:50:47
on don't ask don't tell? And I'll tell you why. I was there my first 2011. All
00:50:52
the joint chiefs of staff were there and explaining and Obama wanted to get rid of it. Okay? Because before everybody uh
00:51:00
kind of kept a don't ask don't tell. That was a Bill Clinton thing. Let's let's let's let let bygones be bygones.
00:51:06
Let let the sleeping dog lie. Well, it came out now. Obama wanted to get rid of it. Okay. And then I'm listening to
00:51:13
everybody talk. It got down to the comedant of the Marines and the Marine comedant said, "Listen, General." He
00:51:19
says, "I've got 50% of my troops on the battle line right now. This is a heck of a policy change. Could jeopardize the
00:51:26
welfare and well-being of my troops." So, I was against it. I said, "Don't get rid of it." No. No. That means if you
00:51:33
were, you know, if you were known uh to be uh gay, then you could not serve. I
00:51:40
was totally wrong on that because it they went ahead and passed it. Thank goodness. And then I found out that it
00:51:46
didn't change anything. Everybody already knew. Everybody knew who was who and what their pre sexual preferences
00:51:52
were. It didn't affect their their ability to fight or defend our country. So, I made a mistake. I got that wrong
00:52:00
and I lived up to it. And I said, "I made a mistake. I'm sorry, but I thought I was doing the right thing listening to
00:52:05
a professional." So, those things happen. But I I don't know how we get to that. And that's why I kept saying if we
00:52:11
had two six-year terms for a senator, six two-year terms from a House member, one 18-year term for the United States
00:52:18
Supreme Court, and one six-year term for the president, maybe we could all do a better job by not worrying about the
00:52:24
next election. You know, as we get towards the end of our time, I want to talk to you a little bit about how dysfunctional and
00:52:30
unpopular uh the Democrats and the Republicans have been the last couple of years since
00:52:35
Nixon. Uh I think Trump's first and second term both uh you know 30 I think
00:52:42
he's about 37% approval rating right now. Uh Biden ended with like 34%. He
00:52:47
was averaging about 40%. People really are not happy with their choices and
00:52:53
there's a no labels group. I've been kind of mocked and dismissed here on
00:52:58
this very podcast talking about I think there's a perfect time for a third party. And uh you know we had Ross
00:53:05
Perau, people forget he got 19% I believe of the uh popular vote. You are in my camp.
00:53:11
You believe there's a possibility and that we're primed for it. Give your um
00:53:16
give your best um explanation of why you think now is the time for a third party to challenge these two extremely
00:53:23
unpopular parties. Jason, we've got to change the process of how we know you have a duopoly right now. The duopoly is a business monopoly
00:53:31
almost, but it's a duopoly. You have the corporation of the Republican and the corporation of the Democrat and that's a
00:53:37
business mode and they can control the flow. So how do you control the flow? By the primaries you can say well it's by
00:53:43
redistricting and all this. It's really the primary process. The primary process is this. I cannot being a no party
00:53:50
affiliate right now an independent that's that's my registration. If I want
00:53:55
to vote for a friend of mine who's a Republican in West Virginia, the Republican party in West Virginia will not let me vote in their primary unless
00:54:01
I register Republican. The Democrats do the same all over the country. They do that. they close them down cuz if they
00:54:08
can control the flow and you have maybe during a uh let's say the 2024 election let's say 24 million people maybe 11 or
00:54:16
12 on each side DNR participated in the p national primary but 160 million of us voted in the
00:54:24
general election but 24 million people made a decision on our choices that's it
00:54:30
and what I've said this is our democracy is still a experiment we thought we
00:54:36
could govern Ourel and by governing yourself that means we can pick representatives that represent us. I
00:54:42
can't even vote. So how am I I can't participate. 45 to 50% of us can't participate in the
00:54:49
primary process. We're the largest nomination of of registered voters who
00:54:55
can't participate. You're referring, of course, independence. Independence. No party affiliation. Independence. There's only about 23 24%
00:55:03
that are registered Democrats. about 27 28 I think registered Republicans. The rest are like myself. And I said,
00:55:11
"Wait a minute. The the the Voting Rights Act, they took that, you know, to the court uh about the African-Americans
00:55:18
not having the right to participate and vote and they won that one. Why don't we take this to court? Why don't we do this
00:55:24
on this podcast? You all take off with it and run with it. It should be we're not I am not able to be represented and
00:55:31
I can't pick a representative cuz I can't participate. Let me just summarize what you're saying. You think there's a legal avenue
00:55:37
under the Voting Rights Act that says what we really need is first pass the post or some form of electoral form.
00:55:45
Otherwise, if you just do it via these primaries, we're getting disenfranchised. My position is this
00:55:50
that the majority of people who are registered to participate in a general election in the United States of America
00:55:57
are are basically prevented from participating in the primary process of
00:56:02
electing who you're going to vote for in the general. I think there definitely is a court procedure that could could
00:56:08
remedy this and basically stop these closed primaries. Mhm.
00:56:14
Let's talk about 26 just specifically. What do you think happens in the Senate and the House? What is the balance of
00:56:20
power in your mind coming out of the 2016 election? The only thing I have I have said and I will continue to say this because my
00:56:26
Republican friends are the only ones that are saying we will not get rid of the filibuster in the United States
00:56:31
Senate. And I hold that I hold them to their word. These are my friends, John John
00:56:37
Thun and his and his staff and and all of his people on his leadership team.
00:56:42
And I hope the Republicans keep the Senate. Now, for that, if you want a little bit
00:56:48
of balance of power to change challenge a little bit, calm it down a little bit, then you'd want the Democrats to win the
00:56:54
House, the Congress. And if that could happen, then it might calm it down. We've got to calm it down.
00:57:01
We got to we got to turn down the temperature. And if that would turn it down, maybe fine because when you have
00:57:07
the trifecta, you can keep throwing stuff up there and pushing things pretty darn hard. Joe, I know that Jason has a
00:57:13
final question, which I'll let him do, but I want to I want to give you my question. Okay. Let's start with from when you went into
00:57:20
the Senate to now when you're leaving. Yeah. President Obama, then President Trump, then President Biden, and now President
00:57:26
Trump. Give us the expectation versus the outcome
00:57:33
on what you've seen from these four presidential terms, if you will.
00:57:39
expectation versus outcome for for these four periods. Expectation on Obama was was that he was
00:57:46
bringing a complete different scenario to it. an all-inclusive scenario as you
00:57:52
will every now it was possibility for all of us to participate no matter what
00:57:57
your gender what your race were boom boom boom so with that we were expecting an awful lot and I think he had a lot of
00:58:04
compassion but he just it just didn't communicate well with the legislature I
00:58:09
didn't know that because I didn't serve with him until I got there at the end of 2010 2011 and I could see you've got to
00:58:17
participate you've got to get involved you got to call them over to the White House and work him. I thought he could have done a lot more with that to get
00:58:24
better participation. And basically, we got rid. They got rid of the filibuster. We lost the filibuster for the uh judges
00:58:33
judicial system and I wasn't upset by losing him for basically appointments that were will and pleasure, but it went
00:58:39
further than that. So, that I think that help that hap helped erode a lot of the
00:58:45
checks and balances we had. Then it went further after that, too. So, with that being said, then you go right in from
00:58:51
there. And then we have uh Trump. We didn't know what to expect, but we were thinking, here's a businessman
00:58:58
always told us how successful and things of this we were expecting some things. And I I met with him from day one and
00:59:05
when 2016 uh and talked to him and then I met with him 2017 2018 and there's a cute thing
00:59:12
in the book there when you go through my book about he said he wasn't going to campaign against me in 2018. He liked
00:59:18
me. I'm his friend. Well, he ended up coming six times to my state and they spent an extra 25 million trying to beat
00:59:24
me. And then afterwards, he calls me one week later, "Come have lunch with me." And I walk in, he says, "I told you we
00:59:30
couldn't beat him." And I'm thinking, "Well, Jesus, what the hell am I going to say?" It wasn't for lack of trying.
00:59:35
He says, "Oh, Joe, you know I didn't want to beat you." I says, "I knew you weren't serious, Mr. President. If you were serious, you'd have spent 50
00:59:41
million and came 12 times." So, so that's what I'm dealing with. But
00:59:48
a lot of the things he did, I was more in sync with what he was doing because he understood we had to have an all-in
00:59:53
energy policy. Yeah. Well, and I still would tell him, I said, "Mr. President, we need everything. We need oil. We need gas. We
01:00:00
need coal. We need to use the technology." I said, "You cannot eliminate your way to clean environment. You can innovate it, but you can't
01:00:06
eliminate it. You've got to use technology." Boom. So, he was more in tune with what I was trying to push
01:00:12
through than my Democrat base was and the people I was working with. And then we have Joe Biden who I had an awful lot
01:00:18
of, oh man, here's a guy I've worked with for a long time. And in Joe Biden, when there was a shutdown with Ted Cruz
01:00:24
in 2013, I'll never forget this. It was Biden uh Obama sends Joe Biden to make a
01:00:31
deal. Open this government up, get a deal done. Joe Biden goes directly to Mitch McConnell, sits down, old buddies
01:00:37
and old friends. They cut a deal. We open the Cong We open the government back up. And I went into caucus the next
01:00:43
the next week. go in the caucus with the Democrats. And uh Harry Reid says, "I
01:00:48
told President Obama, don't ever send that damn Joe Biden back to make a deal. We don't want him here at all making a deal for Democrats." Now he's the
01:00:56
president. Okay. Going to be the president. I think, boy, we got it now. And boy, was that a let down. Went far
01:01:02
to the left. And I don't think that was in his heart. But he came out of Iowa
01:01:08
bad. Came out of New Hampshire even worse. went to South Carolina, got resurrected, and within three weeks,
01:01:14
everybody dropped south. Hadn't make a deal, I think, with the wrong side of that, and try to calm it down. And just
01:01:20
for the sake of being president, I think he had to sign up, and his people took him to the promised land of the far
01:01:26
left, which has no return. Now, with with I think President Trump has a
01:01:31
chance to be monumental in what he can do because he has that support from a real strong base. I want to see the
01:01:38
compassion. I want to see the man that could just charm you when you walk in and talk to him. I want to see that being shown now. He is the perfect
01:01:46
president for the Middle East. Strong man, strong arm. He I say what I mean. I mean what I say and boom, boom, boom.
01:01:52
Using my military might work in the western part of the world where we have
01:01:57
diplomacy. We work we give and take a little bit. He's a good enough of a negotiator to understand that, but
01:02:03
they're still playing his people are pushing him to stay hard hard. And it's
01:02:09
just not it's not what we need right now in America. We need a leader with that compassion, but the ability to bring us
01:02:16
together and make us work together in the United States. Last question before I give it to Jason for the last last question. If you had
01:02:23
to if you had to think about 2028 people that are on both sides I think I
01:02:30
think the Republicans mostly the dy cast but let's not frontr run that but on the Democratic side maybe if you will who
01:02:37
are some people that you think could bring some normaly
01:02:42
try to veer that party back to more of the center are there younger emerging people that you see in the Democratic
01:02:49
caucus and in the democratic party that you think has this potential. I'm not sure it's going to come out if
01:02:55
we have anybody when the United States Senate on the Democrat side. I people that are capable, Mark Warner, my dear
01:03:01
friend, I know he's capable is all the all the get get out, but I'm just not sure you're going to break loose because
01:03:07
you get you get identified. You get labeled. You know, you're in that Democrat party that was just so far to
01:03:13
the left and this and that. It's going to be somebody coming whether it's going to be a governor or an upand cominging
01:03:18
uh statesman within the party or it could be you know someone's talked about
01:03:23
Stephen A. Smith, you know, Stephen. Yeah. I mean, he is incredible. I'm going to
01:03:29
tell you one thing. Incredibly dynamic. He's as center left, center right as you want. He can go both. He's not going to go extreme.
01:03:35
As good as it gets. There's a lot of good people, I think, could rise up. Now, will the Democratic party accept
01:03:40
him? The Democrat party has been has has been basically uh uh taken over by the
01:03:46
extremes. Okay? And they say, "Well, the MAGA party's taken over the Republican party. The Grand Old Party wants to be
01:03:52
grand again. Democrats want to be responsible and compassionate. Again, I tell people I'm fiscally responsible and
01:03:58
socially compassionate, which I think most Americans are. But, uh, and then you have I know Steven Basher. I mean, I
01:04:05
know Andy Basher. I served with his dad. We were governors together. I know good family. I know those people.
01:04:12
So, there's going to be some people rise up that might be surprising. Shapiro. Do you think that there are entrepreneurs
01:04:18
like Donald Trump but on the left or do you think that that avenue is closed for business people on the Democratic side?
01:04:25
I wouldn't think so because a business person on the Democratic side could come across with a heart and a soul and be a
01:04:31
little bit more a little bit more softer in their approach, you know, and I think
01:04:36
be able to hit a nerve there. We have someone with the smarts to do it and we have someone with the compassion but
01:04:42
also the strength to make sure that we remain I I'm concerned my biggest
01:04:47
concern I have is what Mike Mullen told me in 2011 my first armed services meeting Shimat and Jason I sat there I I
01:04:54
wanted they asked the question what's the greatest fear the United States of America has right today and that's 2011
01:05:00
I thought he's going to talk about China about North Korea about Iran on and on and on he never missed a beat within one
01:05:07
second he says the debt of the nation will take us down. We will fold because the debt we have and it's going to be
01:05:13
unmanaged debt which will make us lead us to make cowardly decisions and we're at 37 trillion. One every $5 that we
01:05:22
receive for revenue to run our country takes $1 of that 20% just to pay the
01:05:28
debt on our our interest our interest on our debt. That's horrible. Praise him. Jamie Diamond, Bob Iger come
01:05:34
to mind. Absolutely. that big. I mean, I I would be receptive to all there's a lot of good people. I think it's going
01:05:41
to be very interesting. The Democratic party will have to get out of its own way and his ideology left.
01:05:46
People aren't going that direction. Let me give you one other thing, Jason, to think about. Bernie and and and AOC is going around
01:05:53
the country with these rallies and rallies. Yeah. If that was effective and that's where the country's going, why has the
01:05:59
Democrats lost lost basically people who were
01:06:05
registered? They've lost registration of over 100,000 people who've left the
01:06:10
Democratic party since they've started that crusade. Nobody wants it. It's a road to nowhere. No, that's exactly right.
01:06:16
Wow. Big Joe, you you've been so uh honest and candid here. It's okay if I call you Big Joe because
01:06:21
I just I don't know. I've been called Big Joe. You know what Joe Biden called me. He says, "Jojo." I could always tell
01:06:26
if he was in a good mood with me. He said, "Hey, Jojo, what's going on?" And if he was pissed, "Hey, Joe, what's
01:06:32
wrong?" Oh. Oh, yeah. I'll just call you big Joe because I got a lot of respect for you. Um, okay.
01:06:37
You've been so honest today and so uh you can be permission to be totally candid here. How close did you come to
01:06:43
running as an independent for president and you can be especially candid about
01:06:48
this. How would you now that you got this great book and a great track record obviously a profile and courage. How
01:06:54
would you make the decision to run yourself in 2020? Walk us through both. I think about first of all, I would have
01:07:00
loved to have been and I begged the Democratic party to have a mini primary, 30-day primary when Joe Biden
01:07:07
love it. I I begged him. I said, "You had to you had to dispel some of the things that
01:07:12
they were labeled with." And not every Democrat believed in that. That would have been a time to dispel a lot of that
01:07:18
stuff. But boy, when he come doubled down and came right back within what, an hour or two and threw everything behind
01:07:24
Kla Harris, it was over. And uh you know her I knew we were in trouble then. Uh I
01:07:31
would have loved to been on that das. Would you have run in a speedrun? Would you have put yourself out there in a speedrun? I'd have been right in there. I'd have
01:07:37
I'd done everything I could to be talking about things that we're talking about now. Do we need energy?
01:07:42
Absolutely. Don't turn your back on energy. This is make sure we do it better than anybody in the world. Uh do
01:07:47
you need do you need a strong border? Well, let me ask you something. You all have property lines. When you buy a
01:07:53
piece of property and a house, you either build a fence or you lived in a gated area, you want to protect your property. Why can't we protect our
01:07:59
borders, but also have an legal immigration policy that works. I got to brought all of that stuff out. And I
01:08:06
think a lot of Democrats believe like I do, but they've gone so far to the left they can't retreat. And if they don't get out of their way,
01:08:12
they're going to go down in defeat. And so 2028 to Jason's question.
01:08:18
Yeah. Well, 2028, guys. I mean, if we'll have to see. I'll do anything I can to help my country. But, you know, I want
01:08:23
to make sure 2028 I will be what? I'm 78 years old right now. I'm going to be 81. Same as Biden, close
01:08:29
to Trump. Yeah. And you're sharp as attack. And I'm I'm a year younger. I'll be the I'll give you something. Mitt Romney and
01:08:35
I were talking about running. I said, " Mitt," he said, "Joe, let's we have to start a new party." I said, "What would
01:08:40
it be, man?" He said, "We'll call it the not stupid party." I said, "Hell, my question is why we're involved then." Yeah. And
01:08:48
And then what are we doing here? Yeah. And then I said, "Well, man, what do you think?" He said, "Joe, listen." He said, "They don't want two old white
01:08:54
guys running." And I said, "We're the youngest ones out there right now." Yeah, you're whippers snappers.
01:09:01
We were both of your younger. We have a lot of fun with that. We talked a lot. Anyway, look, we'll just see what happens. I'm going to I'm going to be
01:09:08
involved every way I can. And the good Lord gives me the health and strength to participate. Any way I possibly can, I
01:09:14
will. But I guarantee I'll be trying to find the right people that put country before party and all the behind
01:09:21
him and let's get this country back on track. Heck yes. Well, Joe, by the book, on behalf of the
01:09:26
All-In community, I just want to say thank you for your years of service. Buy the book. Yeah, center in defense of common sense.
01:09:33
Don't be stupid. Your daughter is incredible. Heather is the best. Heather is a force and you know that she
01:09:39
thinks the world of you and your wife, your family. So, I'm just so happy that we got to spend a little time together and I look forward to coming out and
01:09:46
with you all and Jason to meet with you. Come do a live one. Yeah, we'll talk. Let's do a live one. Oh, we'll have one hell of a poker party.
01:09:52
That'll be That'll be a bar. Ladies and gentlemen, there's your hour with Joe Mansion. Thank you.
01:10:04
I'm going all in.
