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Rep. Maxwell Frost: "We're Going to Win When We Do the Work" | Pivot at the DNC

August 23, 2024 / 11:09

This episode features Representative Maxwell Frost from Florida discussing gun violence, housing affordability, and the challenges faced by young people today.

Frost, the youngest member of Congress, shares his personal experiences with homelessness and the housing crisis, emphasizing the need for legislation like the "End Junk Fees for Renters Act" to alleviate financial burdens on renters.

He highlights the disconnect between young people's experiences and the political landscape, noting that many feel left out of the American Dream due to high barriers to homeownership.

Frost also addresses the appeal of Donald Trump among young men, attributing it to a sense of being unheard in politics, and discusses the importance of engaging with voters to demonstrate effective governance.

Finally, he reflects on his collaboration with President Biden and the momentum behind Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign, stressing the significance of youth voter turnout in shaping future elections.

TLDR

Rep. Maxwell Frost discusses gun violence, housing issues, and youth engagement in politics.

Episode

11:09
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hi we're here with uh representative Maxwell Frost from Florida you are the first genz representative which I guess
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that's a good thing well you're going to tell us why and uh you were elected at what 27 25 25 so you're the youngest
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person in Congress right now again low bar but still um let's talk a little bit about what you're doing here how you're
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looking at what's going on and the big issues you think are important well I appreciate it um I got involved in
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politics when I was 15 years old because I didn't want to get shot in school um and so gun violence is the issue that
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really pushed me in the politics and um been organizing ever since worked at ACLU and then marched for our lives um
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the issues I'm working on are gun violence housing we have a a housing crisis in this country during my
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campaign I experienced homelessness uh for two months because my rent went up 33% in just a month and then when I got
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elected I couldn't rent an apartment in DC and I got denied because my credit was bad because I was living off my
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credit card during the campaign and so I've experienced a lot of the brunt of the housing crisis and so that's one of
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the other issues that we're focused on such Just Happening is affordability Scott you talk about this a lot with the
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big issue for young people isn't necessarily the things you think they would be but it's the deficit for
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example Scott yeah so uh Congress person what if you talk about the housing affordability crisis What specifically
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or What legislation or programs would you Champion to make it easier for people of your age to think about the
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quote unquote American Dream well I'd give a shout out to my bill of a bill called the end junk fees for renters act
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this is really based on my personal EXP experiences what it does is and junk fees what's a junk fee well something
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that legally your landlord has to provide for you that you're being nickel and dimed for trash fee this fee lawn
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fee that fee in fact in my district we found a few different apartment complexes where your landlord can charge
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you between $40 and $60 every time you call text or email them for anything and so this would eliminate those fees the
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other thing it would do is eliminate the use of credit scores and being the end all Beyond deciding whether or not
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someone can rent a statistic show or studies show that credit scores are not a good indication on whether or not
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someone's going to pay their rent number one it doesn't impact your credit score
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at all if you're good at paying your rent and the other thing is when a working person or a poor person falls in
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hard times the first thing they cut from is not their rent in fact rent is one of
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the last things they cut from what's the first thing food and medicine so Scott talks a lot about sort of young people
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feeling left out and that that the country is oriented towards keeping seniors Rich richer than ever taking the
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stock market gains or whatever how do you think young people think about this I mean the the issues AOC talked about a
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little bit about it last night affordability and things like that um and among the things they should be
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concerned and you don't speak for all young people but what how do they look at the economy right now is it sort of
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Winner Takes all and old people win or what I think it all has to do with lived experiences right I mean young people
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aren't necessarily going on onl to reading all the statistics and data on what's going on they're just like saying
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you know I graduated school I went straight into Workforce I'm having a hard time finding a place to rent and if
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I have the money saved up I'm being denied a lot of these places because the barrier to entry is so high right now
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because as consumers and tenants we've lost a lot of power in the marketplace since Co because and ownership too and
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ownership that's where I was about to get to that being a tenant is often times the precursor to owning and owning
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a home is the largest asset a working person will own their lifetime we're on track to not even be owning homes like
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that right and so we need to figure out number one how are we going to take care
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of our tenants and make sure they have more power in the marketplace but also make sure that owning a home is actually
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an accessible dream and something people can actually obtain in the State of Florida right now we have a home
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ownership Insurance crisis which is impacting everybody potential home owners current home owners seniors I did
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a round table with um seniors and new homeowners we have seniors who are on a fixed income and because their insurance
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rates were just hiked up so much they're probably going to have to move out of the home they've been in their whole
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life what do you think of the idea of mandatory national service mandatory national service I'm I'm against that I
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mean I do think that we should incentivize national service but you know part of the the the the point and
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homework of our country is you know freedom and and I think freedom to to not serve is one of those things but we
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should incentivize it that's why we have to make sure we put good money into things like aeric core there's also job
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core um these different organizations also you can do military service or going to any kind of be a first
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responder and different things like that we could do a better job of making sure
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that these professions have higher wages 75% of our military budget goes to contractors I think our service members
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could be paid a little bit more same thing with our teachers my mom's a public school educator of 37 years she
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actually just retired um and she has been making the same amount of money for a lot of that time yeah right I mean and
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she's our educator she's an educator so with a master's degree and so I think we
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have a lot of work to do in making these positions of service um actually be able
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to help sustain someone's lifestyle so some one thing Scott talks a lot about is the crisis of young men that's his
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one of his big topics um of young men young men which you are one of apparently um the crisis of young men of
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young men and there's a big gender gap right now between supporters between women who are supporting KL Harris and
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men who are becoming more conservative okay um can you talk about that what how can she appeal to that and close that
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Gap because Donald Trump scores ahead of her though it's not changed a lot and she scores way ahead of him on women so
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can you talk a little bit about that especially young men I think focusing on what we're talking about housing the
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economy how are we going to make sure which he is that young people can get ahead and I'm actually on the vice
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president's National Advisory board for the campaign so I travel the country for
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her right after this I'm going on a back to school tour hitting Six States and I'll tell you when I'm talking with
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young men young everybody they just want to know about how can the vice president
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show us that government can actually work for us right the record's important and what I always tell politicians when
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I was working on campaigns and tell candidates they want to know your record but that's what they got with their last
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vote they also want to know what they're going to get with this next vote and she
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put for a very aggressive and good housing platform that I think is going to be help a lot of young why do you
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think some young men are attracted to Trump it's a very strange phenomena lot for a lot of people yeah maybe not all I
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think the first thing is polling Young Folks young men young people can be a little difficult I've worked in the
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youth vote space for my whole career pretty much it's really volatile and can change very quickly so I wouldn't
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necessarily buy that uh you know Donald Trump has this overwhelming majority of young men or that they're all fleeing
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towards him but you know I think that something Donald Trump did in 2016 is he really appealed to people who may not
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have felt heard in politics before it was a fake appeal right he was saying he went to drain the swamp but he is the
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swamp he was talking about this fake populism when he is he he's part of that billionaire class which is the reason so
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many people are in the conditions they find themselves in and I think now that's being exposed um and so we just
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got to keep making sure people know about that events like this help us make that case to the nation but again what's
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really going to help us do this is going on the ground going speaking with people
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across the entire country and that's what we're doing all right Scott last question then I have one more do you
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think Tik Tok should be divested um I voted no on the Tik Tok ban bill um would I prefer that Tik Tok
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be owned by an americ or Not by a Ford adversary 110% however what we need to do and
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Congress tends to do this a lot is we don't actually do the work of legislating the regulations to ensure
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that we protect all the data privacy of people we select one platform have a bill that will probably ban it or end up
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in litigation that won't actually solve the problem this you know we could ban Tik Tok and be back at the same problem
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with some other uh uh platform in just five years and so what I think we need to do is take a step back past really
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good data privacy bills um 2.0 is a great one there's some other ones as well um but Banning Tik Tok I just don't
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think is a is a solution you're not worried about it as a propaganda vehicle for the CCP I'm worried about every
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single uh uh social media a site being used for propaganda but there's number one there's not really any proof that
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it's been done on a large scale and we we know that um so a lot of his speculation am I am I concerned yes I am
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concerned um but again we can handle that problem and the problem for our domestic social media companies which
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take our data buy it sell it and sell it to China we talk about it a l y yeah of
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course so you y all know uh but you're asking me the question and so either way um yeah so in that vein so a lot these
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these are great things they're fun to come to these events and things like that and TV used to be a big deal and
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now it's not how do you look at how how this is going to be consumed and what stick what has stuck out for you well
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now we're in the era of people really consuming things and bite-sized portions right and so snackable they're called
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snack snackable okay snackable portions um and so uh you know a lot of people are going to be seeing smaller clips of
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these speeches and there'll be a lot of people watch the whole speeches as well um which is you know we saw yesterday we
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had some of our best speakers out there um really exciting we have you know great speakers for the rest of the week
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and I think we're trying to get this agenda out here make sure people know that in terms of the economy security
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safety opportunity making sure people have what they need K Harris is the candidate that we need to elect here and
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what do you think stuck out last night you know the president's speech was really heartfelt um I I'm a big Joe
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Biden fan um you know when I first got elected and he called me we spoke about the fact that we shared something in
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common he was elected to the Senate 29 and was the youngest member of the Senate I was the youngest member of the
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house when I got in the Congress my first bill was create a federal office at gun violence prevention the president
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took my bill used it as the framework for an executive order to make the office and then he invited me to go to
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the White House to be a part of that and we've been very highly involved with the
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White House the old and the young come together then yeah I mean we I've collaborated done so much work with Joe
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Biden and his entire Administration I have so much respect for the man and I think yesterday we really cemented the
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fact that he said himself he loves this job but he loves saving our democracy and people even more and the decision he
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made you know when we talk about one of the greatest presence of our country we of talks about George Washington and the
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point that we usually point to is the fact that he knew when it was time yeah selflessness and that's the difference
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between selfish goals and selfless people and selfless people I think Joe Biden showed that he's a selfless person
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who cares one more quick question kamla Harris has caught up do you think she has a big chance of winning here she
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certainly has momentum yeah we're we're going to win this campaign but what I'm telling people too especially because
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I'm an organizer is we can't let this excitement Cloud us and that's what the Republicans did yeah yeah we're not
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going to win no matter what we're going to win when we do the work if we do the work and we will do the work and that's
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what as I've been traveling I'll tell you people are excited and they're getting to work this excitement will
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translate into votes and here's the good thing especially on the youth vote I think we're going to have the highest
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youth vter turnout we've ever had but the young people we get to vote now they're going to be lifelong voters and
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so it's not just even about this election it's about the one 10 years from now 20 years from around 30 years
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from now great thank you so much appreciate it be here

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Episode Highlights

  • Maxwell Frost: Youngest Representative
    At just 25, Maxwell Frost is the first Gen Z representative in Congress, tackling issues like gun violence and housing.
    “I didn't want to get shot in school.”
    @ 00m 28s
    August 23, 2024
  • The Housing Crisis
    Frost shares his personal struggle with homelessness and the housing affordability crisis affecting young people.
    “I've experienced a lot of the brunt of the housing crisis.”
    @ 00m 58s
    August 23, 2024
  • Youth Vote Momentum
    Frost believes the excitement among young voters will lead to the highest turnout in history.
    “We're going to have the highest youth voter turnout we've ever had.”
    @ 10m 49s
    August 23, 2024

Episode Quotes

  • I didn't want to get shot in school.
    Rep. Maxwell Frost: "We're Going to Win When We Do the Work" | Pivot at the DNC
  • I've experienced a lot of the brunt of the housing crisis.
    Rep. Maxwell Frost: "We're Going to Win When We Do the Work" | Pivot at the DNC
  • We need to figure out how to take care of our tenants.
    Rep. Maxwell Frost: "We're Going to Win When We Do the Work" | Pivot at the DNC
  • We can't let this excitement cloud us.
    Rep. Maxwell Frost: "We're Going to Win When We Do the Work" | Pivot at the DNC

Key Moments

  • Gun Violence Motivation00:28
  • Housing Crisis Experience00:58
  • Youth Vote Excitement10:49

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