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Sen. Mark Kelly: "People Do Not Want to be Dragged Back Into the Past" | Pivot at the DNC

August 22, 2024 / 14:30

This episode features Senator Mark Kelly discussing border policy, the 2024 presidential election, and the role of private industry in space exploration.

Senator Kelly shares his thoughts on the bipartisan border security bill that was blocked by Donald Trump, emphasizing its importance for addressing fentanyl trafficking and border security. He mentions the need for a pathway to citizenship for dreamers and the significance of bipartisan cooperation.

Kelly also discusses the upcoming presidential election, expressing confidence in Kamala Harris's ability to win Arizona and highlighting her accomplishments in reducing drug costs and supporting families. He contrasts her leadership with Donald Trump's record on veterans and reproductive rights.

The conversation shifts to the privatization of space exploration, where Kelly acknowledges the success of SpaceX and the need for competition in the industry. He reflects on the economic benefits of private space ventures and the importance of innovation.

Finally, Kelly addresses the education system, advocating for increased funding for engineering programs and the need for more scientists and engineers in the U.S. He expresses optimism about the Democratic Party's chances in the upcoming elections.

TLDR

Senator Mark Kelly discusses border policy, the 2024 election, and the impact of privatization on space exploration.

Episode

14:30
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all right we're here with Senator Mark Kelly how you doing he just handed me this you're a jokester aren't you it
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says Trump my brother yeah your brother the funnier one the funnier one yeah he is
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funnier he wants me to hand those out yes and you're doing it you're you're the first one you're the first I got it
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well thank you so much I'm GNA keep passing it along like like a virus um so we've known each other for a while we've
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known each other for a while and you were almost you were one of the top picks and you were Scott Galloway's pick
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just so you know I picked Tim Walls sorry for vice president yeah yeah so so can you tell us anything about that are
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you sad that you're not up there I was very honored to be considered and Tim Waltz is a fantastic guy you know he was
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a freshman in the house with Gabby oh House of Representatives yeah they've known each other since 2007 right and
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they're very close and and Gabby loves Tim I've known Tim for a long time great friend yeah great choice so he Gabby's
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Choice then too no yeah I think I was Gabby's second choice second choice yeah Scott explain why you wanted him to be
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this vice president uh out of Central Casting right astronaut border immunized Harrison walls from many questions
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around the Border served served in our uh served the country enough of that so let's talk an alien invasion there you
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go we're all set I'm hiding behind you so with respect to our border policy you said once I thought something really
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interesting you said Republicans aren't sincere and Democrats don't understand the Border or something to that effect
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what if you were and I imagine you will be advising Harris Walts on uh quote unquote our border strategy what are the
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few things you think we need to think about doing right away assuming uh that they in fact are successful in their bid
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for the White House well it's get back to the bipartisan border security bill that we had an opportunity to pass
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several months ago that Donald Trump told them told Senate Republicans that they were not allowed to vote for this
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right KLA Harris Joe Biden the White House worked on this with with us and Senate Republicans over an extended
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period of time to get that bill in a place right where it it was doing the things we needed to do certainly not
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everything that I would have wanted M and folks often say this was a compromise it wasn't meeting Republicans
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on the 50 yard line it was meeting them on the 10 yard line on their side of the
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field but there was a lot of good stuff in there things like more money for uh to hire more border patrol agents more
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more money for border patrol pay and overtime more CBP officers building facilities to hold Asylum Seekers
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temporarily as you adjudicate their claims and then on top of that money for fentanyl detection machines at Port of
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Entry and Donald Trump decided that he needs this issue for the campaign it's the most hypocritical thing I have seen
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while I've been withis and we're talking about Washington right right and we're talking about Donald Trump we're talking
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about Donald Trump we're talking about Washington this this is at the top of the list this shocked me more than him
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sending a mob to Capitol Hill to overthrone the election yeah to to talk about this issue all the time and we
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finally have a bipartisan agreement to to do something really positive on border security and he tells them no um
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I'll tell you what at least he was sort of honest about it he said you know he did he needed this for the campaign
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right but think about this for a second there was money in there for fentanyl detection machines to buy more of them
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so what that means is because he said no and he told them they couldn't do this that more Fentanyl has entered this
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country and has killed more Americans because the decision that Donald Trump made because he needed this he felt he
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needed this to get elect so how vulnerable is KLA Harris on this issue and how should she address it if you
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were she advising her on this when she's president and I am confident she's going
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to be the next president of the United States people do not want to be dragged back into the past by Donald Trump and
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have more rights taken away right and they certainly don't want to see more giant tax breaks for billions
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like him so when she's president she has said she would sign this legislation and
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my hope is that once Donald Trump is you know he's sent off to the dust bin of History here or the golf course
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whichever he prefers uh that we will have an opportunity with Republicans to bring this legislation back maybe we can
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make some changes to it I would love to see some more immigration reform in there Pathway to citizenship for
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dreamers and other things but if it just came back in the form that it was in she
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said would sign right so when you is that her most vulnerable area or is there an area what are you most worried
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about and then what do you think is the most positive part of what she's doing here besides she's the incumbent but she
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feels like the change agent right even though she's in office right now well 100% because she's she's the person
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that's going to be sticking up for everyday Americans and families Bringing Down the cost of housing Bringing Down
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the cost of child care you know she led on the inflation reduction act which brought down the price of rtion drugs
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for seniors to $2,000 out of pocket a year insulin at $35 a month so an issue after issue she wants to move our
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country forward what does Donald Trump stand for he took away Reproductive Rights from women and in Arizona what
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that means is they've been bouncing back and forth between one abortion ban and another like back and forth so he did
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that he gave a 1.7 trillion tax cut trillion dollar tax C cut to the wealthiest Americans and big companies
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and he shredded our alliances around the world I think those are the three things
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at the top of the list you could put that he was what he really stood for what his administration stood for and
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when you look at you know what she stands for I mean the the contrast could not be
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more clear I was just speaking it's very close you know Statewide elections in Battleground states are often very close
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so I would expect it to be close this C is going to be close we had 15,000 people in Glendale the other day and the
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amount of energy for her for Tim Waltz off the charts never seen anything like that now it's our job mine included to
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take that energy turn it into votes and we can do that in Arizona she can win in
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Arizona she can win in Battleground States and she's going to be our next president the other option is and I was
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about to mention I just went and talked to a bunch of veterans MH so Army Navy Air Force Marine Corps Guardians I think
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there maybe been a couple of them in there what the way he regards veterans like myself right I know I don't think
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you know in the history of our country we've had a president with with such a low regard for people like me that that
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have served our country calling them John McCain on he was from John from I mean John McCain and every single
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service member who has died defending our country he he thinks they're a sucker or a loser what he said about the
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Medal of Honor just the other day medal of freedom better than the Medal of Honor because you don't have to get shot
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up with a bunch of bullets or killed I mean he his his his level of regard and his sense of what it means to serve this
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country I don't think you can walk around and find somebody randomly on the street that has such a low level of
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consideration and in regard uh to service members than Donald Trump Scot so you one of a handful or a small
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number of people that have actually been to space and I don't mean the Karm line
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I mean actual space and now we have one man who controls satellites going to ask
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but go ahead yeah I stole your thunder go ahead uh and the majority of space launches now are are funded privately
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there's some good things about that there's some bad things about that how do you feel about our space program
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ultimately becoming a private Enterprise so when President Obama was in office and made this decision to transition
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from big government programs to really a smaller commercial model giving Private
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Industry some money to kind of get started and then allowing them some space you know and allowing them to be
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Innovative I didn't think it was going to work and when SpaceX said they were going to orbit a vehicle for the first
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time I think that was going to work it's really really hard to do this is something countries normally do MH
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got to give SpaceX a ton of credit I mean they have been wildly successful and have even changed the economics of
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launching stuff into orbit yeah no SpaceX Karen is the best Elon but go ahead that's my name that's what you
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call him SpaceX okay I haven't heard that yeah U I mean I mean the company is just incredibly successful and you got
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to give him yeah ton of the credit and CEO Gwen Gwen Shotwell they're Engineers I full discl Ure I used to do some
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Consulting for them right you did you know on on Dragon on the crude version of the Dragon spacecraft and you know
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they they've had some a couple failures along the way I mean his model of how he
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develops spacecraft is a little bit different than Boeing and locky Martin he likes to fly a lot he doesn't mind
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having accidents yeah yeah and you know that's that approach is worked very well
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for him so I mean we're in a much better place today than than were just just consider the cost for a second of
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launching a falcon 9 with a dragon on it to get people up to the space station it's about a tenth of the cost of what
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it was right when I flew the space shuttle four times at the space station right so what does that mean you have
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someone who's doing this Innovation and yet is very allied with Trump is using Twitter or X to cause all kinds of
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problems but Britain here pushing around misinformation hateful things organizing
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tech people to give money although there's plenty of tech B miles who are on the Democratic side but still yeah I
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mean obviously that stuff concerns me and um I everybody has a right to give their opinion sure right I mean he has a
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he has a First Amendment right to do that uh and you know I I don't listen to and watch everything Scott was getting
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at was we're beholden to one company now not beholden to them it's not Innovation
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there's not a lot we got United launch Alliance I mean if we made a a made a decision we don't want to deal with
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SpaceX any anymore we would figure it out but the positive thing is we have them as a as an option and if this is
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when DOD and other government agencies contract we've got to do currently we've got to do what's in the best interest of
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the American taxpayer and look for the best option and it's often SpaceX now we don't want them to have a monopoly
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because then you run into an issue like we had with the space shuttle when you have an accident starlink in Ukraine
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exactly also when you have like an accident you it's nice to have another another option to get people and
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payloads into orbit MH um but the amount of stuff that we're currently and the and the The Innovation that we're seeing
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especially in low low earth orbit is trans transformational for our Eon yeah yeah so one more question from Scott and
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then me well just I'm a big fan of the notion that no admissions are very low admissions very low cost educate tens of
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thousands as opposed to thousands do you think what are your thoughts in terms of
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uh that kind of policy of opening up or increasing Freshman Class across education federally you're a senator
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what how would you approach what can we learn from Arizona and ASU for in terms of actual educ from Michael Crow at ASU
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he's expanded the engineering program there like a you know in size a number of times so a lot more freshman but
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what's uh even better than that is he has a lot more sophomores and juniors people that don't drop drop out he he he
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has a very Innovative program I don't know all all the details but to help folks get through the math you know to
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get an engineering degree and we need more scientists and Engineers you know other countries you know Japan I don't
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know if this is still true today but it used to be that Japan has creates three times as many Engineers as attorneys and
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we're the opposite that's correct we create three times as many attorneys as we do
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engineers and our country speak of China China's waye China yeah I don't know what the statist STA are there but we
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are a country and an economy that's driven by Innovation so anything we can to increase scientists
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engineers money that we spend on education in my view is the best dollar we can spend of taxpayers money get it
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back so final question Arizona is one of the Battleground States and if K she has
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a number of paths to win and Arizona a lot of them go through Arizona um how is uh the race for Senate sizing up does
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that matter ker Lake versus Ruben GGO um how do you look at Arizona for Comm Harris and for the Senate because it's
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critical cuz Chuck Schumer is just saying we might win the Senate again or we're going to increase there people
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were worried that the Senate would be lost you know Chuck I think is uh is you know accurate in how he portrays the map
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and the probability of winning the Senate I think we're we're going to win back the Senate nobody thought we had it
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right well nobody thought we could in 2022 people thought I was going to lose I won two competitive Senate races in
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2020 and then the second one in 2022 it's tough Statewide elections are going to be close there I won by 2.4 and then
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5% uh Ruben gyo is going to win because he is a much better candidate than Carrie Lake conl Harris is going to win
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Arizona because she is a much I mean more accomplished experienced prosecutor Attorney General Senator vice president
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Donald Trump convicted felon um she is the person to lead us into the f future Donald Trump is not I
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think arizonans uh understand that and more of them are going to understand that every
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single day and when we get to November 5th I'm confident she's gonna win and I'm going to do everything I can all
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right well thank you so much we appreciate it excellent vice president thank you yeah they sh had a lot of
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choices good choices really good Cho really good choices and Beyond you guys yeah absolutely

Episode Highlights

  • Senator Mark's Vice Presidential Consideration
    Senator Mark shares his feelings about being considered for vice president, expressing honor and respect for Tim Waltz.
    “I was very honored to be considered.”
    @ 00m 38s
    August 22, 2024
  • Trump's Hypocrisy on Border Security
    Senator Mark criticizes Trump's decision to reject a bipartisan border security bill, linking it to increased fentanyl deaths.
    “This shocked me more than him sending a mob to Capitol Hill.”
    @ 02m 56s
    August 22, 2024
  • Public Sentiment Against Trump
    Senator Mark asserts that voters want to move forward, not back, under Trump's influence.
    “People do not want to be dragged back into the past by Donald Trump.”
    @ 03m 51s
    August 22, 2024
  • Importance of Education Investment
    Senator Mark advocates for increased funding in education, especially for engineering and science.
    “Money that we spend on education is the best dollar we can spend.”
    @ 12m 41s
    August 22, 2024

Episode Quotes

  • I was very honored to be considered.
    Sen. Mark Kelly: "People Do Not Want to be Dragged Back Into the Past" | Pivot at the DNC
  • This shocked me more than him sending a mob to Capitol Hill.
    Sen. Mark Kelly: "People Do Not Want to be Dragged Back Into the Past" | Pivot at the DNC
  • People do not want to be dragged back into the past by Donald Trump.
    Sen. Mark Kelly: "People Do Not Want to be Dragged Back Into the Past" | Pivot at the DNC
  • The contrast could not be more clear.
    Sen. Mark Kelly: "People Do Not Want to be Dragged Back Into the Past" | Pivot at the DNC
  • Money that we spend on education is the best dollar we can spend.
    Sen. Mark Kelly: "People Do Not Want to be Dragged Back Into the Past" | Pivot at the DNC

Key Moments

  • Vice Presidential Consideration00:38
  • Trump's Border Hypocrisy02:56
  • Public Sentiment03:51
  • Education Investment12:41

Tension Over Time

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