¶ Congressman Jared Moskowitz joins the Chuck Toddcast
All right, and joining me now is Congressman Jared Moskowitz. He represents a congressional district in South Florida. And as you know, I always mock anybody that says South Florida because that's always code for not Miami as somebody who grew up in Miami, and in this case, because that is correct. This is a little bit of Broward County, a little bit of Palm Beach County. I'm just sort of teasing my fellow South Floridian here a little bit.
By the way.
Well, I get very I'll say I'm from Miami, and someone will say, oh, I'm from South Florida too, And I'm like, oh, so, where in Broward County are you from?
Yeah, you know, it's like we matter to Chuck.
I'm not saying you don't, but you know, it's a growing up in Miami is a different animal, my friend.
That's now, oh especially.
Now, I barely it's you know, it's a totally different Uh, it's a totally different place than where I grew up. But let me finish quickly your bio. You've been a state rep. He's a Democratic state rep. He served in the Dysantis administration. Doing emergency management, got elected to Congress on the twenty two midterms, I believe, serving now in his second term. He joins me. Now, and we were
just joking. I'm beating up there in South Florida. We'll do a little South Florida stuff here in a minute. But the fact that you worked in the DeSantis administration, that is not a shock to a Floridian that a Democrat would work for a Republican governor if it had been Jeb Bush, Charlie Chris Rick Scott right like, in some ways Jeb Bush set the precedent on some of
¶ As a Dem, could you ever get a job in a 2nd term DeSantis admin?
these things. But when I look at Disantis today and I was wondering, huh, you got hired in the first term. Would you have ever gotten that job in a second term? And you were telling me the answer, So tell me the answer, now, what do you think.
The answer is? No, I don't think so. The second term DeSantis administration very different than the first term. Second term when you started.
Susie Wiles' difference by the way, Well, Susie Wilds.
Is the one who hired me, rightight, she vetted me. She was part of the transition team. No, I think the difference is when he ran for president and and started this tack on the social issues again. And then you know this, this the division that was not the first two years of the administration. It really started obviously during COVID. Although I think there were a lot of things that we were right about COVID, about opening schools, things of that nature that I was that I was
involved in. But look, the division of e wordsy management in Florida had a history of previous directors being from a different party than the governor. Because it didn't matter.
Fugate working for jab and worked for Obama, and he might be arguably right like one of the you know, the best advisors you can have in that era.
No what, one of the best of all time at
¶ The days of bipartisanship are long gone
both at both levels. Those days I think are are over now in Florida and and in politics. Look the Trump folks, the Trump folks, you know, rumors that they were looking at me for or for FEMA. I think it probably worked out for both of us that we didn't go down that route. But that look at this climate, that would be an impossibility to do.
Well, let's start there, because you know, I just got off the phone with just a longtime friend of mine he's an operative out in California, and we're basically having an argument about the redistricting situation, right, which is and it gets at this issue right here are we? Which is?
And of course, like each party thinks the other one breaks the rules all the time, right, we know this, right, there is this base of both so they so you can convince yourself to break the rules because you think the other guy breaks the rules.
Yeah, it's like it's like both It's like two of my I have two boys, it's like both of my children. When I hear crying and fighting up upstairs, it's who hit who first?
Right, And it's exactly right. And then the question is do you stand on principle and bring a knife to a gun fight and lose? Right? And that's the argument he's making to me. And I'm like, well, if you don't stand on principle when it's hard, when are you going to stand on principle? And I guess where are you on this? Because you're in the middle of this,
¶ Why not stand on principle in the redistricting fight?
You've got you're in your house, Democrat. The political environment's probably going to be blowing in the Democrats direction, which maybe why Republicans are so aggressive and trying why Trump so aggressive and trying to do this? Where do you stand on this? And especially look, I'm always so offended by the by how redistricting has worked the state of Florida that I'm just always wanting politicians out of this process.
That's sort of my instinct here. I understand the mindset of Hey, if they're going to do ends justifies the means. Why why shouldn't the Democrats? Where do you? Where are you in this?
Well, let me say as someone who for the twenty years I've been in government elected appointed office, you know, when I see someone trying to start a fire, right and this is my emergency mandment background, the idea is to grab water, put the fire out, preserve as much as possible from the fire. I would tell you that
¶ The Democratic base wants to fight fire with fire
I don't think that's where the base of the Democratic Party is right now. I think the date where the base of the Democratic Party is right now is that if there's if they're lighting a fire, don't grab water, Jared, grab gasoline. Okay, make that fire bigger, burn it to the ground. If they're going to burn it, we should burn it. Don't talk to me about protecting democracy. Look at this is not the democracy I want, don't go protect it, shut it down, shut the government down, do
all of that. Jared. It's no longer about work together. Why would you try to work together with them? Jared? They don't want to work with you. Look at what they are doing. And so I think there's been a shift from us being the adults in the room, which we are, the responsible folks in the room, which we are. I don't think the base wants to hear that anymore at all. They don't want to hear about norms. They don't want to hear about anything that.
You know.
I would go in a room and people would say, Jared, you're not fighting hard enough. And I'm on TV all the time, I fight and committee, and I would say, well, what do you want me to do? Storm the Capitol as a sarcastic joke, and like half the room would
¶ Trump's second term has changed the Democrats
look at half the room would look at me and be like, well have you tried?
It seemed to work for them, It was always you know, one of the fears I had about a second Trump term was that it wasn't that it was going to change the Republican Party even more, but that it was going to change the Democrats. Has happened and we're watching it now, which is, if you can't beat them, essentially join them. It's so funny. Yesterday I just did this tweet above the Center for American Progress pulled their support
right for independent redistricting commissions. And I just put a little note that like, I don't understand why the answer If you're upset about voters being disenfranchised in Texas, why is the answer to disenfranchised voters in California? And then Rob Flaherty, who was the deputy campaign manager for Kamala Harris, and he goes essentially made the argument you just said the base makes, which is, hey, we tried that nobody cares about protecting the democracy essentially, you know. And he
wasn't like being angry. He wasn't like, I didn't feel it as a personal attack. He was basically like, hey, basically saying I've got I'm the one with the head up his ass, right, Like I'm the naive guy here, and and it sounds like that's the feedback you get. And I just think the other district.
Chuck, chuck, I'm a moderate district, right, I don't. I don't have a plus twenty. I got a plus two. Right, Okay, And don't get me wrong. My general election voter isn't
¶ Primary voters want a fighter, swing voters want a uniter
necessarily there, but my primary voter is absolutely well, unequivocally there.
This is the conundrum for the party, right, is that primary voters want a fighter and swing voters want a uniter. And I don't know if you can be both.
Well, Look, I try as much as I can. I hit him in committee, I hit him online, and if there's a bipartisan bill, I will vote for it. But those folks that are there, whether they're d's, are ours, they I now now have the dinosaurs feel right like? That error, that error is coming to an end. It is absolutely coming to it. And jerry mandering is going to speed that up. Because five seats in Texas, five seats in California, a couple in Florida, two in Ohio,
one in Indiana, one in Missouri. Now the twenty five
¶ More gerrymander will increase dysfunction in congress
seats that we're always fighting over, now the twenty five or fifteen.
Right, No, this is full on parliamentary national election now.
Yeah. And by the way, this is if you don't think Congress functions. Now, I mean, just give it to or four more years. More power will go to the executive I don't care who's in charge. Basically, we'll get to the point where the only thing we can pass is a cr maybe maybe.
So what do you do in a moment like this?
Well, look, I think for me, I've been doing this since I was twenty five. I'm going to continue to do what was right. I'm really guided by the shooting that happened and Marjorie Stollman Douglas at my high school in my backyard, when I saw government failed, the FBI failed, school board failed, the braw Sheriff's office failed. Right, this was a preventable event. Government failed, and kids and adults died as a result of it. And so I got
to be honest, truck, I do what I think is right. Okay, I obbaubly want to represent my voters, Okay, but I'm still gonna do what I think is right. If the voters decide that I'm not for them, right, I got two boys at home right behind that door, right, Okay, I'll go back to them, like my life will go on. If keeping my job is so important that I'm going to lose who I've been, then so be it so
for me. You obviously, look at the climate you're in, you adjust, you see where you're going, but you still got to stay true. It's true to yourself. And that's always been me. It's how I passed gun control in a Republican legislature. We raise the age of twenty one. After the shooting, we got red flag laws. I didn't
do that by lighting the Republicans on fire. I did that by bringing them to the school, making them meet with parents, trying to see that, Look, yes, we want to protect the Second Amendment, but isn't there mitigation we can do right to kind of lessen this problem. But that way of thinking, Chuck is gone. Everything Trump touches as bad, we can't, we can't work with him. And don't get me wrong, he's deserving of all of that.
I mean, just look at the look at what's going on here, okay, I mean every day it's something new that you know, wasn't in any book of political science I ever learned about.
Well, certainly not the version that you and I, you and I grew up with, which you know, sometimes I
¶ Both parties moved away from each other after cold war
kind of wonder if we ended up growing up in an outlier period of American history, meaning the Cold War kept both parties more sober and then it you know, after the Cold War ends, that's when you saw both parties start to move further and further away from each other. If you look at that that I used to work in National Journal. We used to do these vote rankings, and you know, who was the most liberal Republican, who's
the most conservative voting Democrat. For thirty years, there was always the lines always crossed, And sometime in about twenty nine to twenty ten they started to be here. Right, You'd get like Mansion and Collins, and it's farther and farther away because politically it's hard to even support a bipartisan bill.
¶ Foreign interference in American discourse has been effective
Oh yeah, And look, jerry mandering is a big piece of how we got here. But also, Chuck, let's be honest, the amount of foreign interference that's going on now online especially Look, China has like one aircraft carrier. Okay, they're not going to beat us militarily. Neither are the Russians.
They're not military threats from the Pentagon standpoint. So what they've done is if they have invested heavily on trying to divide us from within, getting Democrats and Republicans foaming out the mouth, get us to hate each other, divide us, division all the time, create enemies, create boogeymen, do all of that, and by the way, they have had tremendous success doing that. We are at each other's throats. And if we're at each other's throats, then we can't make decisions.
If nine to eleven happened tomorrow, god forbid it, another nine to eleven, you think we would come together as Americans, we would immediately start attacking each other. Rather than focus on who who committed it, we'd immediately start the blame game.
Well, I mean this comes and this is where leadership matters, right. We always are reflected by how the president sets the tone. And there's no there's he doesn't believe in win win. There's one winner and one loser. And if he's succeeding somebody else in the.
Talladega Knights version of politics, if you're not first, your last.
So let's I want to you. You mentioned two important laws you got passed. Governor Rick Scott signed them into law,
¶ DeSantis hasn't succeeded in repealing Florida's red flag laws
and it was raising the age and it was the red Flag warnings and now both I believe have they have they repealed the twenty one completely.
They're all still there. They're all still there. They're trying, right, Yeah, the House, the House has tried, the Senate has stopped them. But seven years later, we still have twenty one in Florida and we still have red flag laws.
Even though the governor's trying to get rid of it, right.
Correct, but hasn't hasn't succeeded, and quite frankly, truck hasn't he put a ton of capital into it. Yeah, he's tried, but he hasn't really tried. You don't want to know why he hasn't tried. You know how many times red flag laws have been used in Florida and seven years now since we've put them in place, over twenty thousand times. It's being used more by Republican sheriffs than Democratic sheriffs, getting hands out of the getting guns out of the hands of people who are your number.
Those are the most supportive of this law. Where the sheriffs weren't they correct all? You know, the sheriffs are probably politically more right leaning than left leaning, but this was always something law enforcement has been dying for something like that.
We're seeing that it's it's stopping domestic violence. We're seeing that it's helping veterans who are having or suffering from PTSD. We're seeing that it's stopping suicides, and yes, obviously it's preventing you know, mass casualty events by getting guns out are the people who are clearly a danger to themselves and a danger to others.
So is the same issues that make it hard to do much governing at all across the board? Is would
¶ Stopping school/mass shootings requires an "all of the above" approach
you assess that it's the same issue here when you look at look at the Minneapolis shooting. Frankly, you hate to say this, but they all look at the same right, meaning you know, the reaction is the same. People take what they politically believe they want to get done and say, see, we told you so. And it's always an or. I always say there's or or? Is it an and issue? And to me, we need to look at access to guns and mental health and school security and language divisive
language on the internet. It seems that it has to be all of the above. And that seems to be you would think that would be an easy thing to sell. That's actually a hard thing to sell.
Believe it or not. That's actually what we did in Florida. So in Florida we raised age of twenty one. We did three d waiting periods. We did in flag laws. Okay. Then we mandated soros in every school, right, putting guns in schools right as we.
Police are basically police officers, said, right with police officers, correct, So a police officer in every school.
Then we put hundreds of millions of dollars into mental health. We mandated a mental health counselor in high schools. We mandated health a mental health program and every school board. We then put hundreds of millions of dollars into creating secure campuses, okay, by making sure that we had single points of entry. We put money into video camera systems, alert systems. Because the response is also a big failure in a lot of these events and lead to more tragedies.
We change the programs and the school board. Now there are threat assessments, right, so that we can identify someone who needs help. Earlier, we did the kitchen sink. We threw the kitchen. I didn't get everything I wanted on gun, I'll see. That's okay, that's what compromise means. But my Republican colleagues moved out of their corner, and so I moved out of mine. And we came, we came to an agreement. I gotta be honest, I don't know that we could do that again. I really don't know. In
¶ There's no political reward for bipartisanship and solving problems
the seven years the change that has gone on, no one feels that they need to move because.
There's no reward for moving, Chuck, no reward.
The reward is for staying in your corner, not for actually solving a problem, but just looking tough.
Yeah, the it's it's when you look at I actually have a specific question. This happened at a private Catholic school. Does did your law apply to private and charter schools? Importantly?
Yes? Yeah it does. Yeah, it does apply.
Where because it does seem as if we know we throw all this we can throw all this money at public schools. How does a private school get that taxpayer security money?
Well, look, they're gonna have to do an after action review obviously to figure out where the gaps were.
Right.
First of all, this kid was posting for a month online, right, So what did the FBI miss here? Did the FBI miss it because they're busy doing other stuff? Did the FBI miss it because they've cut the amount of people that work at the FBI. Did they miss it because they are now underfunding programs. We don't know. That should be part of the after action review that goes on here. How did he get on campus? Okay? You know where did he get his weapon from? Okay? You know how
did he get through the door? Okay? All of that stuff needs to be looked at. Private schools in Florida can draw down state grant money, they can apply for state grant money. Okay. In fact, in Florida they've gone even further. Kids that go to private school, right, do they now get a grant in general to attend that private school? Okay? The schools are very expensive here now,
and they put a ton of money towards security. But but yes, this is this is all about figuring out what failed, right, That's what we did here when we saw what failed in Douglas.
We did if you could have waived a magic wand from what you learned from Parkland, you know, if you
¶ There were multiple points of failure in Parkland shooting
could be king for a day, what would be the what would what do you think is the best answer?
Well, that's the problem, truck. When these things happened, one thing doesn't fail. It's not one point of failure. So it's not like, oh if I just got rid of AR fifteen's this would this would end No, I wouldn't. He would have come in with handguns. He was there for he was there for minutes. There were no police because the officer didn't run into the building, and you would have killed as many people as he could with his handguns. Okay, So one thing doesn't fix it here.
That's why it is an all of the approach. You can't just do all of one category. You can't just do s r os. We had an s R O at Douglas. He decided to stay outside because he didn't want to die.
So the other issue, obviously is rhetoric online and when do you ticket seriously, when do you let it go? There's censorship questions. And what's interesting about this issue, as you said, there was all this there's in hindsight now all these red flags given what he was doing online. We obviously the entire online conversation. Frankly, as a parent, you feel like you have very little ability to sort of to monitor it or to prevent it. We're all
at the mercy of these five big tech companies. And I think about the other thing you brought up, which is, hey, we have foreign adversaries that are intentionally trying to use essentially social media to do this. So this is a societal problem that on one hand is a problem for our young men and boys right now, but it's also this larger problem in our society as a whole. How do we deal with this big tech issue.
Well, I mean, look, it's a big piece to the PU.
¶ Public discourse is at the mercy of five giant tech companies
I mean that the TikTok piece, okay, is a huge piece on how we're going to control how propaganda gets fed to the American people TikTok. And I don't want to be clear, I don't want to ban TikTok, right, but you have to also recognize it's a psyops weapon. Okay, there's a reason why I'm not allowed to have it on my official devices.
Hey man, I won't put it on my phone because if you guys won't, I'm sitting here going, well, look, I mean, you know, and I'm hard I'm having a harder time trusting my government these days. But that's a separate issue. But I am I'm awfully you know. My kids are both on it, you know, but they're now grown adults and there's nothing I can do about that. But I certainly see how it can easily be a
¶ TikTok is a psyop weapon
psyop and and I guess I could argue, why shouldn't we band it?
No Listen in India has banned it, okay. And China's TikTok is not our TikTok. Their is an educational program. Okay. So they're making their kids smarter, they're making our kids dumber, they're feeding our kids false information. I mean, don't get me wrong. Twitter or x is also a cesspool of hate and garbage, but there at least is community notes. TikTok has no community notes. I mean, I remember when that letter from the love letter from Osama bin Laden
was circling on TikTok. Do you remember this? And American kids were reading the love letter and they were like, man, Osama bin Laden was right. And all of a sudden, China was like, oh shit, that we're getting caught in our algorithm and they took it down. Okay, that is the power of that should have showed every American, Oh
my god, look what they can do. And so what they're doing, because China thinks in one hundred years, thousand years, what they're doing is getting us addicted, getting it attached, get it, setting the seeds, getting it fully ingrained in society. Right, and that way with the young people of the eighteen to thirty five demographic right now, thirty percent of them get their news exclusively from TikTok. They don't check a second source. So with young people, they can move them
whatever direction. You ever hear about what the Chinese do to the Wigers on TikTok, Right, do you think any of the kids in school know anything about the Wigers. They know everything about Gaza, they know nothing about the Wigers. They don't know that China's got a genocide going on over there, right, scrubbed from the platform, Right, that's how you do a syops operation.
Well, you just made the case to ban it.
I voted for It's why most of Congress voted for it. To force the sale. You know, China's position on this was interesting. They were like, no, no, we're not going to sell it and make billions of dollars hundreds of billion.
To me, that's what was the tell. They were like, we're going to make more money. Oh no, no, no, we'd rather shut it down.
We'd rather shut it down, well, because we can't get the source code, chuck, Because if we get the source code,
¶ TikTok shows Gaza content, but nothing about the Uyghurs
we can see what they've been doing.
Gets it to a larger, larger issue. I mean, look, I am, I was reading an interesting piece talking about young men and the issue of pornography right and these and I think they've I've been glad to see it's more red states than blue states. But as a parent that trying to at least put some hurdles in pornography. Shouldn't be so easy to get on the internet. Shouldn't be so easy, And how it's really sort of really negatively impacted the way young people interact, the way they date,
all of these things. And yet the First Amendments, the First Amendment, what are some of the lines that you think government could be doing more with here on a federal level in order to sort of clean up this social media mess.
Well, I don't have a problem with the age of verifications with pornography. That's fine. Age verifications are great. We have to start trying to protect our kids right from being just totally sold everything as soon as they get onto the internet, right to be part of the grift
¶ Restrictions government should place on social media/internet
that has going. My kids are on YouTube, they're not on TikTok okay, but man, are they getting pitched everything at all days, at all seconds on YouTube, Like it is crazy to.
Be careful of that recommendation algorithm.
Man.
I mean my son, and when he first started on YouTube, he was just a baseball fan, just following that stuff. And then all of a sudden he's in Joe Rogan's podcast, And when how did that happen?
It happens to you fast, It happens fast. I let them on YouTube, not in their bedrooms. They got to do it in the living room, so I can at least hear some of the stuff. And I got to be like, get off that. I have to sometimes delete the app, try to reset the algorithms, try to clean it up. So yeah, there is no doubt that I think the majority of Americans would do something, and the majority of elected officials would probably do something. But the tech lobbyist strong Chuck.
The texture is no, it's it's replacing the healthcare industry and the defense industry right now.
They're strong, no question they are. They are one hundred percent stronger.
I mean the fact that every one of these companies has their own Washington office, the fact that these CEOs have bought property in DC. You think they're doing it because they like hanging out at the wharf.
Yeah. Well, well, I mean you don't think that the fact that all the tech titans were at the inauguration,
¶ The big tech lobby has become one of the strongest
sitting on stage with the president, that was a very clear message to me, one hundred percent.
So what's the is Normally I would expect a populist administration not to be in bed with some of these big titans here, but it does seem I mean, I think you and I both know the average American doesn't want to be controlled by a corporation, and yet this issue with big tech and how much influence they have on us has actually been really hard to communicate to
the average voter. You know, I've tried to come up with different ways, and it's clear, you know, theoretically the voter's concerned about it, but I don't think people really understand how it influences their day to day lives.
Well, I mean, Chuck, it's it's like trying to get a drug addict to stop taking drugs. Right. I mean, we collectively, me included, so I'm not passing judgment and others, we are addicted to this. Now. It's it is like smoking. Yeah, I mean we are addicted. Okay, I mean you know, it's tough to put the phone down. I deal with it all the time. Trust me, I'm I'm doom scrolling on Twitter too much. I'm just as guilty. Right, But trying to protect the kids, I think should be a
separate conversation. Right. We all know it's not good. So we all know what's not good for twelve year olds and thirteen year olds having some age verifications, having some restrictions with age limits, right, doing more in that space. There should be some bipartisanship there among parents, right. But if we don't, it's just it's just a win for China.
It does feel like if there's one area of bipartisan cooperation, it is on this potentially. Right, This is something Marshall Blackburn seems to care about. Right, So I mean, like and Brian Shatz in the Senate, right, And you're not going to get those two on the same on many bills that are exactly uh yeah, And.
It's gonna take it's going to take action in Washington because look, obviously there's parental responsibility. So my kids are not allowed on it during the week they're allowed to do it on the weekends, right, So that's my that's our rule in the house, right, But their friends are on it. I can't keep them totally away from it, right, They're gonna they're left out. They still learn stuff from other from other people, right, that stuff that's not on
¶ Bipartisan support for internet regulations to protect kids
their YouTube, but it's on their friends YouTube.
Right.
So you can't put your kids in a cocoon. Right. So this is going to take parents from both sides to figure out, how do we protect our kids until they're adults. How do we protect our kids from being targets from companies or foreign governments who are very active on all of these all of these platforms.
Let me shift slightly. It's actually related you brought you alluded to it, and I have actually done some survey work on this, which is if among eighteen to thirty year olds, those that use TikTok have a much more negative view about Israel than those that don't use TikTok. The Democratic Party right now is Look, I always say I'm pro Israel, and I don't like BBI okay, and
guess what, I'm aligned with the majority of Israelis. And to a lot of my friends on the laugh, they sometimes don't even realize the majority of Israelis don't like BB's policies right now and have real issues with it. But it feels like that the Democratic Party as a whole is losing the nuance on this issue.
Do you still look at one hundred percent? And obviously we could do twelve hours on I know we could on this issue alone. I mean, look, obviously, most Democrats don't like the president, disagree with the president, hate president. Most Democrats still love their country, you know. So, But with Israel, it isn't just BB, it becomes the country. It's different, and so look Israel, there is double and triple standards. Right. We didn't get fed the genocide that
¶ The Democratic party is losing the nuance on Israel
was committed in Syria. I didn't have any I didn't have any kids talking to me about what Asad did to his known people, or what's gone on in the Sudan Okay, or what's gone on in other areas in Africa, or like with the Wigers. I don't hear about any of that. No one talks to me about it. And I'm not saying what isn't going on in Gaza isn't horrific, It's terrible, Okay. I want the war to end. I want the hostages out, I want everybody fed. I want everyone fed, Yes, I want everyone fed.
I don't want to I'd be in favor of sending in the Marines to feed everybody while we dealt with this.
Correct. I mean, you know, I'm all for that, correct, one hundred percent. But the reason why there are protests in the street on this issue you and not the other problems. First, I mean, how many people have died in the Ukraine Russian War? A million plus people have died there, over a million. There's fifty thousand kids that
have been kidnapped there. Okay, do you see any protests in the screen on that, Chuck, No, Because what's happening is the Chinese, the Russians, the grifters, the Katari's right. They want to bog America down in this problem. They want to get us divided. This is an easy target. The Russians don't like that we're in Ukraine. The Chinese
¶ Social media has juiced coverage in Gaza, ignored other conflicts
don't like really anything that we do or our pre position on Taiwan. Right, Sell this to the next generation, Sell this to the American people.
Way, what are the Chinese doing for the Gazans? Have you figured that out?
I know what they're doing it for the Gozens? Zero yeah, right, so are the Russians zero. Okay, but but this is something that has been completely weaponized. But when I didn't want to be clear when I say that this has been weaponized, I don't want to minimize the suffering that is going on in Gaza.
Well, this is this is our problem with our politics is that nobody can handle that two things can be true at the same time.
That's correct, That's correct. I can't say I support Israel, right and then not be called genocide Jared, which is what I get called. I get screamed at, right. I mean, my grandparents all escape the Holocaust. Right. You know what's going on in Gaza is a war. Okay.
Irai is mortified by what's happening in Gaza and is highly critical of Bbing, you know. And that's that's what really frustrates me, is that there are people on the left. I don't unders you know, you know who's the you know who's more has pained about this. A large chunk of the Jewish committee in this world.
Oh no, listen, even some of the most pro Israel Jews that I know, and you're talking to one of them, right, look at what they did with Hesbelah, brilliant well executed. Look at what they did with the Iranians, brilliant well executed. Look at Gaza and say, those don't look alike. There's no strategy, there's no endgame, right, what is going on here? Okay?
You know this idea that we're just going to pick up a million Gosms and move them to the Congo is never going to happen, right, and so these right wing elements of Ben Gavie and Smoltrich. I mean, the damage they're causing to the Jewish community around the world is not just existential, it may be permanent for the remainder of my lifetime.
Yeah, no, it's this generational. You're right. I you know, I always said, look, I my father wasn't Jewish, my mother's Jewish. Obviously I'm Jewish. I raised my kids Jewish, but my last name didn't automatically doesn't automatically send a signal that maybe I'm Jewish or not, And maybe I hid in plain sight. Sometime around twenty fifteen twenty sixteen,
¶ Israel is doing generational reputational damage
boyd you know, suddenly it was the first time I have a friend of mine and I both said this. He's a little bit old than I am. I said, you know, my mom would tell me stories about anti Semitism. I'd be like, really, mom, that really happened, you know, be the fifties. I was like, come on, you know, so we're not that way anymore. And then all of a sudden, the way the last five years have gone, I'm like, oh, every story my mother told me about her her days is like the only Jewish family in
a Midwestern town. Yeah, I get it. I see it. And it took a generation to clean that up. And I guess here we go again.
No, Chuck, it's happening again. My grandmother is part of the kinder transport out of Berlin. Her parents were killed in Auschwitz. It's happening again. What was happening on college campuses? They'd see a Jewish student, they would just see a Jewish star. He wasn't Israeli, they didn't know if he supported bb He maybe against against net and Yahoo. But they circled him, assaulted and kept him from going to
class because he's just Jewish. Right, they're vandalizing Jewish stores, you know, holding up a sign at the protest go back to Poland. That doesn't really sound like you have a problem with the net in Yahoo administration. So people say, hey, can you be anti Zionists without being anti Semitic? And I would say, in theory, you could, But most of this movement is just not. They're conflating the two things.
One of my constituents is being sentenced tomorrow, okay, because he tried to kill me all over Israel right target practicing in his backyard, had a manifesto. I was the target. He was googling where my wife worked, what temple I belonged to. He had a rifle, a sniper, a scope, a vest, unlimited rounds of ammunition. He was a former felon.
The only reason we knew about this is because when he was target practicing in his backyard, his neighbor called the police and he was arrested because he was a former felon. Otherwise not on the radar, totally targeted just because of my positions on Israel. Okay, this is not an isolated story. I have police in front of my house twenty four hours a day now. Other members are experiencing this, and other members see this and say, oh, I don't want that to happen to me. So they're
totally silent. Totally silent.
Look, this is equivalent. This is exactly what's happened with MAGA and Republicans. You know, there's a couple of Republican senators during the whole Pete Hegseth controversy, and there was there was a majority not to confirm him, and then there were threats, literal threats, protests against the life of staffers. In the world of Joany Ernst family members of Tom Tellis. I heard all sorts of stories about the two of them being targeted, and they both caved. And here's the thing.
I don't begrudge them caving. I get it right, they
¶ Physical threats have caused Republican senators to cave
have people are being harassed that didn't get elected office, and so you feel protected. You feel like you've got to protect your family, You feel like you should protect those. Hey, they didn't sign up for this, I did type of thing, So I understand. I'm sorry they couldn't stand up to the to the moment, but I have empathy for what they were. They were trying to in some ways thinking they were protecting their own families or their own friends.
But this is this is what happens, right when intimidation over time, then all of a sudden, all principles are going.
Oh, I mean, listen right back to your whole point about how Trump is affecting the Democrats. You were worried about that. Trump has changed the whole thing, right, So, yes, he intimidation politics. Right when people view what Trump is doing in his success, intimidation politics works. So they're just doing their intimidation politics on their issue and it is absolutely having an effect on what can get done in Congress.
What can't that get done in Congress? Whether you communicate on something, whether you stay silent, whether you avoid a target on your back, and whether you cave. I mean, by the way, there is lots of caving going on
¶ Trump's intimidation politics work effectively
on a bunch of issues because of intimidation politics.
Republican Democrat, I'm curious what kind of outreach do you get from Netnyahu's government, because it's clear to me they've really messed this up, right they You know, I think what Bibe did during the Obama years is he you know, he drove a bigger wedge inside the Democratic Party in this issue.
No doubt that, no doubt that.
Simply he he is the cause of this problem. He is one of the he's part of the root cause here and now you've got a majority of the country that doesn't want to send give aid right now Israel. And that's all due to Bebe's leadership.
Do you the majority of the Democrats, a majority of the Democrats in the sense and a.
Big third way a chunk of third of Republicans Democratic primary voters. But it's not like it's he's got unanimous support on the right either.
No, that what's going on in the right is a new thing. Right, you know, the Republicans used to be able to point out Democrats and say they're an anti
¶ Majority of Americans want to cut off aid to Israel
Isra party. But now there's this, there's this movement on the right, you know, Tucker Carlson, Right, you know, there's a roll.
There's please you know, as I joke, when I hear the words populism, as a Jew, I run for cover because populism has been you know, somehow the Jews are always targeted when the rise of populism, whether it's on the left or the right.
Yeah, and the usual conspiracy theories are all back. But I I would tell you, look, the majority of people in Congress are still very pro Israel Israel, but there is a shift coming in the Democratic Party. There is a shift coming in the voter in twenty six, and there'll be a shift coming on the voter in twenty eight. It will be a shift to.
The an actual voting issue, because I'm not convinced it is, but we're going to find out.
So I don't think it's a voting issue like you go to the ballot box.
I'm going to vote right a true one issue like abortion and guns. We know there are voters that will say, you know what, I'm voting on this issue first and everything else is secondary for me.
But the people will be treated differently by the base when they're trying to run a primary in twenty eight. Let's just say, okay, everyone's going to try to out left themselves on this particular issue, especially Chuck. If the war is still going on, God forbid. Yeah, okay, if this is still fresh, if this is still going on,
¶ Will Israel be a true voting issue?
we're going to eat ourselves alive. And the replies I got to sit back and watch.
That's what I'm curious about. Does the net Yahoo government get that hey at some point, I'm not.
I'm not sure, Chuck. I'm not. I'm not sure that they. Oh, I think they've seen the shift in the policy. Are now worried about AID. The question is do they care? Oh, okay, that's a second question. Okay. No one can deny some of the decisions that they've made. We can debate whether it was good or bad for Israel, but it's definitely not been good for Jews around the world. We can debate why that's happened, and who's weaponized that, and who's
taking advantage and is there a double triple standard? And is this the same old thing that's happened for thousands of years. We can debate that. To the cows come home home. Okay, But but but there's no doubt that the net Yahoo government didn't care about the pr perception of this. They were focused on the war on the ground, and they didn't realize that there was a war for hearts and minds online. And by the time they realized it, they lost.
Yeah, is it?
You know?
I said this to a friend of mine. He sort of laughed and he sort of agreed. Which is Israel in America have one thing in common. They have unpopular leaders that they don't know how to get rid of.
Well, ours will eventually be gone. He's got three and a half years left. Okay, But who knows what's going on in Israel. I don't know how what's the timeline on at Yahu till his government collapses, till the war is over? When's that?
Well, every time his government collapse he goes further to the right and finds it way back in. I just don't know how much further to the right he can go.
Yeah, well, I mean, look, there's been shifts over there, right, I mean there has been shifts. October seventh moved them further to the right.
No, the majority of Israelis are no longer in favor of the two state solution, are they.
I guess what, Chuck? After nine to eleven? Which direction did we move? Did we move to the left? No, we moved to the right. We instituted the Patriot Act? Yeah, okay, So this is what happens when countries are attacked in large scale events. Okay. Remember Hamas's goal here. Hamas's goal isn't to win the war, Okay, it's to destroy Israel. If that if they if Hamas destroys themselves and Israel at the same time, mission accomplished. I know, mission accomplished.
No, they're ntilists.
Yeah, and Israel looked at this. Israel looked at this like we got to win on the ground, We got to beat them on the ground. And Hamas was playing
¶ Populations move to the right after being attacked
up here like, yeah, we're losing. You know, Hamas doesn't care what the Palestinians, They don't care how many people. It's just it's new material for Hamas to sell out there. They want that were Israel's falling into their propaganda hands. And it's just it's been unfortunate to watch.
All Right. You predicted we could go on and on on this issue, and I think both of us could keep going. But I did promise I try to keep you here in less than an hour. So I want to end with the state of Florida politics, the state of the Democratic Party and Florida. How much of this is a voter shift and how much of this is a lack of investment and leadership in the state party.
Well, again, Chuck, there's not one thing that has gone wrong to get us here, Okay. Obviously, you know, being at a power for thirty years hard to raise money, okay, which helps with voter turnout. You know, if when you're
¶ Covid led to Republican dominance in Florida
not empowered helps with you know, quality of candidates. Tallahassee is not like a great place to go to. Not easy to get to, especially when the Democratic base is from the South. Okay. But at the same time, I think you really got to look at COVID. COVID was
a seminal moment in politics. You know, even though we had more Democrats in Florida, registered Democrats in Florida, you know, when Rick Scott got elected, when to say this got elected with Jim Bush got elected, when Charlie Chriss got elected, we still had more Democrats, but we were still electing Republican governors. Okay, now there are one point two million more registered Republicans. It's starting to get to a point that it's not recoverable, at least not in the short term. Okay.
But I think COVID was a big piece of it. I think COVID was a big piece and I was there, I was involved in it. On on on the other side, I think, and I.
Have how did Joe Biden only lose by three points?
Then? How did you only lose it?
He lost Florida in twenty twenty by just three points?
Well, I mean again, as Joe Biden would say, don't judge me against the Almighty, judge me against the alternative. And so twenty twenty, right, we were still mid COVID, okay, and you know, people wanted to change. They wanted to change, right, and so that was a mood politic. Meanwhile, Ronda Stantis won his reelection in Florida by nineteen points and Donald Trump and Donald Trump has won Florida by thirteen points. Yeah, okay.
So the policies that came out of COVID, closing of schools, the fact that Florida opened schools early because the data was clear it wasn't spreading in schools, right, that's a big piece, Chuck, I mean, and I was telling my Democratic colleagues, like, guys read the data. Like I would sit at a conference table with the governor. We'd be reading the data from Denmark, right, and Germany and Europe because they were ahead of us and it was clear
it wasn't spreading in the schools. Okay. And I said to my Democratic colleagues, I'm like, when we open schools, it's going to be very popular when you guys come out and tell parents you want to keep their kids in the house for another year. Okay, I'm telling you this is where this is going. And none of my colleagues wanted to hear it, Chuck, None of them wanted to hear.
Is that the power of the teachers union that would would you ascribe it to that?
Or is it just part it's part teachers union, part teachers union part. Also, we were at a point of polarization that if DeSantis wanted to open government, I had to be open schools. Then I had to be against it. Then I had to be against it. You know, things had become so toxic at that point, and so I don't know what the future, the future of the Democratic Party holds in Florida. Democrats had powered Florida for one hundred plus years. We are thirty five years into Republican rule.
We may be here for another seventy so. But right now, right now, there's systemic This is a red state. It's a systemic red state. There was no repercussion for Republicans when they passed the abortion ban. Okay, there was no repercussion for Republicans when they didn't legalize marijuana. There's been no repercussion for the Republicans on anything they have done politically,
¶ Florida is officially a red state
all the social issues, all the attacking of the LGBTQ community, no political consequences, Chuck, So I.
Guess the question, well, and that's just are there no consequences there is there's not a good opposition, or are there no consequences because there there's just more more supporters than opposition, all of it, Yeah, all of it.
There's more supporters in opposition the opposition. You know, because we've been in the desert so long, can't figure you know which way is up? Okay, we fight amongst ourselves. Democrats are excellent at that. Like, you know, Democrats are having policy fights. Republicans are not having policy fights, right, they're having personality fights.
They had a big fight. I mean, you know, it is funny you say that, but I look at you know, the rules of party politics for decades, where the party that's divided in a primary usually loses a general. And frankly, in sixteen it was just the opposite. Rightublicans looked like they were totally divided, and all that did is that device. It's why I actually think the Democrats could use a
big public fight. This is healthy, have it go. You know, I worry that actually debates being stifled a little bit because of part of it has to do with social media.
¶ Democrats have policy fights, Republicans have personality fights
Where only the leftists got the loudest voice on social media. So anybody that's not from that wing of the party.
Well, that's the problem. The moderates aren't in the fight, Chuck. Yeah, the moderates aren't in the fight because they're not paying attention. They're a general election voter, they're not a primary voter. So there are in a primary voter. Those people don't have voices, they don't want to participate, They got their own lives, they're doing other stuff. And so that public fight that you're talking about isn't going to happen, okay. And so all I'm saying is that even if we
had the public fight, could we then coalesce? Could we coalesce? Could we come back? A lot of people stayed home on Harris, didn't vote for Harris.
Let me give you a riddle that Dan Pfeiffer tweeted. He said in twenty twenty eight, he was talking about the Mom Donnie primary in New York and he was because there's a lot of moderates uncomfortable supporting Mam Donnie. And his argument was to these moderates why they had
to support Mom Donnie. And his argument was this, if if a moderate wins the Democratic primary for president in twenty eight, let's say it's Shapiro or Bashir, there's going to be an expectation that the progressives get on board. And if a progressive wind should the should the same rule go the other way? What do you say to that? What do you say to Pfiffer in that sort of
¶ When progressives win, should the moderates get on board?
line of thinking.
I would say, I was at the convention for Hillary when the Bernie people bowed her. I was there, So this is this is not a news thing, right, Okay, all right, That's what I would say, Like, let's go backwards a little bit, okay, And yes, we always say to the progressives, you gotta get on board with a moderate, and they always bitch and complain and throw it in our face, isn't it. That's fine? Okay? But you know, when it came time to trying to beat Donald Trump, okay,
and maybe they didn't understand the existential threat that he was. Okay, a lot of the Burnie people weren't on board, Chuck right, they weren't. They weren't on board. And so you know, and that's a question that Democrats have to ask themselves. Do they want purity or do they want power? Republicans have made that decision. They want power. Power is the only thing that matter. In fact, Republicans tell me all the time, Jared, you should try it. Sometimes it's great, okay,
But but Democrats seem like we want purity. We want purity, right, don't We don't want power, And that's gonna be something
¶ Democrats have to value electability over purity
we're gonna have to decide in twenty six and twenty eight. Do we want to win the House? Do we want to make Hakkeen Jeffrey speaker or do we want to nitpick some of the things we don't like about Hakim or the left doesn't like about Hakim? Okay? Do we want to win in twenty eight or do we want someone who's so pure they're not electable. I mean, these are decisions that we're gonna have to make. That doesn't mean you pick the most right leaning Democrat. That's not
what I'm advocating. What I'm advocating is is electability the only thing that matters. And I think at this point the Republicans have made that decision. It's power. Get everybody in line to win power. If this is the way we got to go to win, then that's what we're going to do to win, period, and Democrats we're having all these wonderful policy debates. We got our hie charts and our grats, and we're going to send out talking points with eighteen things on it that nobody reads. Okay.
Trump is selling blenders, he's throwing in free shipping, Chuck. Okay, and we have we have lost it. There are people who know how to communicate, right, Like I don't necessarily agree with everything on AOC, but brilliant communicator, she knows how to do.
It's really good.
I don't necessarily agree with mom. Donnie, brilliant communicator, knows how to community. He had three things he sold people, three things. That was it? Three and it was repetition, similar to Trump. Remember, no collusion, no collusion, no collusion. I had breakfast this morning, No collusion. Milania is beautiful. No collusion, no collusion, no collusion. Over and over and over again. This is this is how political communication works. Now.
¶ The power of strong political communication skills
I have students that come up to me and they're like, oh, Jared, I want to run for Congress. I am studying political science. I say, drop political science, go study commun ye, go study communication. You need to learn how to communicate. If you don't know how to communicate in today's politics, then good luck to you. It's the communicators that are going to rise on and know how to sell the package to the American people.
There is a US Senate seat that is up in twenty twenty six. Your name's been floated. Uh are you looking at it? And if not, why not?
Well, what I would say is, I'm not looking at it. I'm looking at reelection. But if for some reason Republicans decide to do all the jerrymandering and decide to set me free from my district, perhaps then I would look
¶ Any interest in a Florida senate run?
at it. Chuck, So I'm.
Not looking are you assuming you're going to get targeted?
Oh? I'm absolutely going to get targeted. I mean my districts. The closest in the state is Palm Beach.
I mean I've sort of been watching Palm Beach.
You know.
There's always been this idea that the three counties or these rock blue counties, and of course, guess what, Miami Dade has gone the other way. It's probably pretty much a fifty to fifty county, maybe slightly leaning right right now versus left, but it's right. It really is a center right down the middle county. At the moment, Broward is still a pretty rock solid Democratic county. Palm Beach I would assume that the more sort of the magnet of Trump has had some impact in shifting your Palm
Beach constituency a little bit to the right. Is that is that the case?
Not some impact? Major impact? It's okay. It started again with COVID New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Chicago came down to Florida. Republicans. Republicans moved here. Okay, you can see it just in the price of real estate. Quite frankly so. Boca Ratone used to be a Democratic town. It's now a Republican town. I've lost Pokratone twice Noble to my elections.
¶ Trump's presence created big rightward shift in Palm Beach county
Yeah, that was a rock solid decount d town forever.
Republished Republican town. And I'm not losing Boca by a point. I'm losing Boca by six or seven points. Wow. Now, I'm a moderate dam who's pro Israel.
Pro Israel. I was just gonna say that should have been that should be just, that should have been an eighty five percent number for you.
It's there, But it's tough, Chuck. When DeSantis is winning by nineteen points, and Trump's winning by thirteen points. Those are headwinds and people are just voting down ticket. The fact that I'm outperforming Democrats by five points, I'm outperforming them in Parkland, where I'm fromt I outperform commonly here by nine points. Parkland's a republican town, is always voted for Republicans, has always been a republican town. The northern part.
Of the mistern Broward has always been a bit more conservative than than closer to the coast. Right, No, it's the other way. The coast is, the coast is republican.
Okay, the coast, the coast is Republican. And so what what I think they'll try to do is they're going to try to take the district more north. Give me, give me del.
Ray Palm Beach, Yeah, had a huge Haitian population. Is that that that further north?
Further north, that's where that I don't know that I'll go that north. But look, I think there are probably ways that they can take my D plus two you know, to a to a zero. Right, they start to do
¶ Potential to be gerrymandered out of your seat?
other stuff, they're gonna get they're gonna start getting in the way.
And it's going to become a plight between Schumer and Jeffries for you. What's that It's going to be a fight between Schumer and Jeffries for you because Jeffries is going to want you to run because you're probably the only d that can win if they if they if they redo your district.
Well, to be honest, I actually hope we don't get there. I actually hope that I'm running for your election. They don't mess with fair districts and violate the Constitution. And then I helped to make HAKEM. Jeffrey Speaker because no offense to Chuck Schumer flipping Senate versus flipping the House. Different Democrats have to get a wing of government back. We have. We have to for two reasons, one for the country too. If we don't win in twenty six, I don't know what will we left of the party.
You're not wrong, it is a it is It is pretty bleak. If somehow Democrats don't win anything in the mid terms of.
Twenties, well, Republicans are doing a great job jack with jerrymandering in that if they take to if California doesn't happen, and look, I've always been four independent commissions Okay, back to her, what should we do? Should we respond or
¶ If Democrats don't win in midterms it could destroy the party
should we send? In our principle, I think what Gavin Newsom is doing is correct.
You have to he's going to the voters. I mean, I do think that California is different than these other places. I think they now the voter. They have to, but I actually think that deserves that's at least a small d democratic way of fighting back. He's got to make his case to the voters in order to do this.
No, no, But if that doesn't happen, Let's say the voters voted down. Let's say they reject it and Texas gets their five, and it's two in Ohio, and it's one in Missouri, and it's and it's one in Indiana. We're at nine now, okay, and they do two or three in Florida, right, and it's eleven seats, now twelve seats.
Now, I mean, you can win the national popular vote and still not getting.
Up that that that that's that's correct. And so that's why we have no choice but to do this. It's not the game we wanted to play, but we have to play the game. We cannot unilaterally disarm. Understand, in our Laurels. It's an unfortunate situation, Okay. I like the president's position. By the way, it's just and he gets away with it. Texas, give me five seats. California, I'm going to sue you for what you're doing.
¶ Democrats can't unilaterally disarm in gerrymandering war
It's you know, I'd love to understand the psyche of our, of of of the American public on this, because if Joe Biden behaved the exact same way, oh, forget it, there had been the twenty fifth I think the twenty fifth Amendment might have been in voked.
Forget it. Remember when Trump said I could shoot someone in Fifth Avenue get away with it. We thought that was just like an odd Wait man, did he really early, early, early understand the following that he had and could get away? I mean, he just he knew it. He got away with it. And and that has been I mean, what is there anything I mean, even sure the Epstein stuff maybe for the first time right challenged his base, but
I don't know, Chuck, it's kind of gone right. I mean, they moved her, they moved her.
My god, they manufactured something to release. It was actually weirdly brilliant. I'm gonna send my personal lawyer who now has works for the government to interview you. And oh, by the way, before we do the interview, let's openly talk about the pardon and a commutation.
Chuck. It wasn't it's nice, it was it was.
It was quite reason that don't.
Looked good at necessary? Is Brillian? I look at it as totally predictable. Remember the most parent, most transparent administration in American history. How do we be transparent. Let's go create a record that will then release, right, and we're not going to pardon her now, but we'll tell her,
¶ Trump's cover up of Epstein is openly blatant
we'll move her, we'll give her on work release, and then we'll tell her wink wink, if you play along, that's how you get your pardon. Okay, I mean this is this is easy to figure out. We were going this direction. But again, yeah, it looks like he got away with it.
It does at some point. I don't think voters like to be lied to, right and don't like to be treated like stooges.
And yeah, but he's not on the baut at, Chuck, He's not on the ballut anymore. I mean that's why when people say to me, like he's never leaving, he's running for tenths term he'll be one hundred and fifty. Right, He's acting like a guy who knows he's not up for it.
Know, I agree with that. I'm glad you said that he's fumba lueizing this a little bit. I complete, I weirdly think, and in fact, there's a part of me that wonders, is he's starting to see his mortality right He's staring mortality clearly is not very healthy right now, and suddenly that is motivating him to say, well, throwing all caution out the window.
And yeah, I mean there used to be. I'm going to get a plane from Qatar. What are you gonna do about it? I'm not on the I'm not on the ballot again. I'm gonna build a bull ballroom. I'm going to paint over the rose garden. What are you going to do about it? I'm not on the ballot again. I'm going to paint the whole Oval office gold because guess what, you can't do anything about it. I'm not on the ballot again. It just I'm going to put troops here. I'm going to do this. I'm going to
do that. I'm not going to be held accountable because one I'm not on the ballot, and two I have immunity.
Look, I've kept you past an hour, and I promised your staff I would keep this under an out and I had to say.
One more thing, Chuck before we go.
Ease?
Can we just talked really quickly about what the administration has done to FEMA because I think it's really important for your list.
I'm looked this was going to be absolutely I'm petrified if a hurricane. Let's let's put it in real war terms. We are, we are two days away. We're taping right now in August twenty eighth. When this rolls next week, it'll be September. You know, I look at the calendar. My mother wished me a happy Andrew Anniversary on the twenty fourth. We know to on the twenty ninth is
our Katrina anniversary. We know it's Florida. The likelihood there's what's gonna What is the FEMA response going to look like in October if a major storm hits South Florida.
So let me say this. When Trump said FEMA needed reform, a lot of the emergency management industry said, he's right. FEMA does need reform because it doesn't work in homeland Homeland has stifled it. It can't move fast. Homeland has it doing grants that it shouldn't be doing. Okay, and
¶ What will FEMA response look like when a hurricane hits?
people booked about.
Reforming Homeland just the DHS, Department of Homeland Security, Partment of.
Homeland Security correct. And this has been something that previous FEMA administrators have said, Democrat and Republican. The last three, in fact, have said, we're dying in Homeland. You got to get that.
I should it go? Would you just make it independent or.
It was an independent agency before or would you put it? Look, it was an independent agency beforehand. So if you couldn't make an independent agency, I don't know you could put it in the National Security Council. I don't know that putting in the Pentagon, another giant bureaucracy helps the agency. But if you want to make it faster, right, you want to make response faster, that's a good goal, not what NOME has done. What NOME has done is actually
the opposite. It's slower, it's more efficient. Now we don't have enough people. Everything that's that it was one hundred thousand dollars has to come to her so she can know where the money is going. That slowed down the response in Texas. The idea that we didn't put the swift water rescue crews on the road for three days, Chuck, I never heard anything in my life in emergency management.
Everything we've ever learned. Put them on the road, mobilize and move them from the Omaha district, move them from the New Orleans district. I mean the director of that program resigned days later because his people shoudn't move totally. Crazy. Where do we stand. Here's where we stand, Chuck. If you had a Category four or five storm building to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, they're in big trouble. South Carolina, North Carolina, they're in
big trouble. Their state em departments cannot handle the logistics without FEMA. Then let's talk about the money expedited reimbursement. They used to send money down really early before you waited for the rest of it. Twenty five percent of it would come down. That program seems to be gone. How about pre landfall decks where you would get a land you'd get a declaration from the president two or three days before landfall, so that day you speed up
the process. You can start spending money. You know, you're going to get reimbursement. Your cities and counties who might be fiscally constrained. They know that they're getting their stuff.
¶ States can't handle disaster logistics without FEMA
They can start moving, you know, their logistics operations, their debris removal, their water, ice power restoration, all of these things. We don't know if we're getting pre landfall declarations. We're watching these declarations for other events. You know, we watched the governor of Arkansas who worked in the Trump administration's bay for two weeks to get a declaration. So I can tell you I speak to a lot of state directors deathly worried, God forbid. We had a Northridge in
California hasn't happened. In fact, there's no one really who went through that. That's still in emergency management. Okay, FEMA is not ready. So when they sent that letter and called it the Katrina Declaration, what they're really trying to say is FEMA has to work in a Cat five. Sure, okay, you want states to handle Cat ones on their own, no problem, we could get there. But they can't do a Cat five on their own. It would take generations
and generations of investment for them to build that capacity. Okay, But now FEMA's not ready for a Cat five. They're not ready for a Cat four. They're not ready to mobilize, they're not ready to prop it up in the event that happens. So in Florida and Texas, where we have better emergency management departments, okay, we'll fail better unless in Atlantic Atlantic storm that goes into Palm Beach, state of Rowark. Okay, remember Dorian a couple of years ago that like paused
over the Bahamas and just destroyed the Bahamas. It was a Cat five storm stopped seventy five miles off.
Her coastow didn't come on shore right and just turned due north.
Yep, right, God forbid that that storm that was erin right didn't had turned over land and not over water. We're not ready in those in the Tri County area. Without FEMA's health and we have one of the best emergency management directors in the country and Kevin Guthrie, FEMA would have to move military assets, okay to this area in order to do swift water rescues. We would need the amount of food we would need to feed millions of people.
I went through Andrew, I mean, it was a catastrophe and we and it was two about two thirds of what the population is today down in Did County.
And don't ask me why, because I haven't been able to figure out the why. But Christy Nome has absolutely gutted and destroyed the agency. We talk about what's going on in the Department of Education or Social Security or Medica, and FEMA doesn't get a lot of attention. FEMA is in worse shape than anything.
It's weird about it is it goes against his sort of you know, he wants to be the benevolent king, right Trump, So this you would think would actually be in his wheelhouse that he would want to be the savior. He would want to be the guy the way he wants to control interest rates and control this in a weird way. Why wouldn't he want more? This is the
one thing he doesn't want control for it. My only thesis on this is he didn't like getting blamed for FEMA's mistakes in his first term, so he's decided anything that provided that gave him a negative approval rating right Hurricane Maria down Puerto Rico and some of these other places. That's my only theory is that he didn't like that he accumulated that if FEMA messed up, that he took the fall, so now he wants to turn it into
a state thing. It's my only explanation of why he's this way, because on anything else, See wants more control when it comes to handing out money, not less.
Well, of course, FEMA is a political football, right, So that's and that's always been the case. I'll give you another theory. Any think I'm crazy when I say this.
Look, any theory these days with Trump is not crazy because they didn't know.
How about that the theory he didn't know. He didn't know actually what she was doing over there. They didn't know how bad it was. Similar to how like they didn't know that we got rid of the guys that run like our nuclear programs when we were doging everyone, and they didn't know and then found out later. I'll give you another theory. They didn't know. They didn't know what Christy and Corey Lewandowski had done over there, and
they're finding out now. And the problem is, as you know, very easy to break this stuff, much harder harder to fix it.
Texas was a test run. I mean we already you just pointed out that was actually a massive theme of failure whether Texas basically back Texas had a decent respect, so it sort of covered up how bad The female response was right.
Correct, which that's what I've said. If it was a state without a robust department, it would have been dramatically exposed. And now I think there are people in the West wing that recognize this is a problem. But Chuck, that's not how Trump works. He's a brilliant marketing and sales guy. So you know what he'll do. He'll say, He'll say, I told you so, I told you they were broken.
Yeah. Well, one of those cases where I thought Susie Wilds would have impact on this. There were a couple
¶ White House realizes FEMA will become a problem
of spots that I thought she was going to have impact. One was keeping the Kennedy's crazy from being too influential. That's been a failure, and on and on.
Storm response, Well, I'll tell you this, okay, And again, you're talking to a Democrat who worked in a Republican administration and you know.
Her a little bit, so you may have some insight.
And I know her, you only know what has gotten through. You don't know what she has stopped. I know, I hear this a lot, and so yeah, I was in a Republican administration, there's a lot of stuff that got through, but you also don't know like what came and you're like, oh my god, that got stopped, whether it was one chief of staff for another.
Describing I joke, this is what every trump book is like, right, every trump book is you won't believe what he tried to do, and you won't believe who stopped them, right Like that was every trump book in the first administration with some form of that. So I take your point, but I guess there are fewer things that get stopped. That'd be my one.
Listen, I don't underestimate the presidents of that imagination on what he thinks he can do under his power. But also there are the people around him. Okay, the people around him in some instances are worse okay on what they want to do and now have full reign to go do okay. And so yeah, we never know what what she has or what she hasn't what she hasn't stopped. But look Susie's very qualified, runs a very tight shoit.
¶ Some of the people around Trump are worse than him
No, I look, there there's a few people, you know. I deal with people that are just like they assume it's all alarmists. I'm like, yeah, but there are going to be people that end up that. I always say this, the hero of this story will be somebody you don't like at the moment.
Oh yeah, of course, Mike Pence was the hero of January sixth.
Liz Cheney, Right. I mean I tell this all the time to my liberal friends. You don't know, just like in the first term, somebody's going to be the hero that right now you don't like.
Yeah, So I appreciate it. Thanks for being talking.
About I would too. Am I going to see it at the Miami Notre Dame game?
I don't know that I'll be at the Miami Notre Dame game.
Here's what I just since you you're good with disaster management, you may have some insight on the weather. I just want hot, humid, horrible weather for those boys from South Bend.
That's all I can guarantee. You're going to get hot, miserable, humid weather. What I can't guarantee is whether you're gonna get rain.
Well, the last I saw, we're supposed to get first half ranged, so we'll say, but hey, I hope that's the case, because it rains every day at Green schrein practice field. So there's there's got to be there will be no problem on that side of the ball at least I hope.
Hey, Jared, don't isolate me from my Irish voters, please, I won't.
I hear you, And especially if you run statewide, you know you've got to be You've got to be for all three Florida schools or four Florida schools. I'm gonnaccount you see.
F these days. Well, thanks, ing U appreciate there.
It is great to I was just going to say you lived, you live the life GW. I mean, we have a grown up in South Florida go to GW. You had the guts to run for office. I didn't, So kudos to you.
I actually think perhaps it may have worked out for you. Jock.
Well, you know, I've always wondered about the other path traveled, and so I've admired watching you from afar. It was really good to It was great to get to know you.
Thanks Jock, appreciate it.