Big Cult, Little Brains

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30:21It's nice to see you. Thank you so much for coming on. I'm sure that work has been somewhat stressful lately around the Senate. That big heaping pile of dog shit of a bill. I mean, that's a disaster. Yeah, it's been a mess. Honestly, it's been really tough. You know, I was, you know, the last time that the Republicans had that trifecta in the Congress and the White House and were trying to gut the Affordable Care Act. I was just a regular citizen. I was not somebody interested in politics. It was very surreal being on the floor of the Senate this time. I remember watching John McCain be able to stop them from gutting the Affordable Care Act eight years ago with his thumb, right?

31:05The gladiator style. And this time around, to be actually on the floor of the Senate, to be there and watching this unfold, to talk with my colleagues and be praying for that political courage to return yet again. But, you know, I just see. Yeah, I just think it was really tough to see and really tough to experience this time around. And, you know, I don't know what's going to happen next here in the Senate. I think that's something that I worry about a lot. OK, so, Senator, we like to talk about to start off with just petty grievances, just everyday annoyances that drive our listeners crazy. So Senator Kim, what have you had it with?

31:47Yeah, well, look, I got a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old, two little boys. And we just had them meet up with some of their cousins for a little family reunion. So they were like four boys between the ages six and 10. And every single sentence that they said started with bro. I mean, it was just like, and they would just say, not just to themselves, but to me, They're like, bro, can you get me dinner? I was like, what are you talking about? So I had it with my young boys just saying bro in front of every single sentence. It's a little overwhelming. You know, my sons always say to me if I text them something like, hey, I got our flights booked.

32:27They respond sick. Every time I see that, I'm always like sick of what? And then I realize, oh, you're this is the word like I used to say to my mother. Oh, cool. And she'd be like, what's cool? You know, she didn't know what it went. And there's a real moment where it makes me feel older. Yeah, it does. I mean, it definitely makes me feel like I'm missing some of the language that they're referring to. I don't know. It's also endearing in some ways because I got, you know, these two boys that, you know, at that age, they're two years apart. They, like, love, hate each other, right? And, like, it's cute to see them just, you know, bonding.

33:05They sleep in the same room and like you have that kind of brotherly love. So it's fun to watch their personalities unfold, you know, especially at that age. But it doesn't mean that it's any less annoying when they start to do certain things, though. We emailed with you prior to your coming on. And one of the things that you've had it with is money in politics. So Congress people owning and trading stocks and, you know, like super donor candidates like Elon Musk, Trump, I would assume, and then super PAC spending. So tell us your thoughts on this. Yeah, I mean, I think this is one of the biggest problems that we have out there.

33:46And I think the root of so many of the sins and illnesses that we have in our politics. I mean, first and foremost, members of Congress and government officials, we should not be owning and trading individual stocks. That should be a no-brainer. I mean, I've got colleagues in Armed Services Committee or other committees that have stocks in Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed. We're making major decisions that can affect these companies, these industries. And the American people deserve to know that we are doing things and making decisions based off of what's best for the country, not what's best for one stock portfolio for one's bottom line.

34:25And, you know, so that's something that just really pisses me off. You know, there's so many other industries where you're not able to trade stocks because of conflicts of interest. Why is it that we have this like no one's holding a gun to our head to do these jobs? If you care that much about your stock portfolio, please, I'm sure there's something else you can do. So that's always been frustrating to me, and especially when we see right now with the president as well. It's not just about members of Congress. I have legislation I've introduced that would ban members of Congress from owning and trading stocks, but also the president, the vice president, cabinet officials, even the Supreme Court justices.

35:03I often say, if you have a job whose job description is in the Constitution of the United States, you should not be trading and owning stocks. You should be focused on the people. There's a higher calling, and you should be held at a highest level of standard. So that's been really frustrating. But also, just writ large, in money and politics, I have run for Congress against only self-funders. I've only had the chance to run against self-funders. And it's really frustrating when like someone can just throw in, you know, millions of dollars into their own campaign. And I often say it's like playing chess against someone with all queens.

35:43Like it's just not the same game. I don't have the ability to throw in millions of dollars into my own race. And why is it that someone that can just immediately get so much of advantage? And same thing with super PACs. Like I think one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in the history of this country was Citizens United. has unleashed this curse upon our democracy with billions of dollars being spent. It makes it harder for us candidates because we now have to compete against these super PACs that you don't even know who's funding these. We had one that was coming after me about health care.

36:18We tried to track down who it was, and the best we could find was it went back to some strip mall UPS store in Virginia or something like that. We had no idea who was funding these super PACs trying to spread these lies against me. And it just raises up the ability for like Elon Musk and others to have an outsized impact on our democracy. It's inherently unfair and tilted towards the billionaires, which is now what we see having the influence in this administration as well as in Congress. Let me ask you this. This is something I think is at the core of the Democratic Party moving forward. You have in New York a candidate named Zoran Mamdani who won his primary via grassroots.

37:02And now you have some New York politicians who are Democrats who have not endorsed him. And the one thing that all of these Democrats have in common is they take APAC money. And I think this is a real problem for the Democratic Party. And I think when you put the needs of Israel, who is a completely hawkish country, controlled by a total war criminal dictator, Benjamin Netanyahu, and you see that the Democrats right now in power only have a 16 percent approval rating. And then comes this grassroots, young, good looking, smart talking, affordability candidate that just takes New York City by storm.

37:43And rich white people got the guy elected. And you're not listening to that and you're not endorsing him. And then we did a little deep dive on this. And every single one of these senators and Congress people, the one thing they all have in common is they are beholden to AIPAC. And I think it's a huge problem. And Israel is underwater with the Democrats right now. The support has completely reversed, kind of like gay marriage did, super, super fast, because Democrats cannot cannot watch people being killed and starved and shot in AIDS aid lines, you know, to get food and feel like we're OK with that.

38:25So I just think this is a big problem. And I think more Democrats have to come out and call out their co-workers on this because we're literally on the precipice of an authoritarian regime. I mean, who knows if we're going to make it to the midterms, quite honestly? I mean, seriously. Yeah, no, look, I mean, a lot there that we're struggling with, first and foremost, I mean, you're right. Like, I think about my own Senate race when I was running for Senate. You know, I stepped up to run against an indicted senator, Senator Bob Menendez, who was indicted for corruption. Oh, yeah. But then I also found myself running against the current governor's wife.

39:04And the entirety of the Democratic Party actually supported the governor's wife rather than me, including all my Democratic colleagues in the House of Representatives supported her, not me. And it was just one of those situations where I was basically excommunicated from the Democratic Party in New Jersey for a while. I was radioactive. People there didn't want to have anything to do with me. And I found it to be so frustrating in some ways because you're just like, look, let's not be just beholden to concentrations of power. Let's not be beholden to corporate interests or this or that. And in New Jersey, we have a machine politics, and it's a Democratic Party, my own party that's doing so many things that I think are wrong.

39:49Doing so many things that I think are just— Let's specifically talk about AIPAC. Do you take money from AIPAC? No, no, I don't take money from AIPAC. Don't you think that in light of the low approval ratings of elected Democrats, and it's such a layup right now to get high approval ratings against just this idiotic MAGA regime, it should be such a layup. But our politicians, Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, are tethered to AIPAC. And you can just feel it. You can feel their compromise. And the base of the Democratic Party, we're not stupid. We don't go, OK, we're all into Epstein. OK, now we're not supposed to be into Epstein.

40:33OK, Jewish space lasers. We actually critically think and think for ourselves. And as I watch it and I watch, why are these guys not endorsing this just fantastic candidate? I think we have to at this time, politicians like you, communicators like us have to band together to move the Democratic Party away from this, because I think it will be our demise. We lost two political races to a fucking moron who cannot blend his makeup because of centrist democratic policies. And here's the thing. I live in a red state and I used to buy into this democratic narrative that, oh, we need to be in the center because it's going to turn off the right.

41:17Centrist democratic policies, if you live in a red state, it only makes the right wing further right because everything they define is in opposition to what the opposing party is. So if you're in the center, they go full tilt, no abortion, even if you've been raped or it's going to save your life. They go so far right. So at this point, I'm like, fuck it. Let's go all the way left. And really, Bernie's ideas, AOC's ideas, Zoran Mamdani's ideas, they're just not radical. They're just the problem is they are just not beholden to special interests. And I just feel like we have to beat this drum. You know, I think about this a lot because, you know, in the House of Representatives, I represented and won a district that Trump won twice.

42:04So I watched the Republicans try to gut the Affordable Care Act. My congressman at the time, a Republican, was the lead author of the health care repeal bill. He was the one that came up with the idea of gutting preexisting condition protections. And he won my congressional district by 20 points in 2016. So he thought he was untouchable. But look, we were able to do a 21-point flip, win this seat, help flip the House of Representatives in 2018. And I won in 2020 this district again, despite the fact that Trump won my district that year in 2020. So I thought a lot about what does it take to win?

42:39And I'll be honest with you, like so often people in D.C. try to make it seem like, you know, a swing district, swing states that there just is a blue army and a red army duking it out every day. It's not the case. You know, what I found in my district is the vast, vast, vast majority of people in my congressional district couldn't stand either party. You know, they have such distrust in politics as a whole. And they appreciated that I'm not somebody that dreamt of being in politics since I was a kid, that I'm not central casting what you'd imagine a U.S. congressman or a U.S. senator to look like.

43:14I was only 34 years old when I was first starting to run for Congress. I just doubled the number of millennials in the U.S. Senate on the Democrat side. Like what they liked was that I was somebody that was coming at it from a different direction. I'm not somebody that's just been waiting for someone else to tell me when I can run. I didn't ask for permission. And when I was running for Senate, as well as in the House, I was pushing a heavy reform agenda. Some of the things I talked about, money and politics, but also about just fixing our fundamental democracy. But from an anti-corruption standpoint, I think it's powerful.

43:51Because I think so many of the people that are disaffected, feeling apathetic about politics, they're just frustrated very large about the entire project. And they want people that are going to come at it from a different direction. So I think corruption and anti-corruption and reform agenda, having a new generation of leadership stepping up, those are the types of messages that I think the Democratic Party would benefit from. And I think it's something that can coalesce across ideological spectrum. I don't think that it's only progressives that care about stopping corruption. I think that there's a lot of people that can get behind that.

44:30And that's at least what I've experienced so far in my time. Go ahead. When you look at what you have proposed in terms of corruption, and every time I hear people talking about corruption in politics, Nancy Pelosi is the first name you hear. And I look at how the stock market and the buying futures, like Trump's going to announce a tariff, so we're buying and selling. The way that is working, is there any way by legislation to protect people from insider information because of their political appointments? Yeah, well, look, like I said, I introduced legislation that would ban members of Congress, but also executive branch senior officials from owning and trading stocks.

45:15because I don't think that we should be able to have that kind of insider knowledge and then be benefiting off of that and trading off of it. I think there's conflicts of interest. I think if you're heavily invested in a certain industry, yes, you may want to make sure that that industry is healthy and continue to succeed. So there's no way to be able to extract that. And I've seen it. And also, it's just also about the perceptions from the American people. When they're seeing Trump doing what he's doing with the tariffs, turning them on, turning them off, and then they're seeing members of Congress actively trading at the same time.

45:56When they see members of the administration actively trading stocks at that time, it certainly gives the perception that this is something that is being dominated because of personal benefit and interest. The American people deserve to know that their elected officials and that their government officials are working for them, again, working for the people, not for themselves. And so that's really important, especially at a time when there's such distrust in government. Like 84 % of people in New Jersey surveyed believe that their politicians are corrupt. Like 84%, that is a crazy number. It just shows you how widespread the concern is.

46:42Like, how can democracy function if 84 percent of people believe that their elected officials are corrupt? It's not functioning. It's not functioning. I think it's just absolutely not functioning. And Trump has monopolized on that. Let's face it. One of the best things about traveling is eating new food in different locations. I don't like to cook, but I like to eat adventurous things. And that is why I love CookUnity because they prepare such a huge array of different meals. My favorite meal is the Mediterranean Grilled Shrimp Grain Bowl. And I love this so much. It completely makes me crave it every time.

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51:40And she went famously to her Instagram Live and asked what it was. Zoran Mamdani, same thing. And if you think about the juxtaposition of that, you sitting here talking about anti-corruption, but think back to what people originally said about Trump. He's so rich, he can't be bought. But that's what they thought. They thought he's a billionaire. We worship. That's a symptom of American culture we're going to have to deal with if we survive this, but that we worship rich people and we think that they're somehow superhuman. But I do think the nuggets in your districts that you won, that Trump won, same with AOC and the same with Mamdani is a way for Democrats to look into messaging because all of you fiercely, from what I'm hearing you say and what they do, are fiercely independent, grassroots, not beholden to corporations.

52:36And there was this myth among MAGA voters that Donald Trump, because he's so wealthy, couldn't be bought and that he was going to, quote, drain the swamp. We all know that was all bullshit and propaganda, blah, blah. But to the person who doesn't follow the 24 hour news cycle like all of us here, it's not that big of a stretch. Well, he's rich. He says he's going to get rid of all the corruption because people just assume because of all the aforementioned stock trading and all that stuff that they are corrupt. And let's face it, a lot of politicians are really corrupt, either overtly or covertly.

53:08So what do you think about moving forward, the Democratic Party? Because I feel like we're at a real time here where I feel the base is splintering. I feel it. We feel it in these podcast waves on YouTube. We can feel it. There's a real dissatisfaction in Democrats with the leadership right now, and it's getting fever pitch. So as somebody who has won districts that the Antichrist himself won, Donald J. Trump has won, tell us what you think the way forward, not for you personally, but as a party. Yeah, you know, this has been a real frustration for me because as I told you, you know, I won. I was one of only seven Democrats that won a congressional district that Trump won in 2020.

53:58That's the only seven of us out of 220 some Democrats in the country. At no point after that election did anyone from leadership in Congress or the DNC or the White House ever come to the seven of us and ask us, like, how'd you do it? Like, how'd you pull it off? And like, what do you need to do it again? Or how can we take that and scale it or move it around? And so that's just been infuriating. And as I told you, my own party was trying to stand in my way and stop me from running. um you know when i was running for senate so you know i've experienced a lot of the frustrations uh of this party i mean look for me i am a believer uh in movement politics you know i was a community organizer working on homelessness issues before um i worked on a lot of other issue ways on the outside so that's like for me like i'm not gonna just you know sit by and and just kind of wait for somebody to try to figure out what the game plan is.

55:01I'm trying to just build it on my own. So we're engaged in this effort right now to just build off of what we did in New Jersey to try to mobilize nationwide. For instance, me and Jamie Raskin have started or are continuing this effort called Democracy Summer, which Jamie has done in the House. I'm doing it now in the Senate, which is trying to mobilize young people around the country to try to get them more engaged. There's a lot that I'm trying to do, again, on trying to build a national movement when it comes to reforming politics for taking on so many of these frustrations that people have.

55:37So I think that that's really where it is for me, is as much as I can't stand Donald Trump, when you look at what he's doing, he is a movement leader on his own side. We've seen the MAGA movement basically consume the entirety of the Republican Party. The Republican Party does not exist anymore. It has been consumed by this mega movement. Well, the Democrats, we're not going to be able to compete or be able to win if we're just thinking about this in traditional party politics. This is not party politics. We're up against a movement leader. We need our own movement. We need our own effort on our side to be able to go up against that.

56:16And so I really do think that we need to continue to push on this outside-in mentality to be able to build a movement. And it's not going to just come from just the edicts of political party leadership. It's something that we just need to be able to harness. And I hope people see that as we get closer to the midterms because that's how – I came into office by helping be part of the 2018 wave. I was a candidate that had nobody, no connections to the Democratic Party or the DCCC or whatever. We're seeing those candidates now stepping up around the country. I hope people can channel their frustrations and anger and channel that towards lifting up some of these incredible candidates that I'm seeing stepping up.

57:02These are people that are not waiting for the blessing of party leadership. They're just jumping out there saying that they want to roll up their sleeves and get the war. And I hope people adopt one or two of these candidates or these congressional districts and try to make sure we can mobilize and be able to win back the levers of power to stop Trump, to restore some of the checks and balances. And then certainly get engaged in a much more fulsome effort to try to shape the party leading into the presidential election cycle. So that's certainly what I'm trying to do. We need to make sure we can get back control over one or both of the chambers.

57:39That needs to be our immediate goal in terms of winning back one of the gavels and stopping Trump from just being able to run the tables and be able to do another big, beautiful, disastrous legislation. We can't let him do that again. So that's at least kind of how I'm trying to think through this right now. OK, now let's play our game. Had it or hit it. So we'll list some things. And if you like it, you'll say hit it. And if you don't, you'll say had it. Oh, my God. Welcome to Had It or Hit It. I would hit it. Had it. Had it. I hit it every day, sometimes twice a day. Okay, had it or hit it grocery store bagels?

58:18I had it with grocery store bagels. I'm somebody that, I actually love making my own bagels. So I make my own bagels and I take that very seriously. And with grocery store bagels, I don't even think they can be called bagels. I just call them circle bread. because, you know, like it is not actually a bagel. And I think it does such a disservice to the name. It's false advertising. So that's something I can't stand. Okay, last one. Had it or hid it, your co-workers. My co-workers? Depends on who we're talking about. But look, what I'll say is that, But what I'll say is that at least in the Democratic caucus, it's been really extraordinary getting to see and work alongside them.

59:14Some amazing people there that I've been learning from and engaging in. And just in general, like, look, I want to just put a plug in. Like at a time when Elon Musk and others have been demonizing public servants, like, I want to lift up public servants. You know, I was a career public servant. And I actually started my first job at USAID, which we've seen under attack and decimated. You know, as we're approaching the 250th anniversary of our country, like I hope that in this next year, we try to recommit ourselves to public service. We try to recommit ourselves to recognizing we're part of something bigger than all of us, because right now it's being hollowed out.

59:53and we have a lot of people in Congress now that are what I call performative, they do what I call performative governance. They're more interested in putting on a show rather than actually governing. So to my colleagues that actually want to govern, you know, I will say hit it and I want to make sure we're continuing to support public service. But to those who are just looking out for their own ego and their ambition, you know, I've had it with that kind of stuff. It's just, it's a disgrace And it's something that the American people deserve better than that. Senator Kim, thank you so much for joining us today.

1:00:28And good luck fighting the good fight at work. And I love your shout out to public servants. I could tell pumps did too. I think that's a really important shout outs. But thank you so much for your time today. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Take care. All right. That's all we have time for today, you guys. We're so happy to always have so many senators and Congress people come in and report to us. Please make sure you buy our book, Life is a Lazy Susan of Shit Sandwiches. Pumps is laughing, but we agreed with our publisher that we would promote this. And I am a woman of my word.

1:01:04And she can sit and ridicule it. I'm not ridiculing. But I will keep my word, HarperCollins, and all of the people involved as a woman who keeps her word. We'll see you all later.

1:01:19I'll tell you what I've had it with. Let's hear it. I've had it with that. Listen up, patriots, gaytriots, and natriots. We have a new podcast that has dropped. It's called IHIP News. It's Monday through Friday, every day, 15 to 20 minute hot takes on the political landscape of the United States of America, always served with a side of petty grievances. We are on all the available platforms, Apple, Spotify, Google, whatever you get your podcast and YouTube. Please go rate, subscribe and review so that we will chart upwards with America's greatest legal mind. Pumps, what does an eagle say? Caw-caw.

1:02:02A little bit more enthusiasm. Caw-caw. That's it. That's the patriotism that this country needs right there.

1:02:16Thank you.