Silence of the Liberals

23:39A group of classmates and myself came together after the shooting and said that we were going to try to actually change things. Of course, lots of older people, especially political purported experts and pollsters and pundits, told us, you know, this is Florida. It's horrible what happened to you young people, but nothing is going to change here because this is a Republican trifecta state. There is zero chance that you will get anything done. And then like all good teenagers do, we did what our parents told us we couldn't, and we proved them wrong. And we ended up raising the age to 21 to buy a gun in our state in Florida and passing a red flag law that has been used over 20 ,000 times since the shooting in Parkland to disarm people that are at risk themselves and others.

24:18Most research afterwards showed that there was about a pretty strong correlation of about a 11 % reduction in gun homicides following the passage of that law, which isn't anywhere near enough. but it's a hell of a lot better than the track that we were on. And in the time since, when I was in college, I hired Maxwell Frost to lead our organizing efforts for our lives. Maxwell then asked me to help him in his run for Congress when he was 24. I helped him run. He had an incredibly hard time running, but despite having to Uber drive from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. every night while running for Congress and coming from a very working class family, he ended up being elected to be the first Gen Z member of Congress.

24:55And I've since gone on with his campaign manager, Kevin Lada to co-found Leaders We Deserve. We're a PAC and super PAC that helps elect young progressive Democrats who don't take corporate money and support stronger gun laws and support all kinds of progressive issues, of course, too, so that if our government doesn't change our gun laws, we'll find those young people that walked out of their schools that protested with us in one of the largest student protests in American history and change gun laws ourselves by changing who's in government.

25:19David Miles Hogg:You know, I love Maxwell Frost. He's been on the podcast before, and I he's incredibly impressive. And, you know, I kind of feel like I'm a Gen Xer, but I kind of, I'm ready for your generation to really accelerate into the national scene. I think it's just so time for a changing of the guard and no disrespect to boomers. My parents are boomers. Boomers, the good ones fought really good fights for civil rights and advancements, but there's just a time where it's time to pass the torch on. And unfortunately, your generation has been the gun generation. Pumps and I grew up, we had a tornado drill because we live in Oklahoma, and we had a fire drill.

26:01David Miles Hogg:And I have two sons, David, and my youngest one is in college now. But when I went to pick him up from junior high about five years ago, he was such a happy boy. And I went and picked him up and said, Hey, Roman, how was your day today? he climbed in he said oh hey mom we had an active shooter drill and my heart like fell into my stomach and thinking about like what was said and what they were thinking because i remember doing the tornado drill like you think for a second like most of the time you're dicking off with your classmates you know cut jokes but he it impacted him and so will you please because i don't think we can talk about this enough when you're at high school where you're supposed to be safe and a shooter comes into your school and murders people, what is the impact on that long term in the moment and long term?

26:56How does that impact you, David, as an individual and your classmates? Horribly. And it affects our teachers a ton, obviously, as well, the first responders as well who showed up. And it's to the point that unfortunately, several of our classmates have taken their own lives in the time since the shooting. And it creates long lasting impacts. It really divides a community, especially when it's a issue that, you know, people say is highly political all the time and divides them a lot. And it creates a lot of long lasting pain and scars that I think many people have to just learn how to live with, unfortunately, and some never figure out how to do that, unfortunately.

27:44And this, mind you, my school in Parkland is one of the most well-resourced in the state of Florida. It's one of the best schools in the state. The median household income in Parkland is well over$120 ,000 a year. These are the effects that many of our students and our classmates are facing despite the enormous privilege that our high school had. And what I think about are the young people that don't have the privilege on getting on the news that go through instances of gun violence outside of school on a daily basis. You know, the other day when Charlie Kirk was killed, not only was there a school shooting that happened as well that same day, there were also a dozen plus other shootings that happened that happened every day in this country that barely make it on the news that still have trauma, create trauma for people that doesn't get anywhere near the same attention.

28:34So what I think about a lot is how do we make sure that we're making every community safer and not going to them and saying, you know, this is what we're going to do for you. You know, in my case, being somebody from Parkland, but asking what can we do for each other and how can we support each other? Because if Parkland safe, but no other community is we're not doing our work and our work isn't done yet.

28:52David Miles Hogg:You know, pumps and I have had a guy that worked for us. His name was Javier Sanchez Morales, Jr. And he started working for me for my interior design firm when he was 18 years old. He's a black kid. His dad was like half Cuban, half black. That's why the Javier Sanchez Morales, Jr. And we called him Javi. And last October 12th, I said goodbye to him. October 11th was a Friday. I said, bye, Javi. And he said, he called me J-Dub. He said, bye, J-Dub. I'll see you Monday. And I mean, I worked 40 hours with him. I spent more time with him than I did my children. And in many ways, he was like a surrogate son to me.

29:29David Miles Hogg:And the next day he went out, no criminal record, no parking ticket, nothing. He went to a convenience store a mile and a half, two miles from this studio. And some people tried to rob him and they shot him. And the feeling that I had after that and that I still have, like when I, at first, David, when I come back to the office, I would start realizing he's never coming back. And then like a month would go by and it's like I could still kind of like feel him around I could see like something he had put somewhere in the care he put to organize something neatly or arrange like in this podcasting studio little x's where tripods go and then the time goes on and it goes on and you realize they're not coming back and the grief and then the like then your brain goes to like my brain would go to like when he when he fell down was he was he bleeding did it take a long time for him to die.

30:27And you have all of these things that come out of this.

30:31David Miles Hogg:And the thing that makes me the most mad about all of this is that if you live in America long enough, somebody you love will get shot. And that hadn't happened to me until I was 50. And when I was 50, somebody I loved very much like my very own son got shot. And I was hopeful because the political campaign was going on then, that Kamala would win, and we could have a lot of conversations like this. How can we get, you know, common sense gun laws? How can we end the suffering and the pain that this is causing people? But now we have the pro-life regime in, you know, in power, and it seems like all they want to do is make guns more accessible to people.

31:17David Miles Hogg:And in our state, guns have more rights than women. Right. Yeah. I mean, first of all, I'm sorry for your loss. It's horrible that that happened. And unfortunately, your story is not unique in this country, as you mentioned. What is unique about our country is that we're one of the only countries in the world where stories like that are nearly as prevalent as they are, especially in a country as developed and wealthy as we are, right? And what I think we need to do after these shootings is figure out how to acknowledge that we have our differences and figure out what, even if it's a tiny amount of agreement that we have, how to come together like we did after Uvalde in Buffalo and actually do something to save lives.

31:54Because we all do agree at the end of the day that something has to change here, that something has to be done. And I think in the case of Charlie Kirk, unfortunately, we saw an instance here where this argument of the only thing to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun only is true if the bad guy with the gun is in range. And with a sniper, they rarely are. and there's no amount of bulletproofing our society that we can do that is going to be able to prevent what happened until we address how somebody gets a gun like that in the first place and the hatred that drives them to do that.

32:31I have a question because you mentioned that in your community after Parkland, you know, there were two sides. And then for me, it is hard for me to pretend there are two sides to children dying in school shootings. Gun violence as a whole, absolutely. But particularly, why would someone think that arming a teacher would help gun violence? Oh, well, everybody gets a gun. I attribute it to the NRA. But tell me, what are the arguments for these people that it is more important for them to protect guns than protect little kids that are innocent going to school? I think the reason why they want to arm teachers is one, because for the gun industry, it's useful to sell more guns, right?

33:23Guns are not like iPhones. They don't break down over the course of two years because a lot of the time gun owners aren't regularly using them. So when you're a gun company and you constantly need to figure out how to expand your market and you've already militarized the policed, you've already armed the military, then you have to figure out other parts of our society to arm. And we're in a vicious feedback loop where people feel afraid because there are so many large people that are severely undertrained, severely underregulated, that have firearms in our society, that are going and committing acts of gun violence, that then results in us selling more guns because people feel a loss of agency and a loss of control because our government is failing to do its job, which is to protect its people.

34:02And I think that's part of the reason why this idea of arming teachers has become so popular because people want to feel a sense of agency that even if the government is going to do something that maybe their teacher can and it's horrible and it should not happen right i don't know if any anybody who says that teachers should be armed clearly did not have some of the teachers that i had uh growing up shit that's what i'm thinking i had this miss shiffle bean she was a retired catholic nun she was about 4 11 crazier and meaner than a rattlesnake. She'd slap our hands with rulers in a public school.

34:37She'd like slap our hands. I'm thinking Mrs. Schiffle being armed is nuts. Yeah, it's insane. And not to mention the practicality of it, right? If you have a bunch of teachers that are armed in this situation, how are you supposed to tell who the shooter is? What if it was one of the teachers? What if it was a student who got the gun from the teacher because they went to the bathroom and left it on the ground. There's so many major risks that this brings. But the point that I really want to bring us back to is that while addressing school shootings, of course, is important, the vast majority of gun deaths in this country, one, are suicides that we do and should, we need to address and we have to talk about a hell of a lot more because those are preventable deaths because we know most people who attempt suicide the first time and survive their first attempt do not reattempt.

35:24With a firearm, you do not get that chance almost ever. Then we also have daily acts of gun violence that happen outside of school that predominantly happen in poor communities that have far less resources that we absolutely do need to talk about and make sure that we're not leaving any part of this out in that conversation. But I think that's going back to what you said. The reason why they feel the need to arm teachers is one, because they want to sell more guns and it helps them to fund these politicians more. And it gives people some sense of a false sense of security that at least something is being done so that their kid is going to be safe, even though we know that this is actually going to put them in danger more, almost certainly.

35:59Well, and just what about the psychological effects that our society is having such a regressive conversation that our kids go to schools and people are armed around them, yet we're the richest, freest country in the world. Like it's such a regressive, insane thing to say in the way they move the goalposts. I heard Trump, we call him Kanks, short for Kankles. I heard Kanks the other day talking about arming teachers and stuff. And I'm just like, why are we even entertaining this idea? Why is this even being entertained? We want our children. I mean, two football guys could plow through the teacher, take the gun.

36:44And it's so ridiculous that we even have to have such a regressive, stupid conversation. It makes me so bloody mad that that is even being entertained in conversations with people that are in charge of us, people that know better. It's also just getting to the point where it's like they always love to talk about a slippery slope with guns. I think arming teachers is a real slippery slope because after Columbine, it was we need cops on every campus. And then we had cops at Uvalde. They did fucking nothing. We had cops at Parklet. They did. The cop assigned to my school to protect us did nothing because this was a shooter with an AR-15.

37:26And the reality is these cops, they have to prove that they are good guys with guns in these situations. And far too often, when the moment actually counts, when lives are on the line, they prove only to be cowards with guns. And first responders, of course, have a role to play here in addressing gun violence as a last resort. But people like my father, who was an FBI agent, should not be the first line of defense when our politicians don't have the courage to do their damn job and actually regulate people, regulate guns. so that people like the shooter at my high school who repeatedly threatened to shoot at my high school over several times and was reported to the FBI, was reported to law enforcement and had the police called to his house.

38:12Oh, I think it was nearly a dozen times before the shooting so that people like that are not able to still be legally armed with an AR-15 because we understand making sure somebody like that is not armed is no danger to anybody's freedom. And in fact, it protects all of our freedom to go to school without the fear of being shot. It protects our freedom to know that we can go out to a movie and not look at where the nearest exit is. It protects our freedom to know that when you send your kids to school, that the only drills that they should have to do in the future are tornado drills and preparing for natural disaster, not a man-made and politician and cowardice-enabled disaster like gun violence.

38:49And until we make these politicians feel like they're going to lose their job until they do something about this, both on the left and making sure that we do as much as we can as Democrats to address this, and on the right, we're going to continue having this conversation. Yeah, sadly. I was just going to ask you one thing, and this makes me crazy. Like, I want to tear my hair out and like jump out a window. It makes me so mad, is when politicians after shootings say, well, you know, thoughts and prayers, but no gun policy. And then I sit there and I think, thoughts and prayers is not gun control.

39:27It is not a policy to prevent death. It makes me crazy. It makes me insane. So how does somebody with your background, with all of this experience, how do you talk to someone normally about how their thoughts and prayers are not going to protect children? Because, you know, we online, it's like, you're blasphemous. You know, Mike Johnson gets up there and cries around like he's been under attack. And I'm like, if thoughts and prayers could fix gun violence, this would have never happened. But so how do you talk to somebody rationally? Because I can't be rational about it. I would tell them to actually read the Bible again and remember that Jesus didn't just pray.

40:09He also flipped tables. And they also, in the Bible, it says that, what is it? I'm trying to remember the exact quote. You're asking the wrong person. It's that prayers without works is dead. And so anybody who just acts like this is, you know, that thoughts and prayers are the answer to protecting our kids from gun violence to like, look, if you have faith, that's fine. Pray all you want, but do the work to the thing that when there's a lot of stuff that really bothers me about this issue, obviously. One of the things I've been thinking a lot about lately is like this idea that all of these guns just enable us to have freedom.

40:46I don't feel very free right now. Right. I don't think when somebody like Charlie Kirk is able to be assassinated like that, that that makes us a more free country. Even if I vehemently agree, disagree with everything that he's ever said. It doesn't make us more free. And I think there's a real conversation that we need to have around the fact that democracy and political violence cannot coexist. And look at how many of our leaders throughout American history have been taken by this. And we still continue to have this conversation. And when are we going to say enough is enough? And it's not to say that we'll ever get to a place in this country where we have more guns than people and nobody is dying from gun violence, right?

41:27But we can make significant progress on this. In states like Massachusetts, they have a gun death rate 70 percent lower than the rest of the country. You can still get a gun in Massachusetts, but it's a similar process to getting a car.

41:39David Miles Hogg:Yeah, it's overwhelming. And I just can't thank you enough for your work because it's just it's after that impacted us. I mean, there's just I think about this as you probably do what happened at your high school. It just it breaks a part of you, a part of me, a part of him being murdered, broke something inside of me. But let's move on. And I want to play. Thank you for all of your information on that. But I want to play our game with you called Had It or Hit 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. So David Hogg, Had It or Hit It, Twitter.

42:19I would not be on there if I didn't have to be. I hate social media where they passion. I really like I wish I could just be off of it forever.

42:26David Miles Hogg:OK. OK, had it or hit it, AIPAC had it. They need to go. They should not have any role in dictating our government's foreign policy there. I would argue one of the largest foreign influence operations in American history, and they have been incredibly successful and it is fucking awful and they should not exist. I completely agree. I have been so hurt by the Democratic leadership after Trump's second term. And when you find out that this organization funded his reelection and then also funds Schumer and Jeffries. Yep. That is just insanity. It is complete insanity. And so they are just, by extension, MAGA light.

43:18And once you start opening your eyes up to it, you see it again and again. And then you see we had Zoran Mamdani on our podcast. Hell yeah. He's amazing. And he's great. We were a big supporter of his. We were his largest financial supporter. I love that guy. And the thing about being on the left is we don't require blind loyalty. You can agree with Zoran on a few things. You can say maybe he's too left for me. Maybe he's not, whatever. But the fact that these New York politicians won't endorse him, it makes me so fucking mad, David. I just got to get me started. Because like what's crazy to me is the fucking dancing around in like the like circus of bullshit that they get into constantly.

44:03And it's like, like, like it's like all the answers that Hakeem Jeffries is giving. It's like, like, give us a fucking just we know why. Right. because you don't want to piss off your donors and you don't want to piss off AIPAC. That's it. That's it. It's not fucking complicated. And instead, we see a situation where the vast majority of people in his congressional district voted for Zoran. Yeah. And if you're not listening to them, who are you listening to? Because it's not the people you represent. It's insane. And then I saw after... The disproportionate amount of... Let me just tell you, like inside of D.C., Because I'm in a lot of these conversations with different groups and everything about like, oh, like how do we support people that are going to win in these races and everything?

44:46The three questions I hear most often are what is APAC doing? What is crypto doing? And what is their last quarter's fundraising slash how much money do they have on hand? That's it. It's not like, is this person a good person? It's not, oh, is this person actually going to help like be a good person in our party? Those are the three questions that I hear 95 % of the time and basically nothing else. And it is incredibly depressing. because an organization like APAC should not have a role in our politics. They shouldn't be legal. It is absolutely insane the amount and the chokehold that they have on our party.

45:22And it is beyond time more people start fucking saying it because there's a really good quote that I read the other day from James Baldwin, actually, that really I thought brought this forward because it made me think about APAC and the NRA and why they have persisted for so long. And in this quote, in one of his works called The Fire Next Time, it's one of his most prolific works, he's talking about the Holocaust and how it happened. And he says, one of the mistakes that people make when they're thinking about the Holocaust is that people think that it just required that people be evil or wicked rather for it to happen.

46:01And for evil to happen, it doesn't require that people be wicked, only that they be spineless. And there are a lot of spineless people in our party. And there was a lot of spineless people in Washington. I call them windsocks, where they just go whichever way the wind is blowing. And the question is, are you going to be a windsock? Are you going to make the wind? Are you going to try to make the wind blow? And we need to actually make sure that when people do the right thing, it is not only the right thing, but also politically the right strategy because we know it is.

46:30David Miles Hogg:Well, and this is what gets me, David. The Democratic approval rating is abysmally low. And this is the political climate where it would be so easy to be an opposition party. Like, I mean, the split screen of Kanks with the bruises and his rambling, demented stuff with, you know, it looks like they put on an AI video the other day. I mean, I'm no AI expert, but it's what it looked like to me. So we've got this demented guy wildly unpopular policies, has to have people, billionaires around him kissing his ass, it would be such a layup argument right now to take to working class Americans in suburban and rural areas and say, MAGA lied to you.

47:14They're Israel first, not America first, and start doing it over and over and over and over again. Super simple. And because they're beholden to the same people, guess who's making this conversation right now?

47:25David Miles Hogg:Grifter, anti-Semite, Marjorie Taylor Greene. And I'm shocked that she has that much ambition in her, but she hangs out with Steve Bannon, who is a political strategist. And they're all seeing beyond kanks. They're seeing like, okay, this guy's quacking like a duck. He's 80 years old. You know, we need to be thinking post-MAGA strategy. And then I see, like you said, Hakeem and the word salad, Cory Booker and 25 hours of word salad. Huh? And the strongly worded letters. Oh, my God. I can't take the strongly worded letters. Is that our fucking strategy for November of 26? It's just just just bury Republicans under a avalanche of strongly worded letters because that's what it feels like.

48:07Yeah. What do you think would happen? I mean, you're and this is just an opinion because I have my opinion about this. If the leadership came out and said we're done with corporate donors. We're in the fight of our lives here. The Democrats aren't taking it anymore. I, Hakeem Jeffries, not Chuck Schumer, Cory Booker, and others. And if you don't, if you continue to take them, we're going to primary you. What do you think would happen Democratic support if they started doing that and they started getting on camera all the time and really speaking in real terms about what's happening instead of all of the bullshit word salad stuff?

48:45we we could actually win that's what i think yeah like but the reason why that's not going to happen is because these corporations fund a lot of the most powerful caucuses like the black caucus and others in washington and help to spread that corruption so that and the problem with that is to like because i've thought about this myself is that if we did that that would be awesome but the problem is when you have 200 plus democrats in congress if you're going to have that kind a united message, you need a way of actually keeping them in line and not taking that corporate money. Because all it takes is one or two of them for Republicans to be like, oh my God, like you're, you know, you're lying to the American people and stuff.

49:24And we would need to figure out a way to actually keep them in line. And I think what that would be is like threatening them with primaries and throwing down a couple million dollars to challenge them. But the problem is Democrats don't have the courage to actually do that and stand for anything other than just what we aren't. And that's the thing that pisses me off most about our party right now is we just, it sounds like we are telling, the message I feel like we're telling the American people, especially young people, is like, hey guys, we know like you're 10 feet underwater right now. We're gonna bring you nine feet underwater.

49:57How's that? Does that feel better than 11 feet? And it's like, fuck you. I want to actually have my head above water. I wanna be on shore. And I don't want you talking about how great it is being at nine feet because i'm still drowning and if we don't give young voters and people of all ages an actual vision of what we are trying to build with a moral backbone for the future of this party and how we're going to stand up to special interests and build a government that works for the american people and not groups like apac that are all these special influences special interests that control our fucking party we're fucked if we don't do that because people are increasingly they're gonna lose faith in us and rightfully so because we don't stand for anything in that case and i want to have a party we should have a party that actually does stand for something and that's why leaders we deserve exist is because we want to elect not just one but a couple dozen mr smiths and mrs smiths who go to washington and really shake shit up and show that doing the right thing is not only what you should be doing but it's the politically smart thing to be doing because the american people are not dumb they know that there's corruption They know that our system in many senses is rigged and we are here to turn it around.

51:12David Miles Hogg:That right there is why I think the Democratic polling is so bad. They are operating under the assumption that their base is dumb. And that works to an extent with MAGA because Trump just moves the goalposts, you know, before Epstein released, no, we're against it. It's a witch hunt. They just, you know, like whatever he says, they go along with. And the Democratic base is, I think, more inquisitive by nature, more fact-seeking by nature. And when I look at this shit that we lost to a fucking idiot, idiot, a goddamn moron, Donald Trump twice, like – and then I see what their plan is right now and I see what the leadership is right now.

51:55That's when I really was like, are you guys serious? like are you serious with your approach to this i'll tell you that much you what i honestly at this point i would rather have pelosi than jeffries there's no question she whipped everybody into shape like she believed in something i don't agree with her on everything but she got done she didn't just write fucking strongly worded letters she really held trump's feet to the fire she did remember when she ripped up his speech and then she patronizingly clapped at him You know, there was, I didn't agree with her on everything, but she was an excellent, excellent speaker of the house.

52:33And you know what? She wasn't a pussy. And Hakeem just kind of is a pussy. And that's what bugs me about him. We've had him on the podcast and I can see how in sound bites it can, you know, it's like, okay, but now I'm just at the stage where every time he comes on my feed, I just am like, I wish somebody would primary him. And that's a really bad place to be when we're on the edge of just – I don't even know we're on the edge anymore. We're in fascism now. Like all we have is 2026 holding us together. And I just don't see leadership from him. I don't see it. I see when he pusses out on Zoran.

53:13To me, it's such a window into why the approval rating is so low. Yeah, because we don't stand for anything. like i think part of the reason why trump is so popular to be honest with you as much as i disagree with him and don't like him is because he obviously says what he thinks even if he clearly contradicts totally yeah he clearly believes what he is saying even if he is literally contradicting himself and it is kind of remarkable that he is able to do that to that but that is what american people want more than anything they want somebody who fucking says it like it is, even if they don't agree.

53:48What's remarkable as a horrible person, to be clear, is that he is the most popular president. He's incredibly popular, given how many unpopular stances he actually has. And it's because he says what he actually clearly believes in. And I think what we believe in in our party and a lot of our party's leadership is whatever's fucking good at the moment for us. And it's like that is not actually believing in something, that's just being spineless. That's because what I think people forget, I tell this to our candidates with leaders we deserve all the time. If you were compromising your values, like let's say in Zoran's case, let's say like he started compromising on AIPAC or he started compromising on other things and then he got elected.

54:30Is he actually winning? No, AIPAC is, right? And I think that's when 99 % of people in DC forget that if you compromise your values to get to power, you don't actually win. Somebody else does. And I think that's a huge part of our problem is that we're endlessly compromising our values in order to gain power. When the reality is the way that you gain power is you don't compromise your values and you figure out how to win, even if people say it's not going to be possible like they did with Zoran.

55:01David Miles Hogg:Yeah, no, I agree. No, I completely agree. And I think he is a canary in a coal mine. And we're in Oklahoma, We're in a deeply red state. But I'm just going to tell you there. Yes, Trump within the base is popular, but the people that are put off by him are moving further and further to the left. I went from I went from a lib to far more progressive. Same with pumps. And then all these rich ass white women that I know whose husbands work in the oil and gas industry are like leftists now. I'm talking like rich ass former Republicans who are totally. And so the Democratic Party is not reading this at all.

55:43And women in particular do not want to go backwards. And we are hearing the misogyny coming out of this administration. And when you look to people like Hakeem and Chuck writing strongly worded letters when women in our state are having to drive to other states to get abortion care or they will die if they don't get it because the doctor is afraid of going to prison. We're writing strongly worded letters and we're not endorsing a guy who won the Democratic primary. I am so fucking mad about it. It makes me want to join your group and just primary all these fuckers from top to bottom, left to right, because I have had it, had it, had it.

56:20It makes me crazy. Well, the good news is we're making progress, right? Good. There was a situation where Lloyd Doggett was possibly going to run again against Greg Kassar because they were drawn into the same congressional district. And we came out and said, we're going to back Greg. Like we Lloyd is amazing, to be clear, but he's been there for 30 plus years at this point. And we shouldn't spend a bunch of money fighting each other when there's a great progressive like Greg who can take his place. And then Lloyd, in a very mature way, to his credit, decided not to run again after saying that he was going to.

56:54And then Jerry Nadler just announced that he's not going to run again. Yeah. And part of what I hate about this is like there's a lot of really great older people who are deciding not to run again. and I'm glad that there are young people able to step up there. There's some not so great older people that we need not to run again that are going to be challenged by us leaders we deserve.

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1:00:49Yeah. And that is OK. Completely. And here's one thing that that that is really awkward. Before we continue, let me be really clear on that. OK, sorry to interrupt, but this is really important. There are lots of older people who are great, right? We see Bernie out there kicking ass, working his ass off and he is he is not young by any means but guess what he's expanding the spotlight he's raising up young people he is leading by example we see people like rosa in connecticut another great young older progressive who is getting shit done right there are terrible young people who are trying to take money from apac and say like oh i'm part of generational change but really they have the same stance as a lot of these 80 year old blue dog dems and are taking money from APAC.

1:01:34That's bullshit, right? So there's terrible young people and there's great older people. What we're talking about with Leaders We Deserve is getting more fighters and less folders in this party, regardless of their age.

1:01:45David Miles Hogg:That's a really good point. And I wanna bring up one other point that I wanna talk to you about. One thing that bothers me right now about a lot of the people in the Democratic Party is this idea that I think we have to have credible messengers. And I'm gonna use Cory Booker as an example for this. So Cory Booker can be a very impassioned, very gifted speaker. He evokes emotion in the listener. And he has spoken about children being put in front of judges, immigrant children without lawyers that are six or seven with an interpreter, and really good at social media, astute at social media and all of these things.

1:02:24And then when I – it's silence on Gaza. Silence. He cares about this kid, this kid, this kid, this kid. But not you. I don't care about you. I'm not going to talk about you. And then he does a photo shoot with Benjamin Netanyahu. And it also pisses me off that the same group want to hold us emotionally hostage and say, if you don't support Israel, then you're anti-Semitic. And I've had too much fucking therapy for that at 51 years old. Like, that's not how this works. the anti-Semites are incubated in MAGA culture. You want to talk about anti-Semites, look no further than the evangelical Christians that are prepping for the rapture that want the Jews in Israel so that then they can quickly send you to hell.

1:03:10And so the credible messenger, when I hear Corey speak about immigrant children, which I want to be with those kids, that's a fight that I want that's a fight that I want to unite with him on. But then it's crickets, crickets over a genocide that's happening in Gaza. Then nothing at that point, David, nothing that comes out of his mouth is credible to me because I think we have to have credible messengers in our party. Exactly. And, you know, I know as I say this, as I know, a lot of the people we're talking about that it's going to be harder for me to have fucking conversations with them. But I don't fucking care if we can't talk if we can't call you know they didn't call the irish potato famine a genocide that was a genocide that happened that was human made and that was intentional right a famine like is going on right now that is human made it's not because we don't have food it's because they're not fucking letting it in and it is we're we're basically communicating to young people right now like okay guys we're the we we spent our whole time in 2018 2020 right 22 talking about how like we're the morally superior people like we like we do the right thing we're for these values and then all of a sudden we see a genocide that we enabled and we have nothing to stand on because people don't want to pick between oh well they supported a genocide and the other side tried to overthrow the government and also supported a genocide.

1:04:40So I'm just going to support that. Like we don't want to voters are tired of picking between the least shitty of two options. Right. They want to pick the best option. And I think as Democrats, the way that we do that is, we grow fucking spine and we primary anybody that doesn't have that. And B, we actually do our damn job and acknowledge like, yeah, it's harder to be a Democrat. You know why? Because it's harder to make the government work than it is to intentionally make it fail and run on the idea that it sucks and then make it suck after getting elected and then get reelected on the idea that the government that you broke sucks.

1:05:11You have to try to make government fucking work. And we have a long history of doing that. But guess what? It doesn't come from spineless people. It comes from people like FDR who said, you know what? We're actually going to do things like the New Deal. And if the Supreme Court gets in the way, fuck it. We'll expand it. And then all of a sudden, the New Deal happens, right? Because they tried to shut down the New Deal with the Supreme Court. And he was like, you know what? Maybe you guys should have age limits. And then they're like, Actually, that New Deal thing is fine. Then on top of that, it's people like LBJ, who I vehemently have a lot of problems with, to be clear, but clearly knew how to get shit done and build real power and make shit happen.

1:05:47And that's how movements like the civil rights movement threw people like LBJ with the experience that he had starting when he was 28 years old in rural Texas, right? Starting out as a teacher, becoming a member of Congress at 28, worked his way up, gaining as much experience that he did, becoming a senator, then becoming the vice president, then the president, to be able to get so much done and be pushed from the left to actually pass really great policies like the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act, like Medicare and Medicaid. And that is the party that we need to get back to, is actually having people with the power to do the right thing so that we can get them elected and have our movements on the outside of our government push them to do the right thing.

1:06:27Similar to what happened with Joe Biden on guns, right? Historically, he's done a lot on guns, but because he has so much experience, we were still able to push him to get things done on guns. Yeah. You know, the thing about Joe Biden is his presidency will always go down as the presidency that didn't stop authoritarian takeover. And the failure of Merrick Garland is just a snapshot as to what is wrong with the Democratic Party. Absolutely. Democrats operate on assumption politics. We assumed nobody would be crazy enough to vote for Donald Trump again. We assume all of these crazy white right wing conspiracy theories in this massive media echo chamber we don't need to respond to.

1:07:13Nobody in their right mind would think these crazy things. We have to address them. We have to say this is what they're talking about. This is how fucking crazy they are. We need people in the DOJ that are fucking pit bulls, not some French poodle lap dog like Merrick Garland was. And he should have fucking released those Epstein files and passed him right over to Kamala because that's how serious this was. And Biden was a serious, lifelong politician. And there's things that he did that were good. Infrastructure, Chips Act, on and on. None of it means jack shit right now because you know what Trump's doing?

1:07:49He's been built by Donald J. Trump and all the rubes believe him. And we have a dictator. It's not are we on the precipice of this? We're in it. And he's going to do everything in his power to prevent 2026 from happening and or rig it, I think. Yeah. Well, and also like, for one, I don't know why we're acting surprised when, you know, we we told our strategy last election cycle was to tell voters who told us three things. Right. They said there's a genocide happening in Gaza. They said that prices are too high and they said the president is too old. our tell them no they aren't we have to defend israel at all costs and keep arming them then we said prices aren't high look at the stock market then we said the president's not old look at this speech that he gave at the state of the union if you tell voters not to believe their goddamn eyeballs and wallets with two the force of two billion dollars behind you you are going to lose them especially when you put kamala harris and look she is not perfect by any means to be clear.

1:08:54But when you put her on a fucking glass cliff at the most critical moment in American history and give her all of these shittiest jobs, like being fucking borders are when you know, there is a crisis there so that you can run for reelection and get give her all the shittiest issues to deal with when it became a real fucking liability for her and put her on that glass cliff. And also as a party, we did that. We excommunicated basically anybody that dared to say maybe Joe Biden is too old to run again. Do you guys remember that? Yeah. We claim to not be a fucking cult. We sure as hell didn't act like it.

1:09:33We sure as hell acted like we were one leading up to that decision being made. And there is some real self-evaluation that we have to do on that and hold true to the fact that, sure, Kamala Harris, absolutely, I don't think at that time was the right candidate. But we also put her in that position, that horrible position. And I want to say this about Kamala, and I think this is important. Kamala is a lot more progressive than what the Democratic establishment made her run as, you know, trotting around with Lashani. Just like when Obama ran originally, he said, I'm not for gay marriage. And then he, quote, evolved.

1:10:07I really liked Kamala, but I felt like we should have had a robust primary. And I agree with you that she was kind of set up in this situation and did the best she could with the time that we had. But, you know, it's really devastating to live with the ramifications of political strategists that live on the coast that have no fucking idea what happens in the rest of the country.

1:10:32David Miles Hogg:It's really frustrating. And think they can gaslight the country with enough money. Yeah. Yeah. Last one. They seem to try to do it, so they think. Our last had it or hit it. Had it or hit it, the United States of America. I've had it with our lack of imagination and believing that the best is is behind us for many people in this country and many Republicans that want us to believe that the best is is behind us. And that's what we need to go back to. And I would say I'd hit it because I think that time and time again, this country has proven people wrong. Right. We've we've started out in an incredibly hard place where barely anybody in this country had any rights in the first place.

1:11:09and despite all of that despite a civil war despite so much more we managed to actually through democracy in a long democratic process expand it so that people could and that is fucking remarkable that we still exist at all i it kind of amazes me to be honest with you and it it it is a huge source of inspiration for me of like what incredible things we could be capable of if we had a stronger democratic party if we had people with a fucking spine if we did the right thing and didn't just do it once it was the last resort right and that's why i would say it's it's hit it because i think that the idea the original idea of this country right our motto out of many one is incredibly powerful and i think with the right leadership we can get through this but it's going to take new people.

1:12:04It's going to take new blood. And what gives me hope is that great generations are not born. If studying history taught me anything, it's that they're made in the, in the crucible of awful circumstances and real fucking challenges, right? And sure you have the Neville Chamberlains of the world that are out there, but then you have other leaders that come up after them. And I'm very excited for those future leaders that are there to rise up and meet this moment. Cause our generation knows as a generation that I was born a year before 9-11 happened. I was raised through the wake of the financial crisis with my generation.

1:12:37Then we went through COVID. Then we went through all these school shootings and gun violence and climate crises and so much more. We as a generation, we as a generation have never truly seen our country united in any true sense or form. At every turn when it was time for us to be united, when it was time for us to come together against something like a pandemic, we turned against each other. It was a weak leadership. And I believe that someday, maybe not this election, maybe not the next one, but sooner or later, a leader or a few leaders are going to rise to meet that moment and help bring this country back together because this generation has had it with the instability and weakness of what many of these politicians have brought us.

1:13:28And we don't want to be a generation that goes on to teach our kids how to live through school shooter drills, because we know that it's possible. Joe Biden's generation, they didn't go through school shooter drills, but they did go through nuclear bomb drills. And that generation went on to pass some of the largest nuclear arms reduction treaties in human history. And I think for our generation, given the fact that the bomb for us is going off multiple times a week at this point, it feels like, that we can do that too. But we just have to bring ourselves into power.

1:13:56David Miles Hogg:I really like everything you have to say. I like you a lot. I like how feisty you are. Love it. Hit it. Haven't had it with David Hogg. I love that your generation has been done dirty, truly, by so much of the American policies. And I'm glad that you're going to, you know, ring lead and, you know, get the bull by the horns and get organized because it has to happen and it has to have people of your age group really pushing older people like my co-host here, Pumps, further to the left. She's four years younger than me. Thank you so much, David. Thanks, David. Thank you for having me. He's so, I like how feisty he is.

1:14:38I love how feisty he is. And I like, you know what I kept, I'm going to start using that he said, the circus of bullshit.

1:14:46David Miles Hogg:He said that. But you know what made me sad, like right towards the end when we hung up? Like he's here, like 17 of his teachers and classmates got murdered. And there's this whole generation that, you know, our government, our systems, our laws, the unrestrained capitalism. and now his life's work is this, which is totally commendable, but it didn't have to be this way. No, it did not have to be this way. All right, listen, go buy our book, Life is a Lazy Susan of Shit Sandwiches. We have no idea where it is. Oh, I hear this. No, we found it. Found it. It's a great way to support Pumps and Me and we will see you all win Pumps.

1:15:26David Miles Hogg:See you next Tuesday and Thursday.

1:15:36David Miles Hogg: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 podcasts and YouTube. Please go rate, subscribe, and review so that we will chart upwards with America's greatest legal mind. Pumps. Pumps. What does an eagle say? Caw-caw. A little bit more enthusiasm. Caw-caw. That's it. That's the patriotism that this country means right there.