Trump's Epstein file release botched beyond repair

26:15Healthcare services, which should be part of a universal healthcare system. That's year one. Year two, it goes from 55 down to 45. Year three, 45 down to 35. Year four, everybody is in. Now, the CBO, Congressional Budget Office, estimates that we will save many hundreds of billions of dollars by doing that. Why is that? The answer is not just the profiteering of the insurance companies and the drug companies. And when you have a national health care system, you can actually effectively negotiate prescription drug prices. So that's one part. You lower prescription drug costs, you save a lot of money.

26:56But number two, the reason, the primary reason why health care in America is so expensive is in addition to the profiteering of the insurance companies and our lack of focus on primary health care is that they have to administer hundreds of different health insurance programs. So you have a$5 ,000 deductible. I have a$10 ,000 deductible. You have your heart attack in network and I have my heart attack out of network. You know, as everybody knows, the system is so enormously complicated. Your health care program covers A, B, and C. Mine covers D, E, and F, right? So you add all of that complexity, it is an enormously difficult situation to administer.

27:52stuff, and we have zillions of people who work not as doctors or nurses providing health care. They are billing you. Oh, you're late on your bill, and they're going to hound you for your bill, or they are in one way or another involved in administration. What we need is a simple system. Walk into an office. You go to any doctor you want. You take out your card. There's no worry about money because it is publicly funded. It's not free. It is publicly funded. And we fund it in a progressive way. The average American will save substantial sums of money in their health care. It'll be universal. And I think it'll be a much improved situation of what we have today.

28:36Well, you know, the first question that any Republicans are going to ask or any Republicans are going to challenge you with is paying for it. And so what is your response to those people who say, and granted, I know the hypocrisy of people who are exploding the military budget, the same people who don't say, you know, dare not utter an ill word when Trump decides to use, you know, money to buy a couple of Gulfstream jets for Kristi Noem. I understand all of that, but just in terms of the response to how do you pay for it, what's your response to that? The answer is this is not like education or infrastructure.

29:08You pay for it primarily by eliminating the huge amounts of waste and fraud that is in the system. And this is not me. This is the Congressional Budget Office that suggests that we could save many, many hundreds of billions of dollars a year by having a simpler system without all of the administrative costs. And second of all, being in a better position to negotiate prescription drugs. We don't have to spend a nickel more. and we can provide health care to every man, woman, and child in this country. That's the simple truth of the matter. So it's not a question of spending more. We're spending a huge amount for health care right now.

29:49It's the question of creating a simple system not geared to the profits of the insurance companies and the drug companies and allowing an administrative nightmare. Right, and I would add to your earlier point that this is something that other countries have already done, already done successfully, and are already doing more successfully than the United States. So it's not some theoretical impossibility. We are the only, you know, people talk about American exceptionalism. Yeah. Well, we are exceptional. We are the only country. I want to repeat this. The only major country not to guarantee health care to all 85 million uninsured or underinsured, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.

30:31It is a failed system. And we have got to move toward to learn what other countries around the world are doing. And in this country, I think the best way forward is a Medicare for all system. A technical question really quick. Do you think that there is a way in which the parliamentarian would allow this to be budget related or and pass through reconciliation? Or is this something that would require the filibuster to be, you know, nuked? that's a very good question and i can't give you the answer right now but certainly certainly it has huge uh budgetary implications so you can make the case the other point that i wouldn't make and and sometimes we forget about it i suspect you know many people as i do who are at jobs they do not particularly like but they stay at that job because they have decent health care for their families.

31:26Right. Almost held hostage there. That's right. So think about what it means for all of us in terms of our well-being to say, you know what? I don't have to stay at a job that I'm not good at, that I don't like. I want to do this and I don't have to worry about health care because I get health care as a citizen of the United States. Final question here. If there's one thing I think we can take from the Trump era, isn't it this idea that that you don't have to just settle for the crumbs of incrementalism that I think that we've been told we have to settle for in the past. Like, isn't the one thing we can take from all of this is that Americans want some actual change.

32:09And so can you can you just speak on that idea of what we may have learned from the 2024 election and kind of the overall sense of exasperation that we have of just being told that we can't do something that, again, the rest of the world is doing? That is a great question. And I think you are absolutely right. I mean, the problem is Trump is bringing about great change. Almost all of it is making bad situations even worse. But your point is that you've got a president who is willing not to have to talk to 38 lawyers before he goes forward, but he's going forward aggressively. What does that mean?

32:48It means right now it's not Not only that our health care system is broken, our housing system is broken. The cost of housing in America is absolutely unaffordable. Young people can, you know, wonder whether they're ever going to own their own home. Our educational system is broken. Child care, a disaster. Public schools, primary, secondary, being really challenged. Cost of college, unaffordable. transportation system in deep problems with deep problems so you're looking at a system in many respects which overall is designed to make the 1 % much richer and people like Elon Musk and Zuckerberg they're becoming unbelievably rich while ordinary people are struggling and in basic service after basic service health care education food you know we have the food industry literally poisoning our kids with junk food to make increased profits, housing, etc.

33:51So what we need is leadership in this country which says we have a system designed to get the rich richer. Most people are struggling. Let us move aggressively to improve life for all the people in this country, not just the 1%. We'll leave it there. Senator Sanders, thank you so much for the time. I appreciate it. Well, thank you very much. I'm joined now by candidate for the U.S. Senate in Texas. Jasmine Crockett, thanks so much for joining me. Absolutely. It's good to see you. So first off, congratulations on your announcement that you're going to be running for Senate. I want to dive into that race, but I want to tackle some breaking news first.

34:28Obviously, there was the tragic killing of Rob Reiner and his wife this weekend in Los Angeles. In the immediate aftermath of that tragedy, Trump had come out and basically posted a screed on True Social, saying that he died because of Trump derangement syndrome. He had the opportunity to walk that back, double down on his comments. Can I have your reaction to the fact that in light of a tragic killing of a beloved figure in the entertainment industry, that Trump's initial reaction was to make it about himself and basically just dance over his grave? Yeah, you know, I really have no words for where we are in this country.

35:09And I think that that will be a great segue into our conversation about why it is that I'm running for the US Senate. The fact that there are not more people that are disturbed. I mean, this stuff doesn't have to do with partisanship. I don't really even understand the moment that we're in where it is acceptable for any leader in any respect, let alone the president of the United States after a tragic death before having any information. And even if you had the information, the idea that you're like, yeah, it's basically because he was anti-MAGA and it's almost like you're giving a pass for it.

35:42And it's almost like there's a permission structure that if something happens to you, but you were anti-MAGA, it's okay. That is a problem. Like as we are sitting here saying, hey, let's denounce political violence. He continues to kind of flan these flames or send these messages that if it's on behalf of this, then it's completely understandable. Like I don't understand any of the tragic deaths that I have seen, no matter who it is that is dying in an untimely way. And frankly, I still struggle with some things that are technically timely and ask questions about some of those deaths. And so the fact that this was someone beloved and beloved or not, I just think it was inappropriate.

36:19I think it was an inappropriate thought and it definitely was inappropriate to go out there and post publicly in this way. And frankly, he just would have been done better by living by the old adage that they tell you when you're a kid, if you don't have anything nice to say, then just don't say anything at all. You know, there was this this whole crusade on the right in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's killing that the right was going to take seek retribution against anybody who uttered an ill word that people should be fired from their jobs. You know, you had even come out in the immediate aftermath of Charlie Kirk's killing and basically lamented the fact that he died, as did every other elected official, as did all of the major political commentators, whoever it was.

37:00And so what does this do to any perceived moral high ground that the right was seeking to achieve in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's death to have Donald Trump immediately cut out their legs from underneath them? Well, we know that the hypocrisy abounds. And so I think that this is yet just another example of that. But honestly, besides the hypocrisy, it's just kind of disgusting. I mean, I just can't imagine that anyone, whether you're the president or not, would take this type of moment and let that be the conclusion that you come to. And when you think about if this is where his head is, think about the very complicated issues that our president has to deal with.

37:37And if it's going to boil down to this kind of very simplistic, really concerning type of thought process. I mean, just wonder, it makes me wonder more about like, where is our country headed? And how bad of a shape are we in with him at the helm? So I want to switch over to your race for the US Senate in Texas. First and foremost, why did you think it was important to run this race? Yeah, listen, a lot of people don't believe in Texas. You know, we have gotten people's hopes up time and time again. And for me, you know, to be perfectly honest, this wasn't a race that I was looking at. I wasn't looking at a race to go to the US House.

38:16And frankly, I wasn't looking at a race to go to the Texas house when I went. And everyone gets into politics for different reasons and runs for different races for different reasons. But ultimately, I have continued to kind of walk this path that I felt like was more of a calling than anything. So it's definitely not an easy walk. That is for sure. But, you know, I wasn't looking at this. I was sitting in the house. Everything was flowing. I'll say it that way. I won't say it was going great. But being in the House, I've been sitting there and then the next thing you know, my name was put into a number of polls, just like different names have been put into the presidential polls.

38:54And so I then started to look, but I still wasn't really convinced that running for the U.S. Senate was really a good option because I know that from an infrastructure standpoint, we have not necessarily been in the best position as Democrats. We've not had the investments made and the state of Texas is a vast state. So I was very concerned that we lacked the organization to really get this done. So I still was like, eh, you know, whatever. And then ultimately, as we started to move somewhere with the maps, I really started to get very frustrated when the president said, hey, we want five seats out of Texas.

39:27And when the legislature decided to act on that. And when ultimately we were waiting on the lower court to come out with a decision, I I was like, whew, I can breathe a little bit because a Trump appointed justice decided in 160 page opinion that these maps on the face of them were racially discriminatory, something that I have been arguing the entire time. So I was like, finally, OK, here we go. Right. Yeah. And then about four days before the filing deadline, the Supreme Court said we're not going to necessarily weigh in on whether or not they are or aren't. but we're not going to allow you guys to stop them from going into effect at this moment." And there had been an interview I did that kind of caught a lot of people's attention.

40:16When I was on SiriusXM, I was doing an interview with Loree and she asked me about the redistricting and Senate. And I said, if they snatch five of our house seats, I may have to come and snatch a Senate seat. And from that, people were like, wait a minute, maybe she is serious. And so ultimately, when we look at the power that exists in the House versus the Senate, we can talk about how we want to save democracy. And ultimately, like my seat is a safe Democratic seat. And so another Democrat comes and fills that seat. But I thought that we need to run a different race. We have always run candidates that are amazing candidates.

40:53They're amazing people. They've got great resumes, but they have no name ID. And these races are already expensive. So by the time we spend all the money to get their name ID up, people are just now learning their name and we're behind the eight ball in such a big state. So Colin Allred, who obviously I serve with on the federal level, he was known in like the area that he was elected in, but he was not known throughout the state. So he had to do a lot to kind of get known. And so he was behind the eight ball. Same thing happened with Beto. Beto worked his butt off. I mean, he went to all 254 counties trying to make sure that people got to know who he was.

41:32But here it is. We have an opportunity for a Democrat to enter the race and have their name ID be as high as the person that actually has been elected statewide for almost 30 years. That is a significant advantage that we've never had. In addition to that, when we were looking at internal pollings and trends, because I also wanted to see, can I bring new people into the fold? because at the end of the day, if we have the same electorate, we can expect the same results. We have to expand the electorate. And so people have wondered, like, how do you get them expanded? How do you get them involved?

42:06But we were asking the questions. If these candidates were on the ballot, would you be more or less inclined to vote? And consistently, we saw a trend that people would be more inclined to vote who typically don't pay attention to politics. So with all these things we decided to go for because democracy requires it. And frankly, we know that the Supreme Court needs some oversight and there's only one body that has oversight over the Supreme Court. And that is the Senate. We know that there's only one body in which justices are confirmed through, and that is the Senate. And as a trained attorney, I think that I can add so much value to listening to people as they're going through the confirmation process and being able to ask them very real questions because I've been in those courtrooms and I know what to look for in a justice.

42:54You know, I think when we see Democrats running in red states, as as, you know, Texas has shown itself to be, the question I often ask candidates is, what's your plan on getting independents or Republican voters to vote for you since they have that edge in terms of, you know, who their electorate actually is. Are you going for independent or Republican voters? Are you trying to build out a new subset of the electorate that hadn't voted before? I know that I had spoken to Beto in the past and, you know, he's adamant about the fact that Texas is not necessarily a red state. It's a non-voting state.

43:30And so I'm just curious, in trying to win this state, which tack are you taking here? Are you trying to reach out to voters who had otherwise cast ballots for Republicans or or are you going to go for a different tack, which is to build to bring about a new swath of the electorate that hadn't previously come out? It's a little bit of both, but I will tell you, it's more of the people that haven't been talked to than it is going and trying to win over Republicans. And I'm glad that you brought up Beto because Beto is the last Democrat that came anywhere near clinching one of these statewide seats.

44:03And so he thought about adding different people to the mix. Here's the deal. We're not turning away anyone who wants better access to healthcare, education, housing, jobs. We're not turning anybody away, right? But at the same time, where we are making our investments, we're making our investments into those people that haven't been talked to. And the reason is this. Texas has one of the lowest voter turnouts in the entire country. We're only turning out approximately 50 % of the registered voters. So that means that there's a lot of people that you can still talk to. I mean only 50 % are coming out That means you got another 50 % that you can talk to and we've not seen excitement and excitement really matters in races like this It can't just be enough to be anti-Trump You got to have people to be excited for something and someone and I think that that's something that we bring I will tell you this quick story About a young man who approached one of our state representatives In fact, you are probably very familiar with her, Nicole Collier.

45:04Nicole Collier is the state representative out of Texas who was locked in the chamber soon after everyone returned from the quorum break this most recent time. Nicole Collier walks into a car wash. There's a guy there that asked her, are you planning to vote for Jasmine Crockett? Because she's running for U.S. Senate. This is like a random conversation. I don't think he knew that she wasn't elected. it. And she was like, yeah, she's actually my friend. And so she calls me and I said, hey, I'm getting on an elevator. I'll call you right back. I FaceTime her back. And when I FaceTime her back, we're on FaceTime.

45:40And I'm like, so Representative Collier told me that you were asking her about the Senate race. He said, I'm going to tell you right now that I've never paid attention to politics and never cared until you came along. And I am so excited to vote for you. This was a young black man. So I was like, you know what? I said, Nicole, now go tell everybody what you just experienced because this is the test study. This is my theory of the case and it's playing out already. The fact is this was less than a week after I announced my candidacy and here it was, this gentleman who doesn't pay attention to politics, not only knows that I announced, but he knows what I announced for.

46:20And he's not only planning on going to vote. I did have to ask him if he was registered. He told me he is. He said he just doesn't vote. And he also was talking to other people without me ever meeting this man a day in my life. That is what it's going to take. So obviously we, you know, the blessing and the curse of the U.S. Senate race in Texas, this primary, is that we have two young, dynamic candidates who are both very popular, both have a lot of juice behind them. And so for people who are deciding between you and James Tallarico in this primary. How do you differentiate yourself from him?

46:55Yeah, so one of the things is experience. You know, right now, everyone always says we're living in unprecedented times. And James and I worked on the state level together. And so there's a lot that people can look to and understand kind of where he stands when the rubber meets the road when it comes to state issues. But on federal issues, you're pretty much just kind of having to guess and hope. And it's different when you're in the ring. That's number one. Number two, when it comes down to kind of a continuation of policies that we've worked on, whether it's me working on some of the legislation that I worked on for veteran spouses and military spouses, or whether it's legislation that I've worked on as it relates to reproductive access or whatever the legislation may be, we are put into a stance in which we can kind of continue on our fight and hopefully elevate that fight.

47:49Whereas Mr. Tallarico has not necessarily played in this world, doesn't have these relationships built just yet to kind of continue to work on certain things. Ultimately, I ended up coming to the federal level. It was voting rights, right? We broke quorum when I was in the state house. It was all about voting rights. So I've worked on voting rights legislation. And right now, this is going to be so extremely invaluable in this moment. The other point is that we have to have someone that can really attract a diverse coalition. And so it's been demonstrated that we have a real strength as it relates to our diversity within this state.

48:28And then the final point that I'll make is that I've traveled this country on behalf of other candidates, whether they were national candidates or more so local candidates. And so one of the things that I did when I was trying to figure out whether or not I would run was to see if we were going to get some outside help because Texas is a big state. It is a big lift. And so we've got assurances from elected officials all over the country, not just within the state, that they are ready to help and get their teams going. And so those are some of the things that we bring to the table, frankly, that no one else could.

49:02And I think when you look at something like what happened in California with Prop 50. It seemed like it kind of sailed through, but the entire country got behind Prop 50 and everyone was pitching in. That's what we're going to need in Texas. And frankly, before I entered the race, what we saw is that nobody was talking about Texas. No one was really talking about the race. And once I got in, there was just this natural energy, whether it is love or not so much. There was this natural energy that came with my candidacy. And I think that that is going to be so helpful in not only moving the state of Texas to make sure that we can send a Democratic senator to the U.S.

49:43Senate, but honestly, this is a big deal for the entire country. When we're talking about being able to move some of the most important legislation, the reason we've not been able to do so is because we didn't have the numbers in the Senate, and we've got to change that Senate map. And that's exactly why, literally, I'm putting it all on the line and going in because I believe we can get it done. In the immediate aftermath of your announcement, you know, some Republicans, including Mike Johnson, offered up this public display of joy at the fact that you jumped into the race. I think Mike Johnson had some creepy moment where he rubbed his hands together.

50:19In any case, what was your reaction? Why do you, what was your reaction to their response? And why do you think that they put that kind of display out there? Yeah, they absolutely don't want me to be the one that they face in the general. I mean, listen, you don't normally put it out there. You know, I've been asked over and over, who is it you would rather face in the general election? Guess how many times I've answered that question? Zero, right? Like, I mean, I'm like, whoever comes forward is whoever it is that I plan to beat, right? But you would not normally play your poker hand and say, hey, this is what I've got.

50:55And so what they are trying to do is a head fake. And a lot of things that Republicans do is they love to throw bombs over to Democrats and get Democrats in disarray. We know that they were the first ones to say, oh, Biden is so old. He's too old to be president. And so then Democrats were like, wait a minute, Biden is so old. He's too old to be president. And then what did they do. They elected an old senile man, right? And so they love to kind of stir the pot amongst us because they love to make us very nervous. But I know, I mean, and we've received information from various Republican strategists that they are concerned because when you look at a Barack Obama candidacy, when you look at a Donald Trump candidacy, what they were able to do is they were able to get to people that you couldn't even throw into the polls.

51:47And so if it is that I am within the margin of error in any polling that is available, that's just telling you about the people that plan to vote. Now you add to that my potential ability to bring people in, such as the gentleman at the car wash, that is what makes them fearful. And they honestly want us to continue to say, let's just go try to get their voters. Let's ignore the 50 % of voters that are on the rolls, but they really aren't voting because no one's talking to them. That is what they want us to do because they know that they're going to double down on their people. And frankly, by the time that they get to the polls, so many of those Republicans, no matter how dismayed they may be, they tend to come home.

52:32But we do know that we're seeing swings of approximately no less than 10 points all over the country in deep red parts of this state, as well as obviously further up north. So I think we can ride a bit of a wave, but I think we're going to have to do some elbow grease and we're going to have to do this differently. And so I am that different candidate that starts out not needing to try to get my name ID up, not needing to use the dollars to do that. And also giving people, whether you love my record, like my record, I hate my record, but knowing what a fight on the federal level looks like with me.

53:06For folks who are looking to help your campaign, where can they go? They can go to JasmineForUs.com. We are taking all the volunteers and we are taking all the dollars. Great. I'm going to put that link right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video. Representative Crockett, thanks so much for your time. Best of luck on the campaign trail. Thank you. I'm joined now by leader Hakeem Jeffries. Thanks so much for joining me. Great to be with you. So we have some big news here in the House and a big humiliation, frankly, for Mike Johnson. Can you speak about the discharge petition that reached 218 votes today?

53:39Well, Democrats have made clear for the last several months that we will end this fight until we win this fight and ensure that the Affordable Care Act tax credits are extended as part of our effort to protect the health care of the American people so that tens of millions of folks don't experience dramatically increased health insurance premiums. So we launched this discharge petition shortly after the government was reopened to make clear that there was a path forward to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits in a straightforward fashion. All 214 Democrats signed that discharge petition within a matter of days.

54:19And over the last few weeks, we've been making the case that all we need are four House Republicans out of 220 to join us. And we can force an up or down vote on the extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits. Today, we got four Republicans to join us. And now it's Mike Johnson's responsibility to bring this bill to the floor. All right. So I want to talk about a little bit of the technical aspects of this. If I'm not mistaken, this bill is it's mandatory that this bill come to the floor at the latest on January 6th. Is that correct? That's correct. But seven legislative days, seven legislative days.

55:01If it waits that long, that means that the whole the whole purpose of this bill, which was to prevent, you know, doubling, tripling, quadrupling of people's health care costs in 2026, we would already be in January, which means that people will have already paid their premiums. And so can you talk about the urgency right now of this moment for Mike Johnson to not wait until the last minute, but to actually bring this vote to this bill to the floor for a vote now? That's exactly right. Under the House rules, the Speaker is required to discharge the bill no later than seven legislative days. However, there's nothing to stop him from bringing the bill to the floor today or tomorrow.

55:41There's no circumstance where we should recess for the holidays, which is scheduled to take place at the end of this week before there's a vote on extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits. The Republicans have already done enough damage to the health care of the American people this year in their one big ugly bill. Largest cut to Medicaid in American history, ripping health care away from 14 million people because of their policies, their toxic policies. hospitals and nursing homes and community-based health centers are closing all across the country, including in rural America. They are attacking the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institute of Health, the FDA, vaccine availability, all of the things, right?

56:26This is a Republican health care crisis. And now we've got a bipartisan coalition that is ready to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. And it cannot wait because, as you know, the tax credits expire on December 31st. You know, Mike Johnson was asked about this and he seems to continue taking this defiant posture. And he said, you know, we're not only concerned with the 24 million Americans who are going to lose their health care. We're actually looking to just protect 100 percent of Americans. So what is this? What is it? And granted, look, I know we've been talking about some elusive Republican health care plan for 15 years now.

57:03But what is Mike Johnson's new plan this week that will purportedly give 100 percent of Americans health care coverage? Because I'm assuming he's not talking about Medicare for all. He's definitively not talking about anything close to universal health coverage. Basically, what Johnson is presumably talking about is the so-called Republican health care plan, which actually will stick the American people with junk insurance. In other words, everyday Americans will be required to pay premiums, but they're not going to get any health care coverage as a result of it. What they'll find is that the health insurance that they thought they had, if they get sick, won't cover emergency department visits, won't cover surgeries, won't even cover basic procedures, which are needed for people to live with dignity.

57:55As you said, Brian, the reality of the Republican health care plan over the last 15 years has been they've tried more than 70 different times to repeal the Affordable Care Act. They don't care about making life better for the American people. They don't care about driving down the high cost of living. All they care about are their billionaire donors who earlier this year they rewarded with massive tax breaks and made those tax breaks permanent. And now they can't be bothered to find a dime to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits for working class Americans, middle class Americans and everyday Americans.

58:33Why do you why do you think it is that Mike Johnson seems so hellbent on deferring not to his members in his conference who represent Americans who are going to watch their health care premium surge, but rather just blindly deferring to Donald Trump, who frankly, by by and large, has been an anchor around Republicans next, not somebody who's actually helping them. Because Mike Johnson seems to think that we work for Donald Trump. The way in which Mike Johnson has conducted the House of Representatives throughout the year is as if we, mostly House Republicans, of course, he's in the majority, not us, that House Republicans are a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump cartel.

59:11That ain't anything that we've ever been down with. We don't work for Donald Trump. We don't work for J.D. Vance. We don't work for their billionaire donors. We work for the American people. But unfortunately, what House Republicans have continued to do is behave like a reckless rubber stamp for Donald Trump's extreme agenda. It ain't going well for these people. It's a disaster. Democrats are winning races all over the country. We saw that in the off-year elections in November. We just saw it again in Miami where a Democrat won the mayorship for the first time in almost 30 years by 20 points in a very conservative Latino electorate with Cuban-Americans and Venezuelan -Americans breaking in our direction.

59:56It's very interesting because how it started in the beginning of the year, there was all this talk that the Democratic Party is finished. How it's ending and how it's going is very different. Republican extremism is being rejected all across the country. And Democrats are articulating an affirmative vision for making life better for the American people, for dealing with the affordability crisis. That's very real. It's not a hoax. We want to drive down the high cost of living all across the country and, of course, fix our broken health care system. I want to ask for your reaction to a question that Mike Johnson was posed this morning, which is, are you losing control of your conference?

1:00:41There's a part of me that feels like if you have to be asked the question, are you losing control of your conference? The question kind of says more than any answer could say, but just your reaction to Mike Johnson being asked that question today. I think that's exactly right. Control has been lost. This is the third consecutive week where Democrats have successfully advanced a discharge petition to force an up or down vote on an issue that matters to the American people. We were successful with the Epstein discharge petition to require the Department of Justice to release the files and information to the American people.

1:01:16Last week, we were successful in overturning Donald Trump's executive order that ripped away collective bargaining rights for more than a million hardworking federal employees. It was a big victory for organized labor and for civil servants. We did that over Donald Trump's objection and over Mike Johnson's objection. This week, we've now been successful in reaching the 218 votes necessary to force an up or down vote on extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits. He's lost control of the House of Representatives. Donald Trump knows it because Donald Trump himself has said he has two jobs and two titles, president and speaker of the House.

1:02:02Yeah, that's extraordinary. Mike Johnson is the deputy speaker right now at best. he has no control over what's going on in Congress right now. Last question here. Can you speak about what it says that all of these Republicans, whether it's in these three discharge petitions, whether it's these Indiana Republicans who've refused to bend the knee to Trump and redrawing their maps, what it says that they are now feeling emboldened or okay to publicly rebuke him, which is something that I think, frankly, a few weeks ago we would have, or a few months ago, we would have never seen. They've come to the conclusion that their so-called MAGA emperor has no clothes.

1:02:37It's been exposed. The whole strategy by Donald Trump and the Republicans was to flood the zone with the shock and awe strategy during his first 100 days, try to disorient the American people, cause a big panic, and think that Democrats were going to collapse and not fight back. But of course, channeling the strength of the great John Lewis, we've shown up, we've spoken up, we've stood up. There's still a lot of work to be done, but it's clear that the American people are with us. They want us to continue to fight to end this national nightmare and get things turned around. And we're going to continue to put victories on the table for the American people legislatively, even though we're governing in the minority.

1:03:24No one's ever seen anything like this before. There are more successful discharge petitions this year, as a matter of fact, in the last 30 days than we've seen in the last 30 years in the United States Congress. And of course, electorally, whether that was in New Jersey or New York or Virginia or Pennsylvania or Prop 50 in California, statewide races for the first time in 20 years that we've won down south, overturning the super majority in Mississippi in the state Senate and most recently winning decisively in South Florida. We have the extremists on the run. We're going to keep the pressure on them and continue to deliver for everyday Americans.

1:04:06We'll leave it there. Leader Jeffries, thanks so much for taking the time. Thanks so much, man. Appreciate you. Thanks again to Ro Khanna, Bernie Sanders, Jasmine Crockett, and Hakeem Jeffries. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesley, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five-star rating and a review. And as always, you can find me at BrianTylerCohen on all of my other channels, or you can go to BrianTylerCohen.com to learn more.