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For one of our own residents to become the world's first trillionaire while one in five Texas children live in poverty, to me that is a spiritual sickness.

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Right now, it's three men who now own more wealth than the entire middle class.

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As someone who cares about the people in my state, that's not the future I want.

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We have to have a government of, by and for the people, and we have to clean up the corruption in our political system.

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Is the Texas governor corrupt?

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Yes.

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That's a strong thing to say.

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Well, I'm an eighth generation Texan.

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Was born to a single mother, a preacher's daughter.

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She worked overtime to provide for me.

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My birth father became abusive, so she packed all our stuff into her little Ford Escort.

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We found a little apartment.

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There wasn't room for a nursery, so I slept in a crib in her closet.

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And that fighting spirit, I feel like she passed that along to me.

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But also faith has really been the foundation of my life.

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It's why I ran for office, and I am trying to love my neighbor through public policy.

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you're on the verge of potentially becoming the first democratic senator in texas since 1988 so change is what we need most right now because everywhere i go people are struggling to survive struggling to afford necessities and people are working harder than they've ever worked and it's because the system itself has been rigged against working people we don't have capitalism we have crony capitalism why did the democrats lose to trump in your view

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I talked with a lot of Texans who thought he could get the economy back on track.

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They thought he was going to lower costs, end the forever wars, release the Epstein files.

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But more than a year into this administration, those promises have not been kept.

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But he was right that the Biden administration failed us on our southern border.

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So what would you do about that, though?

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And how do you reverse this change?

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And do you have an opinion on who you think should be president in the next cycle?

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We should start with Donald Trump.

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Guys, I've got a favour to ask before this episode begins.

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The algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed.

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So when we have our best episodes on this show, the most shared episodes, the most rated episodes, I would love you to know.

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And a simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button.

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but also it's the simple, easy, free thing that you can do to help us make the show better.

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And I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this on right now and hit that follow button.

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Thank you so, so, so much.

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If the elections go your way this November, you're on the verge of potentially making history by becoming the first Democratic senator in Texas history, which would be the first time, I think, since 1988 that a Democrat has won in Texas.

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And also, people tell me that you might be president someday.

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Because you have a lot of the attributes that people think it would take a Democratic candidate to become President of the United States.

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So really, I just want to figure out who you are, and what you stand for and where you've come from.

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What is that early context that I need to understand to understand the man that sits in front of me today?

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Yeah, well, I'm an eighth generation Texan.

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So my family's been in the state since it was Mexico, was born to a single mother who was a preacher's daughter from South Texas, who struck it on her own when she was 19 years old and moved up to the big city, Austin, Texas, and worked overtime to provide for me.

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She left a

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dangerous situation to provide a better life for me.

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Yep, this is her.

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Yeah.

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She showed me what it means to stand up to bullies.

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She showed me what it means to fight for the people that you love.

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She was always making time for service.

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She worked a full-time job.

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She had very limited time, but she always...

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carved out time to fight for the causes that she cared about, to volunteer, whether it was at my school or at the church or in the community.

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And so my service, my public service is inspired by her and I would not be here without her.

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You said she taught you to stand up to bullies.

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Yeah.

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She was in an abusive relationship with your biological father.

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Yes.

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She met my birth father.

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He was 21 years old.

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He was a high school dropout.

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And he had a drinking problem.

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And when he drank, he became violent, became abusive.

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And one night shortly after I was born, he got physical again.

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And that night, her love...

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for me, rose to meet that abuse from him.

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And she packed all our stuff into her little Ford Escort, and she drove me to the hotel where she worked, begged the manager to let us stay in one of the rooms until we found a little apartment in East Austin.

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And this photo is taken in that apartment.

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There wasn't room for a nursery, so I slept in a crib in her closet.

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And she always says that she was very proud of that closet, like she decorated it with toys and pictures and...

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And that fighting spirit, I feel like she passed that along to me.

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And whether it was in the classroom or in the state legislature, I have tried to fight for the people I love in the way that she fought for me.

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How do you feel about him?

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Well, you know...

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I remember when I was growing up, I felt a lot of anger toward him.

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I feel like as I've gotten older, I've tried to appreciate the things that got him to that point.

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My mom would tell me that he...

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didn't know the months in order.

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And so she thinks that maybe he had a learning disability that went undiagnosed.

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And things are very different now.

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And we're able to, I know as a former teacher, that we're able to catch these disabilities and serve our students with special needs.

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But it sounds like he didn't get that.

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And that can derail someone.

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And it can lead to substance abuse.

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It can lead to

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to the bottle and then that can lead to violence and abuse.

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And so I try as hard as it is to recognize that I'm the person I am because of him and my mom.

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And that's a hard thing to wrestle with.

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I think a lot of people who've had abuse in their family struggle with the fact that they come from an abuser.

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I've tried to have more compassion for it as I've gotten older.

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Your mum then meets Mark Talariko, who's your adoptive father, I guess.

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That's right, yep.

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And he's the man that's ultimately raised you?

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Absolutely, yeah.

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Very different?

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Yes, very different.

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Than your birth father?

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Yeah.

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What role has he played in your life?

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Yeah, you know, I've said before that the luckiest thing that ever happened to me in my whole life was meeting Mark Tallarico.

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And I certainly would not be on this podcast.

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He gave me his last name.

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He raised me as his own.

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He is probably the best man that I know, honest and cares about other people, does what's right when even when no one is watching.

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And and he has certainly shaped me into the man that I am today.

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If I'd asked you at 16 years old, James, if I said, what do you want to be when you're older, what would you have said?

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I had always been interested in education and being a teacher, particularly around social studies and history.

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My history teachers, when I was growing up, they're the ones who kept me on the straight and narrow.

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They got me interested in school.

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I was not the best student before then, and I struggled.

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But...

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you know, to behave in class and be a good student.

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And I feel like it was my passion for social studies, for history, for reading that, you know, ultimately kept me on that track.

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And so from that point, I did want to go into being some kind of a teacher or a professor so I could do that for other people.

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I read that in high school, you were voted most likely to become president.

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I think so.

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Yeah.

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When I was in school, I took on leadership roles.

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I was the

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the president of our choir and the captain of our debate team.

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And so I think people saw that.

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Are you interested in being president someday?

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I don't think so.

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I struggled a lot with the decision to run for the U.S. Senate.

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I had considered getting out of politics, I guess, as I guess was last summer after my fourth term in the legislature was coming to a close.

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I finished the legislative session in May of last year.

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And I was really proud of the work that I had done in the legislature, but it is difficult work being in politics.

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And so you may know that I also made the decision to go to seminary.

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Which is Bible school?

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Yes.

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Yeah.

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Studying to become a minister like my granddad.

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And this is something that I always kind of had in the back of my mind.

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And I remember meeting with my pastor who baptized me when I was two years old, has been my pastor since I was a little kid.

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And he told me that a campaign can also be a form of ministry.

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If you're giving people hope, if you're bringing people together, if you're helping folks see the image of God in each other and in themselves, you can do that in a political context as well.

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And I had never really thought about that.

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I kind of kept these things felt very distinct to me.

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And he, of course, as a pastor, was helpful and helpful.

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in getting me to reconcile these two vocations and see them as potentially one in the same, given the state of our politics and our civic discourse.

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Like the campaign that we're building in Texas is giving people hope.

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It's bringing people into the process who haven't been engaged before.

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It's bringing people together across all the many divisions in our communities.

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And at its best moments, it does feel like that we're doing something really special and important.

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Why would that exclude you from someday also pursuing the role of presidency?

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It may not.

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I guess what I'm saying is that I think there's a problem with people who are in politics for too long.

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I've already said that I'll only be serving two terms if I'm blessed to get the opportunity to serve for two terms.

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Because I do feel like when people hang on to these positions or are trying to reach for the next position, then everything becomes about self-preservation and...

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It becomes about accumulating power rather than serving people.

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And those are temptations, right, for every elected official between those two goals.

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And from what I've seen being in this now for eight years is the longer you're in this, the more you kind of get –

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The office and your identity become kind of merged into one thing, right?

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Where being a senator or being a state rep, which I am now, if you're doing it for a really long time, it becomes who you are.

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So it's no longer a service.

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It is your identity and you do whatever you can to protect that, right?

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Which means selling out your values.

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It means being susceptible to corruption.

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And so I guess starting out, I'm trying to like always remember that this is a service.

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And I think we need more elected officials who have other interests besides politics and government and legislating.

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There are other things that I want to do and there are other ways I want to serve and I want to have a –

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a well-balanced life, I guess.

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And so I want to do this because I think it's important right now.

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But then I want to give the reins over to someone else, someone who has fresh energy and new ideas and a different perspective.

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And I think that's how this is supposed to work.

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Could you see yourself running someday for the highest office in the land, president?

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No.

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You couldn't?

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No, I really don't.

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I'm surprised I'm doing this.

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I'm running for...

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the U.S. Senate.

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And I feel like there's so much.

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I mean, I'm traveling the whole state of Texas, which is a giant state, a diverse state, complex state.

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And I'm constantly learning about the things I don't know.

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Right.

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And I feel like I'm just every day on the campaign trail cramming for a big test in January of next year to be the senator of this state.

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And

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And, and I've already seen over the course of this campaign how difficult it is, right?

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And the attacks that come your way, the attacks on people in your life, like your family, my, my girlfriend, people who didn't sign up to, to be in office or run for office are also on the receiving end of these attacks.

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Yeah.

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And so I can't imagine doing this for longer than two terms.

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Do you think pressure and attacks are a reason not to do something that is worthy?

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You know, I'm just wondering.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Because even as a podcaster, you get lots of pressure.

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It's a different type of pressure.

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No, yeah, yeah.

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Like, it's pressure, lots of attacks, lots of feedback, etc.

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But at the end of it, like, I think I love what I get to do, and I really hope that people benefit from it.

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So, to me, that's reason enough to continue to do it, really irrespective of the pressure and the attacks.

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I think that's true, but I think there are lots of people who want to be president.

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And so, like, we should give those people a shot if that's the job they want.

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I honestly think that my skill set that I've developed is better suited for a legislative position.

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What's a legislative position for us Brits?

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Oh, yeah, yeah.

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So like right now I'm a state rep in Texas.

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So I serve in the state house in the lower chamber.

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I would be, God willing, after this election, serving in the U.S. Senate, which means I'm one member of a larger team of people.

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I am trying to build coalitions.

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I'm trying to bring people over to my side.

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I'm trying to change hearts and minds in a body.

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And I feel like I'm really good at that.

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I've passed 60 bipartisan bills over four terms, and they're not just like symbolic, you know, superficial pieces of legislation.

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Like these are major bills on housing and health care and early childhood education, teacher pay, property taxes, like the things that are –

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really affecting my neighbors.

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And that is a skill set.

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Some people are better suited as, you know, as an executive, making decisions on their own.

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And some people are better, you know, working as part of a larger team to do something ambitious and big.

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You must have an opinion on who you think might be, you know, because we head towards 2028.

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If you look at the polling data and what's going on geopolitically with Iran and lots of other issues like AI, it appears that there's a, you know, the polls are becoming a little bit more

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Do you have an opinion on who you think should be president in the next cycle?

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There's Kamala's, there's Gavin's, there's AOC's, there's, I don't know, Bernie's probably going to run again.

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Pete Buttigieg is probably going to run again.

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Yeah.

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I mean, I don't, I don't, given that I worked at the state level, I don't know a lot of these people personally, but I honestly think a lot of the people that you just named, you know, have a lot of potential to be, to be good leaders and to deliver for this country.

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And honestly, I'll, you know, change is what we need most right now.

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who's going to bring some change to this political system.

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The only thing I would say is what I'm going to be looking for in the candidates as they start bubbling up is like who's talking about systemic reform.

216
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There's lots of issues that I care about, education, healthcare, housing, all things that I care about.

217
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But I've done this now for eight years and I've seen that the system itself is what's preventing us from making progress on all of those important issues.

218
00:15:06.573 --> 00:15:24.389
And so when I'm kind of thinking about my criteria for evaluating who I'm going to vote for or who I'm going to support, it's going to be who is thinking and talking about comprehensive political reform, including getting big money out of our politics, banning gerrymandering, overhauling the Supreme Court.

219
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All these things that feel like inside baseball, that feel like process.

220
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It has to be the top priority because if we don't fix the system itself, we're not going to make progress on all the issues we care about.

221
00:15:35.922 --> 00:15:42.585
There's been this really interesting rise in democratic socialism over the last year or so.

222
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Obviously, Mayim and Dhani has been elected to office and people like AOC and just the broader democratic socialism narrative has been really popular.

223
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What's your perspective on that?

224
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I think of like the Democrats here, then I think of democratic socialism as being slightly different from sort of typical, more centrist democratic philosophy.

225
00:16:03.619 --> 00:16:07.662
I certainly understand where the anger is coming from.

226
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I hear it...

227
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Everywhere I go across the state of Texas.

228
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I know.

229
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Yeah.

230
00:16:11.865 --> 00:16:18.250
I mean, everywhere I go, people are struggling to survive in this economy.

231
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And it's not like people are buying nice clothes or nice cars or nice vacations.

232
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Like they're struggling to afford necessities, groceries and gas and utilities, prescription drugs, the things that you need to survive every day.

233
00:16:33.962 --> 00:16:34.623
Yeah.

234
00:16:34.783 --> 00:16:36.884
And people are working harder than they've ever worked, right?

235
00:16:36.904 --> 00:16:41.387
Some of them are working multiple jobs and they can't make those ends meet.

236
00:16:42.167 --> 00:16:57.636
And this is especially pronounced among young people in my experience, my fellow millennials, but also Gen Z, because we were promised that if we worked hard, if we played by the rules, if we went to school, if we studied, that we could live the American dream.

237
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And that was a lie.

238
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Because...

239
00:17:02.503 --> 00:17:04.065
It is way too expensive to buy a home.

240
00:17:04.646 --> 00:17:08.370
It's way too expensive to start a family, to have kids.

241
00:17:08.430 --> 00:17:11.133
It's too expensive to retire comfortably.

242
00:17:11.494 --> 00:17:15.318
And it's because the system itself has been rigged against working people.

243
00:17:15.939 --> 00:17:18.342
And I would say, I would go back to the 1970s.

244
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In fact, you can pinpoint...

245
00:17:21.946 --> 00:17:29.435
This one document called the Powell Memo, 1971, he was a corporate lawyer who later got appointed to the Supreme Court.

246
00:17:29.956 --> 00:17:41.830
But if you read this memo, it's basically a blueprint for how corporate interests can start to dismantle the Great Society and the New Deal, which had come the decades before.

247
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And so there was a feeling that among corporate America that there needed to be a strategic plan, a political campaign to protect their power and amass more power.

248
00:17:57.478 --> 00:18:00.700
And so the blueprint says that corporate interests are going to unite.

249
00:18:01.180 --> 00:18:06.043
They're going to spend massive amounts of money in our politics, buying politicians in both parties.

250
00:18:06.803 --> 00:18:11.447
elevate corporate voices in media, appoint sympathetic judges.

251
00:18:11.487 --> 00:18:20.134
It goes through kind of a whole comprehensive strategy for how to reverse the gains made in the New Deal and the Great Society.

252
00:18:21.115 --> 00:18:29.542
And you start to see, starting in the late 70s, early 80s, trickle down economics, right, of cutting taxes for the people at the very top.

253
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And forgetting about the rest of us.

254
00:18:32.459 --> 00:18:36.181
And that has really been the story of the last 50 years in this country, the last five decades.

255
00:18:36.781 --> 00:18:47.547
And that's a major change from what we saw in the middle of the 20th century when our government invested in education and health care, in homes and highways.

256
00:18:47.707 --> 00:18:49.348
Like we grew together.

257
00:18:49.468 --> 00:18:52.769
We had the largest, strongest middle class in the world in the 1950s and 1960s.

258
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And now that middle class is disappearing all over Texas, all over this country.

259
00:18:59.932 --> 00:19:01.392
And there's a lot of anger about that.

260
00:19:01.932 --> 00:19:04.833
And it's not just limited to Democrats or Democratic Socialists.

261
00:19:05.433 --> 00:19:07.234
It really spans the political spectrum.

262
00:19:07.954 --> 00:19:14.036
And people are looking for – they're looking for leaders who are going to take on that broken, corrupt system.

263
00:19:14.856 --> 00:19:17.857
Not nibble around the edges, not incremental improvements.

264
00:19:17.877 --> 00:19:18.497
Right.

265
00:19:18.697 --> 00:19:31.084
People are looking for wholesale change and their right to want that change because it is possible to build an economy that rewards work instead of wealth.

266
00:19:31.765 --> 00:19:32.445
That's very possible.

267
00:19:32.505 --> 00:19:37.828
I mean, the economy is just a collection of choices that we make, particularly policy choices.

268
00:19:38.568 --> 00:19:41.910
And we can make different choices than the ones that we've made for the last five decades.

269
00:19:42.351 --> 00:19:45.913
Trickle down economics, in my view, is not a theory.

270
00:19:45.973 --> 00:19:46.413
It's theft.

271
00:19:47.748 --> 00:19:54.294
In 1970, middle-class households held 62% of all US aggregate income, while upper-income households held 29%.

272
00:19:54.874 --> 00:19:56.375
Today, those roles have flipped.

273
00:19:56.876 --> 00:20:03.061
Upper-income households capture over 50% of total US income, compared to just 42% held by the middle class.

274
00:20:03.321 --> 00:20:08.265
And if we look at lower-income families, there's been a 5% increase since the 1970s in 1970s.

275
00:20:10.227 --> 00:20:20.132
the sort of cohort of people living in the sort of low income category, the middle income category has reduced by 10% and the upper income class has increased by 5%.

276
00:20:20.272 --> 00:20:27.696
So the direction of travel is that there's less people in the middle class, there's more people in the lower income, and there's more people in higher income.

277
00:20:27.896 --> 00:20:28.076
Yeah.

278
00:20:29.202 --> 00:20:30.242
How does one reverse that?

279
00:20:30.342 --> 00:20:39.264
Because whatever the sort of economic system has been in the United States, it's resulted in innovation and GDP growth and productivity.

280
00:20:39.584 --> 00:20:41.264
How do you reverse this change?

281
00:20:42.084 --> 00:20:46.165
Well, what I'm talking about is not a radical new vision for the economy.

282
00:20:46.245 --> 00:20:52.766
I'm talking about how do we get back to the economy of the 1950s and 60s, where we grew together as a nation.

283
00:20:52.846 --> 00:20:56.347
And in fact, the productivity, the innovation...

284
00:20:57.187 --> 00:21:00.928
was I think more significant when we were growing together.

285
00:21:01.229 --> 00:21:09.292
I think the math and the past make it very clear that a country that invests in its people grows faster than a country that abandons them.

286
00:21:09.732 --> 00:21:11.573
And so specifically, what am I talking about?

287
00:21:12.113 --> 00:21:20.036
I'm talking about raising the minimum wage, expanding overtime pay so that workers can actually benefit from the wealth they create.

288
00:21:21.016 --> 00:21:23.297
Capitalism was an innovation.

289
00:21:23.837 --> 00:21:25.058
I think we forget that now.

290
00:21:25.958 --> 00:21:27.404
The idea that you should be rewarded...

291
00:21:28.278 --> 00:21:31.301
that you should be compensated for your time, for your work.

292
00:21:31.381 --> 00:21:33.282
That was a revolutionary idea.

293
00:21:34.303 --> 00:21:35.384
And that's not what we have today.

294
00:21:35.944 --> 00:21:38.246
We don't have capitalism, at least not in this country.

295
00:21:39.047 --> 00:21:40.608
We have crony capitalism.

296
00:21:40.668 --> 00:21:41.109
What is that?

297
00:21:41.589 --> 00:21:49.816
Where the gains in this economy go to those who can afford to buy access, who can afford to buy politicians for control.

298
00:21:50.276 --> 00:21:51.497
Dr. King said something similar.

299
00:21:51.537 --> 00:21:56.562
He said, we have socialism for the rich and we have rugged individualism for the poor.

300
00:21:57.362 --> 00:22:07.267
You think about the bailout, right, and the Great Recession, right, when a lot of the people on Wall Street who got us into that mess, they got golden parachutes, right?

301
00:22:07.287 --> 00:22:08.928
They got taken care of by the government.

302
00:22:09.569 --> 00:22:11.009
But you got single moms out there.

303
00:22:11.750 --> 00:22:13.471
You got construction workers.

304
00:22:13.491 --> 00:22:15.192
You got nurses and teachers who are –

305
00:22:16.166 --> 00:22:19.950
barely surviving in this economy, and there's no bailout for them, right?

306
00:22:19.990 --> 00:22:21.551
It's rugged individualism for them.

307
00:22:22.372 --> 00:22:30.800
And so my only point is that we can create an economy where we all grow together, where corporations have a broader definition of shareholder.

308
00:22:31.711 --> 00:22:31.851
Right.

309
00:22:31.871 --> 00:22:38.335
Because you think about GE, you think about GM, Ford, these great American companies from the 20th century.

310
00:22:38.835 --> 00:22:47.261
They believed that shareholders included their workers, the families of their workers, the communities in which they operated.

311
00:22:47.781 --> 00:22:53.705
So they felt an obligation, a corporate ethos that was about much more than just their bottom line.

312
00:22:53.725 --> 00:22:54.345
Right.

313
00:22:54.565 --> 00:22:56.387
And so that's what I'm trying to get us back to.

314
00:22:56.847 --> 00:23:02.953
I'm trying to get us back to a point where we are investing in our people and we have growth, but it's shared growth.

315
00:23:02.973 --> 00:23:07.638
We have competition, but it's fair competition, not monopolies and consolidation like we see today.

316
00:23:08.419 --> 00:23:14.405
So I guess what I'm trying to get us back to is old school capitalism, where, again, people are compensated for their work.

317
00:23:14.885 --> 00:23:18.629
And it's not a system that benefits the wealthy and the well-connected only.

318
00:23:19.973 --> 00:23:23.598
And how do you think you can do that from a Senate position if you are to win in Texas?

319
00:23:23.839 --> 00:23:24.039
Yeah.

320
00:23:24.420 --> 00:23:29.848
So we talked about a few policies of minimum wage and overtime pay.

321
00:23:30.208 --> 00:23:33.092
But I also think we have to rebuild labor unions in this country.

322
00:23:33.453 --> 00:23:34.454
You can almost track...

323
00:23:35.015 --> 00:23:38.598
the destruction of the middle class with the destruction of organized labor.

324
00:23:39.238 --> 00:23:40.840
And this is not a government solution, really.

325
00:23:40.860 --> 00:23:49.947
This is about empowering workers in the workplace to be able to negotiate with their bosses for better pay, for better benefits, for better working conditions.

326
00:23:50.387 --> 00:24:02.356
I think we've got to do more to tackle the debt crisis, both personal household debt, which reached an all-time high in the first quarter of this year, whether it's medical debt, whether it's student debt, credit card debt.

327
00:24:03.297 --> 00:24:09.621
And we should also talk about the national debt because both are moral emergencies, in my opinion.

328
00:24:10.121 --> 00:24:14.783
I also think we got to do more on supporting families and children.

329
00:24:14.943 --> 00:24:16.364
I think investing in education.

330
00:24:16.825 --> 00:24:21.367
The GI Bill was a game changer in the middle of 20th century, and it's what helped build that middle class.

331
00:24:21.887 --> 00:24:22.568
We haven't seen...

332
00:24:23.328 --> 00:24:29.013
We haven't seen an investment in higher education at that scale since the GI Bill.

333
00:24:29.474 --> 00:24:36.060
You know, I think we've got to expand the child tax credit, which cut child poverty in half just a few years ago, and then it was allowed to expire.

334
00:24:36.780 --> 00:24:40.484
New families who are having kids, like they need extra support.

335
00:24:41.044 --> 00:24:42.385
if they're going to live that American dream.

336
00:24:42.425 --> 00:24:43.665
And we can do that.

337
00:24:43.725 --> 00:24:50.848
And we can do all of this if we just were willing to tax the people at the very top and make them pay their fair share in taxes.

338
00:24:51.208 --> 00:24:57.090
Is that easier said than done in light of the forces that are opposed to what you've just said?

339
00:24:57.551 --> 00:25:01.212
There are big companies and individuals lobbying against what you've just said.

340
00:25:01.232 --> 00:25:01.372
Yes.

341
00:25:01.752 --> 00:25:02.373
And that's the point.

342
00:25:03.773 --> 00:25:07.274
It is a broken political system, which leads to a broken economic system.

343
00:25:07.874 --> 00:25:10.335
That is the direction that I think this moves in.

344
00:25:10.855 --> 00:25:22.419
And it's why I said earlier, I'm looking for comprehensive political reform first, because the only way to unrig the economy so that it benefits all of us again, so that we're all growing together again, that work is rewarded.

345
00:25:23.399 --> 00:25:33.386
is if you clean up the corruption in our political system where corporate special interests, corporate PACs, super PACs don't have the same influence in our government as they do now.

346
00:25:33.847 --> 00:25:45.455
Because right now, I mean, you know, I think about in Texas, there was an out-of-state billionaire from Pennsylvania who gave our governor $12 million because we don't have campaign contribution limits in Texas.

347
00:25:46.968 --> 00:25:55.473
He gave our governor $12 million to pass a private school voucher scam, which is taking money out of our underfunded public schools in Texas.

348
00:25:56.034 --> 00:25:58.875
We rank 43rd in the nation in per student education funding.

349
00:25:59.516 --> 00:26:04.139
It's giving those tax dollars to wealthy parents who already have their kids in private school.

350
00:26:04.839 --> 00:26:13.985
So it is literally a transfer of wealth from the bottom and the middle to the people at the very top, all because of corruption in our political system.

351
00:26:14.705 --> 00:26:20.231
So I don't think we're going to unrig this economy until we get rid of corruption in our politics and in our government.

352
00:26:20.711 --> 00:26:27.999
We have to have a government of, by, and for the people instead of what we have now, which is a government of, by, and for corporate special interests.

353
00:26:28.219 --> 00:26:29.781
Is the Texas governor corrupt?

354
00:26:30.261 --> 00:26:30.461
Yes.

355
00:26:32.263 --> 00:26:33.865
That's a strong, strong thing to say.

356
00:26:34.745 --> 00:26:34.965
Yeah.

357
00:26:35.045 --> 00:26:38.889
I mean, you know, again, the system itself is corrupt.

358
00:26:40.250 --> 00:26:44.554
The question is which politicians succumb to that and which ones don't.

359
00:26:45.435 --> 00:26:54.784
And I'm less interested in the personalities in our politics and I'm much more interested in the system because like politicians are rational actors for the most part.

360
00:26:55.385 --> 00:26:58.508
Politicians are trying to get reelected for the most part.

361
00:26:59.379 --> 00:27:01.562
The question is what incentives are put in front of them?

362
00:27:02.142 --> 00:27:04.445
What incentives is the system putting in front of them?

363
00:27:05.286 --> 00:27:17.520
And right now, if you look at the influence of Big Bunny, Citizens United, if you look at gerrymandering and redistricting, if you look at the two-party system, all of these social media platforms.

364
00:27:18.620 --> 00:27:25.643
traditional media, all of this whole ecosystem incentivizes extremism and corruption by design.

365
00:27:26.884 --> 00:27:29.525
And so you can get rid of the governor of Texas.

366
00:27:29.545 --> 00:27:31.146
You can get rid of whoever you want.

367
00:27:31.847 --> 00:27:34.148
Someone else is just going to take their place.

368
00:27:34.608 --> 00:27:38.450
And if you haven't fixed the incentives, if you haven't fixed the system, you're going to get the same result.

369
00:27:38.890 --> 00:27:45.254
A lot of the great founders, you know, who happen to also be billionaires, have chosen Texas as their home.

370
00:27:45.675 --> 00:27:51.919
Increasingly, I think about Elon Musk building, I think both Tesla and SpaceX in your state.

371
00:27:53.000 --> 00:27:54.601
How do you sort of marry these two worlds together?

372
00:27:54.621 --> 00:27:57.303
Because, you know, Elon Musk is now a trillionaire.

373
00:27:57.403 --> 00:27:58.644
I think the world's first trillionaire.

374
00:27:59.204 --> 00:28:00.765
you're talking about inequality.

375
00:28:00.785 --> 00:28:08.010
I think he's been held up by some as the sort of like poster child of inequality because he's so rich on paper.

376
00:28:08.371 --> 00:28:13.514
Again, it's not like he has cash in the bank, but it's not like he has a trillion in the bank, but his net worth is so high.

377
00:28:14.015 --> 00:28:24.442
So how do you attract someone like Elon Musk to the state to build his companies and to employ the people that he does while also pursuing equality in the state at the same time?

378
00:28:24.462 --> 00:28:25.263
How do you marry those things?

379
00:28:25.323 --> 00:28:28.166
Yeah, some people have asked me if I'm demonizing billionaires.

380
00:28:28.686 --> 00:28:39.818
And I've said that I think I'm humanizing billionaires because for one of our own residents to become the world's first trillionaire while one in five Texas children live in poverty –

381
00:28:41.017 --> 00:28:43.178
To me, that is a spiritual sickness.

382
00:28:43.778 --> 00:28:44.958
I want people to be successful.

383
00:28:45.298 --> 00:28:47.579
I'm proud of Tesla.

384
00:28:48.119 --> 00:28:52.180
I'm proud of the great businesses across the state of Texas, across this country.

385
00:28:53.260 --> 00:28:55.981
When businesses are successful, people are successful, and I'm all for that.

386
00:28:56.741 --> 00:28:58.582
But to accumulate more wealth

387
00:28:59.323 --> 00:29:04.145
than you could possibly spend in 100 lifetimes while we have people starving in this one.

388
00:29:05.046 --> 00:29:10.529
To me, that means we're not fulfilling our full humanity.

389
00:29:10.789 --> 00:29:13.130
What would you have done to stop that happening?

390
00:29:13.997 --> 00:29:20.326
Well, I mean, we at one point in this country, we had, I think it was in the 1950s, had a top marginal tax rate of 90%.

391
00:29:21.167 --> 00:29:22.789
You know, I don't think it needs to be that high.

392
00:29:22.830 --> 00:29:30.781
But we used to have a political system and an economic system that more fairly distributed the fruits of our labor.

393
00:29:31.061 --> 00:29:35.405
On that particular point, if there was a tax rate of 90%, Elon would still be a trillionaire.

394
00:29:35.745 --> 00:29:35.945
Yeah.

395
00:29:36.126 --> 00:29:42.511
Well, I mean, this is the problem when you let so much concentrated wealth and power get so out of control.

396
00:29:43.092 --> 00:29:52.200
And I think the thing that really upsets people, particularly about the Elon example, is that Tesla was successful because of taxpayer dollars, right?

397
00:29:52.400 --> 00:29:58.005
Tesla got investment from the federal government, which is why it has been so successful, right?

398
00:29:58.245 --> 00:30:04.833
And so if we're all going to invest in Tesla, if we're going to invest in Elon Musk or pick your billionaire, right?

399
00:30:05.114 --> 00:30:08.237
Most of our billionaires, you know, they went to schools that we funded.

400
00:30:08.257 --> 00:30:09.799
They drove on highways that we funded.

401
00:30:09.819 --> 00:30:12.282
They benefited from infrastructure that we all built together.

402
00:30:12.302 --> 00:30:12.783
Right.

403
00:30:13.222 --> 00:30:15.263
And we're not saying they can't be successful.

404
00:30:15.303 --> 00:30:20.106
All we're saying is that make sure you give something back to the country that made your success possible.

405
00:30:20.627 --> 00:30:23.608
Make sure there's a ladder for the next guy coming up, right?

406
00:30:23.628 --> 00:30:34.655
I mean, I think that we should be investing and taking a chance on the CEOs in their garage, not the CEOs on their mega yacht, because that's where the next great American company is going to come from.

407
00:30:35.135 --> 00:30:40.659
I've seen that when people talk about being pro-business, what that usually means is being pro-big business.

408
00:30:41.599 --> 00:30:45.963
All the tax breaks go to the giant multinational corporations.

409
00:30:46.003 --> 00:30:52.007
Walmart, we basically subsidize Walmart through Medicaid because they don't give their employees quality healthcare.

410
00:30:52.047 --> 00:30:54.789
So we, the taxpayers, are giving Walmart employees quality healthcare.

411
00:30:55.330 --> 00:30:59.813
So again, socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the rest of us.

412
00:31:00.053 --> 00:31:06.678
And what I'm trying to get back to is an economy where the folks who work for Tesla, the folks

413
00:31:09.060 --> 00:31:12.483
are also getting to benefit from that prosperity.

414
00:31:13.023 --> 00:31:14.024
And this is not a radical vision.

415
00:31:14.044 --> 00:31:14.884
It's what we had before.

416
00:31:15.224 --> 00:31:17.746
And we had the most productive, innovative economy in the world.

417
00:31:18.507 --> 00:31:24.571
And I think we can rebuild that through better tax policy, better health care policy, better education policy.

418
00:31:24.611 --> 00:31:35.559
Like public policy can help us unrig this system so that those productivity gains, the wealth that's created is more evenly shared across people in our communities.

419
00:31:35.579 --> 00:31:35.699
Yeah.

420
00:31:35.839 --> 00:31:40.803
Because in the case of Elon, his wealth is equity value in the companies that he owns.

421
00:31:40.823 --> 00:31:43.205
It's not necessarily cash in a bank account.

422
00:31:43.305 --> 00:31:43.485
Yeah.

423
00:31:43.785 --> 00:31:55.235
So I'm wondering what any governor or government or senator could do to redistribute that, which would have prevented him from becoming a trillionaire in the first place.

424
00:31:55.955 --> 00:31:56.195
Yes.

425
00:31:56.435 --> 00:31:58.356
When there isn't necessarily a transaction taking place.

426
00:31:58.376 --> 00:32:02.736
It's not like he's necessarily sold down huge amounts of that equity.

427
00:32:03.317 --> 00:32:10.898
I mean, what we've talked about on this campaign is closing tax loopholes that benefit the wealthiest in this country.

428
00:32:11.478 --> 00:32:18.020
There's crazy stuff in our tax code that says you can write off your private jet, your mega yacht as business expenses.

429
00:32:18.640 --> 00:32:18.840
Right.

430
00:32:19.000 --> 00:32:21.360
The carried interest loophole, capital gains.

431
00:32:25.581 --> 00:32:32.306
really allows the people at the very top to accumulate and amass more wealth without any taxation.

432
00:32:32.606 --> 00:32:46.515
I mean, I was reading that if we just collected the taxes that the top 1% owes, no new taxes, just collecting what's already owed, it would raise something like $172 billion every year.

433
00:32:47.155 --> 00:32:49.397
And that's enough to end poverty in America.

434
00:32:49.737 --> 00:32:51.018
That they already owe.

435
00:32:51.598 --> 00:32:54.220
But if they hadn't paid it, presumably they're going to be in jail, aren't they?

436
00:32:54.500 --> 00:32:54.880
Well, no.

437
00:32:54.920 --> 00:32:59.803
I mean, one, there are no resources that actually go to cracking down on these tax cheats.

438
00:33:00.363 --> 00:33:03.445
Oh, they're using loopholes, is what you're saying?

439
00:33:03.465 --> 00:33:07.647
Yeah, loopholes in the system and people who are cheating the system too.

440
00:33:07.687 --> 00:33:08.067
It's both.

441
00:33:08.247 --> 00:33:14.311
It's both the legalized loopholes that you can get away with, but it's also people who just know they're not going to get – no one's going to crack down on them.

442
00:33:15.011 --> 00:33:30.783
And so I just say that as an example of how much this system benefits those who can afford to buy politicians, those who can afford to curry favor with elected officials, those who can write the rules of the game so that they're the only ones who win.

443
00:33:31.928 --> 00:33:33.349
And that's what I think people are angry about.

444
00:33:33.389 --> 00:33:36.411
That's what I think people are tired of across the political spectrum.

445
00:33:36.471 --> 00:33:38.933
I don't think this is a democratic thing that I'm saying.

446
00:33:39.653 --> 00:33:43.776
I really do get the sense that most people in this country, they want success.

447
00:33:44.377 --> 00:33:45.717
They want businesses to thrive.

448
00:33:45.758 --> 00:33:46.998
They want business leaders to thrive.

449
00:33:48.279 --> 00:33:53.503
But they don't want all the gains in our economy just to go to a few guys at the very top at our expense.

450
00:33:54.043 --> 00:34:00.688
Right now, it's three men, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos, who now own more wealth than the entire middle class.

451
00:34:01.757 --> 00:34:04.498
Like that, I mean, that's crazy.

452
00:34:04.618 --> 00:34:07.280
And you're not a socialist or a communist if you say that that's crazy.

453
00:34:07.540 --> 00:34:09.361
So what would you do about that though?

454
00:34:09.481 --> 00:34:14.384
Like at this point, so historically, you could have done something, but now this is where we are.

455
00:34:15.304 --> 00:34:17.185
So how would you redistribute that wealth?

456
00:34:17.465 --> 00:34:18.706
A fair tax system to start with.

457
00:34:19.747 --> 00:34:23.732
A lot of these guys don't pay tax because they're taking loans against their equity.

458
00:34:23.752 --> 00:34:34.586
I mean, there's all kinds of ideas for being able to tax not only income but also wealth to make sure that those assets that you have are being taxed fairly.

459
00:34:35.467 --> 00:34:37.109
So you're pro-wealth tax?

460
00:34:37.910 --> 00:34:41.113
I'm interested in what kind of wealth taxes we could actually implement.

461
00:34:41.253 --> 00:34:49.560
I know there's challenges on implementation, but I think we should explore every avenue to make the wealthiest people in this country pay their fair share.

462
00:34:49.920 --> 00:35:00.529
I mean, just as a percentage of income, if we just want to talk about income, I mean, working Texans are paying more as a percentage of their take-home pay than the wealthiest people in our state.

463
00:35:01.515 --> 00:35:02.776
And that just... How come?

464
00:35:02.856 --> 00:35:03.696
What's the tax rate?

465
00:35:03.776 --> 00:35:14.382
I mean, this is the problem, is that the tax system has been transformed by those who can afford to pay politicians for access and for control.

466
00:35:15.222 --> 00:35:29.990
And so it's why I say we don't have capitalism, we have crony capitalism, because it is rewarding those who can influence the political process, because it's elected officials who write those rules, who create the tax code, who set education policy, who set healthcare policy,

467
00:35:30.710 --> 00:35:38.573
And if you can buy off those elected officials, they no longer work for the people, but work for their donors, then you get the rigged system that we have currently.

468
00:35:39.273 --> 00:35:44.835
And that's what I think people are really disillusioned about.

469
00:35:44.855 --> 00:35:48.637
They just feel like the whole thing is hopelessly corrupt.

470
00:35:49.077 --> 00:35:57.340
One of the rebuttals people have when they hear about wealth taxes or just raising taxes generally is that these successful people, these billionaires will just move to a different state.

471
00:35:58.100 --> 00:36:07.743
And I think over the last couple of months, because California were threatening to do a wealth tax, there's been a lot of the famous well-known founders have departed California.

472
00:36:08.423 --> 00:36:10.724
The Mark Zuckerbergs of the world, I think a few others.

473
00:36:10.744 --> 00:36:12.025
I've got a long list of them here.

474
00:36:12.565 --> 00:36:14.345
But is that something you think about as well?

475
00:36:14.705 --> 00:36:25.349
In a world that is increasingly global, but also just where these founders can have their businesses online and on the internet, they can quite easily move their residents to a state that's more preferential, whether it's Florida or California.

476
00:36:25.829 --> 00:36:26.370
other places.

477
00:36:26.390 --> 00:36:31.574
I mean, much of the reason why a lot of founders have moved to Texas is because there's a, what is it, a 0% state tax?

478
00:36:31.594 --> 00:36:33.076
We don't have a state income tax, yes.

479
00:36:33.156 --> 00:36:34.257
Which is a good thing.

480
00:36:34.417 --> 00:36:36.019
And I don't want a state income tax.

481
00:36:36.059 --> 00:36:39.642
Our citizens are taxed enough with property and sales taxes.

482
00:36:40.062 --> 00:36:43.125
But this is the reason we need good federal policy, right?

483
00:36:43.145 --> 00:36:44.506
And it's the reason why states can't

484
00:36:46.708 --> 00:36:52.574
And again, I had an event with Mark Cuban up in Dallas, Fort Worth.

485
00:36:53.995 --> 00:36:57.879
And, you know, the moderator interviewed both of us.

486
00:36:58.379 --> 00:37:02.463
And it was a little awkward because she's like, you know, James, you've had some tough words for billionaires.

487
00:37:03.023 --> 00:37:04.345
And you got a billionaire sitting right next to you.

488
00:37:04.965 --> 00:37:13.869
And I joke that Mark Cuban is one of the good ones, meaning Mark Cuban uses his wealth, his power, his influence to help working people.

489
00:37:14.190 --> 00:37:22.133
If you've seen the work he's done on prescription drugs, Cost Plus Drugs is a great company that is actively making it easier for people to afford their medicine.

490
00:37:22.994 --> 00:37:24.394
And that's true throughout American history.

491
00:37:24.434 --> 00:37:27.576
If I think of Franklin Roosevelt, I think of Bobby Kennedy.

492
00:37:27.596 --> 00:37:29.377
These were political heroes of mine.

493
00:37:29.917 --> 00:37:31.098
They were trust fund babies.

494
00:37:31.598 --> 00:37:33.599
These were the billionaires of their day.

495
00:37:34.585 --> 00:37:39.949
But they use their power to take on these systems that are hurting people.

496
00:37:40.469 --> 00:37:41.790
And it wasn't just through charity.

497
00:37:42.390 --> 00:37:43.271
Charity is important.

498
00:37:43.951 --> 00:37:46.973
But what's more important is addressing the systems that make charity necessary.

499
00:37:47.594 --> 00:37:49.515
And that's exactly what people like Mark Cuban are doing.

500
00:37:49.535 --> 00:37:52.597
So, again, I don't mean to – I'm not interested in punishing success.

501
00:37:53.217 --> 00:37:54.979
I'm not interested in banning billionaires.

502
00:37:55.579 --> 00:38:00.522
All I want is to ensure that we are – we're acting like a community again.

503
00:38:00.542 --> 00:38:01.163
Yeah.

504
00:38:01.763 --> 00:38:04.786
as a country, that we have a responsibility to each other.

505
00:38:05.506 --> 00:38:11.811
And you can be successful while also paying your fair share and ensuring that we're investing in young entrepreneurs.

506
00:38:11.831 --> 00:38:15.154
We've got an education system that's empowering the next great business leader.

507
00:38:15.594 --> 00:38:18.617
So you're saying that the tax changes would need to happen on the federal level?

508
00:38:19.157 --> 00:38:19.357
Yes.

509
00:38:19.817 --> 00:38:20.457
Along with a lot more.

510
00:38:20.477 --> 00:38:21.298
It's not just tax.

511
00:38:21.338 --> 00:38:29.480
I mean, I'm talking about major changes in education and early childhood and in healthcare and blocking consolidation.

512
00:38:29.820 --> 00:38:33.901
One of the things that Mark Cuban and I laid out together was going after healthcare monopolies.

513
00:38:34.201 --> 00:38:43.183
Because you basically, you can now have one company that owns the health insurance company, the hospital, and the pharmacy all in one.

514
00:38:43.423 --> 00:38:46.884
And so there's, again, when I say this is not capitalism, there's a lot of things that are going to happen.

515
00:38:48.088 --> 00:38:52.910
Less competition means fewer choices, which means higher prices for people.

516
00:38:53.650 --> 00:38:57.651
So these monopolies in our healthcare system, that's an example of crony capitalism.

517
00:38:57.731 --> 00:39:00.532
CVS owns one of the largest PBMs.

518
00:39:01.293 --> 00:39:04.154
They own a pharmacy benefit manager.

519
00:39:04.534 --> 00:39:07.555
It's basically like a middleman between you and the prescription drugs you buy.

520
00:39:08.195 --> 00:39:10.216
But they own one of the big PBMs.

521
00:39:10.316 --> 00:39:12.557
They own one of the big health insurance companies.

522
00:39:12.717 --> 00:39:15.638
And they own the largest network of drugstores in the country.

523
00:39:16.320 --> 00:39:26.203
So, Mark, you've been and I were talking about a plan to actually break up those health care monopolies and create more choices, more competition, more capitalism so that we can lower prices.

524
00:39:26.443 --> 00:39:32.125
Because at the end of the day, like if you can't afford your prescription drugs, you get sick and sometimes you die because of it.

525
00:39:32.746 --> 00:39:36.947
The big, ugly bill that passed last year in Washington made a lot of cuts to health care.

526
00:39:37.467 --> 00:39:45.250
The nonpartisan estimates were that as a result of those cuts, 51,000 Americans were going to die needlessly every year.

527
00:39:46.179 --> 00:39:51.625
So I just want to ground us also in the real world ramifications of these policy decisions.

528
00:39:52.006 --> 00:39:52.947
It's not just theoretical.

529
00:39:53.267 --> 00:40:01.818
We're talking about our neighbors dying because we have a system that determines your health care based on how much money you make.

530
00:40:02.970 --> 00:40:05.693
Based on how much money your parents make, a lot of these are kids who don't even work yet.

531
00:40:06.473 --> 00:40:17.303
And so there is a real urgency that I feel that a lot of Americans feel that we have to pursue wholesale transformational change in our political and economic system.

532
00:40:19.254 --> 00:40:22.197
I want to speak to the business owners listening and watching right now.

533
00:40:22.597 --> 00:40:25.040
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534
00:40:25.060 --> 00:40:29.905
I founded my first company at 21 years old, and honestly, the pressure can be immense.

535
00:40:30.125 --> 00:40:33.068
It's the kind of mental load that takes its toll below the surface.

536
00:40:33.288 --> 00:40:38.153
I recently did some tests through our sponsor, Function, which got me thinking about that invisible impact.

537
00:40:38.453 --> 00:40:41.094
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538
00:40:41.294 --> 00:40:47.216
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539
00:40:47.396 --> 00:40:50.538
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540
00:40:50.618 --> 00:40:59.721
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541
00:40:59.781 --> 00:41:04.123
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542
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543
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544
00:41:11.445 --> 00:41:19.207
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545
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546
00:41:34.932 --> 00:41:36.452
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547
00:41:36.532 --> 00:41:39.773
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548
00:41:40.093 --> 00:41:49.676
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549
00:41:50.076 --> 00:41:51.357
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550
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551
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552
00:42:02.900 --> 00:42:05.461
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553
00:42:05.782 --> 00:42:06.542
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554
00:42:07.983 --> 00:42:11.525
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555
00:42:12.005 --> 00:42:17.828
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556
00:42:18.009 --> 00:42:20.570
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557
00:42:23.359 --> 00:42:32.723
In terms of the economic system, and we were talking there a little bit about, you know, average workers and their pay and their livelihoods.

558
00:42:33.324 --> 00:42:38.966
One of the big sort of protagonists in this story is now artificial intelligence and how disruptive that's going to be.

559
00:42:38.986 --> 00:42:40.447
And I've sat here with so many of the like,

560
00:42:41.147 --> 00:42:48.136
you know, the stakeholders in that industry and heard some of the most crazy predictions around robotics and generally around AI.

561
00:42:48.456 --> 00:42:53.903
I mean, one of the sort of big headlines at the moment is that there'll be significant job disruption.

562
00:42:54.223 --> 00:43:00.070
And a lot of that value is going to accrue to the big technology companies that are the Frontier Labs and the Navidias of the world.

563
00:43:00.771 --> 00:43:10.693
It appears to me, when I ask very, very smart people in technology what is the biggest concern at the moment for the U.S. economy, it is dealing with this AI challenge.

564
00:43:11.594 --> 00:43:13.654
Bernie Sanders has been very vocal about it recently.

565
00:43:14.254 --> 00:43:17.655
Donald Trump has said that we need to win against China.

566
00:43:18.795 --> 00:43:21.916
How are you thinking about AI and the impact it's going to have on Texans?

567
00:43:21.976 --> 00:43:26.017
Yeah, I think when I travel around the state of Texas, I get this question a lot.

568
00:43:31.358 --> 00:43:37.321
A lot of us, including me, feel excited about some of the benefits of artificial intelligence.

569
00:43:37.701 --> 00:43:43.724
I met with an AI entrepreneur who's talking about how he's going to cure chronic diseases, maybe cure cancer.

570
00:43:43.744 --> 00:43:45.905
I mean, that's exciting for me.

571
00:43:45.925 --> 00:43:47.166
I think it's exciting for most people.

572
00:43:48.006 --> 00:43:50.728
And then a lot of Texans, including me, feel a lot of anxiety.

573
00:43:51.628 --> 00:43:58.051
Because our leaders, those who should be writing the rules of the game, have their head in the sand.

574
00:43:58.451 --> 00:44:16.018
I mean, it is shocking that our U.S. Senate, our Congress, our federal government has really been MIA as this technology has developed faster and faster and has done so in dangerous ways, as we saw with the...

575
00:44:16.658 --> 00:44:20.962
the recent hacking from open AI model.

576
00:44:21.483 --> 00:44:32.173
And so I think what people are hungry for is a regulatory framework to ensure that we are developing these technologies, that we're winning the AI race, and we're doing it responsibly.

577
00:44:32.674 --> 00:44:33.554
We're doing it safely.

578
00:44:34.255 --> 00:44:38.098
We're doing it in a way that's going to ensure AI works for us and not against us.

579
00:44:38.918 --> 00:44:44.542
And I think that is what I think most people want to see from their leaders, from their policymakers.

580
00:44:44.942 --> 00:44:48.044
Because right now it's just no one is minding the story.

581
00:44:48.205 --> 00:44:49.946
Do you know, what does that mean specifically?

582
00:44:49.966 --> 00:44:51.046
Do you have any ideas?

583
00:44:51.086 --> 00:44:53.088
Yeah, I think if I, you know.

584
00:44:53.908 --> 00:45:00.351
if I was in the U.S. Senate helping develop this regulatory framework, there are three things I would prioritize.

585
00:45:01.512 --> 00:45:16.098
One is protecting our workers, protecting our economy, making sure that AI technologies are improving jobs, making jobs easier, allowing workers to spend less time on the job and more time doing the things they love with the people they love.

586
00:45:17.619 --> 00:45:19.940
The second thing I would prioritize is children.

587
00:45:20.240 --> 00:45:21.121
We've seen how...

588
00:45:22.061 --> 00:45:34.943
Social media companies have preyed on our kids, have taken advantage of our kids, have led to a spike in self-harm and depression and anxiety among young people.

589
00:45:35.743 --> 00:45:41.884
I very much worry that without regulation, AI technologies may do the same thing to young people, to future generations.

590
00:45:41.904 --> 00:45:49.866
You've seen the horror stories of kids going to AI for therapy, for counseling, and sometimes those AI

591
00:45:51.567 --> 00:45:53.667
chatbot have helped those kids harm themselves.

592
00:45:55.281 --> 00:46:03.306
The third thing I would prioritize is our democracy because we've already seen AI deep fake ads in political campaigns.

593
00:46:03.326 --> 00:46:05.727
We've seen it in this campaign in Texas for the U.S. Senate.

594
00:46:06.628 --> 00:46:13.932
And, you know, I've always prided myself as a millennial on being able to differentiate between fact and fiction online, right?

595
00:46:14.352 --> 00:46:20.096
A lot of millennials like me will roll our eyes at our grandparents who get tricked by stuff on Facebook.

596
00:46:20.716 --> 00:46:22.817
But, I mean, I'm seeing it happen –

597
00:46:24.178 --> 00:46:31.822
To me, right, I increasingly can't tell the difference between AI deepfakes and reality.

598
00:46:32.422 --> 00:46:39.665
And I think a lot of people feel that alarm that these technologies are being so good that you really can't tell the difference between fact and fiction.

599
00:46:40.166 --> 00:46:42.106
And most of the time, there's no disclaimer required.

600
00:46:42.827 --> 00:46:44.988
And so, again, there's a lot that needs to happen.

601
00:46:45.528 --> 00:46:51.551
But if I was developing a framework of regulation for AI, those would be the three things that I would prioritize.

602
00:46:51.911 --> 00:46:56.930
So Elon said that there will be, within a decade, over a billion humanoid robots.

603
00:46:58.357 --> 00:47:01.438
over a billion humanoid robots.

604
00:47:02.359 --> 00:47:06.701
And that those robots will be at least five times the output of a human.

605
00:47:08.122 --> 00:47:11.823
And he's, I think it's, these robots are being built in your state in Texas.

606
00:47:12.464 --> 00:47:16.405
At the Gigafactory there, and at the other sort of Tesla factories that he has.

607
00:47:16.926 --> 00:47:21.688
But how is it possible to protect workers when there's a billion humanoid robots in the world?

608
00:47:21.948 --> 00:47:24.269
Now, like, Elon's timelines have sometimes missed a little bit.

609
00:47:24.369 --> 00:47:24.789
Yeah, sure.

610
00:47:24.869 --> 00:47:30.833
But generally, you know, he as an entrepreneur and his companies are being able to do things that are like almost indistinguishable from magic at times.

611
00:47:31.573 --> 00:47:35.575
Well, here's the key and connects to the conversation we were just having.

612
00:47:36.215 --> 00:47:44.340
We cannot let AI or robotics become yet another arena where billionaires are writing the rules for the rest of us.

613
00:47:45.347 --> 00:47:49.110
You think about, I try to always think about historical parallels.

614
00:47:50.671 --> 00:48:01.657
And the only parallels I can think of in modern history are the Manhattan Project, the development of nuclear weapons, the space race, and the development of the internet.

615
00:48:02.318 --> 00:48:08.141
This AI probably will be more consequential than those three innovations.

616
00:48:08.161 --> 00:48:09.022
Yeah.

617
00:48:09.324 --> 00:48:16.211
But the thing that's different is that all three of those innovations were done as a public-private partnership, right?

618
00:48:16.731 --> 00:48:20.414
We as a country were deciding the rules of the game.

619
00:48:21.658 --> 00:48:25.920
And we were doing it in partnership with great private sector companies.

620
00:48:26.781 --> 00:48:28.882
This innovation is very different.

621
00:48:29.542 --> 00:48:37.887
This is being done in the hands of a very small number of people running for-profit corporations without input from any of the rest of us.

622
00:48:38.747 --> 00:48:39.948
And we can't allow that to happen.

623
00:48:40.428 --> 00:48:42.790
We've seen already, we talked about the last 50 years,

624
00:48:43.590 --> 00:48:52.643
When you let the richest people in this country, the most powerful people in this country, write all the rules, all of the gains, all of the benefits will flow to those at the top and we're all going to get screwed.

625
00:48:53.665 --> 00:48:56.228
I could see the same thing happening with AI.

626
00:48:56.689 --> 00:48:59.653
Working people in this country deserve a say and a share.

627
00:49:00.394 --> 00:49:00.514
Yeah.

628
00:49:20.172 --> 00:49:24.696
then we deserve to get compensated for the use of that intellectual property.

629
00:49:25.256 --> 00:49:43.931
If the technology plays out how they're forecasting and how on the current direction of travel, then if you just think about driving as an occupation, we all watched those videos of these new cybercabs rolling out around Texas where they have new steering wheel, no pedals at all, and two seats in the front and the car just drives itself autonomously.

630
00:49:44.492 --> 00:49:49.536
From my rough estimates, approximately 400,000 people in Texas work as professional drivers

631
00:49:50.196 --> 00:49:52.218
as their primary payroll occupation.

632
00:49:52.498 --> 00:50:00.225
But if you factor in like gig workers that are on the Ubers, the DoorDashes, which by the way, you know, the founder of the CEO of Uber sat there and told me those jobs are going away.

633
00:50:01.306 --> 00:50:04.509
It's more than half a million people that rely on driving as an occupation.

634
00:50:04.969 --> 00:50:09.373
Texas is leading the charge towards autonomous vehicles where you need no driver.

635
00:50:10.014 --> 00:50:14.077
It would appear to me logically that on this direction of travel, there's going to be significant job disruption.

636
00:50:14.097 --> 00:50:16.339
This is even outside of humanoid robots and so on.

637
00:50:17.080 --> 00:50:24.968
And I wonder like how, you know, there's an AI dividend, but I just wonder how people like you are thinking about that level of disruption.

638
00:50:25.028 --> 00:50:25.268
Yeah.

639
00:50:25.548 --> 00:50:27.490
Theoretically could happen really, really quickly.

640
00:50:27.770 --> 00:50:29.732
And rejecting the false choices, right?

641
00:50:29.973 --> 00:50:35.198
Because it is possible to benefit from some of these technologies.

642
00:50:35.558 --> 00:50:40.042
You know, some of these self-driving cars will make us all safer on the roads, which is great.

643
00:50:40.062 --> 00:50:40.523
Yeah.

644
00:50:40.912 --> 00:50:49.695
But the idea that that has to replace a human being, the idea that these technologies don't need a human supervisor, to me, that's a false choice.

645
00:50:49.956 --> 00:50:51.356
Why would it need a human supervisor?

646
00:50:51.576 --> 00:50:58.479
I mean, I would hope, especially if we're talking about like 18-wheelers barreling down Texas highways, I would hope there's a human being there.

647
00:50:59.039 --> 00:51:00.340
to monitor these technologies.

648
00:51:00.581 --> 00:51:05.526
If you think about- Even if the data suggests that it's more safe without the human.

649
00:51:05.546 --> 00:51:09.269
You think, I'm all for taking advantage of the safety features.

650
00:51:09.790 --> 00:51:11.191
I just think about airplanes, right?

651
00:51:11.351 --> 00:51:19.360
The fact that airplanes mostly fly themselves, I'm still very comforted by the fact that there is a trained professional behind the controls in case anything goes wrong.

652
00:51:19.960 --> 00:51:31.570
And so, again, if we're making these decisions together instead of just a few billionaire CEOs making the decisions for all of us, then we can reject some of these false choices that are presented to us.

653
00:51:32.310 --> 00:51:42.899
And we can figure out a way to both take advantage of the benefits of these technologies, like making our roads safer, making cars safer, reducing fatalities and ensuring that we are protecting human beings in the process.

654
00:51:43.440 --> 00:51:47.163
I just fundamentally reject the idea that we have to choose between those two things.

655
00:51:48.965 --> 00:51:55.134
I watched a video the other day of a factory, and they had the humanoid robot doing the packaging process, and then a human next to them.

656
00:51:55.294 --> 00:52:03.986
And they were just demonstrating the productivity difference between this humanoid robot that was flipping the packages versus a person who had to sleep and go to the toilet and all those kinds of things.

657
00:52:04.607 --> 00:52:06.729
And it's a video by Figure AI.

658
00:52:06.809 --> 00:52:10.291
And the video concludes with the fact that the humanoid robot was more productive, essentially.

659
00:52:10.771 --> 00:52:12.572
And it did need to sleep and obviously all those kinds of things.

660
00:52:12.592 --> 00:52:14.254
So I think also about that level of work.

661
00:52:14.314 --> 00:52:23.180
And I don't know, I've just, I'm in search of a good answer to this question of like job disruption that seems to be logically on the way.

662
00:52:23.580 --> 00:52:28.843
The big frontier labs, their CEOs in AI have all forecasted job disruption increasingly.

663
00:52:29.043 --> 00:52:31.285
They change their tone a little bit when it becomes unpopular, right?

664
00:52:31.625 --> 00:52:38.415
But if you look through their writing since 2016, they're saying that the economy is going to have to drastically change in light of this technology.

665
00:52:38.435 --> 00:52:45.646
So I spoke with an expert on AI because I'm, you know, when you're in these positions, when you're in elected office, you suddenly realize...

666
00:52:46.347 --> 00:52:47.268
all the things you don't know.

667
00:52:47.668 --> 00:52:51.630
You're having to make crucial decisions on things that you may not be an expert on yet.

668
00:52:52.230 --> 00:52:54.651
And so I'm trying to get smarter on this every day.

669
00:52:54.671 --> 00:53:04.257
And I was speaking to someone who's done a lot of work in AI, and he said he's worried that we are headed toward five trillionaires and 30% unemployment.

670
00:53:05.477 --> 00:53:06.818
And that terrifies me, right?

671
00:53:06.838 --> 00:53:10.240
As someone who cares about the people in my state, that's not the future I want.

672
00:53:11.355 --> 00:53:14.278
And there's still time for us to make these decisions together.

673
00:53:14.318 --> 00:53:15.759
What kind of AI future do we want?

674
00:53:16.540 --> 00:53:18.161
This is not something we're subjected to.

675
00:53:18.201 --> 00:53:20.223
Yes, we're going to see disruption.

676
00:53:20.243 --> 00:53:22.465
We've seen disruption from past technologies.

677
00:53:23.106 --> 00:53:30.432
But if we're making decisions together as a country, then we can both weather some of those disruptions and we can come out stronger on the other side.

678
00:53:30.973 --> 00:53:32.734
I think about the need to invest in.

679
00:53:33.475 --> 00:53:36.577
and double down on what only human beings can do.

680
00:53:37.277 --> 00:53:41.359
Doubling down on human creativity, on human ingenuity, right?

681
00:53:41.539 --> 00:53:44.420
I've talked about the need for entrepreneurship grants.

682
00:53:44.700 --> 00:53:56.166
If we're taxing these AI companies, some of that revenue can go toward investing in folks who have a great idea for a business or an invention or a piece of art.

683
00:53:57.590 --> 00:54:00.111
But these people don't know a bunch of wealthy investors.

684
00:54:00.911 --> 00:54:05.793
And so we're gonna invest in the little guy, just like we did with Tesla, just like we did with the internet.

685
00:54:06.454 --> 00:54:09.735
And those innovations have more than paid for themselves.

686
00:54:10.676 --> 00:54:15.638
And so I want us to do more of that, finding out what is it that human beings alone can do

687
00:54:16.738 --> 00:54:19.760
And doubling down on that creativity, that ingenuity.

688
00:54:20.181 --> 00:54:34.812
Again, that's just an example of if we all come together and we think seriously about this problem and decide that we're going to make decisions together, the AI future can look very differently than the path that we're headed on.

689
00:54:35.692 --> 00:54:41.097
Do you have faith that elected officials can pass through this and arrive at a conclusion?

690
00:54:41.117 --> 00:54:46.703
Because if you think through, I don't know, how social media was handled, we tend to handle it after the fact.

691
00:54:46.743 --> 00:54:49.766
That should be a negative example, right?

692
00:54:49.946 --> 00:54:54.851
Because we let social media companies run wild and they ended up preying on our children.

693
00:54:54.871 --> 00:54:56.913
They ended up hurting our kids.

694
00:54:57.173 --> 00:54:59.015
They ended up hurting all of us, not just kids.

695
00:54:59.835 --> 00:55:23.269
And so we should learn from that example and realize that if we're going to do this and if this technology is coming, if this innovation is coming, let's figure out as a community, as a nation, how we're going to respond and what policy frameworks we need to put in place to ensure that, again, AI is making our lives better and easier and less stressful and not hurting people.

696
00:55:23.829 --> 00:55:26.771
This is a fundamental belief that I have that the economy is for people.

697
00:55:26.811 --> 00:55:27.792
People aren't for the economy.

698
00:55:27.812 --> 00:55:28.372
Right.

699
00:55:28.570 --> 00:55:28.890
Right.

700
00:55:28.950 --> 00:55:31.312
That is a that is a guiding star for me.

701
00:55:31.753 --> 00:55:42.142
And so if if we are headed down a path where people are going to get hurt needlessly because a few guys in Silicon Valley say it's necessary, I think we have to reject that.

702
00:55:42.642 --> 00:55:47.647
And our elected officials who in a democracy are tasked with making these big decisions, they need to get in the game.

703
00:55:48.387 --> 00:55:51.630
Politics has shifted over the last couple of over the last couple of years.

704
00:55:51.650 --> 00:55:55.634
There was quite a distinct shift, I think, when Elon purchased Twitter.

705
00:55:56.254 --> 00:55:56.394
No.

706
00:55:57.335 --> 00:55:58.735
It seemed like the world changed a lot.

707
00:55:58.755 --> 00:56:02.477
And this, one of the terms within politics was this word, wokeism.

708
00:56:02.897 --> 00:56:02.977
Mm.

709
00:56:03.297 --> 00:56:04.798
And it predominantly seemed to exist.

710
00:56:05.118 --> 00:56:07.760
It was like a weapon that the right hit the left with.

711
00:56:07.920 --> 00:56:08.100
Sure.

712
00:56:08.760 --> 00:56:14.323
Recently, AOC came out and said that woke 1.0 was crazy.

713
00:56:15.303 --> 00:56:18.325
Sort of distancing herself from the 2020 progressive political

714
00:56:19.165 --> 00:56:25.547
narratives that I think maybe in hindsight have hurt the party a little bit, or at least hurt the perception of the party a little bit.

715
00:56:26.067 --> 00:56:30.508
Do you have a point of view on this idea of wokeism and the sort of journey we've been on?

716
00:56:31.368 --> 00:56:31.648
Yeah.

717
00:56:31.728 --> 00:56:36.989
I mean, it's hard because, you know, people define woke or wokeism very differently.

718
00:56:37.570 --> 00:56:38.510
I do think that...

719
00:56:39.190 --> 00:56:55.594
there was a rise in performative politics, in people who were more concerned about using the right words, usually determined by academia, versus bringing people together around some common values, like racism is wrong, right?

720
00:56:56.194 --> 00:56:58.394
That everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.

721
00:56:59.014 --> 00:57:01.715
Those are unifying values that we all agree on.

722
00:57:02.395 --> 00:57:15.104
But when you start policing people's language, when you start judging people because they're not up on the right terminology, you're no longer building a coalition to address those real problems that need addressing.

723
00:57:15.744 --> 00:57:25.571
Instead, you're performing a kind of politics that's about your own intellectual and emotional needs and not about actually making change.

724
00:57:25.932 --> 00:57:27.773
Why did the Democrats lose to Trump in your view?

725
00:57:28.557 --> 00:57:30.058
In what year?

726
00:57:30.078 --> 00:57:31.398
The Democrats have lost to Trump twice now.

727
00:57:31.538 --> 00:57:36.401
Yeah, I think really in both years, but I guess in the more recent election cycle.

728
00:57:36.541 --> 00:57:36.861
Yeah.

729
00:57:36.901 --> 00:57:37.942
What is the diagnosis?

730
00:57:38.422 --> 00:57:45.785
Well, everywhere I went across the state of Texas in 2024, people were struggling with the high cost of living.

731
00:57:46.146 --> 00:57:50.528
I talked with a lot of Texans who didn't like the way Trump talked to people.

732
00:57:51.308 --> 00:57:52.569
They didn't like January 6th.

733
00:57:52.869 --> 00:57:54.790
They had deep concerns about him as a leader.

734
00:57:55.693 --> 00:57:57.794
But they thought he could get the economy back on track.

735
00:57:58.355 --> 00:58:04.098
Because if you remember, the economy of 2017, 2018, 2019, that's a pretty good economy.

736
00:58:04.538 --> 00:58:06.079
And costs were a lot lower.

737
00:58:06.400 --> 00:58:09.321
And it was easier for middle class people to get ahead.

738
00:58:09.782 --> 00:58:10.882
I do think we have to separate.

739
00:58:11.543 --> 00:58:16.326
I've talked about the last 50 years of this trend toward consolidation of wealth and power at the top.

740
00:58:17.452 --> 00:58:23.855
All of that became more acute, more urgent after the pandemic and the rise of inflation.

741
00:58:24.475 --> 00:58:29.037
The increase in inflation was kind of like the straw that broke the camel's back, right?

742
00:58:29.057 --> 00:58:37.101
You had 50 years of trickle down economics of stagnant wages for middle class and working class people, systematic attacks on education and health care.

743
00:58:37.501 --> 00:58:40.043
You had all of that happening, but you had cheap goods.

744
00:58:41.018 --> 00:58:43.160
So there was, it felt like we were getting something, right?

745
00:58:43.180 --> 00:58:44.321
My income's not going up.

746
00:58:44.822 --> 00:58:46.263
You know, I'm not able to get ahead.

747
00:58:46.323 --> 00:58:48.125
Like maybe my grandparents were able to get ahead.

748
00:58:48.425 --> 00:58:51.128
It's hard to start a business, but at least things are cheap.

749
00:58:51.989 --> 00:59:03.420
And then when that changed, suddenly people realized that we are all getting screwed by this system because not only is our pay going down or staying flat, but now the cost of living has gone up.

750
00:59:03.820 --> 00:59:05.081
So you're getting squeezed from both ends.

751
00:59:06.570 --> 00:59:10.492
So when that happened, I think people were looking for someone who was going to help.

752
00:59:11.392 --> 00:59:13.673
And that's not an unreasonable thing to look for when you're hurting.

753
00:59:14.493 --> 00:59:18.995
And so people put their faith in President Trump for good reasons, right?

754
00:59:19.015 --> 00:59:20.035
They thought he was going to lower costs.

755
00:59:20.315 --> 00:59:24.157
They thought he was going to end the forever wars that we were all sick and tired of.

756
00:59:24.915 --> 00:59:27.197
They thought he was going to release the Epstein files.

757
00:59:27.798 --> 00:59:29.019
They thought he was going to drain the swamp.

758
00:59:29.099 --> 00:59:33.643
I mean, I have members of my family who voted for President Trump, people that I love.

759
00:59:34.423 --> 00:59:37.606
And those are the reasons they voted for him.

760
00:59:38.186 --> 00:59:39.167
And those are pretty good reasons.

761
00:59:40.108 --> 00:59:45.273
I think, you know, more than a year into this administration, those promises have not been kept.

762
00:59:45.953 --> 00:59:49.317
Everything is now more expensive, largely because of tariffs.

763
00:59:49.718 --> 00:59:51.940
We have a new war in Iran that no one asked for.

764
00:59:51.960 --> 00:59:55.124
It's costing us a billion dollars a day that's driving up gas prices.

765
00:59:55.925 --> 01:00:00.050
The Epstein files have still not fully been released.

766
01:00:00.070 --> 01:00:01.972
And the swamp is bigger than it's ever been before.

767
01:00:01.992 --> 01:00:02.312
Yeah.

768
01:00:03.013 --> 01:00:05.395
And so people are feeling like they've been conned.

769
01:00:06.215 --> 01:00:24.007
And my job as a candidate, our job as a campaign is to extend an open hand to our neighbors who are disillusioned, who misplaced their trust in a leader, and invite them to join this movement that we're building in Texas, which is honestly bigger than Donald Trump.

770
01:00:24.027 --> 01:00:25.589
It's bigger than any one political party.

771
01:00:26.409 --> 01:00:28.310
It really is on the ground.

772
01:00:28.330 --> 01:00:35.214
It feels like a movement of working people across the spectrum who are ready to take on this broken, corrupt system.

773
01:00:35.934 --> 01:00:49.081
And, you know, God willing, as the next U.S. senator from Texas, I will have the opportunity to work with President Trump to try to deliver for my constituents.

774
01:00:49.341 --> 01:00:50.742
What do you think of him as a person?

775
01:00:51.528 --> 01:00:53.050
Well, I don't know him, so it's hard for me to judge.

776
01:00:53.090 --> 01:00:58.256
But, you know, I think all of us have strengths and weaknesses.

777
01:00:59.578 --> 01:01:01.400
I think the president does have clear strengths.

778
01:01:01.720 --> 01:01:07.667
I think he's able to communicate in a way that's clear and concise and powerful to people.

779
01:01:08.428 --> 01:01:12.631
He is willing to take action when there's so much gridlock.

780
01:01:12.811 --> 01:01:16.394
He's willing to just kind of bust through walls to deliver for people.

781
01:01:16.935 --> 01:01:20.737
And he has a sense of humor, which I feel like is really missing in politics.

782
01:01:21.118 --> 01:01:22.639
He has a lighthearted weight about him.

783
01:01:23.800 --> 01:01:25.541
Those are, I think, some of the redeeming qualities.

784
01:01:25.781 --> 01:01:35.208
I think all of us know his willingness to put his ego above everything else, his willingness to make chaotic decisions without much forethought.

785
01:01:35.989 --> 01:01:44.477
his penchant for corruption and self-enrichment for himself and his family, and his desire to be popular.

786
01:01:44.497 --> 01:01:46.839
And all politicians have a desire to be popular.

787
01:01:47.459 --> 01:01:53.745
But he does seem to place that above almost any other principle or conviction that he may have.

788
01:01:54.786 --> 01:02:01.312
And so, you know, I think it's important to consider both the good and the bad of any leader, and that includes the president.

789
01:02:01.935 --> 01:02:03.156
What about immigration?

790
01:02:03.176 --> 01:02:14.224
That's one of the issues that is both very relevant to Texas, but also that frankly helped him get elected by him talking about some of these stats around border crossings in Texas.

791
01:02:14.384 --> 01:02:14.625
Yeah.

792
01:02:14.785 --> 01:02:15.645
And he was right about this.

793
01:02:15.966 --> 01:02:18.888
The Biden administration failed us on our southern border.

794
01:02:19.088 --> 01:02:22.651
I remember talking with my colleagues in the statehouse who represented border communities.

795
01:02:23.471 --> 01:02:26.773
And they talked about the utter chaos on our border.

796
01:02:27.153 --> 01:02:28.874
And our border communities in Texas mean a lot to me.

797
01:02:28.894 --> 01:02:31.775
My mom is from Laredo, which is on our Texas-Mexico border.

798
01:02:32.696 --> 01:02:36.778
And so this system was out of control in the Biden era.

799
01:02:37.058 --> 01:02:37.979
And you see it on this map.

800
01:02:38.599 --> 01:02:45.903
My worry is that we have replaced one extremism on immigration in the Biden years with a new extremism on immigration.

801
01:02:46.883 --> 01:02:59.049
with masked men and unmarked vehicles, kidnapping people off the street, deporting small business owners who have been here for years and decades, taking children as young as five years old and throwing them in detention centers.

802
01:02:59.989 --> 01:03:06.432
So my sense is that most Texans, most Americans want the same thing when it comes to immigration.

803
01:03:06.772 --> 01:03:12.815
They want security and they want to welcome hardworking immigrants who want to live the American dream.

804
01:03:13.625 --> 01:03:16.250
And in our politics, those two things are pitted against each other.

805
01:03:16.490 --> 01:03:17.672
Again, back to false choices.

806
01:03:19.114 --> 01:03:20.517
Those are not mutually exclusive.

807
01:03:21.078 --> 01:03:22.420
You can have a secure border.

808
01:03:22.901 --> 01:03:27.088
You can, you can, it is not racist to want to know who's coming into this country.

809
01:03:27.833 --> 01:03:28.013
right?

810
01:03:28.574 --> 01:03:33.160
You can do all that while also building more legal pathways for folks to come here the right way.

811
01:03:33.721 --> 01:03:41.992
Folks who want to start a business, who want to contribute to this economy, who want to live that American dream and make us richer and stronger in the process, as immigrants have always done.

812
01:03:42.833 --> 01:03:43.715
And so I'm trying to

813
01:03:45.015 --> 01:03:48.119
on the trail, uphold both of those moral values.

814
01:03:49.040 --> 01:03:52.104
Safety, which public safety is the most important thing the government does.

815
01:03:52.804 --> 01:03:55.127
More important than public education, more important than public health.

816
01:03:55.608 --> 01:03:58.011
Public safety is the most important thing.

817
01:03:59.153 --> 01:04:00.274
And we are a nation of immigrants.

818
01:04:00.874 --> 01:04:02.475
It is the lifeblood of our economy.

819
01:04:03.135 --> 01:04:06.217
It is what has made Texas and America so great.

820
01:04:07.197 --> 01:04:13.841
And so we can uphold both of those values at the same time and pass comprehensive immigration reform that can do both of those things simultaneously.

821
01:04:14.281 --> 01:04:24.567
What would you do about the issue of undocumented young people that have come here, that are in the country that maybe were brought here by no fault of their own, but now find themselves in the US without documents?

822
01:04:24.767 --> 01:04:30.968
Yeah, I taught a lot of DACA students, a lot of dreamers in room 112 at Rhodes Middle School on the west side of San Antonio.

823
01:04:31.668 --> 01:04:36.589
My students who were undocumented, they loved this country in a profound way.

824
01:04:37.210 --> 01:04:46.591
It feels like they understand something about America that many of our leaders have forgotten, that this is supposed to be the land of opportunity.

825
01:04:46.912 --> 01:04:48.692
This is supposed to be the place where dreams come true.

826
01:04:49.372 --> 01:05:05.041
And so I would be very interested as part of a comprehensive immigration reform package, which includes border security, to create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented folks who have been here for years, for decades, for kids who were brought over as kids.

827
01:05:05.601 --> 01:05:11.765
So they have an opportunity to come out of the shadows and fully join us as citizens of this country.

828
01:05:14.463 --> 01:05:16.584
This is something that I've made for you.

829
01:05:16.664 --> 01:05:20.826
I've realized that the Diary of a Seer audience are strivers, whether it's in business or health.

830
01:05:21.087 --> 01:05:22.948
We all have big goals that we want to accomplish.

831
01:05:23.288 --> 01:05:35.034
And one of the things I've learned is that when you aim at the big, big, big goal, it can feel incredibly psychologically uncomfortable because it's kind of like being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards.

832
01:05:35.434 --> 01:05:38.656
The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into titles.

833
01:05:38.696 --> 01:05:40.258
tiny small steps.

834
01:05:40.358 --> 01:05:41.900
And we call this in our team, the 1%.

835
01:05:42.100 --> 01:05:46.465
And actually, this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success here.

836
01:05:46.645 --> 01:05:53.093
So what we've done so that you at home can accomplish any big goal that you have is we've made these 1% diaries and

837
01:05:53.954 --> 01:05:56.355
And we released these last year and they all sold out.

838
01:05:56.655 --> 01:06:02.757
So I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back, but also to introduce some new colors and to make some minor tweaks to the diary.

839
01:06:02.777 --> 01:06:07.199
So now we have a better range for you.

840
01:06:07.439 --> 01:06:17.003
So if you have a big goal in mind and you need a framework and a process and some motivation, then I highly recommend you get one of these diaries before they all sell out once again.

841
01:06:17.103 --> 01:06:19.864
And you can get yours at thediary.com.

842
01:06:20.084 --> 01:06:21.805
And if you want the link, the link is in the description below.

843
01:06:23.218 --> 01:06:34.181
One of the issues that I know is going to be front of mind for a lot of people at the moment, and one of the issues I think that's going to result in the Republican Party struggling in the midterms is this issue you mentioned earlier of Iran.

844
01:06:34.921 --> 01:06:41.363
If you are a US senator, you would be voting on foreign policy and war powers and military spending and things like that, including in the Middle East.

845
01:06:42.023 --> 01:06:45.744
So I wanted to get your perspective on what the hell is going on.

846
01:06:46.244 --> 01:06:46.984
That's a good question.

847
01:06:47.304 --> 01:06:49.045
How do you get out of this situation now?

848
01:06:49.545 --> 01:06:52.686
It seems like there's no golden bridge out of this situation.

849
01:06:53.006 --> 01:06:56.131
Yeah, I mean, we shouldn't have been in this situation to begin with.

850
01:06:56.151 --> 01:06:56.972
We should start with that.

851
01:06:57.353 --> 01:06:58.554
How did we get in this situation?

852
01:06:59.355 --> 01:07:06.686
Again, this is just from an outsider perspective, but it seems like after the operation in Venezuela, there was a...

853
01:07:08.048 --> 01:07:20.923
A hubris, an overconfidence that toppling the leadership in Iran would be an easy thing and would be a quick fix to a problem that has long plagued the region and plagued the United States.

854
01:07:22.445 --> 01:07:25.889
And maybe a lack of foresight and consideration.

855
01:07:25.989 --> 01:07:26.209
I mean –

856
01:07:27.130 --> 01:07:34.198
It's not that hard to predict that what Iran would do when they're cornered is take control of the Strait of Hormuz.

857
01:07:34.858 --> 01:07:39.704
In fact, previous administrations had played out these war games and had come to the same conclusion.

858
01:07:40.334 --> 01:07:41.094
So what do you do now?

859
01:07:41.114 --> 01:07:42.715
Because you're going to vote on this stuff.

860
01:07:43.155 --> 01:07:43.375
Yeah.

861
01:07:43.475 --> 01:07:45.916
I mean, one, I think we need checks and balances.

862
01:07:46.597 --> 01:07:58.901
Right now we have something that the founders, I think, couldn't have envisioned, which is parties, political parties, factions is what the founders would have called them, coordinating across branches of our government.

863
01:07:59.622 --> 01:08:07.205
So instead of the ambitions of the legislative branch checking the ambitions of the executive branch, you now have...

864
01:08:08.187 --> 01:08:11.388
members of one party coordinating across those branches.

865
01:08:11.569 --> 01:08:16.691
And what that looks like now is a legislative branch, which is supposed to be the most important branch in our government, right?

866
01:08:16.731 --> 01:08:18.211
It's the first one listed in the Constitution.

867
01:08:18.992 --> 01:08:26.095
It has now become completely subservient to the executive branch, to the will of the president and his administration.

868
01:08:26.815 --> 01:08:29.676
And so one, I think you have to restore those checks and balances.

869
01:08:30.217 --> 01:08:32.478
And it doesn't have to be in a hostile, unproductive way.

870
01:08:32.498 --> 01:08:32.598
Yeah.

871
01:08:33.478 --> 01:08:39.143
It can be in a healthy way where the legislative branch is asking questions about what is the military strategy?

872
01:08:39.183 --> 01:08:41.925
What are the military objectives that we're trying to accomplish?

873
01:08:41.945 --> 01:08:46.569
Because we've seen over the course of this disastrous war, those objectives change over time.

874
01:08:47.029 --> 01:08:47.790
But this is the thing.

875
01:08:47.970 --> 01:08:50.071
It doesn't appear that they know what the objectives are anymore.

876
01:08:50.231 --> 01:08:52.433
It appears- Well, and I think this is key.

877
01:08:53.014 --> 01:08:56.637
If we cannot clearly articulate an objective-

878
01:08:57.217 --> 01:09:10.668
then it is the responsibility of the legislative branch to intervene and withhold funding for these operations until we can get a clear idea of why we are sending our brave young men and women into another forever war in the Middle East.

879
01:09:11.308 --> 01:09:15.952
I think ultimately how you untangle this is through regional partnerships.

880
01:09:16.032 --> 01:09:16.912
It has to involve...

881
01:09:17.753 --> 01:09:19.854
I mean, we kind of know the contours of what a deal would look like.

882
01:09:20.415 --> 01:09:21.755
Free passage through the strait.

883
01:09:22.296 --> 01:09:23.697
We have to deal with the nuclear issue.

884
01:09:24.137 --> 01:09:31.541
I worry that we've actually lost ground on this problem because I don't want to see Iran get a nuclear weapon.

885
01:09:31.561 --> 01:09:33.703
I don't think anybody wants to see that.

886
01:09:34.283 --> 01:09:38.266
And I think we were on track to preventing that through the nuclear deal we had.

887
01:09:38.726 --> 01:09:46.611
So trying to get back to that diplomacy we had before this invasion, I think that's probably going to be the...

888
01:09:47.891 --> 01:09:50.532
the ultimate objectives for how to salvage the situation.

889
01:09:50.972 --> 01:09:53.313
But it is a mess from top to bottom.

890
01:09:53.353 --> 01:09:57.315
And I came of age after 9-11.

891
01:09:57.695 --> 01:09:59.275
I was 12 years old when 9-11 happened.

892
01:10:00.316 --> 01:10:03.697
And so I understand the importance of keeping this country safe.

893
01:10:04.922 --> 01:10:13.431
I also saw as a millennial how military disasters like the Iraq war robbed this nation of young lives, of billions of dollars, and of our moral standing in the world.

894
01:10:13.791 --> 01:10:20.078
I can't believe that we are making the same mistakes just 20 years later in Iran.

895
01:10:20.398 --> 01:10:26.742
The proposal there sounds a little bit like the memorandum of understanding that was pitched to Iran that ultimately failed.

896
01:10:26.762 --> 01:10:35.687
You know, free passage of the Strait of Hormuz, there was a clause in there about nuclear weapons and a few other things, and it failed within a couple of days.

897
01:10:36.727 --> 01:10:43.531
So, you know, because I think Iran are playing to a different time frame than Trump is able to, considering this sort of four-year election cycle.

898
01:10:43.911 --> 01:10:49.874
It appears to me, I don't really know what I'm talking about, but it appears to me that Iran is saying, you know, we have the cards.

899
01:10:50.535 --> 01:10:52.216
You can drop as many bombs as you like.

900
01:10:52.256 --> 01:10:54.137
We're decentralized in our nature.

901
01:10:55.237 --> 01:10:59.499
They're split into lots of these smaller factions that are weaponized in their own way.

902
01:10:59.580 --> 01:11:00.640
There's not particular...

903
01:11:01.080 --> 01:11:05.283
I remember in one press conference, I think it was Marco Rubio or Pete Hegseth saying that,

904
01:11:06.023 --> 01:11:08.706
they're not even necessarily sure who is in charge in Iran.

905
01:11:08.866 --> 01:11:15.232
And he made a remark that it takes a while to get the carrier pigeons down to the front lines, i.e.

906
01:11:15.252 --> 01:11:19.737
the people they're negotiating with might not even be connected with the people that are launching the missiles and the drones, et cetera.

907
01:11:20.437 --> 01:11:21.558
It just appears to be a total mess.

908
01:11:22.291 --> 01:11:28.774
And I just come... We do have, but I do believe that we still have economic leverage and there are still economic cards to play here.

909
01:11:29.234 --> 01:11:37.679
And so the key is, you know, I really don't want this disastrous war to play on for the rest of the Trump administration.

910
01:11:37.899 --> 01:11:42.481
I pray that we can come to a resolution and a conclusion sooner than that.

911
01:11:43.221 --> 01:11:48.304
And I think that's going to have to involve some of this economic pressure in addition to the regional partnerships, because...

912
01:11:49.264 --> 01:11:55.970
We're ultimately going to have to rely on regional partners in order to actually push through a final resolution.

913
01:11:56.690 --> 01:11:58.792
So I'm not giving up hope that we can resolve this.

914
01:11:58.812 --> 01:11:59.293
We have to.

915
01:11:59.313 --> 01:12:07.920
I mean, we just lost one of our own, our fellow Texan, Isabella Gonzalez, lost her life because of an Iranian airstrike in Jordan.

916
01:12:08.340 --> 01:12:09.421
And she was 19 years old.

917
01:12:10.102 --> 01:12:13.164
She had just graduated from Hebron High School in Dallas, Texas.

918
01:12:14.105 --> 01:12:16.367
And the fact that we would send...

919
01:12:18.009 --> 01:12:29.221
brave members of the armed services like Isabella off to die in another forever war without any exit strategy, without any clear military objective, to me is deeply immoral.

920
01:12:30.262 --> 01:12:32.865
Isabella Gonzalez died a patriot.

921
01:12:32.885 --> 01:12:40.613
She died a hero, and we are grateful for her sacrifice, but our gratitude for her sacrifice should not be mistaken for an acceptance of her death.

922
01:12:42.084 --> 01:12:49.249
In terms of what one can do about it, is there any specifics that you have in mind for a way out of this?

923
01:12:49.269 --> 01:12:51.711
Because I really, I mean, I'm in search of them.

924
01:12:52.512 --> 01:13:02.399
Well, again, this is why you need checks and balances, because we need the legislative branch to start exerting pressure on the executive branch so that we can start to see what the objectives are.

925
01:13:02.439 --> 01:13:05.602
We can come to a consensus about an exit strategy.

926
01:13:05.642 --> 01:13:06.983
The U.S. can't afford to lose here.

927
01:13:07.703 --> 01:13:07.963
Agreed.

928
01:13:08.363 --> 01:13:09.104
Yeah, agreed.

929
01:13:09.124 --> 01:13:11.125
They can't even afford to be seen as losing.

930
01:13:11.225 --> 01:13:11.485
That's right.

931
01:13:11.505 --> 01:13:13.626
Because you're going to embolden the Middle East.

932
01:13:13.686 --> 01:13:14.047
That's right.

933
01:13:14.547 --> 01:13:15.847
And Iran is an adversary.

934
01:13:16.008 --> 01:13:17.028
We should not lose sight of that.

935
01:13:17.628 --> 01:13:21.911
A nuclear Iran would be a disaster for the region and for the world.

936
01:13:21.991 --> 01:13:24.052
So it's imperative that we win.

937
01:13:24.412 --> 01:13:27.554
If you had a phone call with Trump and you had an opportunity to, if he said, listen, James,

938
01:13:28.234 --> 01:13:28.876
I need some advice.

939
01:13:29.056 --> 01:13:30.520
Just around situations, got out of hand.

940
01:13:30.540 --> 01:13:31.843
I thought it would be like a Venezuela.

941
01:13:31.863 --> 01:13:32.825
I thought I'd drop the bombs.

942
01:13:33.046 --> 01:13:36.695
There'd be an uprising and then it would sort of correct itself, but it's got out of hand.

943
01:13:36.815 --> 01:13:38.018
James, what advice have you got for me?

944
01:13:39.224 --> 01:13:40.284
That'd be tough.

945
01:13:40.604 --> 01:13:50.187
You know, I think that humility is good and that self-awareness is good and hopefully can help him and the administration avoid future mistakes.

946
01:13:50.967 --> 01:14:02.890
I would urge him to call the leadership in the legislative branch together, leadership of both parties, Democrats and Republicans, and work with them as well as our allies around the world.

947
01:14:03.710 --> 01:14:09.015
to try to come to a consensus on a strategic direction.

948
01:14:09.395 --> 01:14:17.502
The president and his administration have not only pushed away Congress, they've also done everything they can to alienate our allies across the globe.

949
01:14:18.242 --> 01:14:26.529
And there's a reason that this country spent so much political and economic capital on these partnerships and these allies.

950
01:14:26.569 --> 01:14:29.251
It's because when you get in a jam, you need your friends.

951
01:14:29.271 --> 01:14:29.912
Yeah.

952
01:14:30.152 --> 01:14:33.634
And so I would urge the president to start building that big coalition.

953
01:14:34.134 --> 01:14:37.016
I would tell him, frankly, that he's not going to get out of this on his own.

954
01:14:37.876 --> 01:14:44.180
And it's going to require bipartisan collaboration at home and regional collaboration abroad.

955
01:14:45.801 --> 01:14:46.261
Are you hopeful?

956
01:14:46.761 --> 01:14:46.981
Yes.

957
01:14:47.482 --> 01:14:47.702
Yeah.

958
01:14:48.102 --> 01:14:49.483
You think Trump's going to fix it?

959
01:14:50.383 --> 01:14:51.924
I don't know if I'm hopeful about that.

960
01:14:52.044 --> 01:14:54.806
But you want to know what I am hopeful about?

961
01:14:55.706 --> 01:14:56.487
In these midterms,

962
01:14:57.787 --> 01:15:08.661
If the people of Texas, if the people of this country elect leaders who are going to check the president, I think it could be a rebirth for his presidency.

963
01:15:10.367 --> 01:15:18.091
I think after these kinds of midterms, especially when you get walloped in the midterm, executives have kind of two reactions to it.

964
01:15:18.911 --> 01:15:25.014
One is to kind of double down and retreat to their partisan corner.

965
01:15:25.695 --> 01:15:28.736
We saw on January 6th what that looks like for President Trump.

966
01:15:29.777 --> 01:15:36.360
The other path is to hear the response from the people, listen to the feedback that you're getting, and adjust course.

967
01:15:37.903 --> 01:15:39.425
And I would love as the next U.S.

968
01:15:39.445 --> 01:15:46.313
Senator from Texas to work with Donald Trump to actually fulfill some of the promise of his political project.

969
01:15:46.934 --> 01:15:57.426
Because the promise of MAGA was that we were going to transform this government so that it delivered for the people who have been left behind, the people who have been forgotten in this country.

970
01:15:58.227 --> 01:15:59.248
And there's still time to do that.

971
01:15:59.748 --> 01:16:01.689
There's still time to do that on a bipartisan basis.

972
01:16:02.389 --> 01:16:08.371
If the president wants to work with me or with any Democrat to expand healthcare access, I'm there.

973
01:16:09.232 --> 01:16:16.375
If he wants to make sure that every single kid in this country gets high quality, accessible childcare, I'm there.

974
01:16:17.275 --> 01:16:19.616
If he wants to tackle the housing problem, Donald Trump is a builder.

975
01:16:20.217 --> 01:16:24.939
If he wants us to slash the red tape in this country so we can build millions of new homes,

976
01:16:25.659 --> 01:16:29.201
and ensure everyone in this country has a place to call home, I'm there.

977
01:16:29.842 --> 01:16:30.762
I'll work with them to do it.

978
01:16:30.782 --> 01:16:31.603
I would love to do that.

979
01:16:32.223 --> 01:16:38.967
So my hope is that this midterm will be a wake-up call for the president, for his administration.

980
01:16:40.148 --> 01:16:42.890
And as a result, they will reverse course.

981
01:16:43.751 --> 01:16:50.775
They will decide to engage with leaders in both parties to actually deliver for the working people who sent him there.

982
01:16:52.248 --> 01:16:53.289
I have this book here, the Bible.

983
01:16:53.869 --> 01:16:54.089
Yes.

984
01:16:55.390 --> 01:17:03.657
And I also have some photos showing, I think you as a young boy here, at eight years old at St. Andrew's Church.

985
01:17:03.697 --> 01:17:05.418
Yes, yes, yes.

986
01:17:06.379 --> 01:17:07.599
Yep, as the acolyte.

987
01:17:07.860 --> 01:17:13.644
Usually the kids are tasked with lighting the candle at the beginning of the service and then putting it out.

988
01:17:13.704 --> 01:17:17.046
So basically this thing I'm holding here, this part has the...

989
01:17:17.887 --> 01:17:19.167
the flame where you light the candle.

990
01:17:19.187 --> 01:17:20.508
The other part's not in this picture.

991
01:17:20.528 --> 01:17:23.108
It's like a hood, and it covers the candle to put it out.

992
01:17:23.248 --> 01:17:28.210
And so this was my very important job at the service that day.

993
01:17:28.570 --> 01:17:32.051
So have you been religious since you were a young boy?

994
01:17:32.611 --> 01:17:32.871
Yes.

995
01:17:33.971 --> 01:17:36.912
Yeah, I mentioned that my granddad was a Baptist preacher.

996
01:17:37.212 --> 01:17:40.533
The church that I still attended this day has been my church since I was two years old.

997
01:17:40.553 --> 01:17:41.113
Yeah.

998
01:17:41.893 --> 01:17:47.015
And my faith has really been the foundation of my life.

999
01:17:47.075 --> 01:17:49.196
It's home base for me.

1000
01:17:49.496 --> 01:17:56.299
But the work I do, whether it's as a public school teacher or as a public official, stems, grows out of my faith.

1001
01:17:56.339 --> 01:17:58.400
My faith is kind of the soil of my life.

1002
01:17:58.600 --> 01:17:59.400
And what is your faith?

1003
01:17:59.501 --> 01:18:02.002
I know there's lots of different denominations in Christianity.

1004
01:18:02.022 --> 01:18:02.642
What is your faith?

1005
01:18:02.662 --> 01:18:02.962
Yeah.

1006
01:18:03.122 --> 01:18:11.767
My granddad, the Baptist preacher, told me that as Christians, we're supposed to follow the two commandments that Jesus gave us, to love God and love neighbor.

1007
01:18:12.727 --> 01:18:19.971
And that's in the New Testament when a lawyer, it's always the lawyers, asked Jesus to define neighbor.

1008
01:18:21.052 --> 01:18:26.715
And that's when he tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, maybe one of Jesus's most famous parables.

1009
01:18:27.595 --> 01:18:30.837
And he tells the story of a man who was beaten and left for dead on the side of the road.

1010
01:18:31.927 --> 01:18:33.607
A priest walks by and does nothing.

1011
01:18:34.808 --> 01:18:36.648
A religious man walks by and does nothing.

1012
01:18:37.448 --> 01:18:38.728
And then a Samaritan walks by.

1013
01:18:39.449 --> 01:18:43.730
And when we hear Samaritan in our modern context, it doesn't really mean a whole lot.

1014
01:18:43.790 --> 01:18:45.870
Most people associate it with helping people on the side of the road.

1015
01:18:46.670 --> 01:18:52.571
But in Jesus's time and for Jesus's listeners, the Samaritans were not just a different religious group.

1016
01:18:53.312 --> 01:18:55.552
They were their sworn enemy.

1017
01:18:56.152 --> 01:18:59.173
And so in Jesus's story, the Samaritan is the one who stops.

1018
01:18:59.193 --> 01:18:59.813
Yeah.

1019
01:19:00.153 --> 01:19:08.199
And bandages the man's wounds, nurses him back to health, takes him to an inn, pays the innkeeper to look after him until he comes back.

1020
01:19:09.760 --> 01:19:18.447
And in Jesus' story, the Samaritan is the ultimate example of loving thy neighbor as thyself.

1021
01:19:19.266 --> 01:19:21.508
And it would have been a shocking story.

1022
01:19:21.789 --> 01:19:24.692
I'm a Texas Longhorn football fan.

1023
01:19:25.252 --> 01:19:33.540
It's as if Jesus was standing in the middle of Daryl K. Royal Memorial Stadium at the University of Texas and told a story called the Good Aggie.

1024
01:19:34.101 --> 01:19:34.281
Right?

1025
01:19:34.301 --> 01:19:36.684
Like people would be outraged by the story.

1026
01:19:36.704 --> 01:19:37.504
Because they're the opposing team.

1027
01:19:37.544 --> 01:19:37.664
Right.

1028
01:19:37.685 --> 01:19:38.285
They're the rivals.

1029
01:19:38.305 --> 01:19:38.425
Right?

1030
01:19:38.445 --> 01:19:38.605
Right.

1031
01:19:39.766 --> 01:19:46.735
But he's reminding us that we're not just called to love our neighbors who look like us or pray like us or vote like us.

1032
01:19:47.536 --> 01:19:52.462
We're called to actively love those who are the most different from us, maybe those we hate the most.

1033
01:19:53.337 --> 01:19:56.680
And that 2,000 years later is still a radical teaching.

1034
01:19:57.541 --> 01:20:02.665
And so I have tried imperfectly because we're all imperfect Christians.

1035
01:20:03.425 --> 01:20:08.930
I have tried to follow those two commandments, to love God and to love my neighbor as myself.

1036
01:20:10.031 --> 01:20:11.913
It's why I decided to become a public school teacher.

1037
01:20:11.953 --> 01:20:13.074
It's why I ran for office.

1038
01:20:13.094 --> 01:20:17.998
And the work that I do in the legislature, I think of as, again, as a form of ministry.

1039
01:20:18.078 --> 01:20:20.400
I am trying to love my neighbor through public policy.

1040
01:20:21.211 --> 01:20:25.873
So Ken Paxton is your, I guess he's your sort of adversary.

1041
01:20:26.714 --> 01:20:27.414
He's the Republican.

1042
01:20:27.434 --> 01:20:28.095
My rival, yes.

1043
01:20:28.535 --> 01:20:29.215
My Samaritan.

1044
01:20:29.735 --> 01:20:30.996
He's the candidate you're running against.

1045
01:20:31.136 --> 01:20:31.356
Yes.

1046
01:20:32.777 --> 01:20:35.338
You've said that Ken is one of the most corrupt politicians in America.

1047
01:20:36.439 --> 01:20:36.619
Yes.

1048
01:20:36.679 --> 01:20:37.099
Do you love him?

1049
01:20:37.579 --> 01:20:37.779
Yes.

1050
01:20:39.020 --> 01:20:40.341
Ken Paxton is a child of God.

1051
01:20:41.295 --> 01:20:42.736
He is my brother in Christ.

1052
01:20:43.616 --> 01:20:45.678
It doesn't mean there's not accountability, right?

1053
01:20:45.738 --> 01:20:47.018
Love requires accountability.

1054
01:20:47.679 --> 01:20:51.801
We talked about the story of my mom and her love meant standing up to a bully.

1055
01:20:52.582 --> 01:21:09.732
And, you know, if you think about when you're like out having a drink with your friends and your friend grabs their car keys to drive home under the influence, your job as their friend is to take those keys away, to physically block them from getting in the car.

1056
01:21:10.655 --> 01:21:13.236
And that feels aggressive.

1057
01:21:14.096 --> 01:21:16.197
It feels maybe even hostile.

1058
01:21:17.177 --> 01:21:21.719
But it is done out of love for that person and for everybody else, for all of your neighbors.

1059
01:21:22.619 --> 01:21:37.365
Ken Paxton, I don't know Ken Paxton personally, but from everything I've been able to read and learn about his service and his life, he has clearly shown that he only cares about himself.

1060
01:21:37.385 --> 01:21:37.805
Right.

1061
01:21:38.482 --> 01:21:43.723
He was indicted for investment fraud because he was defrauding his own friends.

1062
01:21:44.483 --> 01:21:52.925
He convinced his friends to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into a tech company, but he didn't tell them that he was making a commission off those investments.

1063
01:21:54.006 --> 01:21:56.526
So he got indicted because he was screwing over his own friends.

1064
01:21:57.826 --> 01:21:59.767
He was reported to the FBI by his own staff.

1065
01:22:00.912 --> 01:22:02.573
He was impeached by his own party.

1066
01:22:02.993 --> 01:22:10.036
And of course, you know, his relationships with his own family have now become well known and infamous.

1067
01:22:10.696 --> 01:22:14.638
And so if I was to sit down with Ken Paxton, which I would love to do.

1068
01:22:15.118 --> 01:22:15.838
You'd grab the keys.

1069
01:22:16.238 --> 01:22:19.900
I would grab the keys and I would I would urge him to get his own house in order.

1070
01:22:20.666 --> 01:22:24.650
Before he tries to tell all of us how to, what to do with our own houses.

1071
01:22:25.311 --> 01:22:32.359
And so I am trying both to protect the people of Texas from the most corrupt politician in our state, one of the most corrupt in the country.

1072
01:22:33.531 --> 01:22:43.914
And in a weird way, I feel like I'm trying to protect Ken Paxton because I hope if he loses this race, it will be an opportunity for him to take stock and to reevaluate some of his priorities.

1073
01:22:44.414 --> 01:22:46.495
And I just want to – I am not saying that as a perfect person.

1074
01:22:46.715 --> 01:22:47.235
I'm really not.

1075
01:22:47.655 --> 01:22:57.618
What I'm trying to do is be honest about the clear choice in this race and about the ramifications of electing someone with Ken Paxton's track record to the U.S. Senate.

1076
01:22:58.537 --> 01:23:00.858
At 31 years old, you went off to Bible school?

1077
01:23:01.298 --> 01:23:01.458
Yeah.

1078
01:23:01.818 --> 01:23:08.179
You know, I had always, I looked up to my grandfather, still do, looked up to my pastor, still do.

1079
01:23:08.699 --> 01:23:15.701
And I, you know, always kind of harbored this wish to one day preach and lead a church.

1080
01:23:16.501 --> 01:23:20.562
I saw how my granddad and my pastor, I just really, I saw how they

1081
01:23:21.973 --> 01:23:30.018
how they helped people, how they helped people make sense of their own lives, how they helped people ask some of the deepest questions.

1082
01:23:30.818 --> 01:23:31.338
Who am I?

1083
01:23:31.859 --> 01:23:33.059
What does it mean to be a human being?

1084
01:23:33.399 --> 01:23:34.500
What is the purpose of life?

1085
01:23:35.060 --> 01:23:43.105
I saw them doing that on a, not on a big podcast, but, you know, at a small neighborhood church in like a very intimate way with people.

1086
01:23:43.785 --> 01:23:44.106
I saw them

1087
01:23:45.306 --> 01:23:56.073
comfort people who are grieving in our community when someone loses a loved one, when someone is dying themselves, like their first call is to Dr. Jim, my pastor.

1088
01:23:56.714 --> 01:24:00.276
So I always had this idea that I may want to go into that line of work one day.

1089
01:24:01.357 --> 01:24:03.238
And so I was in my second term in the state house and

1090
01:24:04.433 --> 01:24:05.493
My first term had been great.

1091
01:24:05.773 --> 01:24:08.454
It was 2019.

1092
01:24:09.694 --> 01:24:11.795
Democrats had flipped all these districts.

1093
01:24:11.815 --> 01:24:15.276
There was a close competitive election statewide that year in 2018.

1094
01:24:15.816 --> 01:24:23.098
So the very next session in 2019, suddenly the Republican majority was ready to work on a bipartisan basis with Democrats.

1095
01:24:23.298 --> 01:24:23.879
us Democrats.

1096
01:24:24.440 --> 01:24:30.510
And it was great because we passed this historic school finance reform package that invested a lot of new money into our schools.

1097
01:24:30.590 --> 01:24:33.595
And we provided property tax relief to working people.

1098
01:24:33.635 --> 01:24:34.216
It was awesome.

1099
01:24:34.677 --> 01:24:35.979
And I was like, I have the best job in the world.

1100
01:24:36.965 --> 01:24:46.572
Fast forward to the next session in 2021, and it was one of the most partisan, one of the most unproductive legislative sessions in modern Texas history.

1101
01:24:46.812 --> 01:24:50.614
That's when you saw the most extreme abortion ban in the country go into effect.

1102
01:24:51.055 --> 01:24:59.541
You saw permitless carry, one of these crazy gun laws that allows people to carry these weapons without any kind of background check, without any kind of license.

1103
01:25:00.061 --> 01:25:02.663
You saw efforts to ban books and whitewash curriculum.

1104
01:25:02.683 --> 01:25:03.183
Yeah.

1105
01:25:03.343 --> 01:25:06.024
Voter suppression, trying to make it harder for people to vote in Texas.

1106
01:25:06.044 --> 01:25:08.305
Texas is one of the hardest places to vote in the country.

1107
01:25:09.105 --> 01:25:11.186
So it was a really difficult session.

1108
01:25:12.087 --> 01:25:18.829
And I just started to doubt that I was really making an impact, that I was really doing what I was supposed to do.

1109
01:25:20.150 --> 01:25:30.114
And after meeting with my pastor about it, sitting down with my granddad about it, both of them reminded me that Jesus gave us these two commandments for a reason.

1110
01:25:31.180 --> 01:25:49.496
I had been so focused on that second commandment to love my neighbor in the classroom, in the halls of power, in serving my community, that despite going to church on Sunday, I really wasn't giving enough attention and time to that first commandment to love God.

1111
01:25:50.337 --> 01:25:54.961
To love that sacred something that we are all an expression of.

1112
01:25:56.382 --> 01:26:01.565
And so I made the decision to go to seminary, to follow that first commandment.

1113
01:26:02.465 --> 01:26:19.194
And what I've discovered, because now I'm a seminarian and a lawmaker at the same time, and I've realized that these two commandments, again, given to us as a whole by Jesus, those two commandments, they sustain, they enrich, they challenge each other.

1114
01:26:19.794 --> 01:26:20.635
They're in relationship.

1115
01:26:21.435 --> 01:26:24.657
And at least for me personally speaking, it helped balance me out.

1116
01:26:25.397 --> 01:26:36.042
Because if I'm being honest, if you're devoting all of your energy to loving your neighbor, especially your neighbors who you disagree with, it's really easy to burn out.

1117
01:26:36.822 --> 01:26:40.064
And I think anyone who does service work can tell you that.

1118
01:26:40.484 --> 01:26:48.528
And it's why we have to be in touch with the ground of our own being, the God that all of us express every day.

1119
01:26:50.180 --> 01:26:53.601
To me, you need both the inner life and the outer life.

1120
01:26:53.621 --> 01:26:54.862
You need prayer and action.

1121
01:26:55.482 --> 01:26:56.802
Those two things go hand in hand.

1122
01:26:56.822 --> 01:26:58.583
And without it, you burn out.

1123
01:26:59.763 --> 01:27:06.026
Or if you're only focused on loving God and not loving our neighbors, which a lot of people do that too, you become self-centered.

1124
01:27:06.046 --> 01:27:07.746
You become disconnected from the world.

1125
01:27:08.306 --> 01:27:12.368
And so going to seminary was my way of trying to unite these two commandments in my own life.

1126
01:27:13.188 --> 01:27:17.592
And honestly, it was, I think it's the best decision I've ever made to go to seminary.

1127
01:27:17.672 --> 01:27:20.775
Where does your faith in a God, in Jesus, come from?

1128
01:27:21.475 --> 01:27:32.985
Like what is the, you know, a faith is probably kind of maybe the answer to the question, but what makes you believe that there is a higher power, that Jesus is who he pledged to be back all those years ago?

1129
01:27:33.858 --> 01:27:34.138
Yeah.

1130
01:27:34.358 --> 01:27:45.627
As a seminary student, I had to learn Greek and Hebrew because in our Christian Bible, the Hebrew scriptures are written in Hebrew and the New Testament is written in Greek.

1131
01:27:46.147 --> 01:27:51.592
And so we learned both original languages so that we don't have to be reliant on translations, right?

1132
01:27:51.612 --> 01:27:52.933
Because things get lost in translation.

1133
01:27:54.253 --> 01:28:10.160
And so I was studying this word faith, and I realized that it can be translated both as belief, which is how it's often translated, you know, a commitment to some kind of value, some kind of concept, an idea, right?

1134
01:28:10.180 --> 01:28:10.720
That's a belief.

1135
01:28:11.681 --> 01:28:14.182
But it can also be translated as trust.

1136
01:28:15.863 --> 01:28:20.588
And suddenly, this was like my first year of seminary, and I was already having like a light bulb moment.

1137
01:28:21.629 --> 01:28:24.052
And I realized like that's how my faith feels to me.

1138
01:28:24.812 --> 01:28:27.715
It feels much more like trust than it does belief.

1139
01:28:28.456 --> 01:28:34.742
It's not a commitment to some abstract concept, some intellectual idea.

1140
01:28:35.784 --> 01:28:36.845
It is a visceral belief.

1141
01:28:38.450 --> 01:28:42.891
bodily experience of almost like relaxing.

1142
01:28:44.292 --> 01:28:49.013
The best analogy I can think of, because when we talk about God, we're always talking in analogies.

1143
01:28:49.893 --> 01:28:54.755
I learned to swim at the Wells Branch Pool in the neighborhood where I grew up.

1144
01:28:55.535 --> 01:29:01.117
And I remember when I was learning how to swim, my swim instructor, she said, she told me, don't fight the water.

1145
01:29:01.777 --> 01:29:01.937
Hmm.

1146
01:29:02.377 --> 01:29:03.517
Don't hold on to the water.

1147
01:29:04.177 --> 01:29:05.438
Let the water hold on to you.

1148
01:29:06.838 --> 01:29:13.700
And it was a big moment for me in learning how to swim, but that's exactly how my faith feels.

1149
01:29:14.340 --> 01:29:17.901
So much of our lives is trying to control our surroundings, right?

1150
01:29:18.281 --> 01:29:19.281
Trying to control the people.

1151
01:29:20.001 --> 01:29:23.902
And when you realize that we are an expression of something much deeper and much bigger,

1152
01:29:24.768 --> 01:29:27.969
you're suddenly able to let that hold you instead of trying to hold on to it.

1153
01:29:28.329 --> 01:29:31.270
And why this religion versus all the other available religions?

1154
01:29:31.330 --> 01:29:32.631
Why are you trusting in this one?

1155
01:29:33.011 --> 01:29:41.013
We all inherit a religious tradition, and it is an inheritance that's passed on from one generation to the next.

1156
01:29:41.453 --> 01:29:42.234
And it's such a gift.

1157
01:29:43.074 --> 01:29:49.976
It's such a gift that I feel like a lot of people nowadays are abandoning for understandable reasons.

1158
01:29:50.216 --> 01:29:51.957
I mean, we have seen religious corruption...

1159
01:29:52.877 --> 01:30:00.622
In our religious institutions across this country, across the world, including my home state of Texas, we've seen religious leaders abuse children.

1160
01:30:01.203 --> 01:30:02.603
We've seen them lie.

1161
01:30:02.984 --> 01:30:08.707
We've seen them amass wealth and power for themselves at the expense of the people of God.

1162
01:30:09.528 --> 01:30:14.851
And so I understand where that temptation to just reject the whole thing comes from.

1163
01:30:16.032 --> 01:30:18.254
But there is a baby in that bathwater.

1164
01:30:18.554 --> 01:30:18.774
Yeah.

1165
01:30:20.482 --> 01:30:32.908
I do worry that a lot of young people are growing up in an incoherent universe because we have discarded the traditions that have been passed down to us through the generations.

1166
01:30:33.588 --> 01:30:46.294
And whether it's the Christian tradition, the Jewish tradition, the Hindu tradition, there is, I think, beauty and truth and love at the heart of these great faith traditions.

1167
01:30:47.075 --> 01:30:48.375
And it's up to all of us.

1168
01:30:48.415 --> 01:30:49.556
It's up to every new generation.

1169
01:30:50.196 --> 01:30:52.837
to reclaim that and to live it out.

1170
01:30:53.237 --> 01:30:55.938
And that's what I'm trying to do in my small corner of the world.

1171
01:30:56.958 --> 01:31:04.500
James, what's the most important thing we haven't talked about that we should have talked about as it relates to your work, your mission, or anything else that the audience might find of value?

1172
01:31:04.861 --> 01:31:06.081
Oh my gosh, that's a good question.

1173
01:31:06.589 --> 01:31:12.535
Just wondering if there's anything at all that you wanted to, as a closing message for the audience, anyone listening?

1174
01:31:12.575 --> 01:31:13.957
No, this has really been great.

1175
01:31:15.038 --> 01:31:15.959
And grateful for what you do.

1176
01:31:15.999 --> 01:31:22.826
I mean, I feel like we no longer have town squares like we once had.

1177
01:31:22.867 --> 01:31:25.109
And for better or for worse, it is...

1178
01:31:26.250 --> 01:31:47.675
new media, social media podcasts that have become our collective town squares where we have these conversations, these debates, this kind of discourse, and the way you and your team have structured these conversations and encouraged these conversations has been, I think, very important for the country, for the world.

1179
01:31:47.715 --> 01:31:48.776
So very thankful.

1180
01:31:49.116 --> 01:31:52.697
I think one of the questions that I think everybody's always –

1181
01:31:53.757 --> 01:31:57.199
asking about politicians these days is like, how are you different?

1182
01:31:58.240 --> 01:32:03.002
Because, you know, every politician will come here or they'll, you know, when I speak to them, they'll say that they are different.

1183
01:32:04.303 --> 01:32:17.470
But then when you speak to people, one of the great grievances they have is that, like, politics is the same in terms of, I mean, you've seen this on the, probably on the doorstep, is everybody says it's going to be different this time, but it ends up being kind of more of the same, broadly speaking.

1184
01:32:18.451 --> 01:32:19.392
How are you different?

1185
01:32:20.112 --> 01:32:21.373
The issue is not personalities.

1186
01:32:22.073 --> 01:32:36.828
This, I think, is the central problem is we think, you know, the reason this economy is off track, the reason I can't get ahead, the reason that we see corruption is because of politician X, right, or political party Y.

1187
01:32:38.395 --> 01:32:44.742
When in reality, it is a system that traps all of us, no matter what good intentions we have going in.

1188
01:32:45.303 --> 01:32:58.557
It's partly why I told you I've put in place a self-imposed term limit, because I know that the system eventually, unless it's reformed, will bring out the worst in all of us, including me.

1189
01:32:59.506 --> 01:33:03.450
And so what we need is to focus on systemic reform.

1190
01:33:03.790 --> 01:33:05.151
Don't focus on the personalities.

1191
01:33:05.171 --> 01:33:10.596
Don't focus on replacing the guy you don't like or voting in the guy you do like.

1192
01:33:11.837 --> 01:33:18.363
We have to focus on transforming this broken, corrupt system so that it's bringing out the best in every elected official.

1193
01:33:18.923 --> 01:33:22.367
Because in my experience, like a lot of people run for office for the right reasons.

1194
01:33:23.047 --> 01:33:23.828
They want to help people.

1195
01:33:23.868 --> 01:33:25.609
They want to improve their community that they love.

1196
01:33:25.629 --> 01:33:26.070
Yeah.

1197
01:33:26.750 --> 01:33:35.573
And it is a broken, corrupt system that transforms them, transforms our public policy so that the system only benefits those at the top.

1198
01:33:36.293 --> 01:33:39.694
And until we transform that system, you're not going to see anything change.

1199
01:33:40.634 --> 01:33:43.775
So I guess I would say we're asking the wrong question.

1200
01:33:45.355 --> 01:33:47.076
And it's not, how will I be different?

1201
01:33:47.896 --> 01:33:51.717
How will the system be different if we remake it in our own image?

1202
01:33:52.678 --> 01:33:55.158
And that's hopefully an empowering message.

1203
01:33:55.879 --> 01:34:01.801
Because if you're just focused on what you don't like about certain politicians, you kind of take more of a passive role.

1204
01:34:03.041 --> 01:34:14.605
I think it's going to require a mass movement of working people in places like Texas joining together across all the divisions in our society to force that kind of systemic change.

1205
01:34:14.805 --> 01:34:14.945
Mm-hmm.

1206
01:34:15.365 --> 01:34:20.468
And hopefully that's an empowering message and one that leaves people with a little bit of hope.

1207
01:34:22.050 --> 01:34:25.552
James, we have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for.

1208
01:34:25.712 --> 01:34:26.032
Yeah.

1209
01:34:26.833 --> 01:34:31.916
The question left for you is, what is your biggest challenge and how are you working to fix it?

1210
01:34:32.416 --> 01:34:33.817
Oh, that's a great question.

1211
01:34:34.878 --> 01:34:39.241
You know, winning Texas is a challenge, to say the least.

1212
01:34:39.561 --> 01:34:39.922
We got...

1213
01:34:40.862 --> 01:34:42.302
18 million registered voters.

1214
01:34:42.542 --> 01:34:44.263
We got 20 media markets.

1215
01:34:44.803 --> 01:34:45.843
We got two time zones.

1216
01:34:46.363 --> 01:34:49.944
Texas was once a nation and it still very much feels like a nation.

1217
01:34:50.564 --> 01:35:06.107
So trying to reach all of those Texans, trying to make, trying to listen to them and their needs, trying to share my values and my vision, it is a logistical and physical and spiritual challenge to say the least.

1218
01:35:06.807 --> 01:35:08.168
I'm thankful that I'm not doing this alone.

1219
01:35:08.609 --> 01:35:12.252
We have 59,000 people who have signed up to volunteer for the campaign.

1220
01:35:12.752 --> 01:35:15.235
We have more than a million people who have donated to the campaign.

1221
01:35:16.376 --> 01:35:20.700
And I have many more people who are praying for me on a regular basis.

1222
01:35:20.820 --> 01:35:23.742
And you're winning, according to some of the polls that I saw, by a couple of points.

1223
01:35:23.843 --> 01:35:25.384
The only poll that matters is on election day.

1224
01:35:25.424 --> 01:35:28.126
So, you know, I do think that we are the underdogs.

1225
01:35:28.967 --> 01:35:30.168
until the last vote is counted.

1226
01:35:30.729 --> 01:35:31.710
We talked about Elon Musk.

1227
01:35:32.311 --> 01:35:36.695
He's already committed to spending millions of dollars in our race to try to defeat us.

1228
01:35:37.175 --> 01:35:41.500
And I have nothing against Elon Musk, so I don't know why he's trying to stop our campaign.

1229
01:35:42.180 --> 01:35:48.827
But if you're speaking truth to power, if you're going up against the world's first trillionaire, you're always going to be the

1230
01:35:52.891 --> 01:35:58.816
And so, you know, I would ask anyone watching to spare a thought or a prayer for me.

1231
01:35:59.657 --> 01:36:04.181
I really do believe that when you put energy out into the universe, it has a ripple effect.

1232
01:36:05.081 --> 01:36:14.389
And so I hope wherever people are watching or listening, even if they don't agree with my politics, even if they're going to vote for the other candidate, I hope they'll keep me in their thoughts and their prayers.

1233
01:36:15.070 --> 01:36:15.410
Thank you.

1234
01:36:15.730 --> 01:36:16.051
Thank you.

1235
01:36:16.271 --> 01:36:16.531
We're done.

1236
01:36:17.031 --> 01:36:18.032
Thank you, James.

1237
01:36:18.072 --> 01:36:18.613
Thank you so much.