Thinking of life after Trump: Lots to repair but also opportunities

[0:00] Pete Buttigieg is doing a lot of campaigning for candidates right now, and that may not sound [0:04] that surprising. We're pretty close to the midterm elections. [0:07] But he's doing something I think is really interesting. He's really focusing his time [0:12] right now in red states and districts where the Democratic Party has not won in some time. [0:18] Nine out of 10 House races drawn so that you know who's going to win before the first vote [0:24] is cast in a 50-50 country. This is not an academic concern. This hurts us. This is why [0:35] things aren't working properly. This is how they can make you pay more at the pump for a war you [0:40] never asked for. How they burn down the Department of Education while we're worried about kids who [0:45] can't do math or read like they're supposed to. This is why we can't have nice things. [1:00] It doesn't have to be this way, and that's what we're here to do something about. [1:06] Joining me now is former Transportation Secretary and former South Bend Mayor [1:10] Pete Buttigieg. It's great to see you. You've had quite a good time. It seems like we just showed [1:15] a clip out of the campaign trail over the last several days. It's interesting to me, [1:20] and I just mentioned this. I mean, I know you are a South after surrogate on the campaign trail. [1:25] You probably get lots of calls from people to ask you to campaign. You've made a decision [1:29] as of late to really focus your time in red states. Why? [1:32] Well, I think it's important that we reach out everywhere at this moment when more and more [1:39] people, including independents and a lot of people who usually vote Republican, [1:44] are ready for something different. You know, sometimes I think we've been made to feel like [1:49] we who are opposed to what's going on right now in Washington and in Congress are the minority. [1:53] We not only have a majority, we have a super majority in public opinion when it comes to the [1:59] Iran war, when it comes to the prices being too high, when it comes to the need for the wealthiest [2:04] people and corporations to pay their fair share, on and on down the list, health care, you name it. [2:09] But having majority in public opinion doesn't automatically mean you get a majority in Congress. [2:15] You got to go out there and work for it. And what I have found in places like Nebraska's [2:19] second district where I was today, like Iowa, where I was yesterday, other places I've been [2:24] campaigning from Marjorie Taylor Greene's district in Northwest Georgia to the work we were doing on [2:30] in Montana to heading out to Florida in a little while. There are so many people who, [2:36] if we can get in front of them with that message, I think they're going to respond and are going to [2:41] insist on change, deliver change. And it's a reminder also that you don't have to wait till the [2:46] next presidential election to do something. We have a lot of elections right now in front of us [2:51] in 2026. We got to make sure that they go well. In your speech today, you reiterated how Democrats [2:58] can continue doing politics as usual, which I think the majority of people watching it was like, [3:03] yeah, they can't keep doing it because it's not working and we all see the polling numbers. [3:07] What do you mean by that exactly? What specific things do you think Democrats should avoid repeating [3:13] or continuing to do? Well, I think we've got to recognize that many of the institutions [3:19] that are being destroyed right now by the Trump administration also cannot and should not be put [3:24] back together just the way they looked in 2021 or 2012. I do think there is a risk that we might [3:31] imagine that our job is to take power and to put everything back the way it was, but that's not going [3:35] to work either. If our economic and political and social systems were working just fine, we wouldn't be [3:42] here. So the old status quo can't be the answer. We've got to have new answers and we've got to take [3:47] big swings at major political reform. Again, I think there's a moment here, for example, on money in [3:53] politics. You don't have to be a Democrat and you don't have to be in a blue state to be part of the [3:59] majority that wants to change that, including, if necessary, a constitutional amendment to deal with [4:05] Citizens United. Part of the message that I had in Iowa and that I'm taking everywhere I go is [4:10] our economic problems are related to the problems in our political system. There is a conventional [4:17] wisdom out there among some political strategists saying, don't talk about what's wrong with our [4:21] democracy because we should only be talking about the kitchen table. To me, those two things are [4:27] intimately connected. The reason we are paying more at the pump, the reason our mortgages are [4:33] unaffordable in this country is directly related to the fact that there is no accountability in our [4:39] government. And there won't be until we fix Congress, fix the Supreme Court, fix money in [4:44] politics. And we absolutely cannot be afraid to talk about those big reforms as well as the ins [4:50] and outs of health care, education, the things we want to do on day one. Accountability, you hear that [4:56] word a lot. I hear it a lot. I'm sure you hear it a lot. People really want it, right? What does that [5:01] look like as we look ahead? Because there's not unlimited hours in the day. There's not unlimited [5:08] time in Congress. What do you think accountability looks like as we look ahead? Well, when given the [5:14] chance, Congress has to, a Democratic-led Congress, has to establish accountability first of all around [5:20] the just naked corruption that is going on. This is not a political question. The idea that the American [5:27] people shouldn't have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars of our taxes on retrofitting [5:33] a secondhand jumbo jet, the idea that there is something highly questionable about people from [5:38] the president of the United States to a lot of other officials getting rich on stock trades while [5:43] making decisions that move markets. Dealing with that is not some kind of partisan conquest. That's [5:49] something that most Americans can actually come together around. But also there's the day-to-day [5:54] accountability that our democratic system is supposed to deliver. See, this is part of the [5:58] problem with gerrymandering. If 9 out of 10 House districts are ones where you know who's going to [6:03] win before the first vote is cast, then members of Congress don't feel a level of accountability. [6:07] They don't feel responsible for anything from big policy questions like standing up to this Iran war, [6:13] which is supposed to be Congress's job to declare or to stop, or their personal conduct like trading [6:19] stocks and getting rich when no member of Congress should be trading stocks in the first place. [6:23] One of the other things I think that has been really interesting about the speeches you've given [6:28] is that they're very forward-looking. You talk about kind of the period post-Trump or where we go from [6:35] here, which is so important for people to think about. And you said this thing, and I having worked [6:40] in government a lot myself, I very much related to this in a recent interview where you said that [6:45] serving in the Biden administration radicalized you. That just seeing how hard it is it was to get [6:52] every even common sense things done like delivering a new bridge or airport changed you. Obviously, [6:57] you were the transportation secretary, so it's understandable that those were the examples [7:00] you gave. But just like bigger pictures here, what is solving that problem look like if Democrats [7:06] win back power and eventually the White House? Because you already referenced like you can't rebuild [7:12] things and put them exactly back together. What does that look like when you're thinking [7:15] big about how to go from here? Yeah, I mean, the reality is if you have a common sense view that [7:22] you share with most Americans, it will take radical change to actually act on it in today's Washington. [7:29] That's what I'm getting at. I'm not talking about ideology. I'm saying that in order to get anywhere, [7:35] even as an ideological moderate, you have to be ready for radical change in our institutions. What [7:41] does that look like? Some of the changes I was just talking about around money and politics, [7:45] around Congress and how elections work, certainly making sure that we have the voting rights reform [7:51] and protections that are doubly important because of what has been done to systematically tear down [7:57] black political representation in order to try to keep this Republican Congress in power. But look, [8:03] we've also got to recognize there are certain institutions that we have cherished as Democrats [8:08] that are important institutions that probably can't and shouldn't go back to the old way. [8:13] It was criminally wrong to basically gut the Department of Education as they have done. [8:18] I also don't think our project is to make the Department of Education look just the way it looked [8:23] the minute before Donald Trump got here. I could say the same thing about foreign aid. Again, [8:28] criminally wrong to have demolished the U.S. Agency for International Development. [8:32] That doesn't mean that we should put it back just the way it was. I know a lot of mayors who would [8:36] love to see dramatic change in how housing and urban development works and how federal dollars can [8:43] or can't be used to help make housing more affordable in cities. We should be listening to [8:48] them, thinking about how we build things from the ground up because there will be a moment when we [8:53] have that clean sheet, that fresh start. I hate how we got here. We got here because of all of the [8:58] destruction that's going on in this moment. But it's also a chance to build something new on the, [9:05] sometimes the rubble of these institutions that were frankly already rickety, already showing [9:10] their age years before we got to this moment. I have to ask you before you go, I know you recently [9:15] told a reporter, I laughed at the answer to this in Iowa, that you're not rolling out a run for [9:19] president in 2028. I think you were asked the question and you said, nope, it was pretty simple. [9:25] I know you're not going to announce anything tonight. I know you're focused on 2026. [9:29] But you've thought so much about the future. I'm just curious if you've thought about what kind [9:34] of what qualities and what vision you think the next nominee needs to have. It's a different time [9:40] even than when you ran and others ran. You know, years ago, after my presidential campaign, we started [9:49] an organization called Win the Era. And that organization is still going. And the reason that [9:54] we called it that is, you know, every time I'm involved in an election, I care deeply about winning the [9:59] election, just like I care about winning the elections in Iowa and Nebraska that I was involved [10:03] with the last couple of days. But you need to win an election in order to secure an era, in order to [10:09] make things better for that long haul. And I think that we need that kind of thinking right now. I think [10:16] the 250th is a great opportunity to step back and actually think about what it's going to be like by [10:22] the time of the 300th. I know that might sound a little crazy, but, you know, certainly expect that my [10:28] children will be celebrating the 300th with some luck. I might be there to see it too. [10:33] And we're going to ask ourselves what we've done between this moment and that moment, so that by [10:37] then the sort of corruption that's going on right now is unthinkable. So that by then the idea that [10:42] people would be choosing between health insurance payments and mortgage payments is, it just seems [10:46] barbaric. It is barbaric, but it will seem barbaric and antique by then. And for all of that, I think we [10:52] need leadership. And I'm not just talking about the next president, but the leaders that we're going to [10:57] elect right now in 2026, who can think about that long-term, not in some abstract, airy, [11:03] academic kind of way, but okay, what do we have to do now? What reforms do we have to do now on [11:08] everything from things like gerrymandering and how the Supreme Court works to our tax code and how [11:13] unfair it is? What do we have to be doing right now in ways that we will be glad we did, even if it's [11:18] hard, especially if it's hard, especially if it takes a long time. You know, the longer something [11:22] takes to get done, the sooner we should have started on it. And I'm hoping that we can continue [11:27] to see leaders who can see, of course, to the next election, but far beyond that and make the right [11:33] kind of long-term choices that are going to matter. I used to talk in these terms because I was, [11:37] I was the young guy in the room running for mayor in my twenties, being a presidential candidate [11:42] in my thirties. Now I think of it in a whole new way, which is, you know, every time I do [11:47] break the news to our kids that Papa's going to be on the road for a couple of days, [11:51] I think about why and what's at stake. And the reason the answer, of course, [11:54] is that we've got to give them a better world than we're living in right now.