The Grim Future Of American Politics - Dean Phillips

did you found badier vodka I did not found beler vodka but I helped find badier vodka in fact we had a wonderful experience back in 1993 Chris uh I was uh 24 years old I had recently joined our family business after working for a startup company in the bicycle business for a couple years we are my grandmother who was the advice columnist Dear Abby introduced my father Eddie Phillips and me H to a man named Tad dorda who was a pole a Polish uh gentleman who had a proposition uh relative to the Vodka business so we thought we could sell our Philips peppermint schnaps which we made in Minnesota uh to the Polish market and we went on a trip to Poland in 1993 my father Steve Gil our business partner Tad dorta uh we thought we could sell some schnaps uh what it turned into is the Discovery essentially uh of what we thought was the most beautiful packaging we'd ever seen in the world and the most disruptive idea that the biggest category in spirits had ever seen and that was what turned into both badier and chopan bodka and it was that trip that changed our strategy we negotiated with the Polish government to obtain the distribution rights some years later purchased the intellectual property and the distilleries and created the world's first luxury vodka brand and by the way took on two big Brands absolute and Stolichnaya that is a little bit of a metaphor for what I'm doing right now what was disruptive about what was disruptive Chris first and foremost in in a lot of Industries especially developed Industries you'll have a couple of really big Brands uh that essentially command most of the market and they spend all their time kind of fighting each other to the bottom on price attacking each other by the way the analogy of course is Democrats and Republicans here in the United States and what was disruptive is that we went into a category in which the most expensive vodka at that time was about $15 a bottle and we came in at $25 a bottle we came in with a cork finish we came in with a very different proposition predicated on authenticity but here is the Special Sauce we recognized that this is in the analog era by the way Chris you know well before social media and and the internet and the like and people but people were aspirational you know people want to always live better do better be more happy have more stuff and what we recognized is you know people couldn't buy the same house as the BG celebrities of the day or have the same car or watch or dresses but they could buy the same bottle of vodka for $25 that the most famous person in the world was drinking with his or her friends and there was the disruptive nature of this whole thing the luxury vodka category was created it endured for over a decade now been replaced by tequila of course but it was the brand badier that really redefined luxury vodka marketing and recognized that it's a fashion industry just like so many others what is the competitive relationship or what was it between badier and grey goose because if I was to show my mom two bottles of vodka she might even think that it was two different versions perhaps from the same company this is one type this is another my background is in Nightlife so I ran nightclubs for a decade and a half a million a million entries across my my career so I'm intimately familiar with vodka with Spirits with working bars and clubs uh but talk to me about that that competitive landscape you guys come first you've got this sort of frosted finish on the bottle it's very distinctive what where does Greg Goose did Greg Goose see that and then try and copy what's what's the story so Chris you're you're get here's another untold story what most people don't know is that when we launched badier vodka we also launched another PR brand called rul r o h o l which means motor oil in German it came in a little black drum like looked like an oil barrel and we introduced that to take on Jagermeister we thought Jagermeister could use a disruptive brand and at the same time we introduced rul in the very beginning Chris we got a lot more interest and excitement and orders for Ru than we did for badier and we were really excited about it well cydney Frank who was the now deceased owner of the jgermeister I don't think he was very pleased seeing his U baby being taken on so he thought he would go after us as as The Story Goes and came out with a vodka that looked exactly the same as badier so we sued and we won but here's the lesson learned we were able to have our graphic design team redesign The Grey Goose bottle and let me tell you the lesson is never ask a graphic design agency to redesign something to make it look worse because it doesn't happen they made it look better and we essentially settled uh they redesigned Grey Goose it looked better than ever uh but I'll tell you I give Sydney Frank credit because what he recognized Chris is we thought the badier Vodka category we thought luxury vodka might be a nice Market you know not a huge one so we marketed it with a very very small aperture and Sydney Frank he came out with a huge aperture advertising USA Today big displays on the floor of big retailers and he did a better job of recognizing uh the size of the market and we didn't so Grey Goose outperformed badier eventually we sold the brand to lbmh did very well of course but syu Frank did even better when he sold his brand to bardi and like anything else in life you know you win some you lose some you learn lessons and next time you do better this feels like a Ferrari Lamborghini battle between between two sort of Premium Brands yeah you could say you could say so you could say so you could say so and a great story and and the the other untold story about badier is uh the fact that Jay-Z had a lot to do with its early success it didn't do that well in the beginning and I was getting ready one morning in probably 1996 1997 and I have MTV on and lo and behold Chris I see a music video Jay-Z video where he's pouring bellier all over the place he opens a a refrigerator it's filled with badier vodka I call my dad it's the analog era I'm like Dad turn on MTV he didn't know what channel it was so we waited till we got to the office that day and the whole company sat around the TV waiting for MTV to replay the video and when we saw it we knew the brand was changed forever and loone behold Chris we got orders that maybe tripled within a couple weeks from all around the country and Jay-Z and my dad ended up having dinner uh probably a year later Jay-Z introduced his own vodka called Armadale which I don't think anybody remembers because he saw the opportunity to do for his own brand what he did for ours and uh that's the story of badier people don't really know it talk to me about the principles that you carried over from that into the ice cream company yeah so the same notion of disruption what we like is to look at a category that has two big brands that are not particularly special that dominate the category and have for a long time and when we looked at ice cream you had Ben and& Jerry's and hogendas owned by big multinational you know food companies essentially doing the same thing that stoi and absolute War not a lot of innovation a lot of Confrontation a lot of focus on price versus you know value or uh or um or quality or innovation and we recognize there's a grand opportunity um the founder of tente was a young guy named Josh Haw Schuler who became our partner and the Beautiful part of that story is because he had so little he had a gelato shop that was not doing well in Dallas Texas got an order to package the gelato in containers for the local grocery store but he could not afford to actually print like a nice ice cream pint that you see all over the world so he had to go to a a basically a surplus store and he found on closeout a bunch of clear plastic jars that he could just put a label on it was the only way he could do it and that is the beauty of tanti gelato it was transparent it was in a redefining package just like badier and we did the same thing we priced it just a little bit higher more luxurious and we elevated a category that was still an affordable luxury so you could drink you could drink the finest vodka in the world for $25 and you could enjoy the finest gelato made on Earth for only $5 a pint and it's the same notion affordable luxury branded very very well and we sold it to Unilever seven years later what did you learn from the lvmh and Unilever negotiations I've had a number of friends that have exited companies to one of them to to Unilever and a bunch of others to equally large uh negotiating competent companies what were the lessons that you took that you took away from that I will tell you without diving too deeply into the details let me just tell you that I think unver is a more principled corporation that I think stands more by their word and a company of Great Character that does a lot of good for the world uh I think I could not say quite as kind of things about lbmh and that transaction and I will just leave it at that okay I understand and I think you know what I mean there's a really interesting principle from uh Chris voss's never split the difference well he talks about in in a negotiation you can get yourself to the stage where you get absolutely everything that you want but if it's so aggressive that the other party feels like they've been bent over calls there is a it's almost it's not quite a pic Victory but there is a loss in the victory to some degree because you know unless you don't care about the way that you leave the world after you leave it you have sort of fundamentally it's it's become a a zero some game or even less than a zero some game so true I'm glad you say that in fact I had a great-grandfather Chris Jay Phillips who immigrated from what was then Bell well then the Russian Empire Minsk came to the us as just a little boy at age eight years old started selling uh newspapers on a street corner outside of Milwaukee Wisconsin eventually moved to Minnesota and entered the spirits business right after prohibition uh and became one of the biggest Distributors of spirits in the country and of course the company that ultimately introduced belv vodka he told me three things when I was a young man and he said Dean money is like manure if you stack it up it stinks and if you spread it out it fertilizes he said business is a means to an end and the end is not aggregating as much wealth as humanly possible the joy of business is to share it with as many people as possible in the communities that make the business successful and he also said Dean you always have to leave a little something on the table for the next guy which was his way of saying in a negotiation you know what it's actually the mench it's actually the strong person that leaves a little bit more uh even when you're in a position of strength which by the way I've seen the same Dynamic play out in Congress a number of times but those are the his lessons and the same is true I think in business negotiations you know it's not just about the capital it's not just about the money it's about how people are treated afterwards your employees how the communities in which you've done business are treated I I wish more entrepreneurs would be mindful uh of how their exits sometimes impact families and communities in ways that they didn't anticipate and I wish more deals were structured uh to guarantee a little bit more left over for a lot of people who work really hard to create success and are not really thought about at the end and we've done a I think a very nice job in our businesses to make sure that those who make it possible share and I that's kind of part of my notion in Congress and uh about government now too you know how do we ensure that everybody has a foundation from which they can pursue their dreams and right now I don't think the United States in particular is doing a good job and I think too many companies uh reward the very top of their management team and do not express the same consideration and empathy towards those on the bottom end of their socioecon economic scale okay so you pivoted from the mck andm of business into the Mucky and more Meer ridden world of politics which one's more Cutthroat oh there's no Congress is more Cutthroat because it's because the rules and engagement are amorphous uh friendships are not legitimate they're transactable and it is a strangely talk about zero sum game uh this Spirit of collaboration of of a culture of debate deliberation of learning of Discovery you know the basics of doing better in one's life whether it's business or any kind of pursuit are almost totally absent it is almost in exclusively Chris a culture of self-preservation people who wish to Simply Be A Part part of the club and to stay a part of the club and do what it takes to remain a member of the club and as the only one you know there are 535 members of the United States Senate and House I'm the only one that doesn't take any pack money with is political action committee money which is money from special interest groups corporate or Union I don't take any money from them I don't take any lobbyist money I don't give money to fellow members of the US Congress or accept theirs and I don't have what they called a leadership pack which is a basic a slush fund that American politicians can use at their own disposal which makes me the only one out of 535 people that doesn't play that game uh I was the vice chair of the problem solvers caucus intending to get together with my Republican friends and talk build trust get to know each other because leaders on both sides of the aisle don't do that I sered on the modernization committee in the last Congress trying to fix the social organizational and physical design flaws of Congress and then last Congress I was elected to a leadership position by my peers hoping that I could really affect change but as long as the culture attracts people who are almost exclusively government service folks that don't have a lot of private sector experience and as long as the culture rewards silence and staying in line uh and obediency it's going to be the same disaster for the United States and frankly I think for the world as long as we populate it with people that are beholden that system that's one reason I'm running for president to expose the truth uh provide a little bit of common sense and competency to a place and at a time we really need it it's becoming more and more like House of Cards uh every sentence that you say it's weird right because you know as a muggle outside of the system we see the rumors and the accusations and and and the the the gossip and stuff that creeps out and then we see the dramatization with you know shows like House of Cards westwing or whatever and and V which AMU inui who originally did uh the thick of it which is where that came from the British equivalent which is Phenom it's my favorite comedy of all time um both of those actually play off the back of it's there's some gamesmanship and there's some corruption but the the main joke behind both vep and the thick of it is ineptitude it's that the people who are in Char it's it's idiots all the way up the people who are in charge are not no smarter than you average person watching this but perhaps actually a little bit more stupid and an awful lot more sheltered what is the average leader as smart as the average Watcher in your opinion oh Chris you're going to get me in trouble um Let me let me tell you the oldest joke in Congress and I felt it uh the first day I'm elected I'm sitting on the house floor I'm looking up at this massive Eagle in the ceiling of the United States House of Representatives in the literally the Temple of democracy y as recognized by the whole world and it's the evening and it's dark and with all my new colleagues and I look around and I think to myself Chris how did I get here how in the world did I get here and then about a week later I'm sitting in the same room whole place is filled with Democrats and Republicans from all over the country and I'm looking around and I think how did they get here ah so to your point that's an old joke in Washington and look at I don't there's some wonderful smart uh remarkable people in Washington uh both Democrats and Republicans are they the majority no absolutely not uh and I think part of the problem is we are now in a an era not just in the United States but where public service and po politics are attracting the people who are there for reasons that are much more personal than they are out of principle and and because of the culture of condemnation and anger tainment and uh constant fundraising it doesn't attract the kind of people of Competency of life experience of professional experience that should be populating at least to some degree uh our institutions of uh of government so the answer is I think that's a big part of the problem and one of my mandates and personal missions is to reintroduce the notion of Public Service uh to a younger generation that have great ideas that right now don't even consider it and I think that's a big part of the problem if we only hand the keys to people who have their own personal agenda uh or their uh interest is in tenure and preservation of power uh we're going to be poorly served as we have been in recent years and that's something we got to change fast I read something that said it's recommended when people join Congress that they spend 25 hours a week on fundraising calls and if you are what you do we're primarily sending fundraisers to DC and if you include flights and travel it's perfectly likely that you'll basically have no time to actually get anything done so how much do you do that's work and how much do you do that's fluff like how much gamesmanship is occurring and how much actual graft gets done well Chris I'm getting in good trouble by saying the quiet part out loud and here's the quiet part members of Congress are spending 10,000 hours per week raising money you just you just said the number 25 hours times over 500 people do the math 10,000 hours per week collectively in fact I wrote a bill uh that is pending that would preclude fundraising in Washington from breakfast to dinner time because all my colleagues are constantly raising money I told you earlier I'm one of 535 that does it differently which means it's hard for me to find a friend to have dinner with on a Wednesday night because they're all at fundraisers and even during the day at committee hearings and educational opportunities and constituent visits people are not around because they're across the street either Dialing for Dollars or raising money from packs or lobbyists or at a law firm or something it's sickening but it's legalized corruption and here's the biggest issue though prit if I could just say the biggest issue is this yes the money corrupts because if you are getting paid by somebody even if it's going into your campaign Coffer if you're getting money from somebody they're generally doing it because they want something in return they want influence they want access they want you to vote a certain way of course we're not stupid the biggest issue is this though when you only congregate with the wealthy and well-connected you if you don't mean to but the system requires that you do all you're hearing about is their problems which tend to be issues that are the last things on the mind of struggling people all around the world so we have a system right now that forces everyone to spend their time with the wealthy and well-connected Democrats and Republicans and that's why we have trumpism in America because 150 million Americans are saying you know what my member of Congress never listens to me they never show up in my neighborhood they've never called me to ask me for anything I don't even know how to reach them I'm unheard my issues don't matter I can barely afford my life and all you all are sitting in Washington having stake dinners getting your money and acting like morons that's what people think and that's why I'm trying to do this differently Chris it's the fact that our system is forcing people to behave in a way that is destructive to democracy and all we have to do is change the reward system and re Empower voters and disempower the wealthy and well-connected in Washington it's not rock science and I know how to do it it's why the rich men north of Richmond song I think caught fire exactly exactly he was speaking for tens of millions of frustrated people and I'm hearing it every day I get it you know I I don't know if you know my story you know but Chris I was I lost my dad in Vietnam when I was just six months old he had no money uh which is why he earned an ROTC scholarship to get his education and then went to Vietnam and lost his life I was 6 months old my mom was 24 and widowed we lived with my great-grandparents in St Paul Minnesota until I was 3 years old uh and then I was adopted I got really lucky I got adopted into an amazing family with all kinds of blessings and Privileges and love you know very few kids who lost their dads in Vietnam got lucky like I did very few kids who lost their mom's or dad in Afghanistan or Iraq got lucky like I did and I'm realizing right now that we have to recognize our Good Fortune every one of us who has succeeded had somebody that believed in us somebody that gave us a hand somebody that recognize something in us this notion that only doing it alone is the American dream is nonsensical and I think what we're seeing right now is a uh real erosion of a belief that things are possible in America and around the world if people work hard because the system is stacked to support the wealthy and the well-connected I know it having lived on both sides of it it's like I've got it in my head that it's kind of like a a status driven Ponzi scheme so it constantly needs more favors to be bestowed from the bottom to pay the favors at the top and no one really except for the fact that in a Ponzi scheme the people at the bottom all of the people except for the people at the top know are unaware of the fact that it's going on whereas this it's a cartel it's a cartel of people permanently cycling through a variety of things and everyone is it seems what you're saying is true everybody is on board with just don't stop the music from playing we just need to keep the status quo going that's and that's what happens in a duopoly in a duopoly both participants wish to protect the status quo because they know how to manage it they're accustomed to it they know the game and they don't want competition and whether it's Coke and Pepsi with Red Bull whether it was Ben and Jerry's with tente whether it was absolute and stolich sha with badier when you disrupt a category they come at you hard man and they're coming at me hard they don't want the quiet part set out loud they don't want the truth to be told and they don't want the fact that this is corrupt to be exposed even if it's legal because they're trying to protect it and I have faith I have faith that if you tell the truth and let people know what's really going on that they'll take notice and what you just said is absolutely true I don't want to impune all the people because the fact is the system requires this Behavior for you to stay alive you know I I I made the decision to torpedo my career in the United States Congress after three terms I Knew by making this decision that I could probably never come back and that's unique because there are very few who are willing to give up their careers to do the right thing and that's what makes me a little what did I do well I I resigned my house leadership position and I decided I'm going to run for president of the United States against a sitting incumbent president which is rarely done but this is not a normal time this is not a normal election the opponent is not a normal human being and our current likely nominee is an unelectable human being but I tell you the party does not like that I'm getting out of line that I'm not waiting my turn that I am not abiding by those unspoken rules of what you do or don't do with an incumbent president and I recognized if I did this I would be spending every ounce of political Capital that I had earned and I worked hard to earn it over my three terms but I recognized that if I didn't do this now I wouldn't be meeting the moment and it's not about 2028 or 2032 or about a lifetime aspiration to become president it's about doing this right now because it is existential and Donald Trump in my estimation is an existential threat to the United States of America and to the rest of the world period did people not say that before his last term sure they did in fact a lot of my colleagues my Republican colleagues said the same thing quietly and then they'd get in front of the cameras at night Chris and say something totally different and lo and behold little did I know that that disease was contagious because suddenly on my side of the aisle Democrats were having the same conversations about Joe Biden he's not electable bomic is ridiculous his approval numbers are horrifyingly low he's not going to win in the Battleground States Vice President Harris is even in worse shape as it relates to her approval numbers but then they in front of the cameras and it's a totally different story and we wonder why Americans have lost faith in their government because they know and when 260 or so Democrats serve in the US House and Senate and we see data that says over 50% of Democrats want a different nominee 83% of Democrats under 30 want a different nominee but only one person in the whole Congress out of 260 is willing to say it out loud publicly that's me you can imagine there's something wrong there's something really really wrong what do you think happens in 12 months time if there's no change from here who who do you think becomes president if nothing else changes well I think I will ultimately become the Democratic nominee it's going to take time uh many people right now don't see that path I certainly do I think come May of June yeah June of next year we'll see head-to-head polls that will show me ahead of Donald Trump I'm a former businessman than the board chair of a health system a regent at University been the chair of the board of a charitable uh philanthropy served three terms in the house a former Democratic leader I'm the ranking member of the Middle East subcommittee on Foreign Affairs and the vice ranking member of the small business committee I've got a lot of experience I think I will be able to put together to the Coalition you need to win in America by inviting Donald Trump supporters who deserve and are worthy of invitation not condemnation I'll be ahead of Donald Trump Joe Biden is almost certainly certainly going to be behind him even further and then Democrats will have a choice at the convention do we elevate a candidate who is likely to win or do we literally choose the candidate that that the data is saying is likely to lose that's a pretty clear choice and I think it's one that Democrats will do well in uh because I think they'll choose me and by the way Chris if some other candidate appears enters the primary and has approvals or polls that are even better as it relates to Donald Trump then I should get behind that person that's the whole point of democracy is let people decide who is best positioned to win but in the United States uh we are not a culture that is supposed to endorse and tolerate coronations but that's exactly exactly what this country is doing right now despite the fact that it literally secured its independence from that very system of Coronation yeah it's this sort of every fouryear cycle of uh hereditarian where whoever is in gets passed on again and that goes down what so in your estimation if it's a Biden Trump head-to-head come 2024 what's the outcome oh almost if I had to put all my money if you had this if you said Dean you had to take every dollar and assets you have and put it on just one or the other based on what I think is going to happen sadly I'd have to put it all on Trump every single bit of data every single bit Chris his approval number the intuition when you speak with voters in our country the intuition that Joe Biden is not only is he not better off than he was four years ago he is so much worse off uh the the the polling data in the Battleground states in the National numbers you know all of it points to the same thing and by the way the worst of it is today there was a poll that was just released today that shows that voters in the United States between 18 and 29 years old favor Donald Trump by six points that is a cataclysmic change for Democrats and that is why my proposition is we got to wake up before we sleep off into a unmitigated disaster so that's the way things are going but that's why I'm running is because we need an alternative need a change to a new generation I'd be the first Gen X president in American history you know Joe Biden was born before the Advent of Television before the Advent of Television how in the heck can he Donald Trump address the issues of AI for goodness sakes everybody you know what you what have you learned observing RFK Jr's trajectory over the last few months I have to say generally speaking I admire how he's conducted himself he's appealing to people using non-traditional platforms which by the way you can imagine the minute I declared my candidacy uh and was no longer part of the establishment uh I get stonewalled from a lot of the core you know the the the major media platforms MSNBC and some of the others I think RFK Jr suffered the same thing he saw the writing on the wall so he started going to where people are which is exactly what I'm doing I'm doing that with you right now for example uh I think his videos the way he expresses himself the way he presents information I'd say 80% of what he says sounds pretty darn reasonable to me now there are a couple things 20% of what he says is pretty damn unreasonable to me I have to say uh we see science a little bit differently we see uh health and Medicine a little bit differently and we certainly see vaccinations a little bit differently but I do believe he should be heard I believe there's a place and and space for people like RFK and Maran Williamson and others to be heard I just wish they were running in the Democratic primary so that we could all make our cases within this construct if you will that allows Democrats to choose the person best position to win uh because when you run as a third party candidate Chris in the US it it has the tendency to draw votes from the person you actually are trying to you would rather see win and since we don't have rank Choice voting yet in the United States that can be very dangerous but I think I think RFK is appealing to a lot of people for good reason people are sick and tired of the nonsense uh they're sick and tired of the corruption they want someone to tell the truth and of course he's got an extraordinary political name but I also have to point out the other obvious here too Chris you know you've got Joe Biden has been doing this for 50 years you've got before that you had the clintons Hillary and Bill Clinton then you had the bushes now you've got the Trump family right you know and and the Kennedy family is back you know I I I think it's time for a little bit something new uh not a political Dynasty per se not a coronation but it's time for America I think to move to a new chapter and that's why I wish there were more candidates who are coming coming from the outside that are not part of that political industrial complex which I think is why Donald Trump did so well he appealed to people who who saw him as a little bit of a messiah if you will as an outsider and I have that ability to kind of build the bridge of both I came from the outside I'm a business person and I'm taken on an establishment and a structure that is that they're defending almost at all costs from the truth you know from us telling the truth in that respect Kennedy and I and some others I think are going to expose what people should really know more about and it's not pretty just how bated is the current system inside of Congress how hard is it to talk across the aisle well I'm unique uh out of 535 members of Congress and 50 US Governors I'm ranked number two most bipartisan I'm a progressive my heart's a progressive who's number one Susie Lee my friend Democratic friend from Nevada I gave her a hard time on the house floor the other day I said Susie you totally ruined my whole deal I I was number one last Congress now I'm number two but like Avis Car Rentals I'm number two but I try harder so that's how I I do it the oldfashioned way Chris man I you know I break bread with people I grab a beer I get to know them my dearest friends in Congress are both Democrats and Republicans my wife anaise and I we've befriended wonderful couples by hosting them at our house for dinner getting to know each other spending time with each other's families because you can't work with people you don't trust and you can't trust people you don't know and when you've got in the case of Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy instead of them pushing members of Congress together when I joined the Congress in 2019 they did just the opposite you know they put us on separate buses going to separate events they didn't get us to tell each other our life stories they didn't give us much education they wanted us consumed with fundraising because they didn't want the power structure challenged so I had to do it differently and that's what I've been doing and as president I should tell you the most important when I'm president I'm going to do it fundamentally differently I'm gonna have a Team of Rivals in the White House I want Democrats and Republicans on my cabinet I want extraordinary the very best and brightest Americans running the agencies who are competent managers who've run multi-billion dollar Enterprises before who focus on customer service who can deliver better value at lower costs I'm going to have a youth cabinet of a a high school or college student from every state in the country 50 total sharing ideas on policy with me in the white house I'm G to have common ground dinners in the white house where we have Democratic and Republican Americans from all around the country having dinner with their president in a casual setting getting to talk to him in this case sharing what's important you know not just Black Tie Affairs with celebrities and heads of state you know it is the old school notion of people with people in an era where everything we're doing Chris is behind screens a lot of it valuable but it's also destroying the very fabric of what the world is going to need much more of as we move forward which is relationships between the US and China between fellow Americans you know between Brits and Americans I mean if we don't build Relationships by breaking bread and looking each other in the eyes uh it doesn't matter what the future holds in terms of technology or wealth it's going to destroy humankind and that's just the truth it seems from the outside looking in to the political sphere and also to the cultural sphere of looking at the left there is a huge amount of puritanism a massive Purity spiral where any dissenting voice is treated with a unique kind of skepticism disain absolutely how just looking at that from the outside what what do you wish that the left stopped doing so much why is that Purity spiral so rampant and and and how can you maintain any in-group favoritism without being totally at the mercy of ideology well I to answer your question very directly I I think those on the furthest left who believe that they believe in inclusion are actually practicing the very worst form of exclusion and that's as it relates to to debate and conversation you know the only in business I the same grandfather I told you about my great-grandfather used to say if two people in a business I agree you only need one of them and his message was surround yourself with people who have different opinions who have different life experiences and have different ideas and when you solicit them don't just solicit them from the management class go into the go into the production Department talk to the sales reps right this notion of Discovery the beautiful part of being a human being is learning you know what a blessing to be you where you get to listen to Fascinating People provoke you all the time what a what a cool thing so why would we as human beings wish to deny ourselves of the very opportunity to learn from another human being doesn't mean we're going to like they I I don't disagree but it has become almost the signature of the left now to not listen to dissenting opinions to take a minority opinion and allow that to tyrannize everybody including the people that aren't even a part of that party like is that something that can even be fixed are you thinking about that yes that's why I'm running look at Chris I'm on a I don't want to say a last ditch effort because I hope this is the beginning of some fundamental change on a lot of issues as it relates to my party and my family if you will and that's one of my my missions is to restore those conversations restore the Public Square restore debate not stifle it not shame someone for look at if someone expresses a hateful point of view that puts another human being at risk I think that is a I do draw the line there and I do think there are some bigots and some misogynists and some racists and anti-semites and islamophobes out there that will that are terribly hurtful to other human beings and I I do I take exception to it and I have animist towards them but as it relates to political perspective as it relates to policy propositions as it relates to differences of opinion we should be F democrats should be fostering those spaces and places not shutting it down and yes it is salvageable but it takes leadership President Biden is not creating that space in place I want Americans to see I want it modeled by their president about how you actually engage different opinions that's why I'm going to have a cabinet that is going to be very different and I like to have some of these meetings televised so that people can see how different opinions can be shared without uh condemnation and separation and segregation to the just the opposite and that's why I'm grateful for platforms that are willing to invite different people with different ideas to share them if you don't like it don't listen if you don't like it don't listen or if you don't like it take your turn and explain your perspective but don't shame and Shout people down into um into um and dehumanize them in that way unless it's painful speech that is hurting other human beings and frankly I think most of what the left is doing right now the farle at least is just shutting down all debate how do you know when the left's gone too far look at I I believe first of all I'm a common sense human being you know more than anything else before I'm an American before I'm a Jewish American before I'm a Democrat before I'm a father a son a husband you know I'm a common sense human being that has an open mind and an open heart and I have a high threshold for anger when I get there I get there and I'm Resolute and I'm principled but I have a pretty good instinct when something doesn't seem right when someone seems to be lying when something doesn't seem to be reasonable I love new ideas I love it when people try to convince me to this very day that the Earth is flat or that we have UFOs I love those conversations Chris we should have more of those you know but when someone says something that is just baselessly horrifyingly dangerous that's a little bit different and um I can't tell you I've got a meter or some type of a red light green light system but I tell you I'm feeling more and more that there are things that I want to say that I sometimes can't that I know a lot of people want to say that they sometimes can't and that's why one of my slogans is I'm going to say the quiet part out loud no matter what it does no matter the implications no matter the consequences because I've actually suffered probably the worst consequence essentially ended my career in Congress and have drawn the IR of probably hundreds of people in Washington that used to be my very very good friends and I'm doing so because I think a truth has to be told that sometimes will be very much aligned with those on the left and sometimes we be very disappointing when they hear the truth and I would ask my friends on the right to be open to the same thing there are going to be some things I say that you are going to totally agree with and you're going to hear some things that I frankly think you need to hear that you may not at all and so be it I'll hug it out afterwards as long as you're not threatening another human being it seems pretty easily defined when the right goes too far but you know we've seen over the last few years a total inability or inaptitude or just unpreparedness from people from the left to call out the extreme parts of that you know y mostly fiery but peaceful protest comes to mind uh why do you think it's so hard to call out groups like antifa and and other what are supposedly left aligned groups causing Havoc Chris I'm I'm struggling with that right now as as a Jewish American you can imagine people who I consider to be protectors Defenders progressives who were I was the protector of the underdog I've kind of seen that affection um stop at our front door and that's hard you can imagine that's really hard right now and I'm trying to reconcile that um there are a lot of communities that have been disenfranchised that have been oppressed that have been mistreated uh in this country and all around the world and rather than condemning one another or separating from one another my proposition is we should be uniting with each other and I don't quite understand that I'm processing that right now um I don't want people to be colorblind I want people to look at each other and love our differences and actually be attracted to those differences and I don't quite understand what this disease is uh there's a disease on the right and there is a disease on the left and it is not pervasive but I think it's contagious and I think it's afflicting more and more people every day but it's still a small minority and Chris I would say that I represent the massive number of the exhausted majority not just in the United States but literally around the world people who just want decency and respect have a chance to put food on the table for their families take them on vacation maybe once a year retire with dignity uh and have the joy of living a a life of of Pursuits and Discovery and love you know it's not that much and governments have not done a good job of protecting that encouraging it investing in it and enabling it and these on the far right and the far left I think have to be disenfranchised and that's my proposition to Americans right now go and vote in the primary change this nonsense break down this duopoly and let's demonstrate to the world that it is still possible that's exactly what I'm trying to do I do like the idea of the exhausted majority I think that's a a good way to categorize it would you define the problems of the extreme right and the extreme left in different ways how would you how how do you conceptualize those what is the problem of the extreme right and what is the problem of the extreme left in your perspective well I'll tell you I think there's actually more that's similar than that's different I think at the core of this believe it or not Chris is groups of people who who believe in their hearts that they have been mistreated and that they've been disenfranchised on the far right it's just a very different version of it on the on the left it's a lot of people who are representing legitimate gripes about mistreatment black Americans have been horribly mistreated by the United States of America slavery was a repulsive policy that should have ended far before it did and it has a long long tale Native Americans were horribly mistreated in this country uh Muslim Americans Jewish Americans right Hispanic Americans Asian Americans lgbtq plus Americans everybody who can feel some degree of animosity disenfranchisement persecution you know have been mistreated and they have rightful gripes about the need and desire and their right to be included so if you look at both sides at the they're very different circumstances I believe on the left I understand that disenfranchisement that persecution on the far right it tends to be more white Americans who feel that they are being replaced who feel that somehow their culture is being changed how they're um no longer at some point the white Americans are going to be the majority they're that they're being persecuted they're being kept down they're being uh eliminated and I think that is actually interestingly enough a very kind of a similar ethos that actually connects the far right and the far left it is this notion of mistreatment and they're angry I believe like I said I believe my brothers and sisters on the left I understand that better but on the right I think in terms of their hearts and Minds that is the root of it it's this notion of being replaced or being second or being a lower class citizen or something that scares them when the other side is saying we've been lower class citizen forever and we just want a fair chance but that connects people I think if we just sat back and acknowledged you know the human elements of both of these conditions uh we could actually have conversations about it and um instead we do it through television screens often through anger tainment or Tik Tok and we're only getting further and further pushed into the corners which is what Alvin Toffler warned us about in Future Shock uh you know 50 years ago I think the problem that people have when you look toward the left and the empathy that is proclaimed to kind of Drive the we are helping the underclass we are bringing these people along is that they don't believe that it's genuine empathy they it's performative empathy or it's toxic compassion so toxic compassion is the prioritization of short-term emotional Comfort over everything else so it's saying saying the good thing whilst doing something which may be bad or giving somebody a solution which in the immediate may make them feel okay but over the long term could even result in worse outcomes for them the police coming from people that live within gated communities right it's all well and good saying defund the police when you've got private security or a locked compound or you live in a suburb that doesn't have any crime uh the talk about single parent households being no worse for children's outcomes than dual parent households like it's just it factually not true and it doesn't inform parents teachers and uh the their friends about why the kids are behaving in this way the body positivity movement saying that there's no link between body weight and health outcomes because they don't want to hurt the feelings of people that are overweight even if it causes them to die sooner literally to die sooner that's toxic compassion prioritization of short-term emotional Comfort over everything else in the long term and I think that that's the skepticism that a lot of people have around the left that it is being so it's been the signature move to say the thing right to post the Tweet or the square or the whatever it is and then to forget about what the actual outcomes are and to not even bother to scrutinize these companies to not bother to scrutinize whether or not BLM are actually taking the money and putting it in anywhere that's supposed to be profitable or useful for the outcomes that they espoused in the beginning I I think what you share is um is is compelling and you know anybody who's a parent knows that that's the daily struggle of being a parent shortterm you know pain for long-term gain how do you incentivize encourage without diminishing how do you the people of means you know how do you reward your children with enough to start their lives but not so much that you literally uh limit their their aspirations right appear parents from households that don't have much you know how do you how do you manage your kids how do you give them hope and opportunity when you don't these are the challenges that I think every Community every household faces and now it's we're just talking about a you know entire cultures and I think you're absolutely right you know I think we should be using evidence to Enlighten our decision-making I think we should be even if it's tough love I think democrats should be more focused on generating and encouraging and investing in Independence that's why I think we need healthc care for all housing for all and educ education for all and then once you have the foundation then it is up to you to either succeed or fail but I think we should be raising the foundation I think that's what the left should be doing but I see the tug OFW you're talking about right now and I don't think either side has it entirely right I do think the exhausted majority which combines elements of conservative principles with more Progressive principles both fiscally and socially that's where most of it is at that's where most Americans are at but we don't have a system that allows such leaders to R we have a system that by definition by almost by definition and by intent pushes candidates the further left and further right and then puts voters in the horrifying position of having to choose between the lesser of two evils time and time and time again I just want to have normal conversations acknowledge the truth you know say things that we do have a border crisis that defund the place is foolish you can embed social workers in police departments which we should be doing but we should not reduce law enforcement especially in communities that needed the most I'm coming from Minneapolis where George Floyd was murdered where we misunderstood that quiet does not mean peace you know what I mean Chris we must quiet for peace there's a lot of anger around the world lot of anger in this country in America right now a lot of anger in a lot of communities right now just because they're quiet does not mean things are peaceful so yeah we got to say the quiet part out loud we got to stop the nonsense we got to speak the truth we got to have people at the table of different perspectives and opinions coming to better conclusions uh we got to do that fast got to do it fast what would you say of the structural pathologies of the left when you're looking at the uh Democratic institution the Democrat institution what is it getting wrong there's obviously this sort of purity test cannibalism thing that occurs what is it from being inside of the machine what is it that Democrats are getting wrong structurally well I think I first of all I think you know I'm a Democrat because I believe that Hubert Humphrey was my idol and he said the moral test of a government is how it treats those in the dawn of Life The Dusk of life and in the shadows of life I think that is the fundamental role of government to protect those uh that need defense and support uh and to look out for those who are struggling and I do think Democrats generally come from a position of fairness pointing out inequities onfair circumstances and trying to fight for fairness but I also believe that Democrats the left if you will are employing stereotyping just as um dangerously as as any group I believe um the lack of willingness to look at um uh Talent uh to look at possibility uh versus just looking at categories or identities I think that's hard uh for country that Prides itself on being a multicultural Bastion where meritocracy should be ultimately the goal whereas certain communities I think do need a little extra boost not a hand out but a hand up I think that's not unreasonable but I do I look at I know not I not I think I know that Democrats are being subject to the very some of the very disenfranchising dangerous practices that uh we have long accused the right uh of of practicing and that means stereo typing and that means not looking at people for who they really are rather just what they represent and I think that's dangerous and at the end of the day Chris this all comes back to the same thing you know if we don't create space and place for human beings to know get to know each other we're going to lose particularly in an era in which we are so able to self- select not just with whom we live and eat and pray and sleep and think but even where we spend now our our virtual time we can microtar Target just to be surrounded by people who see things and think exactly the same way not only is that a boring life if you ask me it's a really dangerous condition that I think needs an antidote and I think uh people like you and people like me and I think people who are watching right now can all play a little bit of a role in doing something over the next year that maybe opens up the opportunity to break bread with someone who see things differently or looks differently or prays differently and there we can actually leave some change and maybe end this nonsense I observed this really interesting Dynamic occur with a lady called Melissa Carnie so she works out of Washington actually she is a uh statistician uh demographer uh looking largely at the outcomes of single parent households and she just wrote a book called the two parent Advantage uh the clue is in the title this is the difference between single parent and dual parent household outcomes I pushed her quite hard in the episode to try and get out over her uh statistician skis and think about think about mechanisms like what is it that's going on so get it you know a little bit of bro psychology uh and she was fine to sort of give theories but she was very reticent about about saying you know this is not my area of expertise so on and so forth so what I'm saying is that she wrote a book that was planned to try and inform people coming from single parent households people considering people working through relationships and marriages and family life and so on and so for to better understand why the outcomes that they're looking at and why the Dynamics and phenomena that they're looking at are the ones that are happening and when I asked her to get out over her skis she said no so she was very aware of her own restrictions before her book went live on Twitter uh just the title of the book was released no one had seen a galley copy no one had seen a review copy nothing like that and she was destroyed mostly by people from the left for this is conservative thinking being repurposed this is you know back to a Christian Nation all this sort of stuff it's derating people from underprivileged like workingclass backgrounds etc etc etc and what I saw was a lady who when I spoke to her on the show very touchy feely didn't ask her about her politics but I would guess that she's probably Center left and I saw online the exact dynamic that we've observed occur publicly with tons of people that the Democrats and the left have made life so inhospitable to anybody who doesn't tow the party line even if they actually do but it doesn't sound sufficiently like they do because of that toxic compassion thing where you need to say the thing up front that sounds right even if in the the long run it results in bad outcomes and as you inevitably meet the ey of your own side you inevitably get welcomed by the other side so I observe I didn't see this happen with Melissa I'm not saying that she's like swung right and she's now going to be employed by the daily wire or something but I saw the only support that was available for this lady that had written a very well thought out very meaningful book she wasn't prepared to get out over a ski she wasn't trying to play a game and blah blah blah and I I saw this like you know Purity spiral Witch Hunt lambasa and then the only side that's left open is the opposite so you know there is this sort of polarity where people just swing straight back across and go across the other side cuz it's like hey guess what the you know the enemy of my enemy is my friend and if my ex-friend turns out to actually become my enemy I'm going to go where I'm welcomed that's totally and by the way two things you just shared have personal intersections with me starting with single parent households my my I my father died when I was six months old in you know in Vietnam I I was raised by my mother for three years uh alone we lived with my great-grandparents you know I've explored my personality and and how those three years without a father affected me and they did I'd be lying if I didn't tell you they didn't would it be better for every child in the world to grow up in a nurturing loving safe secure household with a two parents doesn't doesn't even matter if it's a mom and dad if you ask me but a a nurturing household with with love uh and support yes of course do I think government can incentivize that or make that happen no I do I think people have to this is my argument Chris is we have to start you know rebuilding communities and I think that starts with rebuilding the foundation so that people have a chance that we have Healthcare and housing education for all and that way we have raised the foundation we can change that but here's the other thing when I after October 7th what happened in Israel I got a lot more texts and calls this is this is before I declared my candidacy for president I got more texts and calls from my Republican colleagues just saying I got you on my mind I'm so horrified about what happened in Israel and I know the Jewish diaspora must be suffering I only got like two from my Democratic colleagues and then when I went back for votes after declaring my campaign for president my my Democratic colleagues greeted me warmly but my Republican colleagues came up to me and looked me in the eyes and said man your courage I gotta tell you wow and I got so what you just said is I'm human you know I'm I'm I'm Adept enough and mature enough and have enough life experience to process some of these uh these circumstances so I'm not becoming a republican tomorrow but I see exactly what you just shared in practice as a human being and when you drive people out of your tribe of course they're going to affiliate with the other side Liz Cheney did that with us when she was pushed out of the Republican conference she started hanging out on our side and you know what she started voting with us a little bit more and you know what I did an advertisement for her last campaign who would have thought that because I saw her principle on full display so all I'm saying is there's a lot of Truth out there but you got to dig for it and you got to open your heart and mind and my goodness I'm learning things every day some things that I kind of thought were true other things that have shocked me because I was on the totally wrong side of fact and it's been a joyful experience I just want to maybe end with that because I got to get running Chris but if I have a message for anybody look beyond go broad right not just in your reading and your uh your Googling and your your podcasting but find people and do things that open your mind and make you see things differently and um and lead with decency and if we all did that just a little bit better my goodness the things we can learn and the places we can go and I can't wait to help lead us there Dean Phillips I appreciate you thank you for the day as I do you Chris be well and keep the faith if you enjoyed that episode then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks and don't forget to subscribe