https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=TH7Hw_Kg-mQ
I must say, I thought that you would get more traction than you did. And so, we communicated a little bit right from the beginning of your plans, not a tremendous amount, but enough so that I knew what was going on. And I was absolutely … Well, I don’t want to put words in your mouth. What happened? What did you experience? Tell me the whole story, because everybody needs to know. What happened to you in relationship to your colleagues? What happened to you on the legal and practical fronts? And what happened to you in relationship to the media, which might be the most germane question? Exactly. And especially in this day and age, the absence of platform, Jordan, is the most critical deficiency that I faced as someone who did not come to this with massive name recognition. Now, mind you, those in Congress who are well known throughout this country typically generate that name recognition by being jerks, by being aggressive, by being provocative, by being oftentimes mean-spirited. And that is counter my nature. I recognize as someone who is not often on cable news at night, that that was going to be a challenge. But let me get back to the very beginning. My contention was that the country needed alternatives. My contention was that the president should pass the torch, which is what I did beginning in July of 2022, encouraged him publicly to pass the torch. It was met in my own caucus with a lot of dismay because you don’t do that. You know, God forbid you say to the incumbent that he or she should step aside. And needless to say, he did not. Then I started a public and private initiative to encourage others to participate. I telephoned Governor Pritzker in Illinois. I telephoned Governor Whitmer in Michigan, made a public call, whether it’s Governor Newsom or Vice President Harris. I said to the next generation of Democrats, this is the time. The polls are bad. The approval numbers are bad. The country’s saying they want choices. So let’s meet the moment. I never intended nor anticipated that I would have to do it. But in the absence of anybody willing to forego their future, perhaps, and meet the national moment, I was so upset, so disappointed, that ultimately, in the absence of anybody else doing it, Jordan, two weeks before the New Hampshire filing deadline in mid-October, I decided to do it myself. Steve Schmidt had had me on his podcast. We had quite a conversation. He recalled how in 2020, he believed that Joe Biden is the only one that could defeat Donald Trump. He felt in 2024 that I was that person. And we did work together for a handful of weeks to initiate my campaign, went up to New Hampshire. As you might know, it was an unusual year in New Hampshire because the Democratic Party had taken away New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary status and handed it to South Carolina. And that offered an opportunity because Joe Biden wasn’t on the ballot. And we thought if we could perform well there, not unlike another not-well-known Minnesota Democrat in 1968, Eugene McCarthy, it was he who challenged President Johnson at that time and actually inspired him to leave the race by generating almost 45% of the vote that year. And that was somewhat of our strategy. What I did not anticipate was a party that was so intent on preventing competition, and I did not anticipate a media ecosystem that was somehow aligned with that deplatforming, if you will. And of course, for a campaign that was not well-resourced, for one that could not attract Democratic-experienced operatives because they would be blackballed if they worked for an insurgents campaign, you know, the cards were stacked against us. But that didn’t preclude at least the effort, but you asked the question of what was most consequential. The two parties, and I’m going to say this because it’s really important, it is not just the Democratic Party, the two-party system, the duopoly, if you will, they’re the ones that have set the rules, Jordan, in the United States. You know, we do not have competition because the two parties have electively, cooperatively prevented it by setting the rules in all the 50 states and at the federal level. And that means when there is an incumbent, he or she will be protected. Forget the polls, forget intuition, forget what the country might be asking for. These are private institutions that operate by their own rules, behind closed doors. Most of us don’t even know who they are, ultimately, and they’re making decisions of extraordinary consequence, not just for the United States of America and for our neighbors to the north and south, but for the entire world. And not being exposed to that was something that I was not prepared for. Okay, I want to interject something there, because it seems to me that you hit something key with that observation to the attraction of Trump. See, I think that people feel the typical bread-and-butter people of the United States who are attracted by Trump, despite his bull in a China shop way, let’s say, are attracted to him to some degree precisely for that reason. And they do feel in their bones what you just described, and they’re willing to take a risk on someone who has that bull in the China shop nature. And this is also true of RFK, by the way, because I think he is quite similar on the Democrat side as Trump was on the Republican side. I mean, RFK in some ways is a more sophisticated … He’s more sophisticated in his public presentation, and he has a more intellectual mien, but he has the same … There’s real similarities in temperament and approach. And I believe that people are attracted to Trump because they believe he will rampage around to some unpredictable degree and potentially break that domination of behind-the-scenes actors that you just described. Now, I infer from what you said today and from some of the conversations we’ve had before that the degree to which you encountered monolithic opposition was actually rather surprising to you, not merely from your colleagues. Now, you pointed to the fact that there are systemic reasons for that, which we should delve into, and also talk about the behind-the-scenes actors, but also because of the collusion of the legacy media with those actors. Now, that’s certainly something that people on the more conservative side, or I would say classic liberal now, side of the spectrum, have been pointing to for like five years. It’s like, what the hell is going on here? The journalists have lined up with the powers that be, and any objection whatsoever to whatever the plan seems to be has now become verboten. That’s why there’s such relief, for example, with regard to Musk and his purchase of Twitter, and the platform on which he reinstated me, you know, precisely for standing up against, because I had been eliminated from that platform precisely for objecting to, what would you say, certain phenomena that went against the behind-the-scenes narrative. So you were struck by, okay, so let’s take this apart first of all. There’s a mystery here, right? Because what you tried to do was to point out very clearly, correct me if I get any of this wrong, you tried to point out to your colleagues that they were in very danger, in real danger, of losing what it was that they were hypothetically aiming for, which was maintenance of the presidency. And then you looked to find people who were likely leaders, perhaps in a position better than yours, given more name-brand recognition, and none of them would do it. So you decided that you would go ahead with it, and what you found on the Democrat side was, and you said that that may have also been something that would characterize the Republican Party, so we don’t have to make a partisan accusation here, the reality you ran into was monolithic opposition to your campaign that extended to the point where you actually had a hard time finding Democrats who would work for you because they were afraid for the viability of their political careers in the future. Is that all accurate? Exactly. That is so accurate. In fact, Jordan, you could play the same story in 2020 if a Republican had challenged Donald Trump, he or she could have done so under the same terms I challenged Joe Biden, which is, he’s probably going to lose, and shouldn’t we have an alternative that might actually win? But imagine if someone had done that, they would have encountered the exact same impediments and barriers that I did. And I want to speak to it, because you’re a better commentator on the human condition than I, but we both know that we operate with reward systems and incentives. In Congress, there is no incentive to go against your party when it comes to these decisions, because it will impede your path to either maintaining your seat or to ascending to higher office. Despite the fact that behind the scenes, Jordan, my Republican colleagues during the Trump years almost universally despised him privately, and then when the cameras were on, totally different perspective. Same thing with Joe Biden. Behind the scenes, people were utterly afraid of his standing, of their concern that he’s going to lose, that we need an alternative, but then the cameras came on and it would be a very different story. It really bothered me to see the same disease affecting the entire Congress. But the incentives make sense. There is no incentive to be bold or to get out of line or to offer an alternative, because it will almost by definition end your career. Now, it’s the same issue with the media. Let’s say you’re a journalist, and you rely on a leak from the White House, on information from the White House, access to talent that the White House provides to your Sunday show or your evening cable program. If you go against them, if you disappoint them, if you object to them, or you say something or do something they don’t like, they can always then go to CNN. They can go to another outlet. So we tiptoe through these minefields, if you will, of navigating the human condition. And that’s where we find ourselves politically. It’s where the media finds itself, because the incentives are perfectly aligned with the two parties’ mandates and objectives. And they are misaligned with the overwhelming majority of center-right and center-left Americans. And I want to be really clear to people listening and watching. I have no animus towards anyone who supports Donald Trump. As long as you’re a person of decency and principle and integrity, I do have animus towards Donald Trump. It’s both personal, it’s collective, but I want to separate the man from people the same way I would ask that people who do not support Joe Biden would also separate voters for Joe Biden from the man himself. And I want to have these conversations to also reflect on the fact that this is about individuals. I have respect for conservatism, I have respect for libertarian perspectives. I have respect, of course, for progressives. But as I have this discussion with you, I just want to make it very clear. This is the duopoly. Some call it the uniparty. It is real. There is misalignments and, most of all, perverse incentives that have to be exposed, have to be discussed, and have to be rectified. The overwhelming majority of my colleagues, strange bedfellows, want to change the system for the same reason, because it is not working any longer. The cost of living has already increased 17% this year and continues to rise despite interest rate controls. As our national debt skyrockets, you need to be confident in the financial service companies you work with, especially regarding your money and future. Birchgold is a proven industry leader that you want on your side. They’ll show you how precious metal investment can fortify your lifestyle and retirement, even in turbulent economic times. Birchgold understands that navigating financial decisions can be daunting. That’s why their dedicated in-house IRA department is there to guide you every step of the way. Birchgold values your questions and concerns. Their team is always available to provide answers and clarity, whether it’s about fees, taxes on rollovers, or the timing of the process. 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Now, and I would say that machine fundamentally are the mechanisms of higher education. It’s more complex than that, but that’s not a bad place to start. So you talked about, so there’s two issues here. And you talked about a system of perverse incentives that aligns itself on the political side, behind the incumbent, in some manner, no matter what. Right? And that system of incentives is operating so powerfully that that is the case even when there is real evidence of concern that the incumbent might be insufficient for the job or lose, which is also a definition of insufficient for the job. Right? And so that’s what we’re delving into. Like, what is it in the incentive structure that aligns people with a losing candidate at the cost, a potentially losing candidate? I know it’s close, and that makes things complicated too, because people could say, well, I can imagine a situation where Biden might win. So is it that the race is so close that the incentives are mixed? What do you think exactly, what do you think is going on? My belief is that when human beings become proximate to power, that they will place that proximity above their own fellow countrymen and women. And I think that has a lot to do with why there’s this absolutism around incumbency. It’s not rational, it’s not pragmatic, but once people are close to positions of power, they want to protect it because their careers, their proximity, their futures are tied up in that person. That’s why we see people sticking around in our Senate, in our Congress, on the Supreme Court, in the White House, in my estimation, for much longer than they should, because they are surrounded by sycophants, by people who are far more focused on their own personal futures and preservation of power, influence, access, than they put on the country itself. And I think that is, again, part of the human condition. And that needs to be at least exposed, because that’s the only thing, if you ask me, that can explain why we have so many people who are otherwise quite rational and quite pragmatic that somehow dismiss those attributes when it comes to political elections. And it makes very little sense to me, because numbers don’t lie. Numbers don’t lie. And I would argue that either party that would have broken, if you will, this logjam, either the Republicans with Trump or the Democrats with Biden, if one had turned to a next-generation, able, competent, prepared leader, I think it would have made all the difference in the world. But the absence of even that consideration, to me, is the only indicator you need to recognize who really controls the strings and what their real mandate is, which is not necessarily, I think, in the country’s best interest, rather in individuals’ best interests. And that’s exactly the problem in the Congress and in so many other elements of American politics, and frankly, in most countries.