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Hey, everybody. Welcome. I came out of my seat on that one. I was so excited to be speaking with you. Welcome to the Weekly Show Pod. We are recording this on the Tuesday, following the inauguration of the 47th President of the United States, also the 45th President of the United States, Mr. Donald Trump, our guest today will be Congresswoman Alexandria Ocazio-Cortez. I'm excited to talk to her because this is, shit is changing by the millisecond. Things are, executive orders are flying. Olegargue We're tweeting. It's all happening. Everything that was done in this previous administration has been repealed. The Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America. Canada is now officially classified as our hat. I don't know what's changing. We're not in the climate accord. America has announced itself as we don't give a fuck. The mountains have different names. I don't even know what I'm looking at on a map. I feel like it's one of those... When you get one of those maps from the '19, when England would just go in and just redraw, Okay, that country doesn't exist anymore. I'm just going to call that, I don't know, Lebanon. Why don't we do Here's Syria and draw a little line.

I don't know. It's going to take weeks to just parse just what the rules are. Any more about... Gravity is still in effect, I believe, or did he executive order that as well? I don't quite know. You're apparently now allowed to shit in the water. I don't know. It's all a blur. Everybody Everything that we thought we knew about the infrastructure and what to call America's back, baby. We're back, not just as a country in a family of nations, but as the nation. We win Can you lose, bianche. I don't know if that's... Whatever that translates to in Latin, that is the new motto of the United States of America. I'm excited to talk a person today that I think provides a modicum of hope, a level of fight and of ideology that I think, boy, needs to be injected into this moribund party more than ever. I am just going to jump on in and introduce our guest for today's podcast. All right, so we are going to get to our guest. We're very excited. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Corteiz. Welcome. You are the congresswoman for New York's 14th district, the Fighting 14th.

That's right. Thanks for having me.

700,000 strong, the Bronx and Queens. I thank you so Thank you so much for taking the time. How was your day yesterday? What did you do?

I kept my ass at home.

Inside.

Inside.

Did you watch the proceedings? I did. Or did you try and avoid everything?

I watched his speech, and I watched them not be able to turn on the music for Carrie Underwood.

I It was so bad for her. She's just standing there and they're like, We're going to be the administration of competence. We're going to make everything work again except the PA.

Yeah, I was like, We are off to a great start here. But I watched his remarks and leading up to it, and then I was out. I was like, All right, I've seen enough.

And nothing surprising. Was it strange to you? One thing that struck me was this sense that the Bidons or the Democrats wanted to preserve this decorum. I have to say, it was such a surreal scene to see someone who had attempted what he had attempted at the Capitol be handed the reins of power, not just in a peaceful transfer, but one that seemed to want to honor the tea ceremony and to bring them back. Is there a difference between, obviously, is there a middle ground between storming the Capitol? Would you like oolong or throatcoat? What are we doing?

I I totally agree with it. But this is like a thing in the Democratic Party. This is a thing, particularly with the Democratic establishment. I actually think it speaks a lot to some of the class differences and the clastration in the Democratic Party because yesterday was also MLK Day.

Boy, did that get lost.

Yeah. Yes, it did. One of the things that MLK would talk about, he would talk about this this tension between people who value order over valuing justice. I think there is this really strong attachment to order and business as usual. I think also a lot of Democrats see that as a contrast. They're like, See, we're not them, so we are going to ask you what tea you want, as opposed to calling it like it is, which I think sometimes is seen as a little more gauche.

That is in many ways how you made your bones. I think you're right. Even when you think about, and not to get in the weeds, but you were on the Oversight Committee, and I thought did really great work there. Good questioning, the questioning that I think would get to the gist of an issue or would break it down in terms of what the dynamics were. When you wanted to be the ranking member of the Oversight Committee, the Democrats decided to hand it to, and nothing against Representative Connolly, but he's 74 years old. It's almost as if they were saying, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez is really great at this, but he's 74, so there's nothing we can do. He's a 74-year-old man. He's first in line.

I mean, there are rules and structures and orders in the Democratic Party. One that we know very well is seniority. It's a seniority rule type of system. It is true, my run was... It was a challenging of an entire system. It wasn't just about me or about any... Again, I think Jerry's great, but it wasn't just about two individuals.

By the way, that was his campaign slogan. I think Jerry's great.

Yeah. But it was about challenging a system, and a system of in a way of making decisions in the party. The problem with that is that when you asked Democrats sometimes to challenge the way that they've been operating for decades, it's existential in some ways. If we don't make decisions like this, what could we possibly do? What would result?

That's amazing. And doesn't Trump rise and the way that he's operating make farce of that? Yeah. I mean, in some ways, he clowns them. That it doesn't look like a holding to protocol. It looks like submission. It doesn't in any any way appear to be they're maintaining the thing about the party that is ineffectual, that doesn't do anything. Yet that's the thing they seem to cling to the most.

Yeah. And not only that, but the other thing that makes it dangerous is that it makes us remarkably predictable. It makes the Democratic Party highly predictable in the decisions it's going to make, in the people that we're going to select, in the type of people we advance in the way that we make decisions. And And when we are highly predictable to the opposition, they will be one, two, four steps ahead. They know what Democrats are going to do.

You're talking more on a procedural level, or do you mean also a ideological level?

I think both. I think they know what we're going to do politically. They know how we position ourselves, even within internal squabbles, when there's a aggressive or whatever you may want to say about it. They can map us out. Because of that, they're able to operate around that. They'll say, Oh, yeah, they're going to do that, or they're not going to do that. There was never any question about who or who wouldn't show up to the inauguration, for example, or how they would be received, I think. And they know that. And so they're able to... To your point, Trump is able to run roughshod through these things because he knows, he has a lot of the party's number in terms of how they're going to operate. I think that sometimes making certain calculated but unpredictable choices is a way that we can put ourselves, gives ourselves the upper hand.

And it also, I think in some ways, it reveals some of the Democrats posturing as performative. When you're creating apocalyptic messaging about a fascist- Literally. Who is literally coming over and doing these things. And then when he wins sitting down with watercrest sandwiches and cream cheese and doing the whole nine yards, it makes you wonder, well, did you believe any of the shit you were saying before? Exactly. Or was that something, again, that was just a part of your messaging?

Yeah. No, it's really true. I think something that what makes this go around with Trump so much more dangerous than the first time around is exactly what you're saying. It's that he is much more normalized this time around than he was the first time. The first time, people were really on edge. They were on guard. They were very vigilant about any break that he would have with these norms. This time, the norms are becoming him. The norms are embracing him. Even these little things that everyday working people may not care about, but they are strong cultural signals. Oscar de la Renta, like dressing all of the women. There's all these cultural symbols, right?

Participating now in this when they wouldn't have participated in the past. Exactly.

I see what you're saying. Okay. So all of these people that were scared before about being associated with him from the most common basic level to the most elite level, they're all all in now because this is now a billionaire feeding frenzy. It is a kiss-ass race. It is how can I show how much fealty I have to Donald Trump in order to get my digs. I think what's really important for people to understand, and now and every day of this administration is that you're being ripped off. You're being ripped off, dude. Everyone is being ripped off. He goes up there and he says what he wants to say, but he's just the quintessential New York Man.

I mean, for God's sakes, they launched meme coins. I can remember in the first administration, somebody would animate something and the Democrats were streamed. He violated the Hatch Act. Everybody would go crazy, and then everybody have to look up the Hatch Act. Now these guys are literally just launching meme coins before the inauguration and piling up billions of dollars in wealth. It's an incredible transformation But again, it feels like... Let me ask you this, because maybe this is a different way of looking at it, because in some ways it reveals maybe to the cynical mind, the way that you believe this shit always has worked in past, that the idea of, and I'll give you an example, the gentleman Martin, who is running for Democratic National Committee Chair, right? He comes out and he says, Hey, man, we're going to take money from the good billionaires, not the bad billionaires. If money corrupt, and this happened in a conversation I had with Congresswoman Pelosi as well, she said, Money corrupts the process. I said, Well, you raised $35 million. Oh, no, that's it. We can't disarm. I said, Well, how does money corrupt the Democrats?

She said, Well, it doesn't. It corrupts them. Money is bad for them, but for us, it's good money. Isn't it almost better for us to now have this arrangement management be explicit and be out in the open so that we understand this is how the world fucking works. This is how it goes round.

Yeah. But the thing is, it will still be hidden, even if you make it explicit, A, like these meme coins. People do not really understand, nor should they, frankly, in a lot of ways, crypto. But if, God forbid, your job requires you to understand this, one of the things about crypto... I mean, at the end of the day, a lot of crypto is just scamming poor people and money laundering for wealthy people.

But doesn't that reflect the reality of our system in the first place? It's just a more grotesque hyperbolic version of a system that's not working.

I think actually, when you look Look at how, for example, Putin has operated in Russia and the way they've been able to take things over in these oligarchies, these kleptocracies, they prey on that exact logic, on that exact predicate, which is that everyone's corrupt and is all corrupt. And so who gives a fuck? Sorry. Right. Yes.

How dare you? At long last, have you no decency?

You might as well just get yours. The problem with that is that we just entirely give up on a better world. That's the crux of it. It's to get good people to just give up and say, This is just how the world works now, and I might as well just throw up my hands. The fact of the matter is, I know this is hard. Maybe this is something I would say or whatever, but I think it actually is important to understand that there are good people, and we should be doing good things. When we decide to make that the norm, and when we decide to uphold it and value it, and even regardless of party, don't vote for the people who are doing bad things, whether they're a Democrat or a Republican. When we decide to hold people to a higher standard, then things actually do get better.

All right, we're going to take a quick break and be right back.

Miami Metro catches Killers, and they say it takes a village to race one. Anyone knows how powerful urges can be, it's me. Catch Dexter Morgan in a new serial killer origin story.

It's hunger inside of you. It needs a master.

Featuring Patrick Gibson, Christian Slater, special guest Sarah Michelle Geller, with Patrick Denci and Michael C. Hall as Dexter's In Your Voice. I wasn't born a killer. I was made. Dexter: Original Sin, new series now streaming on the Paramount Plus with Showtime Plan. Go to paramountplus. Com to try it free. Terms apply. We are back.

But don't you have to know what you're up against? How do you fight an enemy that you haven't defined explicitly? I'll give you even an example in a small thing, because I think this speaks to a larger, deeper issue that I think I want to get into with you, which is we all look at, Oh, why did the Democrats fall flat? Why was it, Oh, Joe Biden got out too late, or Kamalari didn't have a time, or whatever that was. But I think at its base level, it was a feeling that government is not being responsive to the discomfort of its people, which breeds a certain feeling that there's this disconnect. We have to be able to define why. And I would put this into a unifying theme of governance, which is for the Democrats, oftentimes, they're so analog. They're so tied to Robert's Rules of Order, and they haven't realized like, oh, it's fucking UFC out there now. And we have to switch the way. But then you also have to define what that's going to mean for how you govern and what you're going to do. Yeah. Would that make sense?

I think so. Well, you're preaching to the choir here. That's why I had you on. Because I believe that we need to be a party of brawling for the working class. There you go. We have turned into a party that caters, and this is reflected in the electoral results, we have become a party of people who cater to this Almost people who call themselves upper middle class, but they're actually wealthy. That's a very- You're talking about me now, aren't you? No, you're not middle class at all.

No, I meant wealthy. That's what I meant.

But it's this suburban thing. We've been chasing this affluent group and making all of these little concessions and hoping we're people don't notice.

How does that manifest? If you could give us an example of what those concessions might look like. How in a practical way, when you're chasing a different group, because in my mind, look, one of the biggest issues in my mind is over the last 40 or 50 years, labor has been devalued and capital has been elevated. So investment and finance is king, and labor is in many ways devalued. In what way have you Have you seen those kinds of moves made?

Yeah. I think the most famous one that comes to mind is Kirstin Sinema doing her little curtsy when she voted down the $13 minimum wage. But it wasn't just her. That was the most public expression of it, but there were a bunch of Democrats in the Senate behind her that also voted it down. And I mean, people are struggling so much right now. $15 an hour is nothing. This was the demand 10 years ago. To be honest, when you index it, it should be higher now. It is nothing. What people hear when there's all of these senators voting against it with all of these excuses of like, Oh, well, how is it going to impact business? First of all, these laws are very thoroughly... There's already dozens of compromises before you even get to the floor. It's not like it turns on the next day, like there's phasing periods, all this stuff.

How do those compromises occur? Are those placed in because of who has the ear of the Congressional people, the Senate and the House? This is the effect of big money and lobbying. Yes?

Absolutely. It's really interesting. You mentioned this oversight race, so I didn't win the race. But one thing that did happen is that I've been assigned to a very powerful committee, the Energy and Commerce Committee. They're known as one of four money committees in Congress.

They can do the appropriating or they're just as a part of it because it's not the appropriations, but it's- Yeah.

The four committees are financial services. That governs Wall Street. You got Ways and Means, which is taxes. You have appropriations, which is like government financing all these programs. Then you have energy and commerce. Basically, all the regulation of energy, of health care, of tech, of all of it goes through this committee. I've served in several other committees before. The day that the news came out that I got assigned to Energy and Commerce, my staff's email boxes blew up with lobbyists, just tons of lobbyists just flooding our emails. It is literally because of this assignment that I got.

Hey, man, what's up? Was it like, Hey, what's up, Congresswoman?

Just checking in. It's very like, Hello, fellow kids. I was at the Bernie rally back in the day. I'd love to chat. The thing is, I am afforded because I am supported by everyday people. The average donation to my campaign is 17 bucks or something like that. I don't take a dime of lobbyist money because I am afforded that independence, because everyday people support me, I'm under no pressure or obligation to take a single one of these meetings, not one. I don't meet with lobbyists. It's just not really something that I do. If my constituents or if everyday people are organizing and coming to my door, I'll open it. If I have policy questions, I will go and find the answers that I need for certain things, but I don't make these kinds of decisions. But these compromises that you mentioned, how they happen along the way, it is important for people to understand how Congress is structured. Every bill that gets proposed gets assigned to a committee. That committee has a chair. That chair is the head honcho.

And especially in the House, it's all or nothing. I mean, even if you have a one-seat majority, you control all the business that goes through that committee. That's right.

And people don't really know that. But if you have For example, this majority right now, especially because Trump is appointing some people, there's only two more Republicans or so right now in the House than there are Democrats. But if you just have one more or two more, you gain control control of all the House committees. You decide what legislation gets voted on. You do all of it.

Who gets investigated, who's allowed to call witnesses, what those witnesses are. I mean, you control the entire operation.

Yeah. The minority party just has to basically sit there for two years, and maybe you can rename a post office if a Republican is going to throw you a bone. But it's pretty limited. And so that's how those compromises happen because you need to win that vote. I think about back when Biden was trying to build back better, and we had this massive prescription drug pricing provision in there that was going to make so many prescriptions more affordable for people. And there was one Democrat, and that bill went through energy and commerce. There was one Democrat, maybe two, very beholden to industry. It lost by one vote, or it lost by one or two votes in that committee. And so that's how all of these things get slowly chipped away because of that process. And that's why one of the things that we say is, yes, voting for Democratic majorities is important, but it's really about the Democrat that you're sending. One of the things I've learned a lot in the House is there's so many frustrations, understandably, but Also, the popularity of Congress is super low, but a lot of people actually like their individual member of Congress.

That's part of the story that we have here, too, because a lot of people are just very where they're very beholden to a set of incentives that are not always just the people who voted for them.

Right. The people who voted for them rarely get the access. I thought it was a stark moment at the inauguration yesterday, Amy Klobeschar was up, and she gave that first speech. It began with this ode to the working man, Oh, the working man, the construction workers who built this city, the railroad engineers. It was this large ode to the working man. Not one of them in the room.

Literally.

Not even allowed.

You've got Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos and TikTok CEO right behind. Yeah, no, it's like, what are we doing here?

But it makes it seem like a performance. This is why I think people lose that faith. And I think that ultimately this idea that, well, people just need to have better unions. Why is it incumbent upon working people? Maybe this is a shift, and maybe this is an interesting way to talk about, where do the Democrats let's go ideologically? Because this fire hose of oligarchs isn't going to be ending. It seems like unionization, while a really powerful tool is a slow moving one, and certainly one that's been eroded, is maybe the new economic theory a way to tap into that fire hose. That money is built by labor, but labor does not participate like a shareholder. Is there a way, and this is obviously beyond my pay grade, but to start shifting the conversation beyond like, Hey, man, just give us a minimum wage raise. And think about the ways that the CEOs and these oligarchs are remunerated. It's bonuses, it's stock buybacks. How do we get labor to not just live on the crumbs that they are afforded, but to participate in that fire hose, that $50 trillion growth in wealth over these last four years.

I mean, there are tons of structural things that we can do, and there are lots and lots of ways to get a bite at that apple. I think the crux, the The knot that we have to untie is how do we build the power to actually implement those things? When it comes to labor getting that share, that's not a hard problem to solve. There are everything from Elizabeth Warren and a lot of other folks saying labor should have board seats in corporations. To even more lefty, I mean, it's all lefty, but even other things.

But Why is it left? Even when it's called lefty, in the rest of the world- It's normal. It's like center-right. It's normal. When we talk about, Oh, how about everybody can go to a doctor? And you're like, What are you, a Communist? And you're like, No, you're fucking... The whole world does that except us. Well, that's the thing.

Our country is remarkably propagandized. We are remarkably propagandized. And that's what I'm talking about when it talks about building the power. Working A lot of working class people voted for Donald Trump.

Sure. I mean, he gained a tremendous amount in that area.

He gained a tremendous amount in that area. They voted for him despite the fact that he has a Supreme Court that guts labor rights, that they are overwhelmingly opposed to raising a minimum wage, that they're gutting the civil rights around working people and organizing, let alone women and voting rights rights and for Black folks and immigrants. Put all of that aside, just on a working class level, we have elected the foxes for the hen house to run the hen house. That is a Something that we're going to have to confront because what Zuckerberg and Bezos and all these people sitting behind them, they don't just represent billionaires. They represent all of the communication platforms that people use in the United States. So the TikTok CEO is saying, We work for Trump. The Metta Instagram and Facebook CEO is saying, We work for Trump. Of course, you've got Elon with his fucking jumping around on a stage.

Just gave away a million dollars to individuals in Pennsylvania.

Yeah, which is not legal, but- Right.

But isn't that the point, though? They would rather ask for forgiveness than permission. And isn't a lot of this based on, we say it's the foxes now guarding the hen house, but isn't it the people in the hen house going, Where are my eggs? You promised me eggs, and you guys haven't delivered? Yes. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. We are back. Now, you did something really interesting, I thought, after the election. This is, I think, why I think the right gives you respect and also, I think, is a little trepidacious about you in that you understand these new media platforms, and you went on one of them, and it was either TikTok or Instagram or one after the election because you outperformed the Democrats in your district, and there were people that voted for you and voted for Trump, and you wanted to know why. In doing that, what came back to you? Was it anything being revelatory or illuminating about the process by which their frustration with people that are speaking the language of their struggle but not delivering on their struggle led them to, well, you know what?

Fuck it. Let's just cut through all the red tape and go with a more executive version of all of this.

Yeah. I think there's a couple of things. One is that, especially for people who voted for Trump and voted for me, they see two people that are fundamentally anti-establishment, two people that do not respect a rule if the rule does not lead to an outcome, a positive outcome. One of the things that I really sit with is, I think a shift that we've seen is that people want to hear directly from They're from a politician. And importantly, and this is also dicey territory, I think, they will believe what the politician says from themselves, right?

If they hear it from you.

If they hear it from me, and the same thing, if they hear it from Trump. Trump went around. I don't think people understandably, if you don't like Trump, you probably didn't listen to him on the campaign trail. But this was a very different Trump that was on the campaign trail. And even if to roll back his election night speech and his victory speech. When he talks about immigration, for example, my district is 60% immigrant families. When you hear him, he was very clear on the campaign trail saying, We're only going to go after the criminals, and we're not going to go after people who came here the right way. He is lying through his teeth, but that is what he is saying. People believe it. It's the same thing with the Project 2025 stuff, when he was like, That's not me. We're not going to do that. People will say, he said it's not him. He said he's only going to go after the criminals, which they believe everyone who came here who is undocumented is a criminal. And not only that, but on paper, they say they want to deport 20 million people. There's only 14 million undocumented people in the United States.

So they're going to have to proactively strip status from 6 million people who are here legally in a legal fashion in order to meet that number. But the thing is, and so this is actually where I think the collapse of journalism, which again, Bezos runs The Post. They have the newspapers, too.

The guy from the LA Times was like, Hey, man, what are you What do you guys want us to put in the paper?

Yeah. La Times is a billionaire publication. Washington Post is a billionaire publication. New York Times is taking Ls left and right. You have Elon doing a Nazi salute yesterday, and they're like, Hmm, he- That was weird. He did That was curious. That was controversial flagellation. What are you people doing? What utility do you have right now? It's all of this stuff that is meshing together. But the point is, this is not all doom and gloom. I think that it highlights ways that we can fight back. One of the things that we need to do is to talk to people directly. Also, guess what? There need to be Democrats who walk the walk and talk the talk. There is an insane amount of hypocrisy, and the hypocrisy is what gets exploited to use the cynicism. Sure. And wherever there's a hypocritical window. For example, I think one of the most biggest examples of this is insider trading in Congress.

Dude. I don't know if I... Do I give snaps? I don't know what the kids do anymore, but like, dude. Yes. That's so crazy.

It's so crazy.

It's crazy. It's crazy. I mean, and this is the thing.

It's like people think that everyday people are I'm like, Do you all really think that people don't see this shit?

They sit on a committee, they get information about a drug or a contract or a thing. They immediately make a call. The stockbroker changes things and their portfolio swells.

Explodes. It explodes.

What are we doing?

You're doing this on public trust, on like, your finance public facilities. Of course- You're regulating the market that you're trading on. Exactly.

You run the casino.

And then we're supposed to act like money only corrupt Republicans? Give me a fucking break. So to me, this is important because- We're lucky we're not in the same room because I think we might have high-fived.

I really think we may have disturbingly high-fived in that moment.

And I think sometimes what What my colleagues and other people in the party don't understand is that the insider trading that happens in Congress, it explodes the cynicism that fuels the right. It doesn't benefit us. It benefits Republicans because they make no bones about the fact that they are here, about what class they are here to serve. In fact, Republicans are far more honest in this respect sometimes, which is that they're here to serve the billionaire class, and they make decisions very publicly to serve that billionaire class.

Oh, but they're performing a populace dance in a lot of ways. But doesn't it, though... And this is the thing where it gets tricky because what the rights diagnosis is in many ways, correct. What Trump is saying is the system is rigged. Well, I think that's what we're saying, which is, yeah, it's rig. Now, I don't believe his remedy is correct. I don't believe he's honest about where he's unrigging it. I think he's not draining the swamp. He's co-opting it. He wants the deed to the swamp so that he can continue to funnel. I mean, that meme coin being just the tip of the iceberg there. But isn't that what is driving them? Is that sense that, and they are, I think, not wrong, the system is rigged?

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's completely rigged. And the frustrations at that are why working people want to elect people who seek to not go along to get along.

But the question is they're viewing it like, oh, it's the undocument implemented migrants that are rigging this system and not the six billionaire oligarchs that are sitting in the front row at the inauguration. To me, that's the disconnect.

That's exactly right. The thing is, when we talk about solidarity, the reason why solidarity is when we build that is such an antidote to kleptocracy and corruption. I think something that's really important for people to understand, and that's something that I also think the left can do a better job at, is also explaining why this solidarity is important, not just on moral grounds, but this is our strategy for defeating the billionaire class, because they are going to say, your wages are low because of an immigrant. And by the way, you're going to drive down, wait until there's no immigrants to do your roofing, to do agricultural work in the United States, and you're going to have some... You see DLA alum that's doing your vegetables.

There are people here in this country who will do work for money that Americans won't do work for, who are exploited by the system.

They are exploited. They are absolutely Absolutely exploited. But the thing is that when we allow ourselves to constantly be distracted by these culture wars around trans people, it's a new thing every day. But I think the answer isn't that we just let those people be attacked. It's that we say, What are you doing, man? I think we need to make standing up for these folks just like such an afterthought that it's not even a debate. We need to understand and see the bait for what it is, but we don't take the bait by letting those rights just erode and go by the wayside.

But how do you battle the common sense? I'll give you an example. When they say, Oh, there's an undocumented immigrant who has committed a crime, common sense would tell you, Yeah, that person has lost their ability to be here and should be sent back. And yet you would find there are some Democrats who would disagree with that? Or isn't there another form of progressivism that is more muscular that has a certain amount of common sense, law and order aspect to it that can be fashioned as a way forward that doesn't get saddled with some of these seemingly nonsensical positions? Yeah.

Well, let's take the Lake and Reilly Act, for example, which just passed in the Senate, which is this encapsulates a lot of what you just said. Lake and Reilly, on its face, Republicans brought this and they say, well, if you are... By the way, Lake and Reilly is a victim of a horrific crime.

It was a horrible.

Horrible murder by, I believe, an asylum seeker or an undocumented person.

But apparently, who had a criminal record.

Yes, who had a criminal record.

Who had committed crimes.

Now, first and foremost, her family explicitly asked that her name not be politicized or used or wielded in this way. Every time I see this, it's just so disgusting to me that they just trampled on this family's wishes and decided to do this. But anyways, so you have this act that's brought forth, and Republicans say, Okay, well, this person, if you have a criminal record, if you've sexually assaulted somebody, you should be deported. And so that's the guise of this bill, right? And They said, so that should be the law. Except that's not what's in this law, because A, that is existing US law. It is existing US law.

Why isn't it done then?

Well, I think there are individual cases where I'm not sure, but this is what the right does. They exploit these very narrow individual cases. But the existing law in the United States is that if you are undocumented and you commit a crime, you are put on priority number one for deportation. That is standing US law.

It's not like we don't deport a lot of people, even in democratic administrations. We deport a ton.

Now, here's what Lake and Reilly does, actually, is that they use that guise to then dramatically erode constitutional rights in the United States, tucked into that bill.

No due process then for someone who is an asylum seeker.

That's right. Now, in this bill, all you need to do is be accused of a crime. And you don't have to be fully undocumented. It works against dreamers, too. So you could be here. You could have lawful- So they take a narrow common sense issue, and then what they do is they expand the margins out on it to things that would not be common sense.

Yeah. This is Patriot Act all over again. Mission Creek.

Exactly. Using this guise of national security to erode not just the civil rights of this population, but your civil rights, too. It's like when they did these 100-mile border security zones, they're doing surveillance on everybody, on the vast majority of the United States, because most people, believe it or not, live within 100 miles of some border, the Southern border, the Northern border, or both either Coast.

Oh, I got Delaware breathing down my neck over here. Yeah. I don't know what they're sending up my way.

And so this is the thing that we need to be aware of. But it's also something that you haven't heard this because Democrats are very scared on these kinds of issues. Democrats are vulnerable on issues of immigration. And so the response, instead of being more full-throated and telling people how they're being conned, is to just be quiet about it and to go along with it.

So let's take your energy, let's take the passion that you have for these issues. Let's think about, because right now, the Democrats are almost fully defined by their positions on Trump, as opposed to people are thirsty for a leadership The Democrats, I think, have had a really difficult time responding to that thirst, responding to that action. What is the process then of redefining what this party is, what it represents moving forward, and are there leaders there? It is sclerotic. I mean, it is a party in real confusion. And I don't know. I can't put my finger on. It reminds me the Republicans in 2012, where there was just... When Trump came into that first 2016 primary, I mean, he just flicked his finger, not Jeb Bush. Yeah, nice. Boom. Done. And I think the Democrats that are vulnerable to that. So what is the process of redefining and recapturing what this party is?

Well, I think we need a real agenda. If you've noticed, the Democratic Party has not really had a platform with any new- I have noticed. Yeah. There's no platform. I mean, there's technically a platform that gets voted out. This is the crux of it. If you ask a working class American or just any normal American, what is a Democrat? What do they stand for? They will not really be able to give you a clear answer And so our party needs a clear and strong agenda. I think one of the problems is that the internal incentives within the Democratic Party are quite contrary to a clear, full-throated agenda. And that's why I think you notice Biden on his way out, it was only on his way out that he was like, this country is controlled by oligarchs by... We could have used that energy a couple of years ago.

Well, I mean, what he did on the way out, I really thought it was incredibly disappointing. On the way out, he's like, we're controlled by oligarchs, women are people, and I'm going to make sure that my family has a life raft. I just thought, Boy, what a... I have fondness for him, and he was certainly incredibly important to a bill that was very important to me that went through. But I just thought, again, you just made this whole thing look like a show, like a performance, and that you've been not clear with us over four years. And on your way out, you're just going to tell the truth, which is our legal system doesn't serve anybody, and I'm just going to make sure my family is protected.

Yeah. I think it's one these things where people... I do think that people want rule breakers in this moment.

Purposeful rule. I don't think we're looking for nihilists. I think we're looking for a purposeful recapturing of the thrust. Does it start, Congresswoman, with what you did, which is a customer service? I think what the Democrats have lost is the reality of people's lives when you think about that cradle to grave journey and where the the bottleneck pressures are, that weird working class, middle class, squeeze of, I've worked really hard, I've saved some money, but now I got to blow most of it on my kid's college while my parents need health care and other things, and those costs are soaring, and that's going to put me under by the time I get up to that age when I'm 60 years old. Isn't that journey the absolute priority of any government that's to listen to the discomfort of the way its people live?

Of course. This is where I think when you talk about responsiveness, it's that a lot of people propose these things that nipple around the edges but don't actually structurally address the problem. They'll say, Okay, we're going to do a little bit of Medicare reform here. That doesn't fix the problem. That doesn't fix the fact that you aren't paid a living wage from the jump, from the time you're 15 years old getting your first job at McDonald's or Baskin Robbins or wherever it is. We don't have money. We need money. That doesn't solve that problem. It doesn't solve the fact that the price of college is just skyrocketing year over year, and it's increasingly becoming something that's only accessible for more and more elite people as time goes on. It doesn't fix the fact that then in order to that degree, yes, it still does give you a ticket to a more privileged class. I know there's a lot of discussion about is college worth and also the trades, too. The trades are incredibly important as well. But these are still tickets to a more... So people are getting left behind at every single stage of life.

And what the Democratic response has been is like, oh, let's expand Pell Grants a little bit. No, we need tuition.

Or even Obamacare, which is in many ways just a giant benefit to insurance companies, which is the government just saying, We'll give you a little bit of access to this shitty system that you haven't been satisfied with, and we'll just make sure that to get an insurance company to take you on, if you're considered a poor risk, we'll just pay them to do that.

At the end of the day, and the stuff that's crazy to me is the answers are stuff We're just asking for things that our parents and our grandparents had. Tuition-free public colleges and universities, not new.

It's where my parents went to City College in New York. It was free. This was the 1940s That's right.

We should be lowering the age of Medicare. I want the age of Medicare to be lowered to zero, but even you bring it to 50 and you will be able to make tons and tons of people far more secure in their lives, which, by the way, helps their kids because you're working your ass off to get your parents health care because they're not 65 yet.

Now, to make that argument, is Job 1 then to be honest about the deliverables that a government can offer or about how we need almost, when they talk about moonshots, we need a bureaucratic moonshot because in truth, the way that the government operates right now is counterintuitive and counter factual to all best practices. And there is such opportunity here, Congresswoman. I feel it in your voice. I feel the frustration that you feel being down there. I've experienced it myself. I have to tell you, when we were down there trying to do legislation, I was at times just stunned at what you had talked about earlier, which is that we have to go through regular order. It was interesting to me, what I discovered to some respect is, and this is a terrible thing to probably say, but Congress can be bullied. Yeah. No, it can. By righteousness and by doing the right thing. As long as they feel like you're not going to go away and you're going to keep that light on them, Mitch Buchanault can be- It's true. Yeah. It's true. It's a very strange feeling to have that.

Also, people are very responsive to incentives. I think sometimes people are People are rightfully sometimes frustrated at some of the creep towards pro-business and capital and this turn away from labor.

Does this system require an entrenched underclass to work properly? The way I've always looked at it is, government can be an effective check. Capitalism is the system we've chosen, and it certainly is a wealth generation system, but it also has collateral damage along the way. It has destructive things that are built into its function. Maybe government's there not necessarily to change that system of wealth generation, but to ameliorate the collateral damage and allow more people into that fire hose of wealth generation.

Yeah, I think that's a very valid question. I think depending on your view of the world, it is government either exist to enforce that system and then try to soften the consequences of it. That is defined by the people that we send to represent us, that outcome. But I do think that people respond And elected officials respond to those incentives, as you mentioned. Not only are they responsive to sunlight. Money isn't the only rule here. At the end of the day, people who are in Congress want to return to Congress. And the reason... It's true. And then the reason. And the reason that the Republicans have so much enforcement is because they're more scared of a primary than they are of a general election. And for multiple reasons. One, they're Their base is highly mobilized. Their base is highly engaged. If you can survive a primary, their theory of change is that you will be able, for the most part, be able to survive a general election, which is Which is, I would say, true for maybe 90 to 95 % of all seats in Congress. There are very, very few swing seats left in America.

Republicans and this whole system has been gerrymandered that the number of swing seats is so low. For everybody else, your only election is a primary election. That's been billionaires fuel, and they fund primary challenges. Trump openly talks about that to keep everyone in line. But we all do have a choice. The more choices we have that are more representative of the changes we want to see, the better off we all are. We're going to lose a bunch, but we're also going to win a bunch, too. I will always, always, always believe that it was always worth trying. In fact, it's so important that we don't give up because people do not understand. No, no. Even if you don't see a way, because ways emerge, moments emerge. I was not supposed to get elected to Congress by any stretch of the imagination. I was insane. I was a waitress.

You rarely hear that from a professional leader. I was insane.

No, it's not just a cute story. I I was wiping down a bar and asking people to vote for me. It wasn't like a summer job I had once. I was not supposed to win. The guy I was running against spent $3 million against me. I was getting $2 in my paycheck once a week because I was working off tips and they take it all out. But things happen in America. This is still a place of possibility.

But see, you know the promise of the possible, and that's what gives you that feeling that the fight can pay off. But I think for the most part, that fight is you have no other option. We always talk about that idea, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. But what they don't tell you is it doesn't bend by natural forces. Gravity is not what bends that. And there are people who are bending that fucker back the other way. And it is effort, it is work. And I thank you so much for spending the time with us today. And it's really It's been a wonderfully invigorating conversation for me to hear your passion and to hear the fight that you have and the direction you're going in. I guess the final question is, how do you feel about the confidence that the Democrats are being, A, honest with themselves about where they actually are, and B, have the vision and wherewithal to begin that process it that you're talking about, about redefining it in a way that's more responsive to the people they purport to represent.

Yeah. I mean, I have a weird relationship with the Democratic Party, to say the least.

Friends with benefits. Yeah, I get it. It's fine. Yeah, exactly.

It's like one foot in, one foot out. I think the foot out that I have is the foot that is very attuned to people. The foot in that I have is it's still the coalition that helps people, in my view. It's a coalition that we all have to be part of. To me, I do think there's As you mentioned, I do think that there is a little bit of this lost at sea moment happening. But as you said, I see that not as a reason for despair. I see it as a tremendous opportunity. I've been a wrecking ball in the past. I am also... I think that's one of the tools. I believe in the toolbox, right? Sometimes you need a wrecking ball, sometimes you need a hammer, sometimes you need a wrench. I think in this moment, it's a tremendous window of opportunity for efficacy. Yes. Whoever is most effective is where the momentum is going to go. For me, I'm just trying shit out. I'm just trying shit out, and I'm just in the batting cage, and I'm just waiting for a dinger, and this is the work.

I got to tell you, there are so many metaphors. I don't even know what to do anymore. I've got a toolkit and a batting cage, and I don't know what the hell is happening.

That's what it's going to take, just to throw in everything at it.

All those different things. Congresswoman Alexandria, a Ocasio Cortés, New York's 14th district. Thank you so much for spending the time with us today. I really appreciate it. Hope to see you again soon.

Totally. Thank you, John. Appreciate it. All right.

Bye-bye. Fantastic. We are back. We're joined by Lauren Walker, Gillian Speer, Brittany Mamedevik. Fantastic, I say.

She's so good.

I exclaim.

I love her attitude at the end. It's like, get caught stealing. Get caught trying, Democrats, please.

I really think this time in Congress, she is going to get in a fistfight. And not with a Republican, with another. I think she's going to deck Stenny Hoyer. I think he is going down. She's throwing a roundhouse, and it is over. I love the no wallowing, there was no despair. There was no sense all is lost. There was no sense that it's Sisypus at the bottom of a mountain. She was all like, Let's roll up the sleeves and get in there and make this shit right. I think that is exactly the attitude that is missing and necessary.

Yes, I loved it. She was like, you never know what opportunities will present themselves. And she's an example of that. Exactly right. If you're tuning in for liberal tears, find another podcast. What?

No liberal tears here, for God's sake. We We got to listen to your question about...

They're asking, John, how do you think the media should effectively cover Trump this time?

First of all, I don't think Trump is a different creature. This idea somehow that the media must adopt, Oh, it's Trump, and that's different. The media should have a prescribed methodology that can be applied to all who come there. What that should be is to litigate the boundaries of our shared reality, to stop pretend we live in separate universes. No, we don't. We live in the universe. We live in the world. There is reality. The media's job is to litigate the boundaries of that shared reality through a process of standards of evidentiary truth. That's fucking it. And no more like, Is that racist? Will you promise to honor the 2020? The 2020 result. Like, litigate the why, litigate the boundaries of our shared reality. And that is how you should cover everything.

Preach.

Don't. Mic drop. And I end it with this, Don't. But you guys are doing good. I'm excited that we're back and we're We're, Fuck.

We're good?

We're not good.

I think the Nazi salutes maybe made me wake up on the wrong side of the bed.

That was bananas. What I love about it is, there they go again overreacting. You have to admit, even if it's the awkwardness and neurodivergence or a thing that always occurred, you have to admit it is worthy of people going like, what the fuck was that? Especially coupled with ideological turns that you've very clearly taken on your platform. This all does fit together. It's not like it comes out of nowhere. You did do this and everybody's like, wow, that looked like he was doing his own air trombone. It was what it was. I think it's very reasonable for any observer to be like, huh, that was fucking weird.

But Even the ADL was like, he's a little different. I'm like, what?

Fuck those guys anyway. They're the worst. All these guys have supplement. I mean, the best one to me is Zuckerberg. For Zuckerberg to show up there. Then he goes on rogue and he's like, The Biden administration yelled at me and tried to censor me. Like, Trump threatened to put you in jail. He threatened to put you in jail for doing much less than what Elon did to get Trump elected. He had his democracy project, and it turned out more of the money went to Democratic States. So he was enemy number one. He became Soros Jr. At that point. Elon just basically gave a million dollars to anybody walking by in Pennsylvania. Everybody's like, Oh, yeah, no, that's cool. That's all fine. And Zuckerberg is pretending that he had a revelation. I had a revelation that the Biden administration wanted to censor. No, you were threatened with jail. And they When you can ask Trump, why do you think Zuckerberg came to you hat and hand, and Trump is like, Well, I threatened to put him in jail. Just call him balls and strikes. Fuck it all. That's all I'm saying. But I was very happy to talk to the Congresswoman.

I'm always very happy to talk to you guys. How else can the people talk to us, Brittany?

Twitter, We are Weekly Show pod, Instagram threads, TikTok and Blue Sky, We are Weekly Show podcast. You can like and subscribe our YouTube channel, The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart.

Yeah, do that. Yeah. By the way, last week's episode with Jon Meachum, now my mom thinks I'm smart.

It's all been worth it then.

She loves John Meacham, and doesn't particularly care for what I have to say, but the fact that he was on there and didn't call me a dumbass, I have now been elevated. That's amazing for you.

He is.

Thank you so much. Very, very appreciate it. Lead producer Lauren Walker, Our producer, Brittany Mamedevac, video editor and engineer, Rob Vittola, audio editor and engineer, Nicole Boyce, researcher and associate producer, Julian Speer, and of course, our executive producers, Chris McShane, Katie gray. Thank you all so much, and we will see you next week and continue this conversation about America. All right. Talk to you then. Bye, guys. The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Bustboy Productions.

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