← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everybody, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bulwark. And I'm pleased to be joined by Congressman Jason Crow. Again. We're going to be talking about government shutdown, candidate recruitments for Democrats, bombings of ships in Venezuela and so much more. Congressman, thanks so much for doing this. Really appreciate it.
- [00:16]
B
Sam, is this good to be back with you?
- [00:18]
A
Yes. We got to make it a routine. Let's start with the shutdown. Look, I don't really know. I'm kind of curious, I suppose, how Tuesday night's victories for Democrats affect the party psyche here. There's a lot of chatter about deals potentially in the Senate, but less so in the House. What's your like, 30,000 foot takeaway on how the victories on Tuesday impact the way the Democrats approach the shutdown?
- [00:43]
B
I actually, I'm gonna not view from my personal perspective, I'm not going to view the victories through a political lens. I just firmly believe that we are holding firm because the guardrails of our democracy, constitutional and rule of law require us to make sure that we're not being abused by this president. It's about health care, it's about hungry kids, and it's about rule of law and making sure this president doesn't run roughshod over the Constitution. Right. And then separate from that, on Tuesday, America was very clear. They don't like what Trump is doing. They don't like the politics of chaos and dysfunction that Donald Trump has brought to the United States government. They actually want a reasonable approach to good government. And the tariffs, the military adventurism and all the other things that Donald Trump is offering to the American people is not what they want, clearly.
- [01:40]
A
Yeah. No, it's interesting that you phrase it that way because obviously we at the Bulwark believe and all that the Constitution is being trampled. You have to have checks and balances. The guardrails are falling. The prism through which this shutdown is being waged is on affordability and health care, though. And you, and I'm not saying you're not stressing that, but it is interesting that you've leaned in on the guardrails issue because frankly, that doesn't always come up when you talk to Democrats. It's not like, oh, rescissions and unilaterally canceling programs and, you know, just disregarding the legislative body. That's not always the foot forward for Democrats when we talk to them.
- [02:15]
B
Yeah. Because there are two things at play here. There's policy. Right. And by definition, to pass an appropriations bill that has a Policy that both sides will support. There is going to have to be some compromise. Like we have to figure out a way to save the ACA subsidies and lower health care and provide SNAP benefits to folks that the Republicans snatched away. By the way, we're in this position because of Trump's mega bill in July where they, they took away nutritional programs, snap, they took away massive amounts of health care. So subsidies for regular working class Americans to deliver tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. We know that. And Republicans and Democrats will need to come together and figure out a way to do it, actually. And Democrats have been willing all along to do that.
- [03:06]
A
Right.
- [03:06]
B
It's Republicans that shut down the House. It's Donald Trump that said don't deal with the Democrats. It's Donald Trump that says shut out the Democrats and blow up the filibuster. They have brought us to this crisis. But also, in addition to that, I am not willing to vote on a bill unless I know there are guardrails in place that will prevent Donald Trump from violating the Constitution and law in the ways that he has very clearly.
- [03:32]
A
So what are those guardrails though? It's like, is it. Because what can you trust? Right. I guess is the question. Like, so you could say to, you know, you could say to Speaker Johnson, I will not vote for a bill unless you rule out, you know, passing rescissions package in the future. And what do you have to go on other than his trust?
- [03:47]
B
Well, what I want to see is protections around the movement of funds. Right. They can't reprogram funds and just move it around without congressional authority like they've been doing. I want to see protections around domestic deployment of military in the United States. And I want to see a real teeth behind congressional oversight. I want commitment that they're going to come to Congress, that they're going to seek our authority on tariffs and the other things that they have vastly exceeded their authority on. Because listen, you know, people are like, well, we need to just get the rails back on. Train back on the rails, right. I hear that a lot. Like just, just do a clean cr. Let's just get it open and operate in the train, back on the rails. But if I am looking down the rail line, I see that the bridge is out, right? Am I going to put the train back on the rails? So if it just goes down.
- [04:43]
A
Not unless you're a masochist. Yeah, right.
- [04:48]
B
That is not my responsibility to like do something that I know is going to end in chaos. My responsibility is actually the opposite is that is to Read all the signs and signals and obvious things that have been sent to us the last 10 months. Know that this is going to end very, very badly for America and make sure that I'm taking steps to correct.
- [05:08]
A
It on the last one on the shutdown, because, you know, I think the conventional wisdom heading into it was, well, be a couple weeks at most. And ultimately Democrats want to make a stand, but they probably will at some point cut a deal. And I think that's been turned on its head. Is the party's posture even stronger now than when you started? How would you, how would you describe how the mindset has changed over the course of the 35, 36, whatever days it's been?
- [05:37]
B
Well, very clearly what people have wanted is the Democratic Party to be stronger, more competent and more vigorous and show some fight. Right. That, that is clear. You know, the reason why the Democratic Party's approval rating was 23% is not because people disagree with our policies. Right. They don't actually, if you ask America, without attribution to the partisanship or political party, you know, how they line up behind policies like our policies generally are very popular with folks. You know, there are some that even I don't agree with. There need to be changed and reformed. There are things that we need to fix and do better. No, no doubt about it. But this, but this is not solely a policy decision. So our policy debate, what they want is they want people who are going to fight for them tooth and nail, who will stand up for the democracy. And that is what we are showing. That's what I've been showing the last 10 months. The Senate has started to get more of a clue since they passed their bill in April, which I'm glad about, and we're here to fight for our country.
- [06:42]
A
But again, do you think that the party you think more of, your colleagues are sort of of that mindset, that really what it comes down to is not necessarily finding, you know, the right policy prescription that's going to win over voters. It's showing a pulse.
- [06:55]
B
Well, so showing a pulse is the lowest possible bar.
- [06:59]
A
Showing a bit of an aggressive, more aggressive pulse.
- [07:02]
B
What about just showing a pul to show up and be really damn good at what you do, smart, know your stuff, and fight with vigor and boldness. Right. That is the standard. Right. Gotcha. And stop this crisis of confidence, this hand wringing and like, being afraid of our own shadow. Like hell with that. Right. Like we have our, the country on our side. Americans want a champion and defenders, and we're the ones who can do it, right? So we're the ones that have the obligation to do it, the duty to do it. That is what my oath requires me to do. Right from the very first time I took the oath in service to this country and put the uniform on. That was a lifetime oath. It's still good until the day that I die and I'm willing to fight and give everything for it.
- [07:50]
A
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- [09:55]
B
Well, number one, do Americans really want a president who has the authority to bomb whoever he wants, whenever he wants without congressional oversight, without people asking questions? Because that's what's going on right now. Right? And it's, you know, the Caribbean one moment, then it's Venezuela the next, then it's Iran, then it's God knows where else. I mean, we just spent the last 25 years and, you know, almost endless conflict. We spent $3 trillion, 7,000American lives, decades of lost opportunity and credibility. Largely, that burden was borne by working class kids like me around the country in rural areas and working class towns. Right? Not, not the elites in Washington. The, they're not bearing the burden of this. It's working class folks that are doing it. We just spent 25 years doing this without the accountability and oversight that's necessary to ask the tough questions and to make sure we're doing things the right way. And because of the lack of accountability, they ended poorly. So this administration and Donald Trump have learned nothing from the last 25 years because they're literally just doing the same thing. There is not a problem that Donald Trump encounters that he doesn't think he can bomb his way out of. And that is very disturbing because this is a man who campaigned like an isolationist, but is acting like an imperialist and an interventionist, and America's fed up with it. So that's number one. Number two is America actually does need an answer to fentanyl on our streets. Right? And it's, and it's overwhelmingly fentanyl that's killing our kids and our young folks. Right?
- [11:26]
A
Fentanyl is the prime problem, and that's not Venezuela.
- [11:29]
B
The issue here is that this administration is not going after fentanyl trafficking.
- [11:34]
A
Right?
- [11:35]
B
They have not shown me evidence of a single pill of fentanyl that's been bombed and disrupted. It's other drugs, right? But do we really want an aircraft carrier battle group, nuclear submarines, squadrons of F35 fighters, hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars spent to blow up a couple of speedboats every day in the Caribbean? There's obviously a better way of doing this, right, that would be compliant with the constitutional authority that Congress needs to grant to the president and actually has an end game in the strategy. America deserves a drug strategy that's going to deal with demand, going to deal with supply. And this is not that.
- [12:16]
A
Well, what do you think it is? I've, there's definitely been theories floating around. We've talked to people on the show about own theories but what do you make of the decision to focus so aggressively on Maduro and Venezuela?
- [12:27]
B
Well, I, I know what it is. What, what this is, is the theatrics of Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth. What they want is they want videos of US Fighter jets blowing up speedboats and wooden rafts and saying that they're serious about the drug war. That's what they want. They want the video clip. They want to be able to say they're doing it when in reality they're not actually interdicting fentanyl. Right. And they have no strategy to actually stop the 70 year flow of drugs in the United States. Right. We've been doing this for 70 years. They're not doing anything different that we haven't tried to some degree in the past. Interdiction. But you know, they don't want a long term fix. They want a short term theatrical, you know, video that they can keep on posting on social media. And they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get that.
- [13:21]
A
Do we even know what they're spending? I'm assuming they've not provided any cost analysis to you. Right?
- [13:25]
B
Yeah, we're, we're working to get a firm cost analysis, but I can tell you that is a, is a huge number. Right. We have an aircraft carrier battle group moving into the area. We have about a tenth of the United States naval assets now reorienting to the Caribbean.
- [13:39]
A
Yeah.
- [13:40]
B
Massive armadas of ships and aircraft and other assets that are exorbitantly expensive.
- [13:47]
A
You know, this kind of raises an interesting question. I guess we're allowed to do this now that we're past the off year election and now we're on to the midterm election cycle. But let's say in theory you guys win back the House, which is the goal here. And you do get oversight, investigative authorities, the power subpoenas. Let's say you had your druthers and you could pick one or two or even three items that you are most intent on trying to get get answers to. Is this one of them and what are the other two?
- [14:12]
B
Yeah, this is one of them. I mean, I'm a National security Democrat. I, I've served overseas. You know, I talked earlier about the trillions of dollars and the decades that we spent at war. I think this is so essential both for tax for taxpayers and the amount of money that we spend on this for our national security to do right by our troops and our veterans. You know, it is just madness what we have allowed to happen over the last 20 years. Right. And Democrat And Republican Congresses have allowed it to happen. Democrat and Republican presidents have allowed it to happen. It is madness and it has to stop. So I want real answers about what this administration is doing because I'm sure there are plenty of things that are doing that are vastly outside of their legal authority that are not in the best interest of the American public. There's plenty of things that I know about that we can't talk about in this open line that I'm deeply concerned about.
- [15:06]
A
You could talk about them. You might get in trouble.
- [15:08]
B
But I could, but I'm not. Yeah.
- [15:13]
A
Okay, fair enough.
- [15:14]
B
It's safe to say I'm pretty worried and don't get a lot of sleep these days because of the, the pretty dangerous behavior of this administration and how cavalier they are with a very sensitive and very powerful national security apparatus.
- [15:28]
A
Yeah. Well, when, when you start talking about it within a couple of weeks on signal, it gives away a bit of the game.
- [15:35]
B
I want to accountability. I mean, nothing ever happened. Right.
- [15:39]
A
Like nothing did ever. That's crazy. Right? I mean that just happened. And we were like, oh, okay, moving on.
- [15:44]
B
Well, you know, Mike Waltz got promoted to a UN ambassador.
- [15:47]
A
I don't know if that was a promotion, but putting that aside.
- [15:51]
B
All right.
- [15:51]
A
Your co chair of candidate recruitment for the D trip. I don't have to tell you, we're in this middle of the middle. It's like a decades long ongoing debate among Democrats over what is the right candidate for this moment and should they emphasize this or that and yada yada yada. And you know, Tuesday night kind of showed that you can run different candidates in different locations, have different messages and different vibes.
- [16:14]
B
Yeah.
- [16:15]
A
But I am wondering if there is sort of going to be a unified type of theory of the case for the candidate heading into 2026 on the Democratic side.
- [16:26]
B
Yeah. People are always like, what's the model? What's going to work every, you know, the sky is falling and we have to completely, you know, revamp our models. Like. No, like what Tuesday showed is that when you put smart servant leaders, people with service backgrounds, with proven track records in their community that run very local races that are pragmatic and reasonable and sensible and run good campaigns, they win. Right. Like it happens all the time. Right. Like this is not rocket science. Right. What we need is, is great people with backgrounds largely outside of politics. Not in every instance. But you know, America's thirsty for new leadership.
- [17:08]
A
I mean, the people who won were politicians. Right. I know that they had backgrounds in the CIA, Navy fighters and all that. Stuff, but like they've been in the House for, for multiple terms.
- [17:19]
B
Yeah. Most of their lives and careers have been in service though. To the Navy. Right, Right. Fair enough. The idea is this isn't someone that started an internship on the Hill when they were 18 and has never left policy. Not that there's always something wrong with that. I mean, nothing wrong with that. There are good people that do that too. But like, by and large, by and large, these are people who are raising families, know how excruciatingly difficult it is to raise kids in modern America and all, and all the pitfalls and traps. They are building businesses and how hard it is to make a payroll. They have, they've served in uniform and how really, really tough and dangerous it was to serve in our 20 year wars. And they run local campaigns. Right. And when I'm out recruiting and talking to these candidates, I'm looking for a track record of service. I'm looking for people that can connect people with real lived experience and people that are going to run hyperlocal campaigns. Right. Because remember, we're trying to flip Trump districts. We are trying to flip, flip districts where people voted for Donald Trump and voted for Republicans. So the people in those communities are not going to be like, well, you know, for the last 20 years I've been turned off on Democrats, but they really seem to be crushing it right now. So let's, let's give this Democrat a chance. That's not what's going to happen between now and next fall. Largely right now we have to rebuild and re earn trust in world America and working class America. But it took us 20 years to get ourselves in a difficult position in those communities. And it takes more than one year to get out of it. They're going to go to their ballot. They're going to go to the ballot and be like, you know, I don't like what Donald Trump is doing. He hasn't fulfilled his promises to me. My life is largely worse off than it was before. The Democrats. I'm starting to warm up to them, but they're not quite there yet. You know, but this woman, this man, they get it. This person gets it. And they've run a hyper local campaign on the issues that are important to our community. And this is the person that I want to lead.
- [19:22]
A
I know your time is short, so let me end on this question because one of the people who has run in those communities and done so successfully is your colleague Jer Goldin, who, if people don't know he's from Maine, 2nd District. He, it's a Trump district. Three times in a row, Trump's won the district and he's won, he renounced, he's retiring at the end of this year. His, his statement really was like, it bothered me not, not because I, you know, don't agree with him. It bothered me because of what it said about politics, which is that he felt, I guess, in a way, scared about the way that politics has come, frightened for his own physical well being and also convinced that there's just nothing productive really to do in Washington, D.C. i'm wondering if you share his thoughts about the institution you're in and if so, how you combat the mental fatigue that might come with feeling that way.
- [20:17]
B
Yeah, it's a really tough challenge, right? This comes up when I'm talking to candidates who have to make a very hard decision. Do they actually want to jump in to the current political environment, which is dangerous, which is vitriolic, which is really tough on families? It's, it's a very, very hard environment for folks to step up and serve right now. Then you add AI on top of that disinformation, propaganda, you know, a president that's weaponizing the DOJ against politicians and his political opponents. It's, it's a tough environment. And, you know, I, I know Jared. He's one of my closer friends. You know, he is a, he's one of those servant leaders that I talk about. And he's at the Marine Corps, one of the few combat veterans in the House, actual, you know, serious combat. And he's, he had to make a personal decision that was right for him and his family.
- [21:06]
A
But what do you tell the, what do you tell the candidates who you want to recruit, who say, why would I want to be involved in this?
- [21:12]
B
Here's what I tell them. None of us woke up this morning or last morning and said that, you know, I want to serve and I want to live in a time where democracy is under assault, where the bricks of our institutions are being disassembled brick by brick, where political extremism and political violence and assassinations are running rampant, where, you know, the, the, the Congress and other places are excruciatingly difficult to get things done, where fundamental constitutional rights are being denied Americans. None of us have wanted this. But in those handful of times in America where we have faced challenges like this, the folks that stepped up and made great sacrifices to win the day, to get us out of it and to move us forward also didn't want it and didn't ask for it. You never get to choose your time. Right. Your choice is only when that time is thrust upon us. And we're in one right now. We're in one of the handfuls of moments, and I can count them on this hand, where what happens in the next couple of years will determine the course of our democracy in our country. This is one of those moments. And I tell folks that you just happen to be in a place and in a time where you can make a huge difference for tens of millions of Americans. And I know there are other things that you could be doing, but that's not your choice. The moment is thrust upon you and your only choice is whether or not you're going to answer the call. And I'm not asking you to storm the beaches of Normandy. I'm not asking you to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. I'm asking you to take a couple of years of your life, run a really hard political campaign, win and help us defend our democracy.
- [22:55]
A
Pretty good pitch. Not bad, man. Thank you so much for joining us. Congressman Jason Crow. Really appreciate it. For those who watch this, thank you for that as well. We appreciate your support. So do subscribe to our feed. We appreciate we get great conversations like this. Jason, take care. Talk to you later.
- [23:11]
B
Thanks, Sam.