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Host
This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Not everyone is careful with your personal information, which might explain why there's a victim of identity theft every five seconds in the U.S. fortunately, there's LifeLock. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a US Based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year by visiting lifelock.com podcast terms apply. Trump voters are getting a rude awakening, it seems, every single day. Whether it's Donald Trump posting about reopening Alcatraz or AI images of himself as the Pope as the world is grieving the passing of Pope Francis. Whether it's Donald Trump's trade wars against the world or Donald Trump saying he doesn't know if he needs to follow the the Constitution and saying that he doesn't believe immigrants should get due process and that they shouldn't get trials at all. When we're looking at the polling data, we're seeing some of the biggest drop off as well among Trump voters. Latino voters for Trump now overwhelmingly disapprove of Donald Trump. And you remember we were showing you videos like this leading up to the election and even thereafter. Let's play this clip right here.
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Senator Ruben Gallego
If they let in hundreds of thousands of people who already had criminal records, if deporting them create some mass deportation, I'm all for it. But what if rounded up in all.
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Host
Of that are people who work on a farm?
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Senator Ruben Gallego
They're doing the jobs that Americans don't want to do.
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Host
Does that worry you?
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Senator Ruben Gallego
That wouldn't be fair. Of course. You know, they need to make sure that they don't throw away, they don't kick out, they don't deport people that.
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Host
Are, that are family oriented, that are family oriented. Let's bring in Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego. Senator Gallego, you were warning leading up to the 2024 election about Latino defections, and that was one of the things that we saw. So tell us, what are you seeing now?
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Senator Ruben Gallego
Well, I certainly have seen a reversal mostly among Latino men, and I would say it started about three to four weeks ago. So it's a combination really of the fact that they're deporting people that aren't criminals, that they're separating families, all these things that either a lot of these voters lied to themselves and said that that wasn't going to happen, or let's be clear, Trump, at different points in time will actually say the same thing. And he just said it two weeks ago, we shouldn't be deporting anybody that's here working. And he'll kind of drop these nuggets here and there to kind of give hope to some of these people that for some reason would want to believe them. But the economy is the other thing that kind of has really pushed these guys back out of at least not being big, big supporters of Donald Trump. You know, Latinos are much like, especially Latino men, sorry, just like black men, they're the first to fire and the last to hire. You know, when wages get stagnant, they're the ones who feel it right away. It's all these things that they are more sensitive when things start going bad. And I guarantee you that if the economy, which it is, is slowing down, they're the ones that are feeling it right now. And I think that's why you're seeing these numbers kind of change.
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Host
Let's talk about the economy because, you know, the markets are very volatile. It seems one Trump or Scott Besant, his Treasury secretary, will talk about, oh, there may be a deal, there may be that. And so the market has these massive fluctuations. But I think systemically, when you take a step back and you're looking at the shrinkage in the gdp, you're looking at freight volumes and trucking volumes. Another story's emerging. Can you speak to what you're seeing, Senator?
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Senator Ruben Gallego
Yeah. So these Latinos, men and women, aren't basing their feelings on the stock market. Not that some of them don't invest in the stock market, some that you Know, I'm sure have 401ks IRAs are, you know, are invested themselves. What they're responding to is the slowdown in the economy, right? These are the men and women that are your truck drivers, your delivery, you know, short, short haul delivery people. They're the ones that work at factories, are the ones that do hourly work. And when they feel the contraction in the economy, they're the first ones that feel, feel it, right? They're the waiters. So like if they start seeing tips being less tips coming in, you know, they're the ones that are working at factories and ones that are working on construction sites. And so if there's any slowdown, they're the first ones to feel it and that that is what they're responding to. So Besant and the President can come and say whatever they want to kind of ease the market. If these men and women feel that they are unstable, uncertain about their future, they're getting fired or they're getting their hours reduced, they're going to be unhappy. And doesn't matter what the stock market is doing. And if you look at what happened the first quarter GDP contracted by 0.3% and that's even before tariffs are fully queued in, wait to see what happens second term. So this is something that is going to negatively give an opinion. They're just not going to, you know, right now they're not going to trust Republicans when it comes to the economy and immigration, which are the two things that a lot of them did trust last time going around.
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Host
Well, how could they trust your Republican colleagues when you try to show objective data to them about the economy? What do they say? But have you read the Art of the Deal? Have you read the Art of the Deal? It's a book, everybody.
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Senator Ruben Gallego
Yeah, yeah, well, I never talked, I never tried to talk to anybody about like bring objective data to the conversation. You know, I try to keep it extremely as close to reality as possible. And like, you know, what they understand and which what not just Latinos, but everyone understands. Like, you know, are your wages going higher? Have prices gone down? And normally they just tell me, no, that's not the case. And you know, if you do that enough, they'll figure it out. And you know, the, I think there's going to be a lot of spinning that's going to happen from the right from Donald Trump at the end of the day, you know, inflation still high, you still can't buy a house in Arizona, rent still high, you can't buy a vehicle cheaply anymore. And now there's a really good chance that you're going to be losing your job. So everything that, that, that any trust that they've had for this president is now quickly, quickly eroding.
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Host
You're a veteran. You were in the Marines. I want to ask you your view about how Donald Trump's been handling the, the military. Pete Hegseth's careless handling of classified information, gutting of the va. What, what have you made of, of, of all of their moves there?
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Senator Ruben Gallego
Yeah, let me, let's, let's start with two separate things. Number one, this administration is the most anti veteran administration in the history of this country. And I, and I'm not even close. Right. You know, today we had the VA secretary at our committee hearing and he could not pinpoint why and where he came about that he wanted to cut the workforce of the VA by 15%. There's no logical reason to it. There's no study, there's nothing. They just came up with this number. Some Doge boy out of San Jose, California who has zero experience with the VA came out with this number and now they're executing it. Recently they tried to float the idea of changing Veterans Day to World War II Day, World War I Day. How stupid are you to even think about that? You know, there's veterans that are starting to see the effects of some of these cuts. You know, we're hearing about, you know, therapists that have to have some of their sessions in open, you know, open air cubicles, which is horrible for privacy matters. It is all, all bad. And it doesn't surprise me. Again, this man has zero concept of selflessness, self service or service to the country. And you know, he thinks if he just acts tough that the veterans would be happy with him in the end. And that's not the case on the military side. The lack of leadership from Hegseth as well as just the fact that they're entirely eroding our world alliances and making the world more unstable is what I think also pisses off a lot of veterans. We feel that the President's pissing away years and years of a stable relationship with stable and reliable alliance with our European partners. They're making us weaker versus China. All these things that some of these veterans and people that were military did not think would happen are now happening in addition to just again, the hypocrisy of something like Hexaf talking about the security, operational security that we need and then engaging such really, really risky information sharing that would have gotten me thrown in jail when I was in the Marines.
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Host
Talk about your trip. You're going to Bucks County, I understand. Soon. What's the. They're calling it. The press is calling it shadow primaries. What are you calling it? Why are. Why are you. Why are you getting there?
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Senator Ruben Gallego
Well, we're going there because we got invited to go and we've gotten invites to a lot of places to speak about Medicaid and Democrats. And this is something that I've done before being a senator, traveling the country, you know, even in Arizona. This. This last couple months, I've been traveling to red, red parts of Arizona to talk about the cuts they want to do to Medicaid, how people are going to get kicked off health care, how hospitals are going to shut down, maternity wards are going to shut down, all because these guys want to give a massive, massive tax cuts to billionaires that don't need it and won't even notice it. The one. The Bucks county actually works within my schedule. I have pretty busy schedule, largely because I have two kids and I have a third one coming June 12th. But again, I look forward to talking to the people in Bucks County. Much like the swing voters in Arizona, they want to hear the straight truth. They want to know that the government's looking out for them. And they certainly don't want to be seeing really critical programs like food stamps, like Medicaid being cut just to help the mega, mega rich.
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Host
I want to talk about this crypto bill. It's not getting a lot of attention. You posted about it recently as well. I think this began as a bipartisan effort, in theory, to put guardrails on these stable coins, build an ethics system around it and saying, hey, this is the wild, wild West. Let's rein it in a little bit.
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Senator Ruben Gallego
Exactly.
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Host
So this started with great intentions, but as you just posted the other day, well, Politico wrote democrats reverse course to oppose the Senate crypto bill. But you wrote, this isn't like a reversal out of nowhere by Dems. The fact of the matter is, Dems, including me and my team, were trying to negotiate with Republicans for weeks. The bill that was introduced for floor consideration backpedaled on a lot of progress we made and did not include other improvements we sought. It seems they want us to suck it up and vote for this bill without our input. That's not what we expected during this negotiation and not how I operate. Our statement makes clear we won't let them jam us. Looking forward to continuing to get this bill in a better place. Let's talk about this one first. But then I Think it goes to this broader systemic issue where here you are trying to engage people who are difficult to engage with, and then they kind of go sideways on you and kind of change the deal and then make it something that's less palatable. So talk about this bill first. Is it a big deal? What's happening?
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Senator Ruben Gallego
Well, it is a big deal. Like, you know, we need to, we do need to get some legislation through and reason why, because every other country now has some level of stablecoin legislation. And we want to also have that industry, that economy here. But we also want consumer protections, we want national security protections, anti money laundering protections. And these are things that are fairly reasonable. And I had been working with Republicans and five Democrats on the committee who had worked in and actually passed. And we said when we passed, like, there's more to do, but we want to continue in a spirit bipartisan to work on this. And all of a sudden the language changed. They backtracked on some of the stuff we had already approved. They weren't even moving forward with further legislation. And then they announced the date of the first vote. And I think the purpose of that was really to put Democrats in a bad position and try to force us to vote for it. And as the ranking member on the committee, I just cannot allow them to just jam us and pass bad legislation that has open loopholes that will create really bad situations for consumers, for investors, all these kinds of things. Especially when we're here to work, we're here to speak and try to come up with a good bipartisan bill, but don't try to fuck us on it. That's not going to happen. And they're trying to do these threats where if you do this, the crypto industry is going to say that you're anti crypto. We're all going to label you guys as anti crypto. And that only makes me even more intensely mad at them because now you're just doing more and more threats. We can get a good bill, we could get a good bill that protects consumers, protects investors, brings back a lot of this innovation back to the United States states. And we have the time to do it, but you can't throw us in the corner. You can't try to fuck us and then say, like, hey, you know, you know, deal with it. Like, that's just not going to work, especially when you still need our votes no matter what.
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Host
You know, I read, I read the bill because I'm a dork like that. One of the things that I saw in that they were trying to Jam through. It seemed to me in my reading of it was some exemption for the presidency that like Donald Trump is not. He, he gets to do deals with Abu Dhabi and whoever he wants to do it with. It doesn't apply to him. It applies to every. Was that in there or was I, was I reading that right or so.
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Senator Ruben Gallego
We, we have had an understanding that there was going to be, this is not a Trump focused thing, that there's going to be a general understanding of what you would do with any type of industry currency altogether. And that means that the President, the Vice president and members of the executive cannot engage in this because it is essentially self dealing. Right. Same with senators, by the way, and same with members of Congress. They should not be able to issue their own stable coin. Issue their own coin in general, anything like that. You should not be able to do it. So that was our understanding. And again, this isn't a Trump focused thing. He is going to be able to do his meme coins all he wants. That's a totally different subject matter. But no one is going to have an exemption at all on this. And that's not the biggest hang up on this at all. It's the fact that, you know, they're backsliding on their word and again, trying to basically force our hands. And you know, that's my opinion. I think that's going to work.
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Host
Senators, are there any other issues? I always like to ask this when I have senators on here or governors because there's things that I'm not seeing. And you probably don't get asked some of these questions because the reporters have, you know, they go in with a series of questions. Are there any other areas that you think is not getting enough attention that you want people to know about in front of this, you know, in front of the huge audience that we have here that you think, look, we need to be spending more time on this or that or, or, or here's what I'm focused on right now.
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Senator Ruben Gallego
Well, look, I'm focused on a couple of things. Housing. We just need to figure out how to get as much housing online as fast as possible. You know, when we talk about it like everyone thinks about it in the way, like yes, it's important for us to ask for people to be housed, right? We want homeless people. But it's also important for a couple reasons. Number one, financial stability. People that have homes are more likely to, are less likely to end up below the poverty line, are more likely to have better healthcare outcomes. Children, when are raised in a stable housing Environment end up also having better healthcare and educational and societal outcomes. The fact is right now people in their mid-30s are not going to be able to buy homes for quite a while. There's just not enough market that not bring back to the market. And when you're, even when it is there it is extremely expensive and interest rates are, are so high. And then you're also creating generational wealth and, and then also like at some point it's just damn depressing, right? Like I was lucky enough I used the VA home bill at 26 to buy my hope, my first condo. But you know, there are men and women that are at home with their, with their parents leading up into the 40s. No matter what we say, that's just not good for society. Right? You want people to be happy, proud of themselves, be able to start families or not start families, but living on their own independent lives. And we need to make sure that government is focused on figuring out how does that look like. And it could be a combination of things like making sure we have housing subsidies, low income housing, affordable mortgages. We need to make sure that cities don't over regulate and under zone those areas. That's step one of those areas that we should be working on intensely as Democrats. And the other areas, energy. If you're on your phone and you're doing anything with your phone, with computers, AI or anything else like that, you are causing a lot of energy. And the United States is going to have a big problem in about 10 years if we don't upgrade our energy energy grids as well as trying to bring more energy on. And of course a lot of that will be renewables. But I also do believe that, you know, we have to really, really look at nuclear and I think that's something that Democrats don't usually engage in. But in order for us to make sure that working class people are going to be able to have affordable energy and still keep the lights on and still be able to have the kind of high tech jobs we want. We're going to have to do a massive investment in nuclear which by the way will also keep our carbon footprint down. And you know, it's one of the things I'm working on right now actively is trying to figure out how we can get more nuclear energy deployed across the country.
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Host
Senator Ruben Gallego, thank you so much for joining.
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Senator Ruben Gallego
There you go. You didn't see that one coming, did you?
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Host
I did not see that one coming, but I'm glad, I'm glad we had you. I'm glad we had you on. We'd love to have you back on as well. And thanks for all you do.
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Senator Ruben Gallego
Yeah, please do.
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Host
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