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- [00:01]
Aaron Parnas
Tonight, the United States of America is in chaos. From foreign policy decisions abroad to domestic issues at home, Americans are struggling. Americans are scared. Americans are nervous. I hear it from you every single day. I read your comments, I listen to your notes. And the truth is, today was a very hard day for our nation. In Minnesota, a ICE officer killed a 37 year old woman. We now know that when ambulances went to try to save her, ICE blocked them. Abroad, Americans are growing anxious as the Trump administration ramps up a modern day war machine seeking to increase defense budget from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion as it targets countries from Venezuela to Greenland to Cuba, Iran and elsewhere. And at the same time, Americans here at home are struggling, struggling with the high cost of living, struggling with the lack of affordable health care as Affordable Care act subsidies have expired. And I'd be remiss if I didn't start tonight's update just by acknowledging where we are as a nation. We are a nation in crisis. And today I sat down with Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona, Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, his wife, to talk about this crisis. Fifteen years ago today or 15 years ago tomorrow, Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was preparing to speak with constituents in Arizona when a gunman opened fire, shooting her, shooting other individuals, killing several people. A horrific act of political violence. A horrific act of gun violence. To think that that would have been the end, that America would recover. But 15 years later, America remains on edge. America remains a country of political violence, of gun violence, a country in crisis. Tonight, I want you to watch this interview with open eyes. I want you to let me know what you think and if you can please consider subscribing to support my work. I'm not backed by big corporate executives or big advertisers. And I ask often, but truthfully, it's just me, you, and the truth. With that, here is Senator Mark Kelly and Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.
- [02:38]
Interviewer
Senator Kelly, Gabby Giffords, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm really excited for this conversation. I really want to kind of start off because you've been in the news lately, Senator Kelly, with everything that's been happening with Secretary Hexseth, you're now the Department of Defense going after your rank, your retirement pay. There's something that you could say to Secretary Hexe today. What would it be?
- [03:00]
Senator Mark Kelly
I was just in a brief with him downstairs talking about these operations in Venezuela. That's generally not the venue. The last time I was in that situation with him, he actually brought it up. And I had some very specific Strategic questions at this point with him. You know, I, I, you know, don't think there's anything that I need to say to him, you know, personally. He knows that in November, myself and five of my colleagues in the House and the Senate that we, you know, said something that was lawful in the Uniform Code of Military justice, very basic, reminding service members that they should follow the law. The President said I should be hanged and executed for what I said and then prosecuted. And then Secretary Hegseth began this prosecution, in theory, to court martial me. At this point, they've sent a letter of censure, and they're now threatening to reduce me in rank, and they're going to come up with a determination. So I don't have anything to say to him personally that I don't say publicly, repeatedly. You know, which is, in my view, this guy was totally unqualified for this job. I did not vote for him. We actually had to have the vice president come over because they could not get enough Republicans to vote for him because he does not have the background to do this. And he has demonstrated over the last seven, eight months as how long he's been in this job that he shouldn't have, shouldn't have gotten the job and should have been fired. So there's, there's nothing I need to say to him personally.
- [04:48]
Interviewer
Now you talk about the President's threats, and I got to ask you, Congresswoman, your family has been no stranger to threats over the years. How have these threats impacted your family today?
- [05:01]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
14 or teen war team?
- [05:04]
Senator Mark Kelly
Yeah, we're going to stick together through threats. You know, when Donald Trump threatened my life, saying I should be hanged, the amount of death threats that I get go up dramatically. We would get in one day. We would get the number of death threats I would normally get in three months. But that also extends to Gabby. People started again threatening her life. So I think it demonstrates that words have consequences, especially the words of a president, especially this president. He's got a lot of followers out there that, you know, may think that he wants them to, to do something to either Gabby or to me.
- [05:50]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
No way, Jose.
- [05:52]
Senator Mark Kelly
But here's the thing, and maybe this is what I would say to, to head Hegstadt, is that regardless of what you decide to do or try to do to me, I'm not backing down. I'm not shutting up. I'm going to continue to do my job. I've got millions of constituents I represent in Arizona. They deserve to have me 100% doing my job, and that includes oversight. I'M on the Armed Services Committee. Gadda used to be on the Armed Services Committee in the House. I love it.
- [06:25]
Interviewer
Well, I have to ask you, when you served in the United States military, before coming over here to Capitol Hill, did you ever hear this type of rhetoric from any general, any admiral, any Secretary of defense ever in your service?
- [06:38]
Senator Mark Kelly
You mean the kind of stuff you hear from the current Secretary of defense? The way, Gabby, remember we were watching that video of him kind of giving this brief to the senior admirals and generals.
- [06:53]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
Shut up.
- [06:54]
Senator Mark Kelly
No, I didn't tell him to shut up. I was not there. Oh, no, you're right. What I think what you're getting at is they didn't say anything really. So he gave that. He gave that speech. He was expecting a reaction. He was talking about lethality and killing people and demonstrating that he doesn't care about the rules of engagement anymore. To answer your question, no. We've never seen anything like that from any Secretary of Defense in the time period going back to 1986 since I started doing this stuff. But Gabby makes a very good point, is they were quiet and professional. So the admirals and generals, you get from them what you expect from this Secretary of Defense. You don't get. You don't get that.
- [07:46]
Interviewer
Well, then I have to ask you, because I saw your town hall after the Charlie Kirk shooting and other recent events of political violence. How do we tone down this rhetoric? Because I think Americans are asking today. I'm scared. You're getting thousands of death threats. Many Americans are getting just threats online right now. How do we tone it down?
- [08:06]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
Tone it down. Calm, calm, calm. So calm.
- [08:11]
Senator Mark Kelly
People need to chill out.
- [08:12]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
Chill out.
- [08:15]
Senator Mark Kelly
It was 15 years ago tomorrow that Gabby was meeting with her constituents, the Safeway store, and doing her job, and a guy shows up with a gun in. In an act of political violence, shoots her, kills six other people, wounds 12 others. Happened in 15 seconds at a high capacity magazine, in a. In a Glock. And it changed our lives, you know, for. Forever. What? What? What?
- [08:54]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
And chicken, Chicken, chicken.
- [08:55]
Senator Mark Kelly
Well, for Gabby, you know, with aphasia, initially, she could only say a couple words, chicken and what, being two of them. I don't know where the, with the chicken thing comes.
- [09:07]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
A lot of chicken.
- [09:08]
Senator Mark Kelly
I think it was because of the hospital. You know, they're at lunch, there was a lot of chicken, a lot of chicken. So that became one of the words she was stuck on. But they. And then, since then, we've seen a lot of these, you know, mass shootings, right? And Gabby and I decided to start an organization to try to deal with this issue. But how do you know?
- [09:32]
Interviewer
I would. I would.
- [09:33]
Senator Mark Kelly
I would say that, you know, right now we're polarized. We have a president who looks at every opportunity for him as an opportunity to further divide us as a country. I think it's important for people to understand that and don't take cues from it. Folks need to understand that this is not normal for a president, and we should always be looking to bridge the gap and come together and work together.
- [10:05]
Interviewer
Well, I do want to talk a little bit about Giffords, the organization that you all have founded, because 15 years after tragedy struck you and your family, tragedy is still striking families across America. Just this morning, I pulled statistics from the gun violence archive, and there's already been eight mass shootings just this year. More mass shootings than days in the year. And I think a lot of Americans are worried.
- [10:27]
Aaron Parnas
Well, we don't hear about mass shootings.
- [10:29]
Interviewer
That much in the media anymore. We don't talk about it anymore because it's become normalized. This culture of gun violence, this culture of mass shootings has become far too normal in American society. How do we prevent that from continuing the normalization of gun violence?
- [10:43]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
Over 700 laws passed. The work is hard, but we are building momentum.
- [10:49]
Senator Mark Kelly
Well, one of the ways is, what Gabby's talking about is to prevent gun violence is to pass legislation. And over 13 years since Gabby and I founded Giffords after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, because of all of her. Her hard work and the organization's hard.
- [11:09]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
Work, enough is enough.
- [11:10]
Senator Mark Kelly
And we got to the point, right?
- [11:12]
Interviewer
We got to the point.
- [11:13]
Senator Mark Kelly
We were like, enough is enough. We got to do something. This is.
- [11:16]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
Kids, kids, kids.
- [11:18]
Senator Mark Kelly
Yeah. When the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting happened, you remember, of course you remember. We. We went up to Newtown, Connecticut, and we met these families.
- [11:28]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
Kids, kids.
- [11:31]
Senator Mark Kelly
And there were 20 dead little kids. And we met with their parents in a living room near the school. And there were, you know, moms and dads that just lost their first graders. It was hard. We've now repeated that, you know, over and over and over again. The way, you know, we have to deal with this is we need to get more people involved in the issue that care about it. We've got gun violence in this country that doesn't compare well with Yemen. That's who we compare with. The level of gun violence in the United States compares with Yemen, not with Japan or any European country. We have over 100,000 people get shot every year. Tens of thousands of them die. Suicides murders in other countries that you would expect us to be compared with. That number is in hundreds of thousands. It's not tens of thousands, it's not thousands. In the case of Japan, it's often single digits. In the UK it might be 50 people. So we stand out in the worst of ways. The way you fix it is to get involved in the issue in some way and force people like me or like Gabby when she was in Congress to do something about it.
- [13:00]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
Oh, Maine, Maine, Maine.
- [13:03]
Senator Mark Kelly
There was a pretty bad mass shooting in Maine a couple years ago that was rather horrible. But people don't hear about these as often because, as you say, there's just so many of them.
- [13:18]
Aaron Parnas
What do you say to someone?
- [13:19]
Interviewer
Because one of my earliest memories of gun violence was when I was in the seventh grade. We had an active shooter alert on campus. We're locked down for hours on end. Thankfully, everyone was okay back then. But I remember my first memory was grabbing scissors with my friends, arming ourselves to be able to fight if someone came into the classroom. And I remember back then I told myself, I hope that no other seventh grader has to experience what I just experienced. What do you say to a seventh grader today who's getting alerts, run, hide and fight in their classrooms?
- [13:48]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
Oh, the volley. Kids, kids, kids.
- [13:51]
Senator Mark Kelly
Yeah. Gabby went down to Uvalde and met with some of those kids.
- [13:54]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
Some, that Marvin McConaughey to him with.
- [13:58]
Senator Mark Kelly
Matthew McConaughey, the actor from Texas. It's a thing he says all the time.
- [14:05]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
All right, all right, all right, back up.
- [14:08]
Senator Mark Kelly
She, she visited Uvalde with him. I think he was from the area. But she got to meet with, you know, some of these kids who survived and the parents who did not. I had those parents in this office. So some of them were in, sitting in that chair. And it's just, it's just devastating. So what do we, you know, what do we say to these? I, I, I, I, I don't think we have anything we could say at this point except, you know, I'm sorry that we have gotten here, that this country has failed you as a, whether you're a seventh grader in a lockdown or a kid in Uvalde or Sandy Hook Elementary School. This government has failed those people. Now, Gabby, making progress in the States especially, how much time do you spend.
- [15:08]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
Like 50, 80, 88, 50, 66, 60%.
- [15:14]
Senator Mark Kelly
Of the time on the road working on this, going to state capitals, meeting with legislators, meeting with parents to try to do something about it. But it is, it is A, you know, unfortunate situation that kids find themselves in. We have a granddaughter who's four. She's already been through a school lockdown.
- [15:39]
Interviewer
That is very scary. And you talk about accountability, talk about government failure. And I think a lot of Americans today are really frustrated. They're frustrated with government on a lot of levels, not just when it comes to gun violence, but just generally. They feel as though they're living in a country where they have a Congress that isn't taking enough action on a whole host of issues. What do you say to an American today who says, I don't trust Congress to do the job because I don't feel like Congress is doing the job?
- [16:07]
Senator Mark Kelly
Well, I get, especially now, why the American people think Congress has failed them and the government has failed. We have a president who's now focused on Venezuela and he's in charge in Venezuela, and we're going to somehow run Venezuela and is focused on other parts of the world. When you have you got people that can't afford, can't afford their rent, can't afford groceries, can't afford their groceries, can't afford health care. This president has taken health care away. And Republicans, by the way, in Congress have taken health care away from millions of Americans. So they have every right to be frustrated. Congress has to do a better job of holding this president accountable for the stuff he's doing and the stuff he's not doing and the things that the American people really care about. That's. He's not addressing those. Now after 2026, when there's an election, if we could change who's in charge in Congress, then we have the levers of power to hold the president accountable.
- [17:21]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
Oh, Virginia.
- [17:23]
Senator Mark Kelly
Positive news in Virginia. Also in, also in New Jersey.
- [17:30]
Interviewer
Right.
- [17:30]
Senator Mark Kelly
You know, in other, other elections. Yes, and other places around. So there's, there's some political momentum. And I know your viewers might be on both sides of the, the aisle, but, you know, for anybody out there who's a voter, look at the issues, look at what you care about, and then decide if the person you are, have elected or are thinking about voting for. Are they addressing us now?
- [17:54]
Interviewer
You talk about elections, you talk about 2026. I think a lot of people. There's been a lot of buzz around you, Senator, for 2028. I'm not going to ask you if you're running for president, because unless you want to announce that on my show, which I would love, I don't think you're going to do that today. My question is, have you at least thought about It. Yeah.
- [18:12]
Senator Mark Kelly
Yeah, of course. Yeah, I think it would. Well, first of all, I think every senator thinks about it at. At some point. I think it would be irresponsible not to think about it. But I. Let me also say that Gabby was a member of Congress. In our family, I never thought I'd be in the U.S. senate. And sometimes I think to myself, if I would have been the one who would have been injured, would Gabby have become an astronaut?
- [18:39]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
Yes. Yes.
- [18:42]
Senator Mark Kelly
Maybe.
- [18:43]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
Yes.
- [18:43]
Senator Mark Kelly
All right, we'll take your word for it. So I. I never really, you know, I didn't grow up thinking, someday I'd like to be in a son of two cops. Yeah, I was a son of two cops growing up in New Jersey. I wanted to be the first person to walk on planet Mars. And I failed. I mean, and now I'm independent. Yeah. So tight. That would be fun. Yeah. I do like this job, though, and the impact that. And Gabby taught me this right from being in the House, that you can make a big difference here, even when it's politicized and polarized, challenging. You can make a difference.
- [19:23]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
Solar panels, awesome.
- [19:26]
Senator Mark Kelly
That was one of Gabby's big issues. Yes. Is solar energy. Makes sense. You know, coming from Arizona. Yes.
- [19:34]
Interviewer
Makes a lot of sense.
- [19:35]
Senator Mark Kelly
We get a lot of sunshine, a lot of sun. Yeah. I love it.
- [19:40]
Interviewer
Before we finish off, I. I want to ask you, Congresswoman, what's something about the senator that the American people don't know? They should know.
- [19:48]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
Funny. Funny. Funny. Smart and funny.
- [19:52]
Aaron Parnas
Funny.
- [19:53]
Senator Mark Kelly
Thank you. That was one of the first. First things I noticed about Gabby was she laughed at my jokes. I thought you were going to say that I leave my socks on the floor. No.
- [20:02]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
Funny, Funny, Funny.
- [20:04]
Senator Mark Kelly
I love it.
- [20:05]
Interviewer
Senator, Congresswoman, thank you so much. Thank you. Pleasure.
- [20:08]
Senator Mark Kelly
Appreciate it.
- [20:09]
Interviewer
Thank you.
- [20:09]
Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
Thank you.
- [20:11]
Aaron Parnas
Hey, folks, Aaron Parnas here. Thank you so much for watching the Parnas Perspective. Please consider subscribing to support our work as we grow this independent news media entity into something that rivals mainstream every single day. Thanks so much, and I'll see you soon.