Speaker 1: All right, we are back and joining us.
Speaker 2: Now our second senator from the great state of Colorado,
Speaker 2: Senator Michael Bennett, has stopped by, and Senator, are you speaking?
Speaker 2: I asked John Hickenloop or your cohort if he was speaking,
Speaker 2: and he said, not this time.
Speaker 1: Have you ever had the opportunity to.
Speaker 3: Speak any And I'm not speaking at this one either.
Speaker 3: I'm sure they found better people, but well, they're not.
Speaker 2: Telling us, so I'm having to ask, and then they're
Speaker 2: not giving us the scoop until very late in the evening,
Speaker 2: same as the RNC, I might point out. So I
Speaker 2: want to ask you. You were the first Senator to
Speaker 2: say Joe Biden can't win.
Speaker 1: How difficult was that for you?
Speaker 2: And what went into that decision to publicly say what
Speaker 2: we were all thinking it was?
Speaker 3: It was difficult. It's not easy to go out there
Speaker 3: and on a limb like that. But my assessment was
Speaker 3: that there was no way he was going to win.
Speaker 3: My assessment was that the Democrats were going to lose
Speaker 3: the election in a landslide, that we were going to
Speaker 3: lose the Senate, that we were going to.
Speaker 4: Lose the House.
Speaker 3: And I feel really strongly about the direction of our country,
Speaker 3: and I think all of us that care about it,
Speaker 3: we might have different points of view about it and
Speaker 3: what direction it should go, but I believe this is
Speaker 3: a moral question, you know, an important moral question about
Speaker 3: what the future of our country looks like. And so
Speaker 3: I had said in a private meeting that I believed
Speaker 3: that the president was going to lose, and it leaked
Speaker 3: and CNN invited me to come on, and they said,
Speaker 3: you know, we would say what you said in private,
Speaker 3: and I said, of course I will, because I wasn't,
Speaker 3: you know, trying to keep it a secret. I thought
Speaker 3: it was important to say. And I mostly met the
Speaker 3: test of my three daughters, which is, you know, their
Speaker 3: view of the world is if you see something that's true,
Speaker 3: you ought to say it's true, even if it's hard.
Speaker 3: And the first day I felt, you know, it was rough,
Speaker 3: and after that I felt like I'd satisfied their test.
Speaker 2: Well, it certainly a sentence snowball barreling down the hill.
Speaker 2: I mean, did you expect that? I mean, because I'm
Speaker 2: sure you weren't trying to depose or dethrone the sitting president,
Speaker 2: But I mean, did you imagine that a few weeks
Speaker 2: later we would be talking about Canada, Kamala.
Speaker 3: Harris, I didn't know what was going to happen. What
Speaker 3: I was asking for at that moment was for President
Speaker 3: Biden to evaluate the question, because he was the one
Speaker 3: to make the decision. Nobody else could make the decision.
Speaker 3: And when we had meetings as we did, you know,
Speaker 3: with the Senate Democratic Caucus and the President's folks, and
Speaker 3: I got up to speak, one of the things I
Speaker 3: said to them was, we're asking the president to do
Speaker 3: something no other president has ever done. We are asking
Speaker 3: you his guys to have a conversation with him that
Speaker 3: nobody will ever No one in our in this room
Speaker 3: is ever going to have the kind of conversation we're
Speaker 3: asking you to have with him.
Speaker 4: That's how serious this is.
Speaker 3: And I think much to President Biden's credit, he decided
Speaker 3: that the country he was going to put the country's
Speaker 3: interests ahead of his political ambitions and his interests.
Speaker 4: That's very rare. I mean, going back.
Speaker 3: To Roman times, it's hard to find elected leaders that
Speaker 3: have been willing to do with Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: The th thank.
Speaker 3: Eides of March is what you're talking about at the
Speaker 3: Julius Caesar's end, and thank God that's not the case,
Speaker 3: but it has been really interesting. If you asked, could
Speaker 3: I imagine we would be here, I guess I didn't
Speaker 3: know what was going to happen. And I think what
Speaker 3: has happened is there is a in this hall, in
Speaker 3: the Democratic Convention, we have coalesced around this ticket where
Speaker 3: there is no division, there.
Speaker 4: Is tremendous excitement.
Speaker 3: And what I believe is that the American people broadly
Speaker 3: want to turn the page on this politics of division.
Speaker 3: I think they want to turn the page on the
Speaker 3: Biden administration. I think they want to turn the page
Speaker 3: even more so on Donald Trump. I don't think they
Speaker 3: want Donald Trump to come back. And I think that
Speaker 3: augus very well for Donald Trump being defeated in the
Speaker 3: fall and Democrats winning the presidency.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you.
Speaker 2: A question about Vice President Harris and her relationship to
Speaker 2: the Biden campaign. What's been striking to me over the
Speaker 2: last few nights about speeches is, in some ways it
Speaker 2: feels like the speeches have been running against the current
Speaker 2: administration a little bit. I mean, there's been a lot
Speaker 2: of talk about how people are struggling right now, and
Speaker 2: these are all things that have happened under the watch
Speaker 2: of the current president. Is that is that a difficult
Speaker 2: sort of needle to thread? I mean, how do you
Speaker 2: say I can make things better if you're already part
Speaker 2: of the adminison.
Speaker 3: I'm so glad you asked me that question, because when
Speaker 3: I look at this, you hear a lot of talk
Speaker 3: in you know, democratic circles about how Donald Trump is
Speaker 3: a threat to our democracy.
Speaker 4: And I actually believe that. I believe that is true.
Speaker 3: But I think he's I think of him much more
Speaker 3: as a symptom of our problems than the cause of
Speaker 3: our problems. I think the cause of our problems are
Speaker 3: that if you look at the American economy today, the
Speaker 3: bottom fifty percent of Americans have less wealth today than
Speaker 3: they had when Ronald Reagan was president. The bottom fifty
Speaker 3: percent of Americans own two percent of America's wealth and
Speaker 3: the top ten percent of Americans own seventy five percent
Speaker 3: of americans wealth. That's happened during democratic administrations and Republican administrations.
Speaker 4: It's happened over forty years.
Speaker 3: And you want to see a threat to democracy, it's
Speaker 3: when people lose a sense of economic opportunity for themselves
Speaker 3: and for their families. Think about I mean this, and
Speaker 3: this is not a Bolshevik statement about.
Speaker 1: Now you're going to say a different B word right there.
Speaker 1: I was like, Wow, no, crazy, I.
Speaker 3: Will say, but I feel that I do feel that
Speaker 3: way about it because when you lose a sense of
Speaker 3: upward mobility, when you lose a sense of opportunity, When
Speaker 3: when when the economy grows and the only folks that
Speaker 3: benefit are the wealthiest people, which is what's been happening
Speaker 3: for the last forty years in America. That is when
Speaker 3: you lose a democracy because somebody shows up and says,
Speaker 3: I alone can fix it. You don't need a democracy.
Speaker 3: You know, you should put a strong man in office
Speaker 3: and expect the world to be corrupt and bankrupt. And
Speaker 3: if you don't, you're kind of a sucker. That's not
Speaker 3: the way I see the world. I want us to
Speaker 3: build a capitalist economy again in America that when it grows, it.
Speaker 4: Grows for everybody where.
Speaker 3: The greatest invention besides democracy, this country has ever been
Speaker 3: responsible for, I mean.
Speaker 4: Modern democracy.
Speaker 3: Besides that is our middle class, and our middle class
Speaker 3: has been shattered. So that's not something that happened during
Speaker 3: the Biden administration. That's something that has happened since Ronald
Speaker 3: Reagan began his trickle down experiment. That has happened since
Speaker 3: the nineteen eighties when we decided to outsource everything to
Speaker 3: Southeast Asia to China. That has happened since we made
Speaker 3: higher education impossible for people to afford. It's happened since
Speaker 3: kids graduating with a high school diploma no longer could
Speaker 3: go and earn a living wage and could only earn
Speaker 3: the minimum wage in our economy. It's happened since families
Speaker 3: could not afford childcare so they can stay at work.
Speaker 3: And it happens when you've got a healthcare system that's
Speaker 3: costing our country twice as much as any other industrialized
Speaker 3: country in the world, and yet we alone are paying
Speaker 3: the highest prices in the world for drugs. We alone
Speaker 3: have no ready access to mental health care. We have
Speaker 3: a mental health epidemic in Colorado right now among young
Speaker 3: people in.
Speaker 4: Rural Colorado and urban Colorado.
Speaker 3: We do not have a healthcare system that can help
Speaker 3: parents find help for their kids. So I'm not saying nothing.
Speaker 3: I'm saying is saying that Kamala Harris is the solution
Speaker 3: to all of that, or that the Democratic Party is
Speaker 3: the solution to all that I think actually the test
Speaker 3: is for our generation. The question is are we willing
Speaker 3: to be the first generation of Americans to leave less
Speaker 3: opportunity not more to our kids and our grandkids. That's
Speaker 3: the test in front of America right now, whether you
Speaker 3: are a Democrat or a Republican or an unaffiliated voter.
Speaker 3: And my view is there is no way Donald Trump
Speaker 3: is going to help us answer that question positively.
Speaker 1: I'm not a Trump fan, but I am a Trump voter.
Speaker 1: I'm just letting you know.
Speaker 2: But the reason is is that and you talked about
Speaker 2: our differences and how to solve or maybe that was
Speaker 2: Hickling Lipert that said, let's talk about differences and solving
Speaker 2: the problem. A lot of the things that you just
Speaker 2: laid out. I absolutely agree with that these are horrible problems.
Speaker 2: But when I look at it, I wonder how the
Speaker 2: government regulatory structure that has been sort of abused and
Speaker 2: used by larger corporations in order to create higher barriers
Speaker 2: to entry for other people, those kind of things. So,
Speaker 2: as a member of the Senate, what can you do
Speaker 2: to sort of create a more free and open economy
Speaker 2: to allow those people to flourish at whatever life.
Speaker 4: I think it's a very fair question.
Speaker 3: First of all, I think that you know, there is
Speaker 3: no country in the world that's better situated than the
Speaker 3: US on energy. It's one of the great and what
Speaker 3: we should also nowithstanding that litany of stuff I just said,
Speaker 3: we are still the richest country in the world by far,
Speaker 3: and we have unbelievable energy resources, both in terms of
Speaker 3: fossil fuels and non fossil fuels. Nobody who's better positioned
Speaker 3: than we to transition to the to the to the
Speaker 3: carbon free economy that we have that we have to
Speaker 3: get to if we can figure out how to get
Speaker 3: out of our own way. And part of that is
Speaker 3: the regulatory question that you're talking about. Another example I'll
Speaker 3: give you. Look, I used to be a school superintendent,
Speaker 3: as you know, so this issue of mental health for
Speaker 3: our kids is a big deal for me and Susan
Speaker 3: and I have raised three daughters. In this social media environment,
Speaker 3: we have allowed those guys Mark Zuckerberg and the rest
Speaker 3: of these guys to basically strip mine our kids privacy,
Speaker 3: the strip mine our kids data, to strip mine our
Speaker 3: economic interest just because they can, and just because they're big. Nobody.
Speaker 3: There has been no pushback from anybody in.
Speaker 4: Washington, d C.
Speaker 3: And my view is we should put we need to
Speaker 3: have a negotiation with those guys. Just like Teddy Roosevelt,
Speaker 3: who by the way, was a Republican, as you know,
Speaker 3: just like Teddy Roosevelt said, we should set up an
Speaker 3: agency to regulate these guys that are drilling in places
Speaker 3: where we didn't necessarily want them to drill. We need
Speaker 3: to have somebody in Washington. I think it should be
Speaker 3: a new agency that's taking on the economic concentration that
Speaker 3: these social media and big tech and now AI companies represent. Otherwise,
Speaker 3: they're just going to dominate our media, They're going to
Speaker 3: dominate our politics, They're going to dominate our our civil
Speaker 3: discourse in ways that that's the stuff we should be
Speaker 3: worried about in terms of the future of our democracy.
Speaker 2: I don't disagree that that is a problem. I do
Speaker 2: disagree that we need a new agency for anything. That's
Speaker 2: no more agencies, no grade.
Speaker 4: I'll trade you pick some you don't want anymore.
Speaker 1: The irs, you can have that. Let's get rid of
Speaker 1: the irs.
Speaker 4: Some that have outlived their usefulness.
Speaker 3: I don't agree that that's one, but pick some that
Speaker 3: have outlived their usefulness because God knows.
Speaker 4: Once you create.
Speaker 3: Something there, it never goes away. But the reality is,
Speaker 3: if you think Congress is going to be able to
Speaker 3: regulate these guys effectively, they don't even understand that the technology,
Speaker 3: much less the speed at which it's changing. It'd be
Speaker 3: like asking Congress to regulate our far, you know, to
Speaker 3: approve drugs in the.
Speaker 4: United States, and we have no idea how to do
Speaker 4: that either.
Speaker 2: Senator Michael Bennett, I know you have another appointment. I
Speaker 2: really appreciate you stopping buch talking. I appreciate it's nice
Speaker 2: to see you you as well. I hope we'll do
Speaker 2: this again on the radio. I'm just letting you know
Speaker 2: you said that on the radio.
Speaker 4: People heard you.
Speaker 1: There you go, Thank you in secrets that Senator Michael
Speaker 1: Bennett will be back right after that.