[chuckles]

Uh, I, I, you know, love him.

[chuckles] He's a great senator, but, uh, no. A- and I got to tell you, like I've ...

I, I, I agree that there are a lot of things that need to be fixed and improved, and, and I'm gonna agree with most, not all, but most of the fixes that you guys proposed today.

But I am gonna push back really hard at this notion that Congress is broken as an institution.

In fact, I think our constant repetition of phrases that begin with name of institution and end with is broken are one reason we have Donald Trump as president because, you know, we are inadvertently spreading the idea that our institutions are somehow hopelessly corrupt, ruined, broken.

And if people believe that, and when they hear liberals and Democrats saying that in addition to conservatives, well, you know, the, the -- I think the rational political answer is not to vote for the nice guys who read Brennan Center reports.

Um, given everything that is happening in the primaries and in the Democratic Party, do you think that the Democratic Party looks to be just as factional and difficult to manage as the Republican Party?

Mm.

Uh, um, when people, businesses register under this law, uh, their, their company ownership information, it doesn't go on a public list.

It, it, it's very, very, uh, private.

It's held by the Treasury Department, and it's there for law enforcement agencies, including state law enforcement agencies, to consult with if they're investigating a crime.

So, you know, let's say you're a prosecutor in New York City.

You're pursuing some financial crime investigation.

You run into a shell company, some mysterious company that's involved in the dirty business.

Mm-hmm

Talk to us about it, Tom.

So thank you, great to be on with you.

And as you explained, beneficial ownership, it's just a fancy word for who is the real owner of a company.

Um, and amazingly, you know, we, we used to think that, um, people would use, you know, crooks around the world would use Swiss bank accounts to hide their tracks, or, or they'd go to some little, um, island state in the Caribbean, like the Cayman Islands or the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.

These, these were the places that crooks would go to, um, to hide their tracks.

But, um, we, we discovered in the last decade that actually the United States is a key node in the international money laundering network because a lot of our states, p- particularly but not only Delaware, allowed anybody in the world to register a company, to establish a company under an anonymous name.

It's called a shell company.

... outside of that group? I'm try- I'm trying to think objectively.

But why would that be? Why, why does the narrow margin indicate that?

Because I, I, I think, I think there was a little bit of overconfidence.

Um, I don't know about him personally, but certainly people around him, progressive leaders around the country flying in, thinking they understood Michigan.

And, uh, and actually I think at, at his heart he, he is, he's absolutely not a DSA radical socialist.

He's not one of these crazy people like some of the people who did win in New York City recently.

He's somebody who believes in Medicare for All, who's running on affordability, who's been actually quite disciplined about that message.

I think the narrow victory tells him he has to focus like a laser beam on the issues that are gonna unite Michiganders, particularly affordability.

Mm

Tom?

So, um, well, it was nice to see some of those documents.

I haven't seen them since I was in Congress, and I was briefed on them by the Trump administration, by John Ratcliffe, who was in charge of all of this in 2020.

Um, uh, now the ominous part, the, the president is suggesting that somehow he, th- some of this information was withheld from him when he was president in 2020.

Is he gonna fire John Ratcliffe, who was in charge of his daily briefing? He's suggesting, he's implying that China was part of some nefarious conspiracy to try to rig the election to interfere.

Is he gonna sanction China? Is he gonna sanction his friend Xi Jinping, who he's kissing up to every single day? Of course not.

He's not gonna do any of those things because none of this is actually serious.

[laughs]

Mm-hmm.

That means he has never in his life seen a classified document.

He has never in his life been briefed on a classified matter by anyone in, in the US government.

He has no idea how they do their job.

Sorry, I'm thinking about the NBA finals tonight and my beloved Knicks.

It would be as if my team hired a basketball coach who has never stepped on a basketball court.

Right

... are going to say.

Mm-hmm.

So he's gonna end the war without a deal.

Iran knows perfectly well, we can all see it, that he doesn't wanna go back to the war because he does not believe that, that Iran is a problem worth sending thousands of Americans to die for or ruining the American economy over.

Iran knows that, so they have the negotiating leverage.

The best we are going to get, if we get anything, is something that resembles the hated Obama nuclear deal that is not going to permanently or, or for, or, or completely dismantle the nuclear program-

And we can't have another nucle- uh, nu- nuclear power like North Korea with a weapon and a willingness to use it.

I, I think it's actually taken away our power to mow the lawn, um, because the president is not going to want to restart even a small conflict that provokes Iran to shut down the straits or attack shipping in the Persian Gulf because he's seen what that does to our economy.

We had military leverage over Iran before this because, you know, the I- the ayatollah didn't wanna die.

"I can support the security of a country without supporting the specific policies of any one political party or leader, and if Israelis can take part in rigorous debate and protests of their own government's policies, Americans supportive of Israel can do the same." Do you think that is the right message?

I think that's right.

It is the right message.

It is what most Americans believe.

It is what most Jewish Americans, including many Jewish Americans with deep personal connections to Israel, believe.

Um, and to argue against that, I think, is to argue something that's nonsensical.

The, the idea that, that whenever there's a controversy, um, over what, for example, the Israeli government is doing right now in the West Bank, which many Israelis believe is encouraging settler terrorism, that whenever there's a controversy over something like that, the United States simply needs to defer to the position of the Israeli government.

Mm-hmm

Can you actually sell that message convincingly?

I hope that's the midterm message, because they're gonna lose on that message.

Um, Americans are paying for this right now in so many different ways.

Higher gas prices, threats to our homeland.

The higher gas prices, by the way, there's a champagne party in the Kremlin right now because Putin is benefit- benefiting from this.

Our allies in Asia and Europe are, are feeling the cost.

Um, we're depleting our munitions, munitions that we need for the defense of our allies against Russia and China.

You think it's gonna be a short-term conflict?

What do you have to say about the legality of this, the constitutionality of it, the importance of the Fed, and the effect on markets and on the affordability question?

So I think actually, I would say that it would be Trump acting as if he Trump is Maduro.

because that's like what Maduro would have done in Venezuela, and the impact on the economy would be similar to Maduro's impact on the Venezuelan economy.

It would destroy confidence in the American economy and lead to higher inflation, lead to less investment, foreign investment in the United States, fewer people buying treasury bonds, like our debt would become actually unsustainable.

It...

The economic crisis would be so terrible that I think it would be hard for Americans to imagine that right now.

Now, I don't think, look, it's both evil and stupid, like a lot of things that Trump is doing.

experience experience that a lot of people don't have in other countries dealing with attacks on democracy authoritarian regimes even killings of protesters as um tell us about your experience with this

Why do you believe this visit is the wrong move for the US?

I- I would never argue that we shouldn't talk to MBS.

He's the leader of Saudi Arabia.

We, we have to engage.

But, you know, l- look at the emerging deal a- around this visit.

Um, it, it looks like MBS, the, the Saudi Crown Prince will be getting F-35s, a defense deal, access to the most advanced American microchips, um, in addition to the, the white-washing of, of his human rights record, basically his entire wishlist.

And he's getting those things from Trump the president.

So, so Tom, from your perspective, are these the kinds of deliverables, defense cooperation, tech transfer, nuclear cooperation that the US should be offering to Saudi Arabia right now?

Right, no more lawbreaking, period. (laughs)Basically, what's happening is Trump and Musk and Republicans are saying, "Let's just pass this thing that emasculates you, Congress." (laughs) And Republicans are saying, "Absolutely. Democrats should say no to that." I wanna talk about the Senate in a second. Uh, meanwhile, Hakeem Jeffries is whipping Democrats in the House to vote against the CR. That's good to see. I think that suggests the Democratic opposition is waking up. I wanna ask you about this. You talk to a lot of House Democrats, you know how they think, you were one once. Uh, is there a perception among them now, a growing sense, that Trump is in some political trouble giving- given what we've seen on so many fronts?

Yes, I think so, and I think they should project confidence and, and strength at every turn, uh, especially because Trump is running into trouble. But mostly because I think Americans will reward leaders who, who do that. Um, who lead with actions, who don't just complain, uh, they don't just stand there and complain, they do something. And the Democrats have an opportunity this week to, to do that. And, you know, I also wanna back up a, a, a little bit here to, to emphasize just how existential this debate is. We've got a lot of cases in court challenging various things that the Trump administration has done, and, and Trump is losing more than he's winning. And hopefully he'll respect the court decisions, especially if they come from the Supreme Court, and maybe he will. But maybe he won't. (laughs) There are a lot of people on the right who are daring Trump right now to defy the courts. And so we have to ask ourselves this question, like, "What happens if he does that?" Well, there's no constitutional police. The chief justice cannot send federal marshals to the White House to compel Trump to obey the Supreme Court. He is immune to impeachment because the Republicans will not impeach him even if he shoots a man on Fifth Avenue. He can't be prosecuted while he's president and he probably thinks he can't be prosecuted after he's president, too. So, what's left? The only practical check that's left in that worst case scenario is the congressional power of the purse. It's the Congress can deny the administration funding or compel it to spend money on what the Congress directs it to spend it on. And for Democrats to give that up, if they do, I'm not saying they will, but if they do, it, it's giving up potentially the last check against a tyrannical government in the United States. So, that's what this is about, and why I, I think they have to be willing to take some risks this week to make sure that Con- Congress' prerogative under the Constitution is respected.

... just said, right?

Yes. So the, the CR will include all of that money for USAID. So you... If you vote for it, you're voting for a lie, because the administration is dismantling USAID and, and a bunch of other parts of the government as well. It... M- This is... I, I read that tweet and my heart, uh, that small part of my heart dedicated to Marco Rubio sunk even further. Uh, he was one of the greatest champions of American global leadership when he was in the Senate. When I was in the State Department, he would scold me for not doing more of the kind of work that he is now responsible for destroying. He has been a big champion, uh, in particular of the United States, standing with and assisting folks in dictatorships from Venezuela, to Iran, to Russia, to China, helping them stand up to their dictatorial governments, helping journalists publish, uh, in, in those closed societies, helping people expose corruption in those societies. And part of his legacy will be the dismantlement of everything he stood for when he was in the US Senate. It's absolutely not in the US national interest. It is very explicitly in the Russian and Chinese national interest, and the Russian government has been gleefully, um, praising and, and expressing gratitude to the Trump administration, particularly for taking down USAID, because they see it as a threat. A- And I'm not one for conspiracy theories or for exaggerated arguments, but I, I just... I cannot think of a reason for doing this other than that there are people in this administration who are either drunk on Russian propaganda or consciously trying to serve the interests of our greatest adversaries.