 there once again with another edition of Pacious on the News. And I have to say my favorite interviewee because he knows how to do this. I'll interview you now. All right. Senator Angus King. He's a pro at this. He's a pro at many things. I think he's actually a pro at being a United States senator because I've been in and around politics, my whole adult life. I spent many, many years in Washington. I was a congressional liaison for the Peace Corps when it first started spending many of my days on Capitol Hill. So I observed the House and the Senate and there's some people that look like senators, behave like senators, think like senators, and Angus King is one of them. So I'm very pleased that you could be here, Angus. Well, you know, we like to be topical here and a lot's going on and we're going to get into some of the gridlock in Congress. And I know that you read and you read history and you might be able to put some of this gridlock in context. It's not the first time in American history and much like, frankly, what led up to the Civil War in the 1850s and the way members of Congress were at each other's throats practically. Well, I'm going to, I want to talk about that. You want to get into that now or you want to do. Let's get into it now. Well, the first thing is we don't hate each other. I mean, people think that. You know, you read about the toxic Congress. It's very partisan institutionally, you know, Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer and that. But personally, I mean, the best evidence of this is to watch a Senate vote where the senators come in and sort of wander around and they vote, they walk by, it takes 15 or 20 minutes or actually it usually takes longer. Harold, if Saint Peter comes to you and says, you have 10 minutes to live, you should say, could it please be during a 10 minute Senate vote because you have at least an hour? But anyway, what you'll see if you watch C-Span 2 is a lot of chit chatting on the floor. It looks like the dump on Saturday morning. And it's almost always bipartisan. It's, you know, it's, you know, Dick Durbin talking to John Thune or somebody else, John Barrasso talking to Ossoff of Georgia. I mean, it's, and so the idea that we that we're at each other's throats that it's bitter. I don't think this is, I don't think that so much the senators, that's the most exclusive club in America. Well, I think the house, it may be more, more personal. I think so. But the other piece is that conflict sells newspapers or cable TV shows. And the truth is we, the last Congress was one of the most productive in the last 10 or 20 years. There were seven major bills passed, five of them were bipartisan. Two of them were Democrats only, but five of them were strongly bipartisan. The PACT Act, the infrastructure bill, a lot of these major bills that, that, you know, people don't think that we can do anything together. And the answer is we can. But some issues are still really hard. Immigration, for example, it's hard to get agreement on that. There's so much politics. Why is it hard on immigration? Well, you mean you had your senator from Florida, what's his name? Rubio. Rubio was all about let's have reform of the system and let's fix it. Well, we got very close. In fact, in, in 13, the first year I was there, we passed a major comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate with 67 votes. It went to the house and John Boehner, the speaker at the time, wouldn't bring it up. If he'd have brought it up, it would have passed and we'd be way beyond a lot of the fights that we're having now. So that was a, that was a real missed opportunity. To me, and I'm talking with some of my colleagues quietly about it, Republican and Democratic colleagues, there's an obvious deal. And the deal is border security and something to, to give the dreamers a pathway to citizenship and workforce. Harold, the biggest issue after inflation in Maine and everywhere else right now is workforce. Every group that comes to my office from Maine, whether it, I've had the loggers, the, the medical association, the nurses association, teachers, principals, school superintendents, there are shortages of people everywhere. And it's the major thing that's holding our economy back right now. So one of the possible fixes is immigration because this country's been built, was built on legal immigration. And so that's, I think there's an opportunity. The question is whether the majority in the house wants a solution or the issue. You see what I mean? I do see what you mean. Do they want to get, do they really want to fix it? Or do they want a solution? Well, that's the question or do they just want an issue that they can hammer the Democrats over the head with? Of course they don't want a solution. I say you can't say that. But I, of course, the Republicans in the house do not want a solution to the problem. They want to use it as a sledgehammer. But anyway, that's, I, you know, it's one that just mystifies me. And why don't they want a solution in the house? Those Republicans, because their voters, their constituents are, you know, they're part of what's always been the case. Human beings are afraid of strangers. They're suspicious historically true. You go back to the 1840s, there was a whole political party called the know nothings. And their whole platform was no Catholics and no foreigners. Exactly. And the thing in human nature is unchanged. In 1924, my, my father came in 1914, along with grandpa, my grandparents. In 1924, 10 years later, all immigration of Greeks was essentially shut down the quota system based on the number of Greeks that had come to this country in 1850. Well, the country, the country was pretty much totally open until the like the 1880s. And the first immigration law had an interesting title, the Chinese exclusion law. So this is part of our history. On the other hand, immigrants are also who we are. I mean, I, I speak to large groups, and I say, Okay, how many of you here are either an immigrant or a descendant of immigrant? And of course, everybody said, And then their hands go up. I mean, that's who we all are. And we've got to fix this because we're, we're, we're aging. And if we don't have new people coming in, and they can, you know, they don't, they don't have to be from foreign countries, they can be from Ohio. I mean, we can bring in people in domain from wherever. But, but immigration is part of our history. Here's one of the problems, Harold, and I haven't seen anybody writing about this. This is an observation I've made. We now have these heavily gerrymandered congressional districts, they're either all Democrat or all Republican, and our states have become heavily red or heavily blue, main as they say, purple, it's, you know, we can vote for people of either party. But here's the problem. In, in many states and congressional districts today, the primary is the election. In other words, if you, if you're in Oklahoma, and you win the Republican primary, you're going to be the senator. The Democrat has no chance. That's just the way that state is set up, or, or Alabama. And if you're in a district in Brooklyn, if you're the demo, you get a Democratic thing, you're going to, you're going to win. So here's what's happening. You can lose that primary, not because of your position on immigration or abortion or gun control, but because you're viewed as a person who's willing to listen to the other side and try to solve the problem. You can lose, in other words, if you're seen as someone who's willing to compromise. If you think about that, that's really dangerous because our system is, you can't solve tough problems without compromise. But do you see what I mean? What's the worst thing you can call a Republican today? A rhino. Republican in name only. What that really means is a Republican who's willing to talk to Democrats and try to solve the problem. And, and think for themselves. Yeah, but, but it, but I think this is one of the most dangerous things, because it, it, it goes a long way toward explaining the, the, the, the paralyzed nature of our politics. I've had good friends in the Senate who we worked together for three or four years and then it comes time for their reelection and they stopped talking. They're, they're almost afraid to be seen with somebody from the other side. And that's, that's just not a democracy, a, you know, a Democratic Republic can't function that way if the people are afraid to talk to people who have differing views and try to find solutions. The voters demand it. Their voters demand it. Their voters want them to behave that way. And that's how they get ahead in politics behaving. Well, one, one problem is that primaries tend, the voters in primaries tend to be the activists on either side. 100% of the Democrats or 100% of the Republicans don't turn out for a, for a primary election. Here in Maine, for example, let's take up just a typical example, you can have, take a Republican primary that about 30% of the people of Maine are Republicans. Okay. So you start with 30% of the people of Maine. In a typical primary, Democrat or Republican, about 25, 20% will show up. So 20% of 30% to 6%. The person that wins that primary wins with 35%, three or four candidates running, 30% of 6%, 2%. 2% of the people of Maine are selecting the party candidates for US Senate or governor or whatever. And the pressure is toward, if you're a Democrat, toward the left and or toward the right, if you're a Republican. And that's why we have these, you know, people with their more extreme and afraid to compromise. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's not an easy place to work. It is not an easy place to work. You know, I was the Democratic chairman at one time and I was totally against open primaries. Totally. As I said, no, these primaries had to build party loyalty. I was totally wrong. Totally wrong. Open primaries are very important. You've got to force politicians to worry about other views, not just the mainstream party view. Right. And so there are things that can be done, but I don't, it's, you know, it's all about power. Well, people talk about the Congress being polarized, but the country's polarized. Absolutely. I mean, the, the Congress reflects the population to a large extent. And that goes, we can spend a lot of time, that goes in my view to the fact that we've got, we're living in different factual universes. In my experience in public policy, going back to being governor and even before, if you can get everyone around the table and have a common understanding of the facts, it's fairly easy to get to a solution. The solution is usually sort of self-evident. But if the people around the table have totally different views of the facts, it's practically impossible to get to a solution. Do you think of, of immigration as MS-13 and gang, gangs and rapists? Or do you think of immigration as, as Harold's family coming over here in 1914 and building a successful career in the United States? If you have these radically different views of what, what the facts are, it's very hard to solve problems. And we, people are getting their news from places they, they agree with. And we have politicians, leaders, political leaders who stoke that anger, who actually live off of it, stoking it. And so if you don't... Well then the problem is what happens when they, when it gets beyond them and they can't, can't stop it. Donald Trump was booed in Alabama when he talked about being vaccinated. Yes. By his people. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It, it, it gets out of hand. Of course, I think he likes to get out of hand. He, he, he, he, it's a source of his power and influence. But Donald Trump, it seems to me, is, owns the Republican Party. Now, I do think so. They're afraid of him. They know that if they anger, if they say anything bad about Trump, his voters, who he owns, are going to turn on these votes. Well the truest thing he ever said was back in 2016 when he said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn't cost him any votes. Absolutely. He knows that. And it is true. And look what's happening now. I mean, they're... His polls are going to go up because of this indictment. His polls will go up because of the indictment. You know, I don't understand this, why this is a party of, of law and order, supposedly, wasn't my day, the law and order party. Now it's... Let's, let's investigate the DA. Yeah, let's investigate the DA. It's totally changed. Let's, let's eliminate the FBI. Let's do all of these crazy things. Nobody's going to do any of those things, but they talk about it. And Bill Clinton was about to be indicted when he was president, finishing his presidency. The special counsel had told people he was going to seek an indictment. And so, Clinton made a deal. He admitted he lied. He made a public statement. He said, you know, I admit I lied. He was fined. He was disbarred. Humiliating thing for a lawyer. He was disbarred. They made the deal in order not to be indicted. This guy says, I don't make any deal not to be indicted. This helps me. Sure. The public, so many people in the public will admire me for being... John Gotti was admired by many people. The murderer. John Gotti. People like that. They like celebrity fighters. Fighters and criminals. Well, part of the, part of the issue these days is the so-called weaponization of the government. And I'm not sure how that's really defined. And it should work both ways. I mean, if the House Judiciary Committee investigating the DA in New York, that's the kind of weaponization of the Congress. But it's a, you know, it is where we are. And it's it's, it's, the problem is that we're devaluing our institutions. People don't, I don't think we realize how much we take for granted. How much we assume trust. For example, elections. You go to the town office on election night and the town clerk says, you know, 800 for, for Paceus and 750 for Bellevue. And you say that's the, okay, that's the vote. But you trust it. You see what I mean? And if that trust is eroded, which is what really worries me, then it all breaks down. And, and, you know, I didn't agree with much that Donald Trump did. But I thought the worst thing was the undermining of confidence in the election process itself. But you have nearly half your colleagues that don't agree with you, that don't worry about it apparently. You know, maybe you, maybe you see something you talk to them personally. Maybe they do privately worry about it. Do they? I don't want to talk about what my colleagues say privately, but I would say that there's a more skeptic, skepticism of Donald Trump privately than publicly. Yeah. Publicly. Because they're responsive to their voters. Of course. The disaster for them politically, if they were to be very critical of him. It is amazing that this guy who's a con artist, you know, is a sale, snake oil salesman, is probably in my lifetime by far the most powerful Republican ever. And he wasn't, he wasn't even a Republican before he decided this is the root. Well, I'm not a psychologist. I mean, he obviously tapped into something that I think he's, he tapped into a frustration in the in the society of change, fast change, changes in the world and he just, he channeled it. And I don't think it was so much, you could have a long discussion about whether he was doing this consciously or whether it was just him. I think a lot of it was just him. Instinct. His instinct going back, you know, long before politics. And I think he just, he hit a current that's there, that's probably always been there. But he's, he's enabled it and has that, that kind of, that kind of power. I don't think he has majority support in the country, by any means. Thankfully. So, you know, the question will be who, who the Democrat who runs against him and I think it's pretty certain you'll get the Republican nomination. I know Mayor Curley was elected Mayor of Boston while in jail. Right. So I don't think the indictment will affect his ability to get the Republican nomination. But then, you know, then Joe, Joe Biden will, looks like is going to run, but we don't know that's almost two years away. Yeah. No, I agree that Trump is shooing for the Republican nomination. I mean, because his opponents are afraid to disagree with them. Yeah, they're trying to do this dance of having some level of disagreement, but still in poor Ron DeSantis. I agree. Let's talk a little bit about prescription drugs. The Senate and the House passed this Inflation Reduction Act and tell us what it did with respect to prescription drugs. Well, for the first time, it allowed Medicare to negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies for lower drug prices. Basically, it's a volume discount. And the funny thing about this is that the VA and Medicaid, which is healthcare for lower income people, have had this power forever. From, you know, I don't know how long, but 30, 40, 50 years it's been assumed. The reason Medicare, which buys, as you can imagine, drugs by the gazillions, because it represents so many million seniors, the reason they can't is that when the Medicare drug benefit was passed under George W. Bush, I think it was 2005, the Congress put a specific provision in that new benefit, saying Medicare can't negotiate drug prices. Period. So that's been the, if that's the President, you can take it. But that's been the law for, you know, 20 years, 15 years. Finally, this past year, we changed it. And by the way, it's sort of a lesson about how politics works. I think it was the very first bill I introduced when I came into the Senate with J. Rockefeller in 2013 was for Medicare negotiation of drug prices. And it, you know, and I'm not taking credit for it. A lot of other people worked on it over the years, but it finally happened 10 years later. The stars align. You know how the Congress works. You never can tell. You work on something for years and years, nothing happens. Then all of a sudden, things come into place. So basically, it allows Medicare to negotiate a volume discount on the drugs that they buy. And it will lower prices for the government. It'll save the government, the Medicare program billions of dollars and ultimately drive down prices for everybody else. So here's what I think I understand, but I want everybody to think about this. So none of us know people, particularly older people like me, who don't want lower prescription drug prices. And so back when this Medicare drug act passed and they made sure that you could not negotiate a lower price, probably one of too many Americans that said, I'm for that. I don't want to have that. Right. Heaven forbid we should have lower drug prices. Heaven forbid, yeah. So it pleased only one group of people, drug manufacturers. So it had to be their lobbyists were pleased, but the public wasn't pleased. So the lobbyists have some influence. Well, we have a system, Harold, that there's too much money in politics. There's too much money and it comes from all over the place. I have an idea for election finance reform that totally unconstitutional. So I'm going to think I'm going to try to put it in the form of a constitutional amendment. I want to get your reaction. The rule would be no one can contribute to your election campaign except people, people who are eligible to vote for you. In other words, if you're running for the U.S. Senate in Maine, only Maine people can contribute in a limited amount of three or $4,000, whatever it is. But then no outside money, no, you know, billionaires from Arizona coming into the main Senate race. The amount of money that's in these races today, Susan Collins and Sarah Gideon, it was like $130 million. I mean, you and I remember campaigns where it was a million or two was huge, huge money. Bill Hathaway's campaign in 1972 was $212,000 and it was the most expensive Senate campaign in Maine history. But the idea, to me, the idea, we ought to get back to the idea that your supporters, your finances should come from the people you're representing. And it would utterly change the landscape because right now there's just so much. Well, you're right, it'd have to be a constitutional amendment. Oh, yeah. When George Mitchell first got to the Senate, he called me up and he said, I want to put together a committee to study campaign finance reform, and I want you to chair it. So we did, we got all these people on the committee, and we came up some very good suggestions, but of course we ran up against one thing, free speech. Free speech. Yeah, the Supreme Court has defined money as speech. Money as speech, yep. Yeah. So that's why it has to be a constitutional amendment. It has to be a constitutional amendment. Back to one. By the way, I threw this idea out with some of my colleagues at dinner the other night. They all loved it. I don't know if they'll vote for it, but the idea of not having to spend so much time making fundraising phone calls and drug going all over the country. Miss McConnell won't be for that. No, I don't think Mitchell will. No, he will not be for that. So, same thing with the Inflation Reduction Act. It passed. You can negotiate lower prices for drugs. It will help us all. But then immediately, a bunch of Republican senators got together and put in a bill to reverse that, which I don't understand. I don't understand what the possible argument is. And they won't tell you, I'm sure, what their argument is, except it's clear. It's the lobbyist wanted them to do it. Well, one of my problems with drug prices is that we're paying the highest in the world for the same drugs. Yeah. And I remember I was approached, and this was when I was governor. I can't remember where I was, but a lobbyist or a representative on the pharmaceutical company said, why don't you like us? And I said, I feel like the only guy on the airplane paying full fare. Right. And so, you can get the same drug in Canada, the same drug for half of what it costs here. And they always say, well, we need the money for research. Yeah, that's their argument. My problem with that is that they spend more money on those TV ads we see. Every night on the news. And we're one of only, I think, two or three countries in the world that allows those ads. Yeah. I have fun. When I watch one of those ads, I write down the name of the drug, and then I go online and find out what it costs. And usually it's like, you know, $10,000 a pill or something. Yeah. And again, why are we advertising to you and me when it's only doctors that these are prescription drugs? But do you know the answer to your question? I suppose it's because people will go to their doctor and say, I want this new thing that I saw on TV. Yeah. But the other answer is that there is no good reason why we have to pay the highest drug prices, double other countries. There is no reason except the lobbyists have the influence on Congress, and the public doesn't put fire to the feet of the politicians. The public, you know, it's self-government. We can have an influence. The public can have an influence. I haven't seen any polling, but I suspect that the negotiation for drug and the Inflation Reduction Act probably has 80% approval rating. Yes. But when those Republican senators put that bill in, there was no pushback. They didn't take any risk. Well, the other thing that I can't understand, frankly, and I don't want to sound too partisan on this, but they urge to take health insurance away from people. I don't get. I mean, to me, there's a not trivial statistical relationship between health insurance and living longer. And what is the reason? Well, you and I remember the message of Medicare and it was a big deal at the time. Socialized medicine, remember? It was socialized medicine and the end of the country and very gold water and everything. And yet it's a godsend. I was there. I was there at the signing. I worked for Lynda Johnson. I was there in Independence, Missouri at Harry Truman's library when Johnson signed the bill. No question about it. Socialized medicine is going to bring the country down, finish the country. So flash forward 50 years and we're having the same fight about the Affordable Care Act, which is nothing more than helping people buy health insurance. But I don't understand how the people get convinced that these guys who are against expanding health insurance, I don't understand how they get away with it. One of the interesting things is if you look at a map, you'll see that the highest percentage of people who are getting the Affordable Care Act are often in the red states. So how do they get away from being against it? They're apologists. I don't understand why. It can only please a group of people who don't want to expand it. You're assuming that people vote and make decisions on policy and often it's different than that. It's deeply mysterious and emotional and it's how you feel about somebody. The famous thing about George W. Bush is that somebody you want to have a beer with. So those kinds of things are very much a part of this. I've run in a bunch of elections and when I went to college the major was we called it government because I remember the head of the department said we have a government department because there's no science in politics. There's no such thing as political science. But like I say, it's mysterious. That's a good point. I think that guy made a good point. There's no science in it. It's emotion. That may not be entirely bad. I don't think we should say because people are making decisions that are distinct of what they see for character and honesty and that's not a bad thing. We don't want our representatives to be just mechanical of the poll says this so therefore they're going to do that. Why do we need the representative then? You can do it with a switch. Edmund Burke's letter to the electors of Bristol about am I just a representative or am I supposed to use my best judgment and knowledge on your behalf and Muskie used to say I can't remember what the issue was but somebody said that's not polling very well or something and Muskie said the polls can change from day to day. I'm supposed to do what I think is right and that's what I'm trying to do. But if you're in the United States Senate you have all of that information that I don't have ordinarily. I mean I read a lot but the fact is you have more information and that's valuable. And that's my job. And that's your job. So yeah there's a balance. You don't want to be arrogant and say I know best and I don't have to listen to my constituents. You absolutely have to listen to your constituents. I like coming back here believe me they tell me what they think in the airport or in Millinocket or Skowhegan where I was a couple of weeks ago so you absolutely have to listen but I think your constituents also expect you to as you say weigh the information that you have and do what you think is best for Maine and for the country. You alluded to something earlier in this program about facts and truth and how everything can crumble in this country very very quickly if we pay no attention to facts we don't care about what's true. It's very very dangerous. Well here's one of the problems there's a phenomenon called confirmation bias and confirmation bias is the human tendency to seek out sources of information that you already agree with. You read the columnist first that you like and you don't read the one that you disagree with. Everybody does that and so what we have the best example is Fox News and MSNBC you're conservative you watch Fox News and you get a steady diet of conservative information. If you're liberal you watch MSNBC Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell you're getting your own biases confirmed. Obama once said if he watched Fox News for a week he'd hate himself. But the problem is that that and then you compound that with the internet and the algorithm on the internet where if you click on a story a negative story about Hillary Clinton one for the next month you're going to get a steady diet of you'll never guess what Hillary did next. It happens to me on online when I go shopping for a product Wayfair has decided I need a wall sconce. I must have looked at wall sconces but I'm getting all this stuff here's the thing Harold I don't mind it when they use the algorithms to sell me things I don't like it when they use them to sell me ideas and that's what's going on. I get it all the time because I do this program and I'm kind of curious guy and so I'm always I watch Fox News not steadily but I watch it I want to know what they're saying and I even look at the New York Post all the time I want to see what they're saying. But that means you see how this algorithm thing works. I get emails all the time but that's one of the things that divides us when you and I were kids in America got their facts from one guy who? Walter Cronkite and now the facts are coming from all over and they're coming from sources they're tending to push us apart but here there's another step and you didn't ask me what keeps me up at night these days artificial intelligence the power of this new technology is unbelievable I would urge your viewers to go to chat chat G-B-T the word chat G-B-T 4 number 4 G-B-T 4 and it says try it out and you can try it out and you write a sentence I could write in in fact I did it over the weekend I said write me a poem about the Penobscot River in the style of Robert W. and within 15 seconds a 20 stands a poem came out that would have taken you or I a month to write I mean it was unbelievable that the Penobscot River and the Falls and the beauty and the trees and all in the style of Robert W. I mean the power of this is unbelievable the dark side of it is that it can be used to create false films called a deep fake where a professor I saw in eight minutes put in about 30 seconds of his voice a picture of himself and then had it write a narrative about how he kicked dogs or something and it created a film of him moving his eyes his mouth moved his own voice saying stuff he never said I mean it's terrifying it's terrifying and yesterday in the New York Times there's a big long interview with the inventor with the guy who started the company he was very worried about it very very worried he said it's like developing the atomic bomb something useful could come of it but it could be a disaster for the human race just what he said I've been playing with it over the weekend and it's shocking it's pretty cool it's fun to write a poem or an essay but where it goes I sent a copy to two of my friends down in the senate and said this is something we gotta talk about and nobody knows and we're in a free country and those kinds of things but this is an incredibly powerful technology and again democracy is based on information but what if the information is made up what if it's not information and in the old days you could here I'm sounding in the old days but in the old days if somebody put a negative tv add up about you you could put on your own or if it was really gross you could ask the tv station to take it down if it was just a lie but if one of these fake videos goes up how do you it goes online you can't catch up with it you don't know who's seen it where it's gone so this is this is a new frontier that is something that we really gotta think about I should say to the audience when I was talking the other day to senator king's communications director he said oh I didn't I'm sorry I didn't call you right back I had to take a call from senator king he is really worried about artificial intelligence and here I am so while we're on facts you're a member of probably the most interesting committee in the senate the senate intelligence committee you know a lot and you'd have to kill me if you told me it was funny because I get interviewed and I have to consciously think where did I learn this did I learn it from reading in the newspaper or did I learn it in a classified hearing but one of the things about facts that what we hear a lot is the word hoax and his followers do too all the time this is a hoax that's a hoax so your bipartisan committee did a review and an investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 collection and Trump said and I think it's a narrative that kind of took with the public Trump said it's a hoax they're Russia hoax now look you're a member of the senate intelligence committee that wrote this a republican led committee that wrote this report is it a hoax that they interfered in the 2016 election? absolutely not no it's a couple things about our committee it's one of the more nonpartisan committees in the congress in fact if you watch one of our hearings most of our hearings are classified but we have open hearings periodically if you watch the hearing you couldn't tell who was which party because that's just the nature of our committee and yet it's ideologically diverse I mean we have John Cornyn and Tom Cotton and Diane Feinstein and Ron Wyden it's not like it's all you know middle people it's pretty diverse but during the Russian investigation the committee was led by Richard Burr a republican staunch republican from North Carolina who came in he came as part of the Newt Gingrich Revolution in the house but yeah the simplest answer to that is that on August 2nd 2016 Paul Manafort who was then Donald Trump's campaign manager had dinner in New York with a guy named Konstantin Klemnik who was an agent of Russian intelligence and gave him Trump's internal polling data campaign manager gave a Russian intelligence agent the internal polling data now you know you know about polling data for a candidate it tells you where you're vulnerable where you're not which states you're strong in where the battleground states are and what are the issues that will move the needle that's right and I mean that's the simplest answer to me and there's no doubt about that and the republicans on your committee agreed with that yes our report was pretty much unanimous all the way down the line and I have it on my desk the report for the the final part of the study was whether there was a connection between the Trump campaign and Russia and the volume is this thick I mean it was a deeply researched we went to the CIA building in Langley Virginia and looked at cables I mean live intelligence about what was going on during that period and there's no question that the first there's no question that the Russians were trying to interfere in the campaign I mean they've been doing things like this for a long time but this was really systematic and then the question was whether there were connections to the to the Trump campaign and there were I mean the one I just outlined so the word hoax just doesn't fit doesn't fit so there is impending a major crisis in the congress the debt ceiling crisis and so you're going to have to be in the middle of that dealing with it and the way I look at it and you can correct me if I'm wrong whether or not to approve an increase in the debt ceiling is not about spending whether we should spend more it's whether we should pay our debts that's I'm so I'm glad that's where you started because there's a lot of confusion the debt ceiling sounds like something that you can't yeah to increase spending you want to increase spending to hit it in reality it's allowing the government to pay the bills that it's already incurred it's as if you it's exactly like going out to dinner 10 times in a month on your credit card and then deciding not to pay the credit card bill that's what it is and that's really an important point and it's an archaic law it goes back to World War I nobody really knows why we have it it doesn't but if it doesn't get increased what happens we're in default we can't pay our bills and if we can't pay our bills the economic disaster could be worldwide because the dollar is the unit of value around the world the dollar would decline the immediate effect on American taxpayers is that it would significantly increase the price of borrowing which would result in us having to pay more to borrow money now is there a debt problem? absolutely should we be working on it in some kind of thoughtful way? yes but this isn't this blunt instrument is not the way to do it of course the problem is it was increased three times during the Trump years when Republicans controlled the congress without much of a peep all of a sudden it's World War III it's only when it's a democratic president the debt really matters except when it doesn't yeah so many of the key supporters for the speaker when he was having trouble getting elected speaker made this a point we do not want to approve right we're going to use the debt ceiling as a weapon use the debt ceiling as a weapon either we bring down the country and our economy in America or do what we say the problem is I don't understand what to do what we say is they don't say what they want well it's varied what worries me Harold is that some of these people well I divide the congress now into legislators and performers and some of these people I think wouldn't care if we brought the country down I don't think they you know I don't think they're too worried about that or they think that will prove their point or something like that Tim Cain my friend from Virginia he said look we can negotiate about budgets spending budgets that's what we do but not not the debt ceiling we've got a budget coming out I don't know if we're going to be able to get a budget or not whatever on a budget but the debt ceiling is an artificial rule it may be unconstitutional there's an interesting question because the 14th amendment says the public debt of the United States shall never be questioned and there's an argument that makes the debt ceiling which is a statute it's not in the constitution anywhere it's just a statute that was passed in 1921 I don't know the date but anyway so that constitutional provision I don't think it's ever been tested if I were the president now I would have somebody bring an action and see whether whether it's a constitutional provision but the problem goes deeper than that because those people like Marjorie Taylor agreeing and totally I'll say it you're involved in a ticket totally irresponsible dangerous people who have a lot of influence with the Speaker of the House a lot of influence yeah he's going to have a hard time making the deal although remember the margin in the House is only five votes right so you could have you could have a dozen Republicans vote with the Democrats and do it in a more rational and responsible way but what's interesting is they say we want to reduce spending and they absolutely refused to say how they talked about two things foreign aid let's get rid of foreign aid that's one percent of the budget that's one percent of the budget get rid of foreign aid and let's not be sending money to support the resistance to the Russian invasion that's what they want folks those are the two things what else have you heard you hear these Republicans talk about anything else well it's interesting there was a poll the other day that said how many people should we reduce the debt and the answer was you know 85% yes and then they started asking giving options and it was 85% no on all the options it's hard and they've already taken off the table social security Medicare which is good and defense and so that leaves only domestic spending and that's not enough to fill the gap they've and then you start saying okay well does that mean the VA no no we don't want to cut the VA how about you know health insurance for seniors well no that's so isn't that a reason why we need at least a few statesmen in Washington statesmen people you know what a statesman is a dead politician come on musky's a statesman you know I know what you're saying well I'm saying that you know when I read about Madison and all the negotiations they had to go through to come up with a constitution that people would vote for and get adopted by the states and these people were well Madison's a good example he was educated moral philosophy you read the Federalist Papers and all these references to Roman history and early British history and Greek history and they the other thing though I've thought for years they were geniuses when it came to understanding human nature they understood there's a wonderful I think it's the 51st Federalist where Madison says if and you have to excuse it it was gender only at the time but he said if men were angels no government would be necessary absolutely and if angels were to govern men no checks and balances would be necessary but in a government of men over men there must be constraints and that's what our whole constitution is Angus I'm 87 years old you don't look a day over 86 I haven't there's a lot of things I haven't learned but I think and that's why I like reading about Madison and the other founders they were keyed into human nature and they understood just what you said I'm glad you gave us those quotes because it was all about human nature we would not need but for human nature we would not need government by the way they hated political parties the Federalist Papers and Washington's Farewell Address are all about factions and they could have been written yesterday could have been written yesterday because while things have changed dramatically in human existence just think of medical science how that's it watch the NBA and basketball and see the difference between how they've evolved now to what basketball was 50 years ago everything's evolved but not human nature and it's all about fear and it makes us do a rational thing but it's also about the human tendency toward the concentration of power the old saying from Lord Acton power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely that's what they understood I give a talk about the constitution look with me a vegematic remember vegematics I carry I have a thing and I have a cucumber and I said this is George III here's all the power right here in one person the constitution you put the cucumber in the vegematic and it comes out in about 20 pieces it is a vegematic of power it divides it between the house the senate the president the courts vetoes two thirds all of these elaborate steps to make it hard for the majority to run roughshod over the minority because that very limited powers and federalism the states have a role and that is based upon their understanding that you have to be careful with people getting too much power in our society and I think we have to be pretty worried about the presidency the presidency has evolved into a much stronger they used to call it the central magistrate and the presidencies the old term was the imperial presidency for example we just took a big step last week we repealed the authorization for the iraq war because congress ought to be responsible for whether this country goes to war not the president the constitution is very clear on that congress shall have the power to declare war you know when the last time congress declared war 1942 and why? not because the president grabbed the power but congress gave it up so we took a big step last week tim cane led it bipartisan to repeal the authorization for iraq so no future administration can use that as an excuse for sending troops anywhere and everywhere the graduate said that because I think people need to understand that the division of power the separation of powers is critical to the functioning of this country even though it's clumsy and slow and difficult they wanted it to be that way I worked for a president who was imbued with a lot of power and liked power and wanted the presidency to have much more power than he then had and interesting about him Lyndon Johnson his Achilles heel was the vietnam war he couldn't find a way out he couldn't figure out how to get out of it and the people that brought Lyndon Johnson down were senators from his own party who criticized him who had hearings Fulbright church said this isn't they brought him down and the people who ultimately brought Richard Nixon down were senators from his own party correct I have a question for you if Richard Nixon had had Fox News do you think he would have resigned? no I don't think so either he had Fox News he wouldn't have resigned but Bill Barr I think Bill Barr is a very intelligent man I met with him and he is very intelligent but he is a smart guy and he believes that presidency should have more power he believes in imperial power George Washington 8 years as the first president one of the great things he did was to make sure he was not an imperial figure he was offered to be the king and he turned it down I think it was George III that said if he leaves after 8 years he will be the greatest man in history to take away and establish the precedent and no it's a real concern in a modern complex society you need to be able to do things but every time you give away the power more power to the executive that's a real concern I think you will find this interesting I'm reading Meacham's new book about Lincoln during the Civil War Lincoln almost lost the election of 1864 everybody thought he was going to lose Sherman taking Atlanta probably is the only reason he won but the troops were all for him but in those days there was no such thing as absentee voting and so some states that were pro-lincoln passed absentee voting laws to allow the soldiers to vote other states didn't and those states didn't want Lincoln to win do you see what I mean the idea of states manipulating the electorate is not new I was fascinated you have to come back again so we can talk about electoral reform and elections we could spend a whole hour you and I on just that and states rights and the Civil War what you just talked about is the best example of states rights we do it this way we states rights say we can treat people this way well we have to wrap it up but believe it or not we're just getting started exactly we could do this for a long time and our readers would go to sleep our viewers rather thank you very much for coming here today as always I enjoy it because it's unique to have a politician sit here with no scripted questions no scripted answers and have a discussion I thank you for that