Michael Bennet And Jason Crow Rail Against The Trump Administration During Colorado Town Hall

Forbes Breaking News

2 days ago

On Tuesday, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) held a town hall in Centennial, Colorado.

Transcript

00:00:00Littleton Public Schools, Joan Anderson, Joan, thank you.

00:00:08Former City Council, Candice Moon, Candice, thank you.

00:00:16And City Councilor, Andrea Peters, Andrea.

00:00:22Did I miss anybody? I'm sure I did.

00:00:26Alright, well, thank you all for joining.

00:00:28This is what we're going to do. I'm going to turn it over to Senator Bennett to talk about

00:00:32how we're going to go about answering the questions.

00:00:35So make sure we make it random and we spread it out in the crowd.

00:00:38But I'm just very honored to be here with Michael.

00:00:42Since I first came into Congress, he was already there and took me under his wing

00:00:47and really taught me the ropes about legislating, policy work.

00:00:51I am an unabashed policy wonk. I love policy.

00:00:56I love to take the deep dive and there's nobody who does that better than Michael Bennett

00:01:00who always shames me when we're on the weekly commuter flight every Monday morning to Washington

00:01:05because I'm sitting here watching Netflix and he has like a 600 page book on some policy issue.

00:01:11And I'm like, Michael, why do you make me look so bad all the time?

00:01:14But truly an honor to have Michael Bennett who always helps Colorado punch way above its weight.

00:01:20Michael, over to you.

00:01:27Can you hear me now?

00:01:32You can.

00:01:34Thank you for being here.

00:01:36And I am deeply honored to be here with Jason.

00:01:39I've taken a page out of Jason's book where he talks about the town halls that he's been doing

00:01:44and he's been relentless about it.

00:01:46Actually, there is no senator in the United States who has had more town halls than I have.

00:01:53Because for the same reason that Jason was talking about, I think I was in Pueblo on Saturday

00:02:00and we had a great town hall down there.

00:02:02Now we have this one in Centennial.

00:02:05Tomorrow, actually, we're having a different one at GU.

00:02:09It's sort of an anti-civics night that I'm having with my old friend.

00:02:17My old friend, John Tester, who used to be the senator from Montana

00:02:23and who we lost in this last cycle, tragically.

00:02:27But I want to, first of all, thank Jason for his extraordinary leadership.

00:02:33And I know you all know that.

00:02:35He's an incredible member of Congress.

00:02:39And some of you may be thinking, well, the bar isn't very high back there.

00:02:43And that's actually true.

00:02:46But if we had a bunch of people more like Jason,

00:02:51who understood that his job really has nothing to do with him,

00:02:57but it's about serving the people of this district, serving the people of Colorado,

00:03:01serving the country, something that I know he learned in his service in our military overseas,

00:03:11lessons that have carried with him throughout his political career

00:03:16and into this auditorium tonight,

00:03:19I think it's safe to say the House of Representatives would have a 90% approval rating

00:03:25instead of the 9% approval rating that they have right now.

00:03:29And it's been a great privilege for me to have the chance to work with him.

00:03:33And I want to thank all of you for being here as well.

00:03:36This is an extraordinary time in our country's history.

00:03:40It's a profoundly reactionary period in American history.

00:03:45And I have no doubt that if we do what we are required to do,

00:03:49when we consider what our responsibilities are to this democracy,

00:03:56that we will not just get through this,

00:03:58but that there will be something on the other side of this

00:04:03that is very important to the future of the kids, for example,

00:04:08who are graduating this weekend or did graduate this weekend from Aperol High School.

00:04:13That is who is in my mind when I am on the floor of the Senate.

00:04:18I see the superintendent. Is it the superintendent? No.

00:04:21Board of Education member here.

00:04:23That is who is in my mind as somebody who once was superintendent of a public school,

00:04:28worked in a school district where most of the kids were kids of color,

00:04:31most of the kids were kids living in poverty whose parents were working two and three jobs.

00:04:36The question for me in the end of all of this nightmare that we're in today is,

00:04:40how do we build a better future for them?

00:04:42How do we build a better future for the kids who graduate from Arapaho?

00:04:46How do we build a better future for the kids that are graduating all over rural Colorado

00:04:51as we're standing here today?

00:04:53We've got to keep that question in our sights.

00:04:56We are going to have a very scientific approach.

00:05:00We have that Easter bunny head over there,

00:05:03and that has traveled with me to all of my town halls.

00:05:07I'm grateful that Jason's allowed.

00:05:09It's Michael's idea, by the way.

00:05:11It's true. He's not lying.

00:05:13But we don't screen questions in these town halls.

00:05:18That's also an unusual part of my town halls.

00:05:21I want you to feel like you're able to ask what you're able to ask,

00:05:24or that's more important, we're answering what you really ask.

00:05:27We're going to call two tickets, two numbers at a time,

00:05:30and then we'll have microphones come to you,

00:05:34and then you'll ask your question, and we'll try to do the best we can to answer it.

00:05:38We're going to end on time because you guys have responsibilities,

00:05:43Jason has responsibilities,

00:05:45and I have the honor of introducing my friend Cory Booker at something in Denver today

00:05:52that I need to get to himself.

00:05:54John, take it away.

00:05:56Awesome. I'm going to read the first two,

00:05:58and when I do that, if you could just raise your hand, that would be great.

00:06:02First number is going to be the last four is going to be 7976,

00:06:097976,

00:06:14and 7850,

00:06:187850.

00:06:24Raise your hand.

00:06:25You have a winner.

00:06:39I have tons of questions, but I'll limit it to one,

00:06:43and my biggest fear is how are you going to stop his big, beautiful, ugly bill?

00:06:51Well, I mean, it is a terrible bill.

00:07:00This is actually, I was looking back over my six years of Congress,

00:07:04which feels like a lot longer than that, actually,

00:07:08and I was thinking about all the things I voted on,

00:07:11some of which I'm extremely proud of,

00:07:13things like the Safer Community Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, great things.

00:07:19But I was thinking about the other things that I voted against,

00:07:22and I can say that this bill is actually the worst bill that I have ever seen,

00:07:28an omnibus global bill, in my entire time in Congress.

00:07:32And let me tell you why, just by the numbers,

00:07:36and then I'm going to tell you about my perspective on stopping it.

00:07:39It's going to add $3.2 trillion to the deficit.

00:07:44It's not paid for.

00:07:46You have over $1 trillion in cuts in Medicaid.

00:07:50So you're not just cutting Medicaid for 13 million Americans,

00:07:54including 175,000 people in my district that I represent,

00:07:58but you're taking $1 trillion out of the health care system.

00:08:01Just think about what's going to happen.

00:08:03The hospitals, the clinics, the medical providers,

00:08:05whether you're on Medicaid or not,

00:08:07think about what that's going to do to the entire health care system in America,

00:08:11taking $1.1 trillion out of that system.

00:08:14It's going to cut $300 billion in SNAP cuts.

00:08:17So this is hungry children in our community,

00:08:20kids that go to school here at this school and other schools,

00:08:25and get this, to give tax cuts largely for the top 1%.

00:08:32So it's going to give, for 1.2 million Americans,

00:08:39it's going to give more tax cuts to the top 1.2 million

00:08:46than to the bottom 127 million.

00:08:49If you're in the bottom 20%,

00:08:52you're going to see an average of a $90 tax cut

00:08:56before offsets for Medicaid and SNAP losses,

00:08:59which are going to put people deep in a hole.

00:09:02So this is an awful bill, and it's going to have terrible consequences.

00:09:07All Democrats in the House united against this bill and voted against it.

00:09:12And that's actually happened several times this cycle,

00:09:19where we've united against a bill, which is fairly uncommon, actually.

00:09:24So this is a point of pride for us.

00:09:27I'm going to continue to fight, I'm going to continue to communicate,

00:09:30because one of our biggest responsibilities right now

00:09:33is to communicate to as many people as possible,

00:09:36including people in areas that are represented by folks

00:09:40who are not doing town halls,

00:09:42people who are hiding from their constituents because they've supported this.

00:09:46And we have an obligation to reach out to those folks

00:09:49and to put pressure on those folks who are trying to hide from their responsibility.

00:09:53So that's my primary responsibility.

00:09:56And if it comes back, if it comes back to the House,

00:10:01of course I will resist it again.

00:10:03So now over to the Senate.

00:10:06So the functional Senate, where did you go?

00:10:10Sorry.

00:10:12Thanks for the question.

00:10:14It's on the minds of lots and lots of people.

00:10:16First of all, I'm not going to repeat anything Jason said.

00:10:19I'll agree with everything that he said.

00:10:21Where are we living as a country on these economic questions?

00:10:25That's really important to understand,

00:10:27because Trump is the cause of many, many problems.

00:10:30I blame him for many, many things.

00:10:32But I think fundamentally he's also a symptom of a very important problem in America,

00:10:38which is the lack of economic mobility that we have in this country,

00:10:43the profound income inequality we have in this country.

00:10:46I could give you a bunch of statistics, but let me just give you this one.

00:10:52You know, today as we're here, the bottom,

00:10:55the top 1% of Americans own 50% of the value of the stock market.

00:11:01The bottom 50% of Americans own 1% of the value of the stock market.

00:11:05That's not how it looked 20 years ago.

00:11:08You know, for the American people there's a real feeling that no matter how hard they work,

00:11:12their kids aren't going to do better than they are,

00:11:15and there's a lot of evidence that that's the case.

00:11:1850% of 30-year-olds today are going to make less income than their parents,

00:11:23and if you're a young man in your 20s in America today,

00:11:26you're making less on average than you did in the 1970s.

00:11:30What is Donald Trump's answer to that?

00:11:32To give big tax breaks to the richest people

00:11:35and to cut the most significant safety net we have in America.

00:11:38I was in Grand Junction recently with a Republican congressman that serves in Colorado,

00:11:46and we were with all of the health care providers from all over the western slope of Colorado.

00:11:52These are red, red areas of Colorado where Medicaid truly is keeping the lights on in the hospitals.

00:12:02They're truly keeping the lights on in the clinics there,

00:12:05and the people there were saying, we already don't have OB services, for example.

00:12:10We already have to send people to Denver because we've had to close,

00:12:14not emergency rooms, but primary care or mental health care.

00:12:19There's all kinds of stuff.

00:12:21Donald Trump does the cuts to Medicaid.

00:12:23We're going to do everything we can to fight this in the Senate,

00:12:27and there are disagreements among Republicans right now about what they want to do.

00:12:32I think ultimately Donald Trump could care less about whether or not he preserves Medicaid.

00:12:38I think he's going to actually try to cut Medicaid,

00:12:41and I think it is very likely that he will be able to ram it through.

00:12:44Jason said he wanted to be honest. I want to be honest.

00:12:47There are 53 votes probably, but we have to fight and try and see if we can shame them into not doing it.

00:12:53There are a whole bunch of really important climate provisions that are being reversed

00:12:58that are really important to Colorado, that are really important to rural Colorado,

00:13:03our wind and solar industries that matter to Republican senators,

00:13:07or at least used to before Donald Trump made them all walk out on the very first day they were there

00:13:13and vote for Pete Hegseth to be the Secretary of Defense.

00:13:16He did that for a reason, and the reason was to show everybody in America who's the boss,

00:13:23who's in charge, what he can actually get them to do.

00:13:26But I think that the debate that we're going to have is really important in and of itself

00:13:31because it will demonstrate to the American people that Trump is actually making matters worse now that he's there.

00:13:38Not a big surprise, but that is what he's doing.

00:13:42And then the last point I want to make is this.

00:13:47We're in a fight to save Medicaid when what we need to be in is a fight to have universal health care in this country.

00:13:58And universal mental health care in this country, and we can't lose sight of that.

00:14:06I think we're going to go with our next two.

00:14:11Our next two are 7963.

00:14:16That's 7963.

00:14:20And 7864.

00:14:257864.

00:14:30If you hear your number called, if you could just raise your hand until somebody sees you.

00:14:37Hi.

00:14:41Number one, I just want to say that I personally worked really hard on this last election,

00:14:50and I feel that we were kind of betrayed by the Democrats not being honest with our original choice of Biden.

00:15:04The other thing I want to ask of you is we lost.

00:15:11And instead of completely criticizing everything that the Republicans have done,

00:15:21have the Democrats learned anything?

00:15:25Is there anything that the Democrats are going to change?

00:15:32Because we all know in this room we just can't go in the direction we're going right now.

00:15:38It's absolutely critical to democracy.

00:15:43That's all.

00:15:48Yeah, so I will answer this as a representative.

00:15:52This is an official event, so I can't go into campaigns and I won't talk about campaigns.

00:15:57But I can tell you that there are two people on this stage right now that actually led the charge

00:16:03to address that issue when we saw warning signs last year.

00:16:08That spoke out and tried to say things were not moving in the right direction.

00:16:14And tried to right the ship.

00:16:17Because my obligation is to all of you.

00:16:20It's to the Constitution, it's to the country, it's not to any one person.

00:16:25Any one elected official.

00:16:27And I take that obligation extremely seriously and I always will.

00:16:31So that's one.

00:16:33The other is, I'll just speak to policy.

00:16:36Not the politics and I'm not going to talk campaigns.

00:16:39But policy wise, there are areas where we have to do better.

00:16:44There just are.

00:16:46And we can't, I grew up in a working class family.

00:16:49I started working construction to help pay my way through college.

00:16:53I've been employed since I was 15.

00:16:55Worked fast food.

00:16:57And what I can tell you is, if we want to be the party of the working class,

00:17:03which is why I'm a Democrat.

00:17:05Because I don't want government to solve my problems for me.

00:17:09I don't want the answers to be given to me.

00:17:12What I want is a fair shake.

00:17:14I want a level playing field.

00:17:16An ability to work hard and to achieve something.

00:17:18And I don't want the game to be rigged.

00:17:20That's why I'm a Democrat.

00:17:22I just want things to be fair.

00:17:24It's that simple for me.

00:17:26But in so many places around the country, places where I grew up,

00:17:31that is not the case.

00:17:34The American dream is out of reach.

00:17:36The American dream, the ability to buy a home,

00:17:39to send your kids to college,

00:17:41for your kids' and grandkids' life to be better than your own,

00:17:44is actually dead for so many Americans.

00:17:49And that anger and that desperation is real.

00:17:54We have to pay attention to it.

00:17:56And in so many places around the country,

00:17:58in large cities in particular,

00:18:01working Americans are being forced out because they can't afford to live.

00:18:05You can't afford to buy a home.

00:18:07You can't afford transportation.

00:18:09And we have to be honest that we haven't done enough in a lot of ways.

00:18:12We haven't leaned in hard enough on affordable housing,

00:18:15on real mass transit and transportation costs,

00:18:18on really breaking through on the issue of equitable education.

00:18:22We have to break through on universal health care,

00:18:25of which Michael has been a leader.

00:18:27We have to lean in and do more and be more aggressive about it.

00:18:30Absolutely.

00:18:31And that is a lesson that we all should take to heart.

00:18:35And I'm always somebody that says,

00:18:38you know, you're not always going to agree with me.

00:18:41There are, I'm sure, issues that most of you disagree with me on,

00:18:46on one thing, on something that comes up.

00:18:50And you're going to know where I stand.

00:18:52I'm going to be honest with you and answer questions,

00:18:55and I'm going to keep an open mind,

00:18:57and I'm going to try to lead together.

00:19:00This idea of servant leadership, of which I talk so much about,

00:19:03is this notion that there is no one woman or man or leader that has all the answers.

00:19:09That's what Donald Trump tries to get you to think.

00:19:12That's just not going to work anymore.

00:19:14It's 2025.

00:19:15The challenges we face as a country and community are too complicated,

00:19:18too deep-rooted for any one person to have all the answers and to know all of it.

00:19:23That's why we have to collaboratively address it and go on that journey together.

00:19:29That is the solution, and that's where I think I am

00:19:32and the people that have ascribed to my leadership philosophy,

00:19:36whether they be Democrats or Republicans, are also at.

00:19:39I want to, I'm trying to find, thank you.

00:19:43Thank you for that question, by the way.

00:19:46In all the town halls that I've done so far, nobody has asked the question.

00:19:52I want to thank Jason for his leadership, which was extraordinary in that moment

00:19:58and somewhat rare, unique, really.

00:20:02I want to paint a little bit of a picture of where I was, too.

00:20:05I spent three days before the debate on the eastern plains of Colorado

00:20:10in the deepest red parts of Colorado,

00:20:13having conversations, among other things, about the Farm Bill,

00:20:16the effect of social media on the mental health of kids in communities all over the state.

00:20:22These are places where no matter what I do, I'll never get 20 or 30 percent,

00:20:26more than 20 or 30 percent of the vote because of the partisan nature of our political system,

00:20:31but where I think it's important to be.

00:20:33It's like it's important to be right here.

00:20:35I was there not to talk about politics, but to listen.

00:20:38I was listening to the concerns that they have about how hard it is to find young people,

00:20:44for example, to do the jobs that Jason was talking about when he was growing up.

00:20:49Then I came home, and I was on the phone.

00:20:53Susan and I were sitting in our living room, and I was on the phone.

00:20:57She and I were on the phone with our three daughters,

00:21:00who shockingly are now 25, 24, and 20 years old.

00:21:06They were watching the debate with us, but they were watching it from home.

00:21:10They're like, yeah, this is crazy.

00:21:14Then I spent three days on the western slope of Colorado in much more blue territory.

00:21:21People were saying, you know, Michael, you have to go back and say something.

00:21:26I saw this in my mom. I saw this in my dad.

00:21:30The following Tuesday I was sitting in the Democratic caucus in the Senate,

00:21:36and when it came time for me to talk, I said,

00:21:41you know, if we don't change the top of the ticket,

00:21:45the Democrats are going to lose in a landslide in this election.

00:21:49The consequence of that is that if we lose this election to President Trump,

00:21:57we will be the first generation in American history

00:22:01to leave less opportunity, not more, to the people coming after us.

00:22:05There's a lot of talk these days about threats to our democracy.

00:22:09That is the fundamental threat to our democracy,

00:22:12that lack of economic opportunity that Jason is talking about and is so focused on.

00:22:19It's that that we need to address.

00:22:22To be honest, this isn't political either, but let me just say,

00:22:26it's not Trump's fault that he won the election.

00:22:29And your question about how the Democratic Party lost twice to somebody who took away,

00:22:38for example, the first civil right that we've lost since Reconstruction,

00:22:42a woman's right to choose.

00:22:45I would have thought that that would have disqualified him out of 330 million Americans,

00:22:50because nobody else has done that.

00:22:53And yet we weren't able to win because I think we were not able to create a convincing focus

00:23:01on our desire to strengthen the middle class in this country,

00:23:05to re-energize our middle class, and to make sure people have real opportunity.

00:23:10Jason talked about our education system.

00:23:13What was our proposal on that?

00:23:16Free college?

00:23:18You know, in Colorado, people are a lot more interested in knowing

00:23:22that when their kids graduate from high school, they can earn a living wage,

00:23:26not the minimum wage.

00:23:28That they have the ability to be able to do what Jason did, graduating from high school.

00:23:33And we don't do that.

00:23:35We can't do that as a state or a country.

00:23:38We can't do what any other industrialized country can do

00:23:41with the kids that are graduating from high school.

00:23:44There isn't a country in the industrialized world

00:23:47where people are fighting to have mental health care for their kids,

00:23:50except for the United States of America.

00:23:53The good news is that the list is not, you know,

00:23:56there is a long list of stuff that we could be fighting for

00:24:01that would, I think, put the American people in a position of picking something other than chaos,

00:24:07which is what we have picked,

00:24:09because people understandably are so angry about an economy

00:24:13that's not supporting themselves and their families.

00:24:16I didn't vote for Trump.

00:24:18I thought he'd be a terrible president.

00:24:20He's been far worse than I ever thought he would be.

00:24:22He really has.

00:24:24I mean, I had the lowest expectations you could possibly have,

00:24:27and he has exceeded them, if you could do that.

00:24:30He has. He has.

00:24:32But if we don't get our act together,

00:24:38it's not about Trump,

00:24:41it's about how do we drive a stake through Trumpism.

00:24:44That's what we need to do as a nation.

00:24:47And we can.

00:24:51I think he gave me a little bit of a segue there

00:24:54in terms of stake in Trumpism.

00:24:56But one of the things that's difficult just as a citizen

00:24:59is to keep track of the plethora of events.

00:25:03You open the newspaper and there's something else.

00:25:06You go, oh, my goodness, I never thought that would happen.

00:25:08And whether it's an economic policy,

00:25:10whether it's a medical policy,

00:25:12whether it's how we're treating immigrants in our country,

00:25:15it's just over and over again every day.

00:25:18And so I'm interested in your advice

00:25:21in terms of the ways that interested, active citizens

00:25:26can be helpful in supporting driving that stake

00:25:30in a way that is meaningful right now while he's in power.

00:25:34I will keep letting you go first for all this.

00:25:38Whatever you want to do.

00:25:40We're going to work out.

00:25:42I'm just answering a question.

00:25:44I'm just answering a question.

00:25:46I don't want him thinking that I'm avoiding the hard questions either.

00:25:50Somewhere in there is a how many elected officials

00:25:52that's screwing a lightbulb joke.

00:25:54Yeah.

00:25:56All right.

00:26:00It does seem unrelenting.

00:26:03First of all, I'm not surprised by anything they're doing

00:26:06because it's what they said they were going to do.

00:26:08It's in Project 2025.

00:26:10It's literally written down.

00:26:13I am astonished by the pace of it.

00:26:16The sheer speed of which it's happening has been shocking to me.

00:26:21So we don't have the luxury, though, to take passes.

00:26:29We just don't have the luxury to say I'm not going to do this one,

00:26:32I'm not going to do this one, I'm going to focus it.

00:26:34We have to fight on every front.

00:26:37And we have to put speed bumps, as many as we can,

00:26:42to slow these things down.

00:26:45We just have to.

00:26:47And we are working so hard, and so are many of you

00:26:51and many of the people that I called out at the beginning

00:26:53to try to fight back and to protect our community.

00:26:56But this also will not be solved in Washington.

00:27:02This fix that we're in is not going to be solved by me or Michael

00:27:08or any of the other elected officials.

00:27:10We have a critical role to play, a very important role to play,

00:27:13and really important jobs in fighting back.

00:27:17And not just fighting back, but also building something new,

00:27:19have an alternative vision, an idea for people to choose.

00:27:24But ultimately this is going to be solved by all of us.

00:27:28By Washington and the history of America, Washington has never driven change.

00:27:34It hasn't.

00:27:36It's changed the way we see.

00:27:37It's responded to things.

00:27:38It's helped change the trajectory.

00:27:40But real change has always come from the country.

00:27:44And if we're going to turn around the polarization, the partisanship,

00:27:49the entrenched vitriol that we see growing, the extremism,

00:27:55it's going to have to be by reinvigorating civic life in America.

00:28:00This is where I'm going to walk out for a minute.

00:28:03When Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America,

00:28:07he compared different democracies.

00:28:11And he said, but in America it's different.

00:28:15And I'm paraphrasing here.

00:28:16He said, what is unique about America that doesn't exist anyplace else

00:28:22is the civic life.

00:28:25That politics in rallying around democracy

00:28:30doesn't revolve around electoral politics of Washington.

00:28:36It actually exists throughout the country in this fabric of community

00:28:40and civic organizations.

00:28:41That's how Americans organize themselves.

00:28:45And for so many years, that's how we did it.

00:28:48So it's no surprise that as civic life has frayed,

00:28:52organization involvement has frayed, and we've self-segregated,

00:28:57but our politics have followed.

00:29:00So my request for all of you is to engage in citizen oversight

00:29:06because you all need to be our eyes and ears.

00:29:08We need to know what's happening in our community.

00:29:10When we're out in Washington, our teams are out in a lot of places,

00:29:13but we're not everywhere.

00:29:14And we need your eyes and ears to help us see what's happening

00:29:17and how to respond to it.

00:29:19That's one.

00:29:20Number two is, if you're not already, run out tonight and join an organization.

00:29:26A rotary, a parent-teacher association, a local community board.

00:29:32Get involved and get to know people who you wouldn't otherwise have interaction with

00:29:38and engage and let them know who we are as a community, what our values are.

00:29:43That, ultimately, is how we're going to solve it.

00:29:47I'm so happy this guy is your congressman.

00:29:55First of all, what they're doing is totally intentional, what he said.

00:30:00They're flooding the zone and flooding the zone and flooding the zone,

00:30:03which is what he did before he got elected and what he did the last time that he was elected.

00:30:07It's different this time because the last time he didn't think he was going to win.

00:30:12Like he was standing there in New York and, what, Hillary Clinton's not the next president?

00:30:16This time they had four years to prepare and they didn't.

00:30:20That's what you're seeing and that's what we're dealing with,

00:30:23and it is an avalanche every single day.

00:30:27That's a reality that we're all going to have to find a way to deal with.

00:30:32I will say that I would suspect that all of us would be a little better off

00:30:41if we maybe turned the cable television off for an hour or two a day rather than watching it,

00:30:48if we're watching it all day or for hours and hours and hours.

00:30:52And I'm telling you, we would be better off not doomscrolling on our phones all day long.

00:30:59We would.

00:31:00Listen, and by the way, if you think I don't understand what that looks like,

00:31:04know that my mother, Susie Bennett, who was born in 1938 in Warsaw, Poland,

00:31:11the year before Hitler invaded, is still alive and spends most of every day, as far as I can tell,

00:31:18sending me that article, this article.

00:31:20Did you see what they said on MSNBC?

00:31:23It's like, I got it, I got it, I got it.

00:31:27And then I come to these meetings and we get it again.

00:31:31And Susie Bennett, you should stop watching all that stuff.

00:31:35But the other thing that happens, because this is the nature of doomscrolling

00:31:42and the nature of those programs, is that in some ways they're selling advertising.

00:31:51It can create a sense of fatalism and a sense of hopelessness.

00:32:00And I know there are some people who say, you're naive, don't you know how terrible this is?

00:32:05As I said, I stipulate to that, this is terrible.

00:32:08This is a terrible reactionary period in our history.

00:32:13But we have no right to be fatalistic.

00:32:17We have absolutely no right to tell our children that there is no hope.

00:32:23That would be such an abomination of our responsibility,

00:32:29or a compromise of our responsibility as citizens in a country where,

00:32:34just to take one example of a billiard,

00:32:38of John Lewis's willingness to subject his skull to the billy clubs

00:32:44on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, not for his sake, but for the sake of democracy.

00:32:50I can assure you that there is no one in this room, I don't even know you,

00:32:55that has more of a reason to think this country is corrupt than,

00:32:59or that its government is corrupt than John Lewis did.

00:33:02But that didn't keep him from giving up hope.

00:33:05In fact, he saw it as part of what he had to do to make sure

00:33:09that his generation and the next generation were able to sustain that.

00:33:16And frankly, it's the only way we've ever made any progress.

00:33:19And that is something we have to do.

00:33:23And I agree totally with Jason that in Colorado,

00:33:27our civic infrastructure has atrophied seriously.

00:33:32I think a big part of that is these phones and these social media platforms

00:33:38that those guys who were sitting behind President Trump at his inauguration

00:33:42have inflicted on school children all over our country,

00:33:46and inflicted on the rest of us.

00:33:49I think that the collapse of edited content journalism in America

00:33:53is something that we are wrestling with in a very profound way.

00:33:57Do you think, just one example,

00:33:59do you really think we'd be having a conversation

00:34:02about whether Canada was going to be our 51st state

00:34:06if Walter Cronkite were reading us the news at night, every night?

00:34:10I don't think we would. I don't think we would.

00:34:13And we're not going to bring that analog world back,

00:34:19but Trump has mastered that digital world.

00:34:22And we have to find a way to rebuild the architecture that Jason was talking about.

00:34:27There's no other way to do it.

00:34:29And I would add to his list.

00:34:31I guarantee you that there is a kid in this community

00:34:35who could really use somebody who came once a week to read to them.

00:34:39I guarantee you there is a senior in an elder care facility

00:34:47who could use somebody to come there and read to them.

00:34:51My worst nightmare, by the way, as a former Democratic politician,

00:34:54is that someday I'm going to find myself in one of those facilities,

00:34:58and somebody's going to say to someone else,

00:35:00I don't really know, but he used to be a politician,

00:35:03so put on the cable.

00:35:06And I'm going to be sitting here watching that 24 hours a day,

00:35:12because I can't think of anything less constructive

00:35:16in terms of the answer to your question.

00:35:19And post-COVID, we have lost our ability to interact

00:35:29in the way that Jason was talking about.

00:35:32And we have to rebuild that at the local level,

00:35:35and in the state of Colorado, that's what I say.

00:35:38Thank you for your question.

00:35:40We're going to have our next two questions.

00:35:46The first one is going to be 7-9-4-8.

00:35:517-9-4-8.

00:35:55The second one is going to be 7-8-7-1.

00:36:017-8-7-1.

00:36:15Thank you for ‑‑

00:36:17Who's wearing this better, by the way?

00:36:19We didn't plan that.

00:36:27That's not the answer.

00:36:32Yes, sir.

00:36:33I'd like to thank you both for giving all of us an opportunity

00:36:37to hear your perspective on what's going on.

00:36:41The issue, well, I think I share a lot of issues with people here,

00:36:47but one that is extraordinarily dear to my heart

00:36:51is the existence of National Service and AmeriCorps,

00:36:56and Senior Corps,

00:36:58which are programs that engage hundreds of thousands of seniors,

00:37:03young people, people of all ages in service,

00:37:08principally to nonprofits,

00:37:10but also to government entities, to schools.

00:37:14They help prepare our forests so that they don't burn up.

00:37:19I mean, just critical work.

00:37:22Importantly, also, it gives them an attachment to this nation

00:37:27because it is National Service,

00:37:30and it works in concert with all of the local efforts.

00:37:34So what I'd like ‑‑

00:37:35I mean, I know that both of you support National Service,

00:37:39AmeriCorps specifically,

00:37:41but I'm hoping that you can tell me that you're crossing the aisle

00:37:46and talking to your colleagues that wear different hats than we do,

00:37:52trying to convince them of the importance of National Service.

00:38:00We'll give brief answers, I think.

00:38:03We both strongly support it.

00:38:05There are cuts in this bill to National Service.

00:38:08You're right, typically it's been bipartisan,

00:38:11and hopefully someday we're going to be able to put those back in.

00:38:15In the meantime, we've got to figure out how to keep engaging young people

00:38:19in the kind of service that we're all just having conversations about.

00:38:23There are probably things the state of Colorado can do there.

00:38:25There are probably things our private sector can do.

00:38:28I think it's critically important to who we are as a nation

00:38:32that the Tocqueville observation that Jason was talking about,

00:38:37about our civic architecture,

00:38:38has so much to do with the volunteer spirit of the American people,

00:38:43and it is a way of bringing us together.

00:38:45We should be not dealing with the cuts.

00:38:49We should actually be creating a system in this country of National Service.

00:38:53That would be a way of building our civic spirit,

00:38:58and I hope someday we'll be able to do that.

00:39:01Yeah, one of the many parade of horribles from this administration

00:39:04was the slashing of AmeriCorps.

00:39:07We actually have a very large AmeriCorps facility here in this district,

00:39:12AmeriCorps Vista, and the kids from all around the country

00:39:17who had signed on to serve our community in their country, AmeriCorps,

00:39:21were literally given 24 hours to pack their bags and go home.

00:39:26That was a month ago.

00:39:28We got frantic calls of, like, what do we do?

00:39:31These kids just have to leave, right,

00:39:34who signed on to literally do projects in our community.

00:39:38It's just horrible stuff.

00:39:40So my life, I wouldn't be here if it weren't for National Service.

00:39:44It completely changed my life, actually,

00:39:47and it's still the lens through which I view my work.

00:39:51I actually enlisted in the National Guard originally just to help pay for college

00:39:57because I didn't have money for school, so I did it for economic reasons,

00:40:00and little did I know that it was going to completely change my life

00:40:04and my trajectory and instill in me pride and service and lead me here today.

00:40:10And I still view this country through the lens of those paratroopers that I led

00:40:17when I was in the Army, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, straight, gay, rich, poor,

00:40:26from the north, from the south, east, west, and everywhere in between.

00:40:30And we never had any reason to find ourselves together.

00:40:34We never would have found ourselves together had it not been for that experience.

00:40:39But there we were.

00:40:41We had to work together.

00:40:43We had to come together to survive, literally, and we did.

00:40:48And that's why when I think about people that voted a way that I would have disagreed with,

00:40:56I sometimes take a pause and I think about,

00:41:00is this one of those men who I saw run into enemy fire

00:41:05to save a six-year-old Iraqi boy who he doesn't know?

00:41:10Is this one of these men who struggled with that experience

00:41:16and yet showed a humanity that you would never expect

00:41:19from an 18-year-old put into an inhumane situation?

00:41:25You find that, right?

00:41:27And that's what National Service does to you,

00:41:29whether it's the Civilian Conservation Corps, whether it's AmeriCorps,

00:41:32whether it's Peace Corps, it takes you out of your comfort zone

00:41:36and it binds us together in ways that you really couldn't in any other way.

00:41:41And that's why, as a member of the bipartisan Veterans Caucus in the House,

00:41:47we have made it our priority to reinvigorate National Service pipelines.

00:41:52And we are working in a bipartisan way to do that.

00:41:54And there are Republican friends of mine who are committed to that project still

00:41:58and who are working with me to do it.

00:42:00APPLAUSE

00:42:08So I'd like to thank you as well for coming out and keeping up this pace.

00:42:13I think it's very important to be in front of your constituents,

00:42:16unlike many folks out there.

00:42:20We were talking earlier about just the pace of just all the stuff that's happening.

00:42:32And it's hard to keep up with it.

00:42:35One thing that – let's just focus on one thing, and that's the corruption that I'm seeing.

00:42:41If you look at – take one aspect of corruption, which is cryptocurrency,

00:42:47it seems like the laws are inadequate today to meet the threat from corruption in cryptocurrency.

00:42:59And my question is, is there any focus in either the House or the Senate

00:43:06to shore up these laws and try to get ahead of the game here?

00:43:14So we have a – have you had a bill go through yet?

00:43:18On emoluments? No, not crypto.

00:43:21So yeah, we're not keeping up with it.

00:43:24There is a bill in the Senate that I think is really a terrible bill.

00:43:29It doesn't – it does nothing to prevent President Trump or his family

00:43:35or members of Congress, for that matter, from issuing cryptocurrency.

00:43:42We're in a period of a case where the guy's making billions and billions of dollars with these shady schemes,

00:43:48and that's not even dealt with in this legislation.

00:43:51We have – there are allegedly the votes to pass it.

00:43:55I am – the thing's called the Genius Act, by the way, in the Senate.

00:44:00So naturally I offered an amendment which I called the Stable Genius Act.

00:44:06And that simply says that if you are the president and you are the vice president

00:44:11and you are a member of Congress, you should not be able to issue cryptocurrency.

00:44:17You should not be able to speculate in it, and you should put it in a blind trust.

00:44:22So I'm hoping very much to be able – if they bring it forward next week, I don't know whether they will.

00:44:28I'm looking forward to that debate because I think that the problem is

00:44:33the bill is not thoughtful enough, and it risks the result of sending a signal to the American people

00:44:43that this is okay, that it's copacetic, that somehow the consumer protections part of this law are all right if it passes.

00:44:54And I'm deeply concerned about that because I've been watching this thing,

00:44:58and it has gone through as a tear through the Senate.

00:45:02And I think it did a very, very incomplete job, to say the least.

00:45:07So look for the Stable Genius Amendment.

00:45:11And then the corruption is absolutely stunning in every respect,

00:45:15whether it's a foreign government giving a $400 million jet to Donald Trump for his personal use

00:45:21in a way that he can use it after his president,

00:45:24whether it's the bitcoins or meme coins,

00:45:29whether it's this new club that Donald Trump Jr. opened up in Washington called the Executive Branch.

00:45:35It's literally the name of the club.

00:45:37And people can pay $500,000 for a membership,

00:45:40and they're guaranteed the ability to rub elbows with cabinet officials and senior members of the administration.

00:45:45Gratuitous pay to play.

00:45:47And I can go on.

00:45:49There's dozens of these examples.

00:45:51Number two, our first responsibility is to not let it become normal.

00:45:56This is a big risk, that we become numb to it and somehow this is normalized in our politics.

00:46:01No. We've got to call it out.

00:46:03We've got to shame people for it.

00:46:05We've got to not stop calling it out.

00:46:07We cannot allow this to be normal because it's not.

00:46:09Number two, many of these things are violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution.

00:46:14Absolutely. Just straight up.

00:46:17So what I say and what I've heard Michael say repeatedly is the truth will come out.

00:46:25There will be investigations.

00:46:27There will be oversight.

00:46:29We're already doing as much oversight as we can in the House.

00:46:31It's harder because we're in the minority.

00:46:33We don't have the gavels yet.

00:46:36But there will be accountability sooner rather than later.

00:46:39And I am not going to forget.

00:46:41Because I think that the path to reconciliation and the path to moving forward includes accountability.

00:46:49It includes getting to the truth.

00:46:51So I'm not going to let any of this stuff pass.

00:46:55That's number two.

00:46:57And then the last piece is, again, all of you speaking up and letting people know locally

00:47:05with your networks that you're paying attention too.

00:47:08And this is unacceptable for all of you.

00:47:11So while we're legislating and we're trying to pursue these large reform packages,

00:47:17actually Adam Schiff and I joined forces years ago before he abandoned me for the Senate.

00:47:23After the first impeachment trial of which, you know,

00:47:27probably one of Michael's harder times in the Senate was being locked in the Senate chamber

00:47:31and listening to me for two weeks straight.

00:47:35After that trial, we worked to put together a comprehensive democracy reform package.

00:47:42And the point of that Protecting Democracy Act is to actually learn lessons from this era

00:47:48and say, you know what, it turns out that many of the things that we have taken for granted,

00:47:54our norms, our customs, our traditions of our democracy are just that.

00:48:01They're not actually in law.

00:48:03They're not enforceable.

00:48:05And when people stop abiding by them, there's no recourse.

00:48:10So we have a comprehensive package that when we get the opportunity,

00:48:14I think we need to prioritize, and I've been pushing leadership to prioritize this, to pass it.

00:48:19If we're back in power, which I think we will be at some point in the near future.

00:48:24And learn the lessons and establish the guardrails that we have learned are actually missing.

00:48:37So we have time for one more question.

00:48:40Is that really true or not?

00:48:42If we can be brief, we can do two.

00:48:44Okay, let's do two.

00:48:45Three.

00:48:46Can we do three?

00:48:47Three quick ones.

00:48:50The next two are going to be 7-9-3-8.

00:48:557-9-3-8.

00:48:597-9-4-6.

00:49:037-9-4-6.

00:49:07And then if we wanted to do a third question.

00:49:11Two.

00:49:51They're going to be 7-9-4-6.

00:49:57And 7-9-3-8.

00:50:037-9-4-6.

00:50:07And 7-9-3-8.

00:50:12They're going to be 7-9-4-6.

00:50:15And 7-9-3-8.

00:50:20Yes, ma'am.

00:50:26It's coming.

00:50:33You know, we were actually talking, the two of us here.

00:50:37And I think one of the questions that we have.

00:50:40And you've touched on it.

00:50:42But we obviously missed the mark in our messaging in 24.

00:50:48And I think as Democrats, we are craving direction with a solid,

00:50:57clearly defined, simple, and understandable message that we can

00:51:02communicate to those we've lost on who we are, what we believe,

00:51:07and where we're going.

00:51:09What's happening in Washington?

00:51:15I mean, I think that I don't think it's just a messaging problem.

00:51:23I think that we have a profound disconnection.

00:51:33It's less of a messaging problem than it is a substantive problem.

00:51:38And the substantive problem is that we don't have a persuasive set of

00:51:41arguments about what we would stand for to create an economy that when

00:51:46it grew, it grew for everybody, not just the people at the very top.

00:51:51Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about.

00:51:54You know, both parties have pursued a trade policy that has clearly

00:51:58benefited the people at the very top.

00:52:00And it hasn't really necessarily benefited lots of other people.

00:52:05And as much as Trump drives me crazy on all these subjects,

00:52:09he had a preternatural sense about the China question here that we have not

00:52:14had a position on that's compelling.

00:52:18Our education position, you know, was about addressing student debt,

00:52:23college debt, when 60% of the American people don't have a college degree

00:52:28but are desperate for knowing that we could develop an education

00:52:32in this country that's driving academic achievement for kids that are

00:52:36graduating from high school.

00:52:38That's something that we could stand for.

00:52:40What was our health care position?

00:52:42It was extending the tax credits for the Affordable Care Act.

00:52:46Well, that's an important thing to do.

00:52:48But is that really compelling when we're living in a place where people

00:52:52are struggling to keep their head above water just to pay for insurance

00:52:56in this country so they can, you know, support their kids?

00:53:01I had somebody, I've got a nodding young man in this front row,

00:53:04asked me the other day who just graduated from Western in Gunnison,

00:53:08and she said to me, I'm going to be off my parents' insurance in a year.

00:53:12Am I supposed to get, what is it, two or three jobs to pay for the health

00:53:16insurance that I have?

00:53:18That is a great freaking question.

00:53:20You know, like why are we defending a system that is ridiculously expensive

00:53:25and provides the scarcest health care that we can imagine?

00:53:28Why are we defending an education system that can't be defended?

00:53:32You know, we have never fulfilled, you know, there's a lot of discussion

00:53:38these days about Trump's, you know, inability to listen to what courts say

00:53:44to Trump, you know, his desire not to do that.

00:53:47We still haven't fulfilled what Brown v. Board of Education says

00:53:51we should be doing when it comes to public education.

00:53:55So there is a lot for us to stand for, and, you know,

00:53:59partly because I think we made a poor judgment.

00:54:04Joe Biden accomplished some really important things.

00:54:09The most important thing he accomplished, in my view,

00:54:12was beating Donald Trump to begin with.

00:54:15That was really important.

00:54:17And he was the right guy to run at that moment,

00:54:19and we did some important work on infrastructure,

00:54:22on the Affordable Care Act, on the Inflation Reduction Act,

00:54:25and that other stuff.

00:54:26But the best decision he could have made for himself and for the country

00:54:29would have been to say, you know what, I am done,

00:54:33and I'm going to create a bridge to the next generation.

00:54:36We're going to let a new group of leadership emerge.

00:54:39That's what he should have done.

00:54:41And we better take this opportunity to figure out

00:54:46what it is we want to go out and fight for,

00:54:49because otherwise we're going to lose another election to Trump

00:54:52and another election, I don't mean to Donald Trump, but to Trumpism,

00:54:56and we will have failed to live up to the obligation that we have

00:55:01in the next generation and the generation after that.

00:55:04And that's what we have to do.

00:55:06And it's going to be, you know what, we're not going to fix that problem today.

00:55:10We've got to work on it and work on it and work on it,

00:55:15and I'm absolutely convinced we will succeed.

00:55:17And we'll be able to turn the page on all this.

00:55:22So for me, it's about fairness.

00:55:26I spoke earlier about why I'm a Democrat,

00:55:30raised in a Republican family, in a Republican community, by the way.

00:55:36But because I want to love a playing field.

00:55:38I'm not afraid of hard work.

00:55:40I'm not afraid of competition.

00:55:41I welcome it.

00:55:43But I want to love a playing field, and I want everyone playing by the same rules,

00:55:46because that's when America is at its best.

00:55:49That's when Americans are at their best.

00:55:51Number two, making democracy truly work so it can deliver.

00:55:56And that includes government reform.

00:55:59That includes addressing the systematic barriers to democracy.

00:56:04And for me, that's ending gerrymandering.

00:56:09And campaign finance reform.

00:56:14I'm often asked, what is the one thing?

00:56:16I think to do this job right, there has to be one thing

00:56:19that you are instantly willing to lose this job over.

00:56:22I think that should be a litmus test for anyone's service.

00:56:24What's the one thing?

00:56:25And there's actually a couple for me.

00:56:27That if I knew that if I voted for or did, I would just lose the job.

00:56:32And absolutely, or my magic wand thing, that's the other way to put it,

00:56:36it would be gerrymandering.

00:56:38You end gerrymandering in America,

00:56:41overnight it changes who's in Congress.

00:56:47And you end up with a very different result.

00:56:49So it's making democracy work.

00:56:51And then the third is investing in people instead of investing in wealth.

00:56:59I mean, it's simple.

00:57:00The philosophies are simple.

00:57:02What we believe in is when historically we invest in people,

00:57:07education, infrastructure, job training,

00:57:10now look at the GI Bill.

00:57:12The GI Bill changed America.

00:57:15When you invest in people, it works.

00:57:19And it gives you a return on that investment many times over.

00:57:23When you invest in wealth in the form of tax cuts for the top,

00:57:28it actually has never worked.

00:57:30Trickle-down economics has actually never worked.

00:57:33Right?

00:57:34So that's my message.

00:57:37That's why I'm here, and that's what I'm going to fight for.

00:57:40Applause

00:57:51Yeah, there is a lot going on.

00:57:53Yeah, Palestine is big.

00:57:55What is being done to stop the genocide?

00:57:58Are we still giving our tax dollars for the missiles and things,

00:58:02or is there some things that are being slowed down there some way?

00:58:08Applause

00:58:12When I came into Congress, I actually formed the Protection of Civilians

00:58:18in Conflict Caucus because of my own experience in seeing civilian casualties

00:58:23in war and in conflict.

00:58:26And I've led on that along with Andy Kim,

00:58:28who is also now in the Senate, and Sarah Jacobs from San Diego.

00:58:32And we have led efforts to try to prevent civilian casualties.

00:58:36This war, this conflict requires, first of all,

00:58:4040,000 plus civilian casualties is just completely unacceptable.

00:58:44By any measure, it just should not be happening.

00:58:47This conflict requires that we hold many things to be true,

00:58:52which is not easy in our current politics, in our current environment.

00:58:56And what can be true is that the Palestinian people have the right

00:58:59to self-determination and statehood and to live in peace and dignity.

00:59:03Applause

00:59:08What is also true is Israel has the right to exist as the Jewish homeland

00:59:13and to also live in peace and security and dignity.

00:59:16Applause

00:59:20But the path for that, as out of reach as it may seem right now,

00:59:24is for a two-state solution of which I have fought for a very, very long time.

00:59:28I've traveled there. I've spoken with Palestinians.

00:59:31I've spoken with Israelis. I've gone to the West Bank.

00:59:34I have taken a deep dive on this issue, and we cannot give up hope on that

00:59:39because ultimately that is the way to true peace.

00:59:43So that is also true.

00:59:47Another component of that is it's not just enough to say

00:59:51that you're going to protect yourself, but you also have to do it in the right way.

00:59:56And I did this. I had experience doing this in war where you have a mission

01:00:02and you're trying to defend or accomplish your mission,

01:00:05and you do have to focus on those civilians

01:00:09because there is a right way and a wrong way to do it.

01:00:11And I have been very vocal in offering my critiques, my suggestions, my pressure

01:00:16to make sure that we are doing everything possible to protect civilians in this conflict.

01:00:21And I will not stop being vocal about that because not just our credibility,

01:00:25but the moral aspects of this are at play as well.

01:00:34I agree with everything that Jason just said.

01:00:37And I would say one of the things that he said that I believe is very, very important

01:00:42is that we cannot let go of the two-state solution

01:00:46as the answer to the situation that we're facing here.

01:00:50And people are giving up on that.

01:00:52There are people in the region who have given up on that,

01:00:54and there are people in our political system here on both sides who have given up on that.

01:00:59And I think that's a huge mistake

01:01:02because it really is the only way out of the permanent state of war that people are in right now.

01:01:11And it has been an epic human tragedy, what has happened.

01:01:17And it has been absolutely appalling to see the lack of care that Benjamin Netanyahu has

01:01:25for the Palestinians who have suffered in this conflict.

01:01:30And I think it is an abomination that he has done nothing to make it easier

01:01:36to get humanitarian aid in to Gaza as well.

01:01:40We need this war to come to an end.

01:01:43We need there to be a peace in this region.

01:01:46And then we have to figure out how to build that two-state solution.

01:01:50And it is an example where the United States has a critical role to play here

01:01:56as the leading democracy in the world.

01:01:59It's hard for us to play that role when we have a president

01:02:02who doesn't think that's important and doesn't care about democracy

01:02:07and every day is figuring out how to undermine it.

01:02:10That jeopardizes our credibility around the world as well in ways that are very, very fundamental.

01:02:17And when he's flying over there to take in one airplane the biggest piece of grass

01:02:25that all the presidents together in our country's history have not ever taken,

01:02:32it creates huge problems as well in the region.

01:02:36So I'm grateful that we have Jason's experience on the battlefield

01:02:40as he thinks about these questions.

01:02:42And I lean on him a lot to understand the issue.

01:02:45In the food aid, can I add?

01:02:47I just want to add one other thing.

01:02:48I was with Cindy McCain recently, and she's the head of the World Food Program right now.

01:02:54And she told me unequivocally that there has been no food

01:02:59that has been allowed to enter Gaza since March 2nd.

01:03:04It is unacceptable by any measure,

01:03:08and I'm putting pressure any and every way that I know how to say it's unacceptable.

01:03:13The Trump administration is not listening to me, to us.

01:03:17I have communicated that to everybody who will listen, anybody who will listen,

01:03:21because it cannot stand by any stretch.

01:03:26And you have my promise that I am exerting as much pressure as possible

01:03:31to stop that state of affairs and to get food and medicine flowing again.

01:03:36Applause

01:03:43Okay, all right.

01:03:47Well, thank you, Senator Bennett, for joining a wonderful Arapahoe High School.

01:03:53Applause

01:03:59I'm going to end again with this call for commitment to civic engagement

01:04:05and civic life in America, because none of us asked for this moment.

01:04:12I look back on history in some of America's hardest times.

01:04:17You look at moments where people stood up to do great things,

01:04:22the suffragettes, the greatest generation, the freedom riders,

01:04:27folks like John Lewis, my colleague, our colleague, that Michael Bennett spoke so much about.

01:04:33They didn't ask for that moment, but that is always, always the case with leadership.

01:04:38You never get to choose the moment. The moment is thrust upon you.

01:04:43So our only decision is whether we're going to answer that call

01:04:48and what we're willing to do to serve and to step up and put it all on the line

01:04:53to protect this democracy, to protect our families, to protect our community,

01:04:58and to get through this together.

01:05:01I promise you, you have all of me. From day one, you have had all of me in this project.

01:05:07And I know you do. I see Michael Bennett running around relentlessly around the state doing the same,

01:05:13and I know you have all of him, too.

01:05:16But we cannot do this alone. No one person can do it alone.

01:05:20This is a community project, and I implore you to join with us and to do more.

01:05:25And I know it's uncomfortable, and I know you are all so busy,

01:05:29but we all have to do more to get through it, and I know that we can.

01:05:33I am hopeful that there will be a new era.

01:05:37I am hopeful that we will get through this, and we will rebuild something new,

01:05:43something different that actually can fulfill the promise that is yet unfulfilled in America.

01:05:50Applause

01:05:55Congressman Crowe!

01:05:58Applause

01:06:03Before he deserves it, and I appreciate it, I can't resist because the guy is such an amazing historian.

01:06:11You know, thank you for being out here, by the way.

01:06:15Some of you asked what can we do, what can we do.

01:06:18Part of it is showing up in stuff like this. Part of it is raising your voices.

01:06:22Part of it is making connections, meeting people, knowing that we're all in this together, which we are.

01:06:28And sometimes when young kids come to see me, like middle school students in particular in D.C.,

01:06:35and they've got a tour of the Supreme Court or the Washington Monument, all that stuff,

01:06:40before they come to see me in the Capitol, and sometimes they have some of their parents with them,

01:06:47and I'm trying on the parents as well, even though I'm pretending it's just about talking to the kids,

01:06:52as a poor superintendent.

01:06:54But one of the things I say is, you know, the building that I work in was built by enslaved human beings,

01:07:00the U.S. Capitol.

01:07:02And that if you want to think about this country, you need to understand that we have been in a crucible

01:07:07that Jason talked about so eloquently from the very beginning.

01:07:12You know, a fight, a struggle between the highest ideals that humans have ever committed,

01:07:18I don't care how cynical you are, ever committed to the pain.

01:07:22The words on the Constitution, the words in the Declaration of Independence,

01:07:28and literally the worst impulses in human history.

01:07:31In our case, human slavery.

01:07:33In our case, the genocide of Native Americans.

01:07:36And that crucible has been with us from the beginning and is going to be with us for a long, long time to come.

01:07:43When I was last running for office, I would tell the story about Camp Hale, you know,

01:07:50a camp that was created up in the mountains to train people from all over the country.

01:07:58Some of the greatest mountaineers, the greatest skiers, some who had never seen snow before.

01:08:03I'm short-cutting it because I know you've got to go.

01:08:05But to train people to fight the Nazis.

01:08:08And they went over after three years and they pushed the Nazis out of Northern Ireland.

01:08:13One of the great stories of America, one of the great stories of Colorado.

01:08:17And I'd tell that story because we were trying to get Joe Biden to make that a national monument,

01:08:23and actually he made it.

01:08:24The first national monument of his administration was Camp Hale, right here in Colorado, which is good.

01:08:30But as I was traveling and thinking, I began to tell a story about another camp

01:08:39that was built exactly at the same time as Camp Hale.

01:08:44And that was Camp Amache.

01:08:46Same war, same fight against tyranny, same patriotic battle.

01:08:53But in that camp, unlike Camp Hale, there were 10,000 American citizens locked up behind barbed wire.

01:09:03Using Roosevelt, using the same bill that, the same law that Trump is using right now in immigration.

01:09:14And the people behind that barbed wire on the eastern plains of Colorado,

01:09:19some of them, even though they were locked up there, sent their kids to fight fascism in Europe

01:09:25while they were locked up there.

01:09:27And some of them said, forget it.

01:09:31As long as we're locked up here, we're not sending our kids over there.

01:09:36I don't know about you, but I think of those things as both patriotic decisions.

01:09:43And if you know anything about our history, you can't give up and you can't despair.

01:09:52That's not acceptable.

01:09:54It's not acceptable.

01:09:56And there are kids in your community, there are kids all over this state that need better from us.

01:10:01You can't make Trump 10 feet tall.

01:10:05And that doesn't mean we shouldn't fight.

01:10:07It doesn't mean we shouldn't resist.

01:10:09Of course we should.

01:10:11But our job is to build a better future for our children and for our grandchildren.

01:10:17And people who say, well, you're being naive, don't you know that?

01:10:20Again, the only thing that's naive is to give up hope.

01:10:24That's the only thing that's naive.

01:10:26That is what's naive.

01:10:28Because we can't make, we will never, ever, ever overcome this without that.

01:10:34And I'll just finish by saying again, I agree totally with Jason.

01:10:38In addition to watching too much cable and too much volunteer, find something you can do to help somebody in the community who needs your help.

01:11:15That's okay.

01:11:16Yeah, let her speak.

01:11:17It's okay.

01:11:18It's okay.

01:11:19Thank you for, thank you.

01:11:23Yeah, sure, sure.

01:11:27Yes, ma'am.

01:11:29Well, first and foremost, if you're having problems with your family, if you have family members,

01:11:33it sounds like maybe your husband or somebody has been, yep, okay.

01:11:39First and foremost, one of our biggest responsibilities, and Michael Bennett's team does this too, is constituent case work.

01:11:44We have entire teams available in our offices that do hundreds of these cases to help with immigration, with USCIS, with ICE.

01:11:53So we're going to get you contact information from my team right now.

01:11:57So you can be in touch with my staff.

01:12:01If there is a specific issue you have that we can intercede on your behalf, we will do that and we will fight for you.

01:12:16And I personally will fight for you.

01:12:18One of the things I'm most proud of is the fact that I represent one of the most diverse communities in the country.

01:12:24Right?

01:12:25I have nearly one out of five, nearly 20% of the people I represent were born outside of the United States.

01:12:33There's over 130 languages spoken in our public schools, and that's a source of great strength and pride for us.

01:12:39And we are truly a community that represents the world.

01:12:44And I will fight for that and I will fight for your family.

01:12:49It's fine.

01:12:51Yes.

01:13:19Yes, I know.

01:13:20And it is awful.

01:13:23It is horrible.

01:13:25And there's so many people in our community that are experiencing the same thing.

01:13:29And you all deserve comprehensive reform.

01:13:31You deserve a pathway to citizenship.

01:13:34You deserve protection for Dreamers and DACA.

01:13:37All of those things are necessary.

01:13:43But until we are in the position to fight for and deliver that for you, we will defend you and your family and your daughter.

01:13:52And you have our contact.

01:14:01I would just like to mention, and then we're out of here.

01:14:04I'm sorry.

01:14:08Because there are people not just all over this district, but all over this state that have exactly the same concern that you have.

01:14:14And Jason's right.

01:14:15I mean, our offices are spending a lot of time working on individual cases to make sure that people are protected.

01:14:24And we will continue to do that and make sure that our office knows.

01:14:28And we work together.

01:14:29We collaborate together on these.

01:14:32So I'm really just grateful that you were raising your voice.

01:14:35Because you weren't just raising it for your daughter.

01:14:37You were raising it for people and for people with daughters all over the state of Colorado.

01:14:42And thank you for that.

01:14:52I heard Jason mention Cindy McCain.

01:14:55I know her, but not as well as John McCain, who has passed away.

01:15:00But, man, do I miss him now.

01:15:02Because in 2013, he and I were two of the eight members of the Gang of Eight who wrote the last comprehensive immigration bill that passed the Senate.