YouSaid · the spoken record

Jim Himes

lines on the record: 54
first: 2025-05-11
most recent: 2025-05-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“No, you're absolutely right about that, which takes me back to the constant need for affirmation that anybody who gets into this business does. You're right. And by the way, here's an interesting little anecdote. My staff runs Facebook and Instagram. I do my own Twitter or X or whatever. And by the way, it's become just an absolute cesspool, so I have to get away from it. But it is a vehicle for authenticity. So when I put up a tweet that says, I'm celebrating the return of the astronauts from whatever it is, it is utterly uninteresting. But I happen to be a beekeeper. When I put up something about how I've just drawn honey out of my bee, oh my God, the world goes bananas. So it is a scalable opportunity for authenticity. You're probably right, Alistair. I should probably receive a lot less, but we do need to transmit.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's a version of why it must be brutal to be a teenager today because our predecessors in politics at the end of the day would go home and they would get no feedback until they opened the paper the following morning. All of us, we're in this business for a reason, right? We need constant feedback. And of course now we have the tool to provide it. So I can be lying flat on my back in bed at 12.30 in the morning scrolling what some idiot in Cleveland, Ohio thinks of what I had to say about Tulsi Gabbert. And there are very few politicians who are disciplined enough to not at some level absorb that. Again, I think can you imagine what it's like to be 14 years old today where, you know, just every moment of every day is consumed with pecking order and this sort of thing, that makes it very, very hard. It also takes away our ability to focus.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“uncomfortable status quo. The other thing I would say is let me make that statement and let's think about this with some humility because transformative Democratic candidates have often come out of, sort of come out of nowhere. I'm thinking of Bill Clinton in the 90s and Barack Obama. Now Barack Obama was on people's radar screens, but it's also possible that we don't even know who the candidate is going to be at this point three years out.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, again, let's go back to something that I feel, and this goes back to Boris Johnson and the conservative win, and it's Joe Biden as a person, which is left-leaning economics, centrist to right-leaning culture, religion, patriotism. The name that jumps off the page there is Governor Andy Bashir of Kentucky, who not only gets elected but gets elected in a deep red state. And I'm not saying that he should be the candidate, but somebody like that who is also relatable and authentic. There are any number of other governors, a couple of other governors that fall into that category. I think it's going to be hard for legislators to be in the mix right now because there is this sense in the Democratic Party of business as usual is not going to cut it. So I think there's likely to be a lot of disappointed Democratic senators who find that they lose out to a governor who is less associated with...”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a sense of meaning, a sense of belonging to a community. And there's a very real risk that AI completely upends all of that. How's that for pessimism?”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really am, as you've sensed now, a temperamental optimist. And I've always been a tech optimist in the sense that, and by the way, easy to say from Connecticut as opposed to Youngstown, Ohio, but changes in technology have historically created more jobs than they have ended. That's been true for centuries. AI seems to me to be different in two respects. Number one, it's not going after the manual labor jobs, it's accountants and radiologists and lawyers. And let's remember, revolutions are led by lawyers and doctors, right? And so I'm very, very concerned about that. And just it's pervasiveness, right? This isn't putting automation into silk mills anymore. It's everything. And we don't know how to deal with that. So you've got these forward thinkers talking about things like universal basic income. And, you know, okay, maybe in theory that makes sense. But a job is much, much more than a paycheck to people. It's stacked.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there's a very exciting movement now that Ezra Klein is one of the sort of intellectual godfathers of how do we get back to a world where we can actually build things in this country. AI, my gosh, here's where my optimism runs out.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know how many electric charging stations we built in the state of Connecticut now five years after the passage of the IRA? Zero. Zero. We built nothing. We paved a bunch of roads. Inflation took the biggest investment in our infrastructure in a generation. And the end result because of inflation was that we ended up building less after the bipartisan infrastructure law was passed than we were building pre-COVID. And we talked briefly about this. This is a transformation that is happening and needs to happen inside the Democratic Party in particular. I know you talked to Ezra Klein. This is this abundance theory and it has political reverberations for the left, which is our whole premise is that we can, through government action, make your life better. We can build that bridge. We can build out the rural broadband. And guess what? We don't. And we didn't. And America felt that. And so we will either”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I felt this very personally. So I can't tell you the number of celebrations and ribbon cuttings and earth-moving ceremonies I went to to celebrate the bipartisan infrastructure law and the IRA, the biggest investment ever in climate change.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Five days that intelligence sharing and arms were cut off to Ukraine. Had that been permanent, I might think differently, but he's unpredictable. And I think that probably serves as a check on Putin's thinking.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's hard to understand the political pressures on Vladimir Putin. And I think it's a mistake to say that there aren't. You can't wipe out 150,000 of your own citizens, though they may come from the provinces and not from St. Petersburg and Moscow, and not face some political upwelling. And in Russia famously over the centuries, those political upwellings have come brutally, unexpectedly, and violently. So my guess is that he probably feels a bit more constrained than we can appreciate in the West. He's in no position, again, militarily speaking, to move on a NATO ally. It would be insane and suicidal to do that soon. And I do think he certainly understands that Trump has a bizarre affinity for him, as he does for many strong men. But I also think he sees Trump as very unpredictable. And Trump is unpredictable. And so, you know, it was all of what?”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When Russia has had an opportunity to rearm, to learn from its mistakes in Ukraine. So again, maybe I'm being over-optimistic, but I think that more independence in the European defense space is actually a very good thing.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but that's okay. I mean, I always want there to be a partnership, and I always want us to use the same gauge of ammunition and that sort of thing. But I actually think it's very healthy for Europe to be less dependent on the U.S. for its security, and in particular defense manufacturers. So I don't think that's a bad thing. The thing I was going to say that doesn't happen is in this weird moment, whether it's two, three, or four, or five years in which I do think we'll reestablish our traditional relationship with the Europeans different, though it may be Russia does not invade. I mean, I just, you know, in Washington, it's a cottage industry saying, well, what happens when they move into Finland? They are not going to do that. They can't move two miles in Ukraine right now. And so I worry about, especially if Russia comes out of the Ukraine conflict having won something, I really don't worry about the next two, three, four years. I worry about five or six years.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“to a more internationalist view. In the meantime, one thing has happened that is good, and another thing hasn't happened. The thing that has happened that is good is that Europe has sorted out its defense and come up with a defense industrial base that makes sense for Europe, that is hopefully collaborative amongst the NATO countries. I think that's a good thing, not a bad thing.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think the story, again, and maybe I'm being over-optimistic, the story begins where we are today, which is that the president's approval ratings continue to go downward. Again, remember that auto dealer who explains why the car is $4,000 more expensive. In the next four weeks, the Republicans will be telling America what it means to cut 25% of Medicaid. All of these things are going to create political heat for Republicans. So you're going to start to see cracks form. So then here's the story. In 2026, and by the way, if we can't do this, take the majority in the House, you know, I'm giving up. Because if we can't, under these conditions, if the Democratic Party can't reassert itself, I'm going to go do something else. A Democratic House now serves as a legitimate check and a balance. We've got subpoena power. We open dialogues that don't exist today with our allies. And there is some set of political circumstances that mean that for a period of five, it takes us five or six years to get out of this isolationist moment back.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But flattery combined with, again, remember that power relationship. If Macron or Starmer is having a conversation with Donald Trump, flattery flattery flattery, but then there is a moment in which there is a bullying statement, I would say you need to push back on the bullying in a polite and flattering way, but no, Mr. President, if he doesn't sense that resistance, he will just keep pushing.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think two things, and really no one should take my advice on this. If you can get Navarro to come speak to you, but I think two things. Number one, look, flattery is everything with him, every other sentence he says, he's evaluating, you know, like, oh, that was a very, that was a beautiful thing to say about me, or that was a nasty woman. So flattery is everything. And by the way, this worries me right now about the potential for a war in Iran because I think that the Prime Minister of Israel probably has his number and will achieve one of his...”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Power for him. And let's also face it last point here in my, you know, always trying to be a bit optimistic. He also looks at the fact that, in fact, the NATO relationship for a long time was one in which the US probably overspent on its military at a time when our NATO allies were underspending. And that just sticks.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“His mind is a power play. And it is critical that he always be on top of that power play, which is why, by the way, I'll say this to some British friends, which is why there are these elements of Europe that sort of make him swoon. The royal family, I think at some level he understands that this is a thousand-year-old institution that even if it's a little quaint now, you know, it commanded the seas and the sun never set and all that. I think at some level he understands that. And that's why he's sort of cowed, I think, by the monarch and the monarchy. It's why he was always a bit cowed by Nancy Pelosi. Because I think he understood that that woman had very real power. It's why he stands in Paris, a town that I think he otherwise would despise and loves it and will never forget the military parade because tanks and planes, it's all about...”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So here's why I tread into dangerous territory of trying to analyze the man. But I think he's very unusual in the sense that his whole being, every thought he has is about power relationships. I think the idea that anything could be not a zero-sum game is completely foreign to him. And I think that probably extends to his relationships inside his family, certainly the way he thinks about Europe. Trade. Trade is inherently a non-zero-sum game thing, or it doesn't happen, but he can't understand that. He sees trade as the payment of tribute in one direction or the other. And I don't know how he might explain the fact that our allies rallied to our side after September 11th. My guess is he doesn't think too much about it, or he's got some conspiracy theory about how it was really about trying to get an Afghan minerals or something. So everything...”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly, yeah. And so it's all very polite and careful, but there's no question in my mind that whether it's Tulsi Gabbard, look, the president himself has shared classified information on social media platforms in his first term and is loose with the way he talks about it. And, you know, there was this whole thing about how there may have been intelligence shared in the signal chat. So no, I mean, look, our five eyes partners are human beings. Of course, they're going to be more cautious with Tulsi Gabbard as DNI than they were with Avril Haynes, you know, lawyer and punctilious and everything else.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, it's a fascinating question. You know, the partnership between the US and the UK is so important. And the United States provides the UK and our Five Eyes partners with intelligence that can't be gotten anywhere else. I'm not chest-pounding there. I actually happen to think that the Brits are probably generally speaking per pound better at human than we are, but SIGINT capabilities are unique. And, of course, everybody treads very carefully. So at no point is Sir Richard Moore going to say, well, we're dialing back our sharing of intelligence because that would obviously be catastrophic.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely appalled. I mean, these are Wall Street Journal Republicans who like immigration, who hate state conduct of the economy, industrial policy, but they are so scared of Donald Trump ending them that they have to behave themselves. So it's actually a much more interesting and complicated group of people than you might otherwise think.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Put in place this sort of Rube Goldberg Affordable Care Act, Obama Care thing. Did we nationalize the banks after the banks obliterated 18 trillion dollars of household? No, we didn't. In fact, we bailed them out. And on the other side, a lot of the extremism, of course, is the rhetoric coming out of the Trump White House. But on the other side, if you look at the signature achievement in Trump's first term, it was a series of tax cuts that were somewhat radical, but not catastrophically so. You know, the corporate tax rate went from 35% to 21% or whatever it did. And in fact, the men negotiated, renegotiated NAFTA and got the Abraham Accords done. So I always object to the notion that there is no bipartisanship and that America swings from a policy standpoint, from one extreme to another. That's just not what's happening. And inside the Congress, by the way, right now, I would tell you the Republicans, very interesting conference right now, because half of them are appalled.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, first of all, I think it's overblown. We are a terribly polarized nation, but in terms of actual policy, the notion that we swing from one radical extreme to another is just not accurate, right? So in my own career, let's look at that moment in time in 2009 when the Democrats owned the House, the Senate, and the presidency, and not only the Senate, but they had 60 votes in the Senate. Did we implement an NHS-like policy, nationalization of the health care system? No, we didn't even do single payer healthcare, which was hardly.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“America and a bunch of young people in particular not just justify it, but celebrate it. That is a sign of deep moral rot. And I fear that, you know, in addition to this secular religion of politics that we've adopted, the moral sensibility, the discernment has gone away.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Could have put our pilots at risk. It didn't, thank God. But the answer to Signalgate is now the answer to every moral charge in our politics, which is what about? So, well, the signal gate, but what about her emails? Or what about, and it just infuriates me because there is no crime so severe that it can't be justified by a moral argument that we don't accept from our four-year-old children, which is that what about what my little sister did last week? And yet that excuses everything. And I really do worry, Alistair, here you get to some deeply seated fears. Again, there is a good ethical, pragmatic America out there, but it is not hard to imagine a descent into violence. And a descent into violence that is excused by a good chunk of the electorate, case in point, healthcare CEO is murdered in cold blood on the streets of America.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, Alistair, you're asking a profound question that I think is even upstream of our politics. We are in a pathological moment in the United States right now in a lot of ways. I sometimes joke that someday we'll be back in a world where the average American thinks about politics the appropriate 15 minutes a week. Now it has sort of become the secular religion for people. You wake up in the morning, you scroll the Twitter feed, and until you go to bed, you're in this state of heightened emotion and another attribute of this secular religion is that we've lost all moral discernment. And when I say we, it's not everybody. And in fact, if you get out of the political arena and get off of, stop talking to people who are on X all day long, there's a good common sense, pragmatic America out there. But the political dialogue has last lost all of its moral discernment. So Signalgate, which”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where Margaret Thatcher is Satan, right? It's a left wing economic message combined with a slightly righter-leaning, patriotic, cultural, and social and national message. I mean, to me, that felt like the formula that allowed this incredibly charismatic guy to win a stomping victory.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, very much so. Again, if there's an emotionally crushed thing inside of me, it is that 85% of Americans don't reject obvious attacks on the rule of law, that they don't reject obviously brutal things like the fact that there is a man mistakenly jailed in a Kafka prison in El Salvador right now. The government's own to the fact that it was a mistake and they're chuckling about it. They're laughing about it. That's a level of indecency that assaults my idea of Americans as good and decent people. But again, it's this visceral thing. You will have known the Boris Johnson phenomenon much better than I did. But he was charming, an optimist, charismatic. Everyone loved being in a room with him. And he hit on, I think, a political combination that I'm thinking a lot about how the Democratic Party adopts because I think it is the answer universally speaking, which is lefty economics in the whole leveling up thing. I mean, how in God's name do the Conservatives win in Manchester and...”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And compared to this lovely university student who was murdered by an illegal alien, it allows for people to set aside those things that are core to our identity.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were a better people than that. But I think it's the lesson of millennia, which is that a demagogue can change people. A demagogue can say the 14th Amendment is an abstraction. Your chicken is too expensive because brown people from Mexico are stealing your Medicare. I mean, it's some message like that. And otherwise, decent people. And again, things are on the margin. I'm not condemning 25% of the American population. On the margin. particularly when the Democratic Party is completely failing to understand the emotions, particularly in places where we're not particularly present in rural areas, in what we condescendingly call the Rust Belt, Donald Trump can change people to make the preservation of democracy, which was central to our message, sort of an abstraction, that on Maslow's hierarchy compared to the price of China.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a super interesting question. I mean, it's in the category of how did we lose the pardons of the people that assaulted 140 police officers on January 6th that didn't come as a surprise. Trump sort of advertised that he was going to do this. And it's hard for me to reflect on because I thought that”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To that by being annoying and priggish and self righteous and wrong and unintelligible on the economic anxieties that so many Americans felt.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a winnable election, yes or no, we wildly mishandled people's economic angst. It was a typical democratic answer. It was academic and condescending. We said when people went to the supermarket to buy chicken and it was twice as expensive as it was two years ago, we said, oh, don't worry, it's transitory. Latinate explanations rooted in economics. And, you know, again, politics is visceral. The question people ask in politics is, do you understand me? Do you have my values? Do you understand my emotions? And not only did we completely blow that, we became self-righteous around social issues. We became immensely annoying around things like pronouns and, you know, we opened the door to Donald Trump saying the ad that had a real impact on the election, and this is controversial stuff, but the ad that had the impact on the election was she is for they, them, he is for you. We opened the door.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I would set the stage for the answer by saying two things. Number one, the presidential election is one on the margins. It was one on the margins. The popular vote victory that the president won was under 2%. So we're not talking about massive tectonic shifts here. And politics are often more visceral than anything else. And this is, by the way, something that Democrats often fail to appreciate. There's still an instinct that if you would just understand my 14-point healthcare plan, certainly you would vote for me. And Trump is a master of the visceral appeal, this sense of grievance. I mean, this is the oldest story in American politics, right? You're unhappy and here's the scapegoat and the reason why you're unhappy. But the self-reflection, first of all, it's an open question, and I think to be fair, it's an open question in a world where incumbent parties all over the world lost badly.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Suffered quite a blow in the last decade or so, certainly since October 7th. But, you know, pro two state solution. Pro-labor would be more complicated. That is a more traditional democratic point of view. Although I would point out if you talk to Josh Hawley or other Republican populists, they now are becoming pro-labor. And so what's the lesson of that, Alistair? I guess I might argue that what you're saying is that the Trump administration is actually very much at odds with majority opinion on a lot of issues. not on immigration generally, certainly not on inflation. Remember, the number, in my opinion, the number one reason Trump was elected was the discomfiture that people feel around inflation. And what has he done? He's taken a number of steps which are almost certainly going to increase inflation. So that has interesting political consequences.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, I mean, no doubt about that. What's interesting, Alistair, about what you just said, I think the way you articulated those positions, that's not democratic orthodoxy. Medicare and social security are the most popular federal government programs in the country by a super majority. So being pro Medicare is hardly sort of an indicator of being a Democrat. I suspect that it's the same is true of the two-state solution. Now we all understand that the two-state solution has...”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're simply riling up the people who believe in us anyway. Look, I'm delighted that Bernie Sanders and AOC are running around the country, whipping up activists. But those activists are with us already. And what we haven't had the opportunity to do in any meaningful sense, although you start to see it shifting now, is to start to bring Democratic, skeptical people into the coalition.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unpopular with the American people right now. We just got crushed in an election by an obviously unfit felon, and we don't have a ton of credibility with the American people right now. So what needs to happen to, there's a lot of things that need to happen, but one of the things that need to happen is that America needs to get a very big bite of the dish that it ordered. And I hate to say that because it's going to cause a lot of pain, especially to people who are not in a position to bear that pain. But until Americans come to realize that the Medicaid cuts that the Republicans are talking about are going to close hospitals in rural areas, deep red rural areas, that they are going to force grandma out of the assisted living facility that she lives in. The tariffs have wreaked havoc, right, already. Until an auto dealer says to a guy who is purchasing an automobile, this car is $4,000 more expensive because of the tariffs, this is an academic conversation in which”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, having been at the center of the signal story, I'm not sure that it was ever going to be a long story, given that the executive, the president on down just said nothing to see here. We're moving on. There's a limit to how much you can turn that into a long story. I would contrast that. And there's a lesson for the Democratic Party here, Alistair, because much to the chagrin of my activist, I keep saying that until very recently with the imposition of tariffs, with the picture being painted about what Medicaid cuts will actually look like, everything has been abstraction. When the president talks in the abstract about tariffs, it's very different than when the president imposes a set of tariffs that actually cause the stock market to decline 10%. So what I've been saying, again, much to the anger of my Democratic Party activists is that we are remote.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You need to do is to read the text to see this. Why does Pete Hegseth tell Mike Waltz and Tulsi Gabbard and the Secretary of State, you know, F-18s launching 0600? I mean, it's almost like a Navy recruiting ad. I mean, as you say those things, F-18s, MQ-9 Reapers, Assaulting Target, you feel this rush of testosterone just articulating it. And that's what he's doing. That's what he's doing. I mean, it's almost like a 12-year-old boy living out a fantasy. Look, we have all sorts of secure methods of cabinet secretaries communicating information, which is actually important. You know, it's not terribly important for the director of national intelligence to know precisely what weapons platforms are approaching Yemen at precisely what time. So that's a big part of it. Again, it's part of this reality show of just centering testosterone and aggression.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who are in the Department of Defense that if you do something truly awful, absurd, dangerous even, so long as you're senior enough, if you simply bluster your way through it, there will be no accountability. And that's a terrifying thing inside an institution which handles nuclear weapons and drives aircraft carriers and flies planes. And so even the Department of Defense is, I think, being eroded from within by this administration.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, it really is the dismantlement of the federal government. Even the Department of Defense, you know, this sort of macho testosterone driven ethic that would lead you to believe that the Department of Defense is immune from the attacks on Voice of America or the EPA or what have you. Not really. Not really. If you talk to soldiers and sailors and others, they'll tell you that they're very aware of the fact that the Secretary of Defense is sort of doing performance art, saying that the force under Joe Biden was not a lethal force. They know that's not true. And they know that the Secretary of Defense is really like the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, in a reality show. That's not a good change in values in the Pentagon. I mean, one of the things that was most disturbing about the signal gate issue, which, let's face it, it was a one-week story. It was absolutely absurd, is the cultural message that is sent through the millions of people.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what's very interesting, of course, is the Harvard example will be interesting to watch. Trump can be forced to retreat by things that he can't control. So the stock market forced him to radically alter, I think, his bizarre dream of universal tariffs. The courts, of course, are pushing back. And now Harvard, which I would argue is probably not the best position because this is an anti-elite moment in the United States. We'll see. When these institutions push back, President Trump often retreats. And that is a source of optimism for people who are concerned about this slide into authoritarianism.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's an interesting moment, right? Because finally, after the most powerful and wealthy law firms in the country have bent the need to Donald Trump just yesterday, Harvard University said enough. And that is symbolically an interesting moment. So Alistair, to answer your question, yes, it's a terribly scary and poignant moment. The question, of course, is how far does it go? And here I'm a congenital optimist. So I do get into arguments with people who say, well, this is clearly Nuremberg in 1939. I don't think that's true. We have very strong institutions. Certain of those institutions actually are standing up, even if too many of them have caved to the president. But no, we're absolutely trending in an authoritarian direction. And it has been shocking the extent to which these institutions, whether it's Paul Weiss, Sullivan and Cromwell, or Columbia University, have just crumbled in the face of this bullying.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there's a couple of reasons to be scared. One, one of the very depressing aspects of having a front row seat to the federal government right now is the dismantlement of things that were so important and are so important to the United States. Everything from the cutting-edge medical research, shockingly innovative things most people will be familiar with that because of the development of mRNA vaccines during COVID. Now, by the way, that is another element that is being dismantled because that was a joint venture in many cases between universities in the UK, companies, UK, US. But the dismantlement of our research and development, the dismantlement of our soft power, the elimination of USAID, we have no mechanism for the use of soft power around the world, the destruction of our relationship with our allies, the tradition, I mean, I could go on, but the tradition that the federal government doesn't put too heavy a hand on media outlets, on law firms, on universities.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Voted for Obama in a significant way, this message of hope and aspiration and positive change have now gone hard for Donald Trump. So not only does he play to grievance, but he can summon grievance and people who otherwise might have been more amenable to a more optimistic message.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People who feel like they have been left behind, and that's, of course, a key element of populism around the world. And he just feels that. And I have no psychoanalytical chops to offer, but people will tell you that he was always sort of the New York outsider who felt that he needed Needed to try to aspire to high end New York culture and sort of never felt fully accepted. So here's a man who really understands grievance and he speaks to and morphs the country, by the way. I mean, remember, it was only 2008 when Obama wins with an aspirational message of hope and change. It's fascinating to look at American politics because many of those counties in places like Pennsylvania or Ohio or Wisconsin that”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. In fact, there's a joke that goes around that's probably only funny to Latin Americanists, but we're here in 20... And Argentina is libertarian in the United States is Peronist, right? I mean, how did this happen? I think it's probably giving Donald Trump a little too much credit to say that he studied Peron or other populist movements of Latin America and learned from them. It's not clear to me that Donald Trump learns from anything. What he does have, though, he's got a few points of genius. And one of those is to really understand the grievance.”
2025-05-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 133. Trump vs. Europe: Flattery, Pushback, and Powerplays (Congressman Jim Himes) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source