YouSaid · the spoken record

Justin Amash

lines on the record: 73
first: 2021-05-20
most recent: 2021-05-20
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

“I hope so. Know, I've been inspired by those students, and I think they will make a difference in our country. And I encourage them to be independent, but I want to thank you as well for considering me to be a part of those seminars so that I could have those engagements and learn myself from the students as well as give them the chance to learn from me.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You'll never dissipate that hostility intention until you accept that the worthiness of the ends is not justification for all the means”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the ends are important. Like there's no doubt about what you're saying. People do care about the ends, but the means are important. And there is a tendency, an increasing tendency in our politics on both the left and the right to believe that the ends justify the means. And I think that's a very dangerous approach to politics and life and will only result in more tension and more hostility. You can do all the great things as a president and say, you know, I wanted to give the people good things, so I just signed anything by executive order or one party decided everything and that's good enough because we'll get we'll get some money out and help people. But beneath all that, if you don't have the proper means for achieving that, there will be a lot of tension that builds up and there's a lot of hostility and resentment that builds up. Not everyone's going to agree on all those ends and there will be”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's no doubt if you want to stop that stuff, you have to return to a more normal process, one where people are required to work together, are required to accept differences, must tolerate differences. When you get back to that kind of system, we'll be able to restore America as a place where people can get along and where partisanship is not to the extreme. And I'm not convinced that President Biden understands that. And that a lot of people in leadership roles understand that.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Congress do not feel like they are active participants in it, where they feel beholden to just a few leaders, you will have massive partisanship and it will permeate then into society and then it feeds back up. And I think that Democrats are not understanding why Trump rose up, why Republicans are so angry, is because they do feel the system is totally broken. And they viewed Trump as a weapon against this broken system. They said, well, All of Congress, these guys are liars and cheats and they don't care about the process and they'll run roughshot over anyone anyways. They don't care about our representatives. It's just a few people at the top deciding things. Well, we'll just put Trump in there and he'll fight back and we'll fight fire with fire.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think through things differently. My concern with Biden becoming president was not one of like, does Biden have good character versus Donald Trump? I think he has much better character than Donald Trump. It wasn't even so much about his policies, even though I have my disagreements with President Biden's policies. It's that I don't think he, like a lot of other people in politics, recognize what is the true problem in our politics that concentrated power, centralized power has really done a lot of damage to our legislative system and to our representative system. And there's no going back to a world where people are at peace with each other and less partisan unless we correct that problem. Like he can be the kindest, gentlest man in the world. But if we have a legislative body where members of Congress”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and so I wouldn't rule anything out in my life. Like, if I want to get back into politics someday, I'll do it. And if I don't, I'm perfectly happy not doing it as well. But I do think that we need to.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't rule anything out like that. I'm very happy to be back home with my family. I don't really miss Congress the way maybe I even thought I might miss it. I've been very happy with my non-communist. That makes a difference to me. And I don't want to lose that. My kids are still pretty young, but they're getting to the age where they're going to start getting into high school and college even in the next.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's what principles are about, right? Principles only matter. Principles only matter when the decision is tough. They don't matter when it's an easy choice. Principles are useless. Who needs principles to tell you to do the easy thing? You need principles when actually your instincts are to do the opposite.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But if I might push back just quickly, the scope of the crisis is not justification for using emergency powers. The emergency means, at least in the government context, emergency means that the legislative body doesn't have an opportunity to meet to handle the situation, that there's not sufficient time, there's not sufficient ability for this legislative body to meet. You can't say, well, something is really bad, and so we're going to decide that the executive can do things unilaterally now, because otherwise there is no limit to the kinds of things the executive can say is just really bad. There's no ability for the people to be represented. I think that's very dangerous because I just don't want to be in that situation as a country. So I want us to work through the legislative process.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Months long or 12 months long where we continue to ascribe emergency powers to the executive, whether it's a governor or the president and say, well, look, it's really important and it's a bad situation. So we're going to let the executive do this. Being really important and being a bad situation are not legitimate justifications for tossing away our representative system of government.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's a difference between emergencies and crises. When you have an emergency, you absolutely in our system allow the executive to take action quickly because there's no alternative really. Like you don't have time for a body to meet. So the executive is going to take quick action. There's some sense in which this is like a extra constitutional principle. It's not really a part of our constitutional system. It's like, well, there's a fire and we have to wait for the legislative body to decide whether we're going to rescue people. You know, the governor can say like, I'm going to, I'm moving these resources and I'm going to give people out of there. But that's very different. And this is where I think a lot on the left make a mistake. That's very different from an ongoing crisis that is like six.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The will of one person. You know, so when I see a rule dictated by one person, and again, I think my concern in that tweet from Biden was President Biden is not so much that he framed it as a rule. It's that he framed it as a choice. And I wanted to make clear that that's not really a choice to tell people. It's A or B and that's it. But when someone comes up with a rule, I want it to be the product of a representative system. I want it to be something that is consistent with the rule of law, that it's not arbitrary, that the rule is equally applied, that it has considered the circumstances. And I think a blank A statement like that was not really that type of statement for me. I mean, from the president.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An enemy of Twitter. Because it is very nuanced. But yeah, look, when it comes to something like coercion, there is coercion in our lives. What I like to see is that it's not the product of arbitrary will. In other words, that it's not one person through his or her arbitrary will making a decision for all people and saying, well, these are your two choices. And for me, the way you limit it is you make it as non-arbitrary as possible. In other words, you have a representative body that makes decisions. This doesn't mean when you have representative body that there's not any coercion, but there is some kind of standard for assessing whether it's been vetted by a broad swath of the electorate or whether it's”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I respect nuance. I believe in nuance. Twitter is not nuance generally as part of the problem. It's very hard to engage on something like, you know, the topic of coercion versus choice in a Twitter discussion.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Relationship. And actually, I've told people many times who have talked to me about this, Republicans in Congress, who have asked me about Liz Cheney. I've said, look, she's respectful. I think that she will engage with you in an honest way. But when it comes to this thing, I don't think that it was much different from what a lot of people did.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that stuff is just as damaging, just as dangerous to our politics as anything else because it's just another. You know, manifestation of this bigger problem, which is that people are just not honest about who they are. And again, I say that not as someone who's saying you can never change, you can never grow, you can never learn, but I'd like to see some real development when people learn. Like, what is it that changed your mind? Liz Cheney, what is it that you saw that made it so different for you versus how Trump was behaving, say, before January 6th? I mean, I don't think there was any radical difference there. It was the same, but what? Because the outcome was different because that was the one time they stormed the Capitol. I put that out there and it's a nuanced perspective. I don't think it's a perspective that most people ascribe to because people want to make everyone either a hero or an enemy. Again, I have no ill will toward her, like personally. I don't have any issues with her in terms of our personal.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that bothers me as someone who spent a lot of time pointing out the risks here and the dangers. And then, you know, I was essentially criticized by her. And by the way, I say this not just of her. I'm not trying to pick on Liz Cheney. There are a lot of CNN commentators who I've seen, you know, you bring in Republicans, former Republicans. I've seen them flip on a dime too. When Justin Amash is saying, hey, Trump is a risk. Trump this and Trump that, these commentators are coming on and saying, oh, Justin's a gadfly. Justin's out of step with the party. Then when Liz Cheneys comes out and says it, all of a sudden they're like, oh, what a hero. Isn't it wonderful? An independent woman standing up to all these men and all the rest.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But you're saying Don't think she did. No, and anyone can see why that would be because you had Kevin McCarthy come to the floor and say, look, this is it. Like what Trump is responsible, he said. Kevin McCarthy himself said Trump is responsible. People were really turning on the Republican Party in that brief period of time. And I think she saw it as an opportunity to jump forward. This is my assessment. Look, I don't have, I didn't ask Liz Cheney her opinion on this at the time. So this is my assessment of it as an observer. But as someone who is an informed observer who has interacted with the Republican conference for all those years, who's been a part of that group and has been a part of politics and has seen how it goes. And to me, it has the same sort of change on a dime sort of aspect to it that I saw in my House Freedom Caucus members, except they changed on a dime in the other direction.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Miscalculated that she made a mistake, but once she jumped into the pool, she was stuck. Now she's just got to swim. And so I think it's basically a miscalculation. I really believe that if she had not seen the whole party moving, she would not have moved either. And that to me is indicative of the problem we have in Congress, that people are waiting till they feel they're safe. I think she thought she was safe. She moved. Now she's got no choice. She already moved. She can't backtrack.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With that said, I also think we need to be careful because you want to give people the room to learn and change. I'm not saying that we shouldn't say it's a good thing when someone does learn, but we should think about what are the reasons this person changed. From my perspective, here's what happened. She thought that after the capital insurrection, the party was turning that this was it. She even saw Kevin McCarthy go on the house floor and say some negative things about Trump. She saw Lindsay Graham say like, I've had enough, I'm done. She saw people starting to turn and she thought, this is the turn. And so she wanted to put herself out there up front to say, look, I'm going to leave this turn. She never really liked Trump. She pretended for four years that she did, but she never really liked him. So she was like, now is my opportunity to turn. I think she actually...”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stand up for that view. And in fact, those of us who were for impeachment previously, whether it was related to the Mueller Report or the Ukraine stuff, she mocked us. You know, she went on TV and said, it's a sham, this sham impeachment to remove a duly elected president. It was always like from her perspective, a partisan game that the Democrats and apparently Justin Amash and maybe Mitt Romney are playing. I think one of the biggest problems we have in politics is that when someone is inconsistent like that, where they're doing the wrong thing for four years and then they flip on a dime, there's a tendency to turn them into heroes. And I think that's a huge problem because it lets people get away with things.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We had four years where she could have stood up and said, There's a problem here. What Donald Trump is doing is wrong. And granted, she did do that a couple times, not of any significance, mostly like minor dings here and there. And usually related to things involving foreign policy to take a swipe at them. But for the most part, it's almost exclusively positive or supportive for four years. And in fact, she never came to my defense. She never came to my aid when I was saying what the president's doing is wrong. For a long time, I was warning that the president's approach could lead to things like violence could lead to a lot of animosity and contempt and all sorts of things that would be harmful to our country. She didn't.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So for me, this is a little bit complex, and I probably will give the most nuanced view on Liz Cheney that anyone's going to give. In my experience as a member of Congress, I didn't have any difficulties with her personally. Like she was fairly polite to me, fairly respectful. I can't say that of most of the people in leadership. We don't have a whole lot of interactions, but in my interactions with her, I always thought she was someone who was willing to at least listen and engage with me. With that said, I think this”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they looked at the midterms and they saw Republicans get wiped out. And a lot of people forget that, that the 2018 midterms were an election where Republican leaders and Republican candidates across the country were trying to keep a distance from Trump. And then they got wiped out. And so a lot of them turned around then and the ones who survived, who came back to Congress, said, look, our party took an approach of like let's not talk about Trump. Let's talk about the issues. Let's stay away from all the Trump stuff. And we got hit pretty hard. And so, again, that reinforce in their minds, maybe Trump has the formula.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, so my theory on, I have a theory on why it happened around that time. Around late 2018, you had two things happen. You had the Kavanaugh stuff going on, the hearings and all the questioning of Kavanaugh's history. Justice Kav And you also had the election, the 2018 midterms. And I think in both cases, you had these Republicans who were highly skeptical of Trump decide that the dangers of the left were greater than the dangers of Trump. They made a calculated decision that like, look, maybe Donald Trump is right. Maybe we're going about this all wrong. Maybe the left is more dangerous than we think. Maybe, you know, from their perspective, from the perspective of my Republican colleagues, maybe they're willing to smear this Supreme Court nominee for no good reason from their perspective.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They think you're the crazy one. You're the one who's like somehow lost touch when they've totally flipped their personality.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were saying it privately behind the scenes, they would insult him in ways that I didn't even think was appropriate. Then I'd see them go on Fox News in the evening and they'd make some excuse for him. And at first it was kind of like, well, we just have to like play along. They didn't really believe in it. But then at some point, like they just changed. And it happened around the late 2018 to early 2019. They just changed totally. And it was like people who I knew very well were all of a sudden totally different people. I could talk to them about something where if I talk to them about it two years earlier, they would have been totally with me. And then in 2019, you're talking to them about it. And it's like you're talking in a different language or, you know, they don't even understand what you're saying. They can't relate to you.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, for some of them, it was at first an effort to give Donald Trump a chance, in a sense. Like, look, we don't like this guy. He's a buffoon. I mean, some of the biggest defenders of Donald Trump in Congress today were saying things that were far more critical of him than anything I've ever said publicly. Like, you know, they were saying it.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, it shows how quickly people will turn. And that was also very hard because people I know, people I thought I knew really well, really, really well. Like I had gone to dinner with them, I'd spent time with their families. They turned out to be totally different people than what I thought. And that was very hard for me because I think of myself as pretty good at seeing people for what they are. I'm not easily duped. I look at people and I try to make an honest assessment about them. I don't fall for politicians. Let's put it that way.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think that's the point. If a Democrat agrees with our principles or someone on the left, then so be it. I don't see any problem with that. There's nothing in the mission statement that I think a Democrat couldn't agree with. So I wanted it to be open. I wanted it to be a caucus that brings transparency. And instead it was turned into a tool for one man. near the end of my time there made the plea to them to turn this around, to remember what we were here for. And the problem was the number of allies I had in the caucus kept dwindling. I had Mark Sanford and Raoul Labrador. And as these people started to drop away, you know, you're left with, you know, it's just you who are there saying, let's do these. Well, and the”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was a difficult part of my time in Congress. When we founded the House Freedom Caucus, I was at my most hopeful. We had finally put together something that I felt could be used. And in time, it was turned against that completely. It became the opposite. It became a tool for cementing power in the executive and decreasing true representation on the House floor. So it was the most hopeful and in many ways something that I'm very sad about to see it turn that way. I actually wrote the mission statement for the House Freedom Caucus. If you go and look, I think probably still on their Twitter. I don't know for sure. But the mission statement is very specific about it's not being a conservative group. It's not about supporting one party. I even was able to get them to keep the word conservative out of the whole mission statement and name of the group.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think these kinds of unfair comparisons happen all the time. There's some extent to which John Boehner did that to me as well. I think it's unfair when we just take people and just because they tend to be a thorn in their party's side or whatever it might be to categorize them the same way and say it's all the same whatever else you want to say about AOC, I think that she does bring real ideas to the table. You may not agree with them, but I think she actually has a set of principles and brings those to the House floor and tries to fight for those things. And there are other people who I think are mostly there for self-aggrandized and to do a little bit of entertaining and raise some money for their campaign committee.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A representative body. It is very much a top-down operation. And for the most part, the Speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader, and to some extent the minority leaders in each party run the show, along with the President of the United States. And the other people are just there to press buttons.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“have very different views from me even if they're pushing you know democratic socialism or whatever that's okay because that's what our representative body is for it's for us to work through those ideas she should be allowed to present her ideas on the house floor just like i should be allowed to present my ideas on the house floor let's have a rigorous debate let's treat congress as a discovery process where we discover what is the will of the people acting through their representatives and then we get an outcome and that's i think how our system is intended to operate but today the way it operates is very top down it's it's very much like an oligarchy and i i know when i use that phrase maybe or that word people might think that's too strong but i really believe that's what it's like i don't think there is really a legislative body at this point i i don't think you have”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know who I don't necessarily agree with on a whole bunch of issues. But I, look, I see her like a few others in Congress as people who will stick to their principles, stick to their guns, who are upfront with people about who they are and are willing to challenge leadership, are willing to stand up for their views and their principles and their constituents regardless of the pressure they're facing. And I don't see many members of Congress like that. Another one like that on the Republican side is Thomas Massey. You know, these are very different people. They're people who can go to the House floor and leadership can be pressing them that they must absolutely vote one way and they're willing to vote the other way because of something they believe deep down in their heart and they're trying to represent their constituents the best they can and stand up for the principles they believe in that matters to me I want to see a Congress full of people like that even if”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't see anyone currently in that Republican primary who's going to beat Peter Meyer. I just don't see it. Now, that's not to say a more serious competitor couldn't show up. But I just don't see it right now. And I've encouraged him to remain true to himself. I think that's the most important thing. You ran for office on a set of principles. And I don't agree with him on everything. We're not the same person. We have disagreements. I respect people who stay true to themselves. This is why, again, I have some camaraderie with AOC and there are others.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think so, actually. You know, I'll say this after I made the decisions I made about the Republican Party, my popularity within the district went up. It didn't go down. I actually left Congress with my highest level of popularity of any time I was in Congress.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The party is maybe 25% now of the total voting electorate, something like that. And maybe 15% of the voting electorate. If you're not totally aligned with Donald Trump, you're in trouble. You're going to get voted out of office. Now, there are some districts where I think probably other Republicans have the upper hand, but those districts are fewer and fewer in number. And so I think this is the fear. The leadership team. Well, you would have been beaten.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it says that they're afraid of Donald Trump's voters. I mean, they recognize that The die-hard Trump voters within the Republican Party probably make up a majority of the party now. And this is partly because the party has shrunk so much.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Spreading all sorts of lies and propaganda, smearing people, you can do all sorts of things and they won't boot you from the committee. They'll say, well, you know, you're good to go.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and to be clear, to put this in context. I got booted from the budget committee for voting with Republican leadership. Only 95% of the time. So I did have a tendency to stick with the Republicans on committee votes, and I stuck with them on the budget committee on most of the votes. The vast majority. In fact, I voted for stuff I'm sure where I did not necessarily support it on the House floor. So, you know, I voted with Paul Ryan. He was the chair of the budget committee. Something like, you know, 95% plus of the time. And they told me, they thought that wasn't good enough. They were upset about it because especially because I voted against one of his budgets one time. And so they booted me from the committee. And yet today you can say the most outrageous things. You can threaten other members. You can be, you know.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Amendment that's going to run counter to their view of how the bill should turn out. There's no chance they're putting it on there if it has a chance of passing.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In Congress today, at least in the House of Representatives, there is no longer an ability for members to introduce amendments on the House floor. Everything is pushed through the Rules Committee to the extent you even can get an amendment onto the floor for a vote. It has to first go through the Rules Committee. They can eliminate it for any reason. And what ends up happening, and this is true under Republicans and Democrats, is if the Speaker of the House thinks your amendment has a chance of passing and is contrary to the Speaker's view of how the bill should turn out, that amendment is not getting put onto the floor for a vote. So the only amendments that are going to get onto the floor are the ones that are trivial or meaningless, amendments that don't make much of a difference, or amendments that already have the blessings of the leadership team. But if you've got some...”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And yeah, I saw the reaction and recognized boy, they're not letting anything go, they're going to be on top of you, and it doesn't matter how strongly held your beliefs are. It doesn't matter what the topic is. They want you to fall in line. And that was different from my experience in the State House where at least at the time in the state of Michigan there was a lot more flexibility to be independent. When I got to Congress, it was another story. The place is so partisan that you're sticking with the team on everything, red team, red or blue or else, you know. And by the time you're...”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. But this incident was even before all of the Snowden revelations. This was pretty early on in Congress in my first term.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But when I got there, I mean, one of the things that I really remember was for our first vote on the Patriot Act, where I voted no on reauthorizing the Patriot Act. And Republican leadership were just stunned by this. I mean, they couldn't even believe what was going on, couldn't understand it. And I'd rallied quite a few other people to vote no on it as well. It failed on the floor, which shocked the leadership team who thought it would just sail through. And I remember thinking right then, boy, these people are on top of you. They're not going to let anything go. Even something that is a very strongly held belief, like my opposition to the Patriot Act, opposition to unconstitutional surveillance, they're going to come and give me a hard.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's totally my fault. I don't blame the reporters. The reporters did in fact feel very bad about it. It was important to me to be there for every vote. It really bothers me to have missed a vote. I took it very seriously. You know, we're elected to go represent people. And I... Take it seriously. I took it seriously. And that was a hard thing for me.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I wouldn't vote to be clear. I wouldn't vote yes on things that I didn't read. Right, right. I didn't miss a single vote in the State House, but.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's right. And then I ran for Congress and I won that primary with by a significant margin. I attribute that to my independence.”
2021-05-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 444 — Justin Amash · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source