James Talarico: America's Corrupt System Is Designed To Keep You Poor! | Texas Senate Candidate

0:00As a founder building a business when I was in my early 20s, I think I always had a deep sense of imposter syndrome because there was something that I wasn't good at and that thing was finances. Finance and understanding your financial position as a small business is the great enabler of all of your dreams. I was running from it until I discovered a platform called Xero. Xero is an accounting and financial management platform specifically for small businesses and it brings accounting, payments, payroll and analytics all into one place, even for people that don't love doing finances. Xero wants to do the financial work for you. But its core ambition is to go beyond keeping the financial record

0:36because Xero wants to help you understand what's happening in your business. And increasingly, and this is maybe the most important thing, is help you make decisions. Finally, we have a partner who can enable us in a simple way for those people that are both left brain or right brain and enable our dreams. You can learn more about Xero by going to Xero.com. Thank you to Xero. Thank you for sponsoring this podcast, but also thank you for helping me to scale my business as somebody that, quite frankly, has never loved finances that much. For one of our own residents to become the world's first trillionaire while one in five Texas children live in poverty, to me that is a spiritual sickness. Right now, it's three men

1:13who now own more wealth than the entire middle class. As someone who cares about the people in my state, that's not the future I want. We have to have a government of, by, and for the people, and we have to clean up the corruption in our political system. Is the Texas governor corrupt? Yes. That's a governor corrupt? Yes. That's a strong thing to say. Well, I'm an eighth generation Texan. I was born to a single mother, a preacher's daughter. She worked overtime to provide for me. My birth father became abusive, so she packed all our stuff into her little Ford Escort. We found a little apartment. There wasn't room for a nursery, so I slept in a crib in her closet. And that fighting spirit, I feel like she passed that along to me.

1:44But also, faith has really been the foundation of my life. It's why I ran for office, and I am trying to love my neighbor through public policy. You're on the verge of potentially becoming the first Democratic senator in Texas since 1988. So change is what we need most right now, because everywhere I go, people are struggling to survive, struggling to afford necessities. And people are working harder than they've ever worked. And it's because the system itself has been rigged against working people. We don't have capitalism. We have crony capitalism. Why did the Democrats lose to Trump, in your view? I talked with a lot of Texans who thought he could get the economy back on track. They thought he was going to lower costs, end the forever wars, release the Epstein files. But more

2:21than a year into this administration, those promises have not been kept. But he was right that the Biden administration failed us on our southern border. So what would you do about that, though? And how do you reverse this change? And do you have an opinion on who you think should be president in the next cycle? We should start with Donald Trump. Guys, I've got a favour to ask before this episode begins. The algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed. So when we have our best episodes on this show, the most shared episodes, the most rated episodes, I would love you to know. And the simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button. But also, it's the simple, easy,

2:59free thing that you can do to help us make the show better. And I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this on right now and hit that follow button. Thank you so, so, so much. James Tallarico. If the elections go your way this November, you're on the verge of potentially making history by becoming the first Democratic senator in Texas history, which would be the first time I think since 1988 that a Democrat has won in Texas. And also people tell me that you might be president someday. Because you have a lot of the attributes that people think it would take a Democratic candidate to become president of the United States. So really, I just want to figure out who you are and what you stand for and where you've come from.

3:49What is that early context that I need to understand to understand the man that sits in front of me today? Yeah, well, I'm an eighth generation Texan. So my family's been in the state since it was Mexico, was born to a single mother who was a preacher's daughter from South Texas who struck it on her own when she was 19 years old and moved up to the big city, Austin, Texas, and worked overtime to provide for me. She left a dangerous situation to provide a better life for me. Yep, this is her. Yeah. She showed me what it means to stand up to bullies. She showed me what it means to fight for the people that you love. She was always making time for service. She worked a full-time job. She had very limited time, but she always carved out time to fight for the causes that she

4:37cared about, to volunteer, whether it was at my school or at the church or in the community. And so my service, my public service is inspired by her and I would not be here without her. You said she taught you to stand up to bullies. Yeah. She was in an abusive relationship with your biological father. Yes. She met my birth father. He was 21 years old. He was a high school dropout. And he had a drinking problem. And when he drank, he became violent, became abusive. And one night, shortly after I was born, he got physical again. And that night, her love for me rose to meet that abuse from him. And she packed all our stuff into her little Ford Escort. And she drove me to the hotel where she worked, begged the manager to let us stay in one of the rooms until we found a little apartment in East Austin.

5:39And this photo is taken in that apartment. There wasn't room for a nursery, so I slept in a crib in her closet. And she always says that she was very proud of that closet. Like she decorated it with toys and pictures and, and that, that fighting spirit, I felt like she passed that along to me. And whether it was in the classroom or, or in the state legislature, like I, I have tried to fight for the people I love in the way that she fought for me. How'd you feel? How do you feel about him? Well, you know, I remember when I was growing up, I felt a lot of anger toward him. I feel like as I've gotten older, I've tried to appreciate the things that got him to that point. My mom would tell me that he didn't know the months in order.

6:24And so she thinks that maybe he had a learning disability that went undiagnosed. And things are very different now. And we're able to, I know as a former teacher, that we're able to catch these disabilities and serve our students with special needs. But it sounds like he didn't get that. And that can derail someone. And it can lead to substance abuse. It can lead to the bottle. And then that can lead to violence and abuse. And so I try as hard as it is to recognize that I'm the person I am because of him and my mom. And that's a hard thing to wrestle with. I think a lot of people who've had abuse in their family struggle with the fact that they come from an abuser. I've tried to have more compassion for it as I've gotten older.

7:12Your mum then meets Mark. Yes. Tallarico, who's your adoptive father. That's right. Yep. And he's the man that's ultimately raised you. Absolutely. Yeah. Very different. Yes. Very different. Than your birth father. Yeah. What role has he played in, in your life? Yeah. You know, I, I I've said before that the luckiest thing that ever happened to me in my whole life was meeting Mark Tallarico and I certainly would not be on this podcast. He gave me his last name. He raised me as his own. He is probably the best man that I know. Um, honest and cares about other people does what's right when what's right when no one is watching. And he has certainly shaped me into the man that I am today. If I'd asked you at 16 years old, James, if I said, what do you want to be when you're older,

7:56what would you have said? I had always been interested in education and being a teacher, particularly around social studies and history. My history teachers, when I was growing up, they're the ones who kept me on the straight and narrow. They got me interested in school. I was not the best student before then. And I struggled to behave in class and be a good student. And I feel like it was my passion for social studies, for history, for reading that ultimately kept me on that track. And so from that point, I did want to go into being some kind of a teacher or a professor so I could do that for other people. I read that in high school you were voted most likely to become president. I think so. Yeah.

8:41When I was in school, I took on leadership roles. I was the president of our choir and the captain of our debate team. And so I think people, you know, saw that. Are you interested in being president someday? I don't think so. I struggled a lot with the decision to run for the U.S. Senate. I had considered getting out of politics, I guess, as I guess it was last summer after my fourth term in the legislature was coming to a close. I finished the legislative session in May of last year. And I was really proud of the work that I had done in the legislature. But it is difficult work being in politics. And so you may know that I also made the decision to go to seminary. Which is Bible school? Yes.

9:31Yeah. Studying to become a minister like my granddad. And this is something that I always kind of had in the back of my mind. And I remember meeting with my pastor who baptized me when I was two years old, has been my pastor since I was a little kid. And he told me that a campaign can also be a form of ministry. If you're giving people hope, if you're bringing people together, if you're helping folks see the image of God in each other and in themselves, you can do that in a political context as well. And I had never really thought about that. I kind of kept these things felt very distinct to me. And he, of course, as a pastor, was helpful in getting me to reconcile these two vocations and see them as potentially one in the same, given the state of we're building in Texas is giving people hope. It's bringing people

10:25into the process who haven't been engaged before. It's bringing people together across all the many divisions in our communities. And at its best moments, it does feel like that we're doing something really, really special and important. Why would that exclude you from someday also pursuing the role of presidency? It may not. I guess what I'm saying is that I think there's a problem with people who are in politics for too long. I've already said that I'll only be serving two terms if I'm blessed to get the opportunity to serve for two terms. Because I do feel like when people hang on to these positions or are trying to reach for the next position, then everything becomes about self-preservation. It becomes about accumulating power rather than serving people. And those are temptations, right, for every elected official between those two goals. the longer you're in this, the more you kind of get the office and your identity become kind of

11:25merged into one thing, right? Where being a senator or being a state rep, which I am now, if you're doing it for a really long time, it becomes who you are. So it's no longer a service. It is your identity and you do whatever you can to protect that, right? Which means selling out your values. It means being susceptible to corruption. And so I guess starting out, I'm trying to like always remember that this is a service. And I think we need more elected officials who have other interests besides politics and government and legislating. There are other things that I want to do and there are other ways I want to serve. And I want to have a well-balanced life, I guess. And so I want to do this because I think it's important right now. But then I want to like, I want to

12:11give the reins over to someone else, someone who has fresh energy and new ideas and a different perspective. And I think that's how this is supposed to work. Could you see yourself running someday for the highest office in the land president? No. You couldn't? No, I really don't. I'm surprised I'm doing this. I'm running for the U.S. Senate. And I feel like there's so much. I mean, I'm traveling the whole state of Texas, which is a giant state, a diverse state, complex state. And I'm constantly learning about the things I don't know. Right. And I feel like I'm just every day on the campaign trail cramming for a big test in January of next year to be the senator of this state. And I've already seen over the course of this campaign how difficult it is, right?

12:58And the attacks that come your way, the attacks on people in your life, like your family, my girlfriend, people who didn't sign up to be in office or run for office are also on the receiving end of these attacks. And so I can't imagine doing this for longer than two terms. Do you think pressure and attacks are a reason not to do something that is worthy? I'm just wondering, because even as a podcaster, you get lots of pressure. It's a different type of pressure. Pressure, lots of attacks, lots of feedback, et cetera. But at the end of it, like I think I love what I get to do and I really hope that people benefit from it. So to me, that's reason enough to continue to do it. Really irrespective of the pressure

13:42and the attacks. I think that's true, but I think there are lots of people who want to be president. And so we should give those people a shot if that's the job they want. I honestly think that my skill set that I've developed is better suited for a legislative position. What's a legislative position for us Brits? Oh, yeah, yeah. So right now I'm a state rep in Texas, so I serve in the state house in the lower chamber. I would be, God willing, after this election, serving in the U.S. Senate, which means I'm one member of a larger team of people. I am trying to build coalitions. I'm trying to bring people over to my side. I'm trying to change hearts and minds in a body. And I feel like I'm really good at that. I mean, in the state house in Texas, even as a Democrat in a Republican dominated body, I've passed 60 bipartisan bills over four terms.

14:31And they're not just like symbolic, you know, superficial pieces of legislation. Like these are major bills on housing and healthcare and early childhood education, teacher pay, property taxes, like the things that are really affecting my neighbors. And that is a skill set. Some people are better suited as, you know, as an executive making decisions on their own. And some people are better, you know, working as part of a larger team to do something ambitious and big. You must have an opinion on who you think might be, you know, because we head towards 2028. If you look at the polling data and what's going on geopolitically with Iran and lots of other issues like AI, it appears that there's a, you know, the polls are becoming a little bit more favorable for the Democrats. Do you have an

15:15opinion on who you think should be president in the next cycle? Kamala's, there's Gavin's, there's AOC's, there's, I don't know, Bernie's probably going to run again. Pete Buttigieg's probably going to run again. Yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't, given that I worked at the state level, I don't know a lot of these people personally, but I honestly think a lot of the people that you just named, you know, have a lot of potential to be, to be good leaders and to deliver for this country. And honestly, I'll, you know, change is what we need most right now. So I'm excited for anyone who, who's going to bring some change to this political system. The only thing I would say is what I'm going to be looking for

15:50in the candidates as they start bubbling up is like, who's talking about systemic reform? There's lots of issues that I care about, education, healthcare, housing, all things that I care about. But I've done this now for eight years, and I've seen that the system itself is what's preventing us from making progress on all of those important issues. And so when I'm kind of thinking about my criteria for evaluating who I'm going to vote for or who I'm going to support, it's going to be who is thinking and talking about comprehensive political reform, including getting big money out of our politics, banning gerrymandering, overhauling the Supreme Court, all these things that feel like inside baseball, that feel like process, it has to be the top priority. Because if we don't fix the

16:37system itself, we're not going to make progress on all the issues we care about. There's been this really interesting rise in democratic socialism over the last year or so. Obviously, Mehmet Dhani has been elected to office and people like AOC and just the broader democratic socialism narrative has been really popular. What's your perspective on that? Because I think of the Democrats here, then I think of democratic socialism as being slightly different from sort of typical, more centrist, democratic philosophy? I certainly understand where the anger is coming from. I hear it everywhere I go across the state of Texas. Anger? Yeah. I mean, everywhere I go, people are struggling to survive in this economy. And it's not like people are buying nice clothes or

17:26nice cars or nice vacations. They're struggling to afford necessities, groceries and gas and utilities, prescription drugs, the things that you need to survive every day. And people are working harder than they've ever worked, right? Some of them are working multiple jobs and they can't make those ends meet. And this is especially pronounced among young people in my experience, my fellow millennials, but also Gen Z, because we were promised that if we worked hard, if we played by the rules, if we went to school, if we studied, that we could live the American dream. And that was a lie because it is way too expensive to buy a home. It's way too expensive to start a family, to have kids. It's too expensive to retire comfortably. And it's because the system itself has been rigged against

18:18working people. And I would say, I would go back to the 1970s. In fact, you can pinpoint this one document called the Powell Memo, 1971. He was a corporate lawyer who later got appointed to the Supreme Court. But if you read this memo, it's basically a blueprint for how corporate interests can start to dismantle the Great Society and the New Deal, which had come the decades before. And so there was a feeling that among corporate America, that there needed to be a strategic plan, a political campaign to protect their power and amass more power. And so the blueprint says that corporate interests are going to unite. They're going to spend massive amounts of money in our politics, buying politicians

19:09in both parties, elevate corporate voices in media, appoint sympathetic judges. It goes through kind of a whole comprehensive strategy for how to reverse the gains made in the New Deal and the Great Society. And you start to see, starting in the late 70s, early 80s, trickle-down economics, right, of cutting taxes for the people at the very top and forgetting about the rest of us. And that has really been the story of the last 50 years in this country, the last five decades. And that's a major change from what we saw in the middle of the 20th century when our government invested in education and healthcare, in homes and highways. We grew together. We had the largest, strongest middle class in the world in the 1950s and 1960s.

19:58And now that middle class is disappearing all over Texas, all over this country. And there's a lot of anger about that. And it's not just limited to Democrats or Democratic socialists. It really spans the political spectrum. And people are looking for leaders who are going to take on that broken, corrupt system. Not nibble around the edges, not incremental improvements. People are looking for wholesale change. And they're right to want that change because it is possible to build an economy that rewards work instead of wealth. That's very possible. I mean, the economy is just a collection of choices that we make, particularly policy choices. And we can make different choices than the ones that we've made for the last five decades. Trickle-down economics, in my view, is not a

20:50theory, it's theft. In 1970, middle-class households held 62% of all U.S. aggregate income, while upper-income households held 29%. Today, those roles have flipped. Upper-income households capture over 50% of total US income, compared to just 42% held by the middle class. And if we look at lower income families, there's been a 5% increase since the 1970s in the sort of cohort of people living in this sort of low income category, the middle income category has reduced by 10%. And the upper income class has increased by 5%. So the direction of travel is that there's less people in the middle class, there's more people in the lower income, and there's more people in higher income. How does one reverse that? Because whatever the sort of economic

21:37system has been in the United States, it's resulted in innovation and GDP growth and productivity. How do you reverse this change? Well, what I'm talking about is not a radical new vision for the economy. I'm talking about how do we get back to the economy of the 1950s and 60s, where we grew together as a nation. And in fact, the productivity, the innovation was, I think, more significant when we were growing together. I think the math and the past make it very clear that a country that invests in its people grows faster than a country that abandons them. And so specifically, what am I talking about? I'm talking about raising the minimum wage, expanding overtime pay so that workers can actually benefit from the wealth they create.

22:27Capitalism was an innovation. I think we forget that now. The idea that you should be rewarded, that you should be compensated for your time, for your work, that was a revolutionary idea. And that's not what we have today. We don't have capitalism, at least not in this country. We have crony capitalism. What is that? Where the gains in this economy go to those who can afford to buy access, who can afford to buy politicians for control. Dr. King said something similar. He said, we have socialism for the rich and we have rugged individualism for the poor. You think about the bailout, right? And the Great Reout, right? And the great recession, right? When a lot of the people on Wall Street who got us into that mess, they got golden

23:11parachutes, right? They got taken care of by the government. But you got single moms out there, you got construction workers, you got nurses and teachers who are barely surviving in this economy, and there's no bailout for them, right? It's rugged individualism for them. And so my only point is that we can create an economy where we all grow together, where corporations have a broader definition of shareholder, right? Because you think about GE, you think about GM, Ford, these great American companies from the 20th century, they believed that shareholders included their workers, the families of their workers, the communities in which they operated. So they felt an obligation, a corporate ethos that was about much more than just their bottom line.

23:59And so that's what I'm trying to get us back to. I'm trying to get us back to a point where we are investing in our people and we have growth, but it's shared growth. We have competition, but it's fair competition, not monopolies and consolidation like we see today. So I guess what I'm trying to get us back to is old school capitalism, where again, people are compensated for their work. And it's not a system that benefits the wealthy and the well-connected only. And how do you think you can do that from a Senate position if you are to win in Texas? Yeah. So we talked about a few policies of minimum wage and overtime pay, but I also think we have to rebuild labor unions in this country. You can almost track the destruction of the middle class

24:41with the destruction of organized labor. And this is not a government solution, really. This is about empowering workers in the workplace to be able to negotiate with their bosses for better pay, for better benefits, for better working conditions. I think we've got to do more to tackle the debt crisis, both personal household debt, which reached an all-time high in the first quarter of this year, whether it's medical debt, whether it's student debt, credit card debt. And we should also talk about the national debt, which reached an all-time high in the first quarter of this year, whether it's medical debt, whether it's student debt, credit card debt. And we should also talk about the national debt,

25:10because both are moral emergencies, in my opinion. I also think we got to do more on supporting families and children, I think investing in education. The GI Bill was a game changer in the middle of the 20th century, and it's what helped build that middle class. We haven't seen an investment in higher education at that scale since the GI Bill. I think we've got to expand the child tax credit, which cut child poverty in half just a few years ago, and then it was allowed to expire. New families who are having kids, they need extra support if they're going to live that American dream. And we can do that. And we can do all of this if we just were willing to tax the people at the very top and make them pay their fair share in taxes.

25:55Is that easier said than done in light of the forces that are opposed to what you've just said? There are big companies and individuals lobbying against what you've just said. There are big companies and individuals lobbying against what you've just said. Yes. And that's the point. It is a broken political system, which leads to a broken economic system. That is the direction that I think this moves in. And it's why I said earlier, I'm looking for comprehensive political reform first, because the only way to unrig the economy so that it benefits all of us again, so that we're all growing together again, that work is rewarded, is if you clean up the corruption in our political system where corporate special interests gave our governor $12 million because we don't have campaign contribution limits in Texas. He gave our governor $12 million to pass a private school voucher scam, which is taking money out of our underfunded public schools in Texas. We rank 43rd in the nation in per-student education funding. It's giving those tax dollars to wealthy parents who already have their kids in private school. So it is literally a transfer of wealth from the bottom and the middle to the people at the economy until we get rid of corruption in our politics and in our government.

27:32We have to have a government of, by, and for the people instead of what we have now, which is a government of, by, and for corporate special interests. Is the Texas governor corrupt? Yes. That's a strong, strong thing to say. Yeah. I mean, you know, again, the system itself is corrupt. The question is which politicians succumb to that and which ones don't. And I'm less interested in the personalities in our politics, and I'm much more interested in the system. Because like, politicians are rational actors for the most part. Politicians are trying to get reelected for the most part. The question is what incentives are put in front of them? What incentives is the system putting in front of them? And right now, if you look at the influence of Big Money, Citizens United, if you look at gerrymandering and redistricting, if you look at the two-party system, all of these social media, traditional media, all of this whole ecosystem incentivizes extremism and

28:28corruption by design. And so you can get rid of the governor of Texas, you can get rid of whoever you want. Someone else is just going to take their place. And if you haven't fixed the incentives, if you haven't fixed the system, you're going to get the same result. A lot of the great founders who happen to, who happen to be also be billionaires, have chosen Texas as their home. Increasingly, I think about Elon Musk building, I think both Tesla and SpaceX in your state. How do you sort of marry these two worlds together? Because, you know, Elon Musk is now a trillionaire. I think the world's first trillionaire. You're talking about inequality. I think he's been held up by some as the sort of like poster child of inequality because he's so rich on paper.

29:13Again, it's not like he has cash in the bank, but it's not like he has a trillion in the bank. But his net worth is so high. So how do you attract someone like Elon Musk to the state to build his companies and to employ the people that he does, while also pursuing equality in the state at the same time. How do you mirror those things? Some people have asked me if I'm demonizing billionaires. And I've said that I think I'm humanizing billionaires. Because for one of our own residents to become the world's first trillionaire, while one in five Texas children live in poverty. To me, that is a spiritual sickness. I want people to be successful. I'm proud of Tesla. I'm proud of the great businesses across the state of Texas, across this country. When businesses are successful,

29:59people are successful, and I'm all for that. But to accumulate more wealth than you could possibly spend in 100 lifetimes while we have people starving in this one, to me, that means we're not fulfilling our full humanity. What would you have done to stop that happening? Well, I mean, at one point in this country, we had, I think it was in the 1950s, a top marginal tax rate of 90%. You know, I don't think it needs to be that high, but we used to have a political system and an economic system that more fairly distributed the fruits of our labor. On that particular point, if there was a tax rate of 90%, Elon would still be a trillionaire. Yeah. Well, I mean, this is the problem when you let so much concentrated wealth and power get so out of control. And I think the thing that really upsets people, particularly about the Elon example, is that Tesla was successful because of taxpayer dollars, right? Tesla got investment from the federal government, which is why it has been so successful. And so if we're all going to invest in Tesla, if we're going to

31:06invest in Elon Musk or pick your billionaire, right? Most of our billionaires, they went to schools that we funded. They drove on highways that we funded. They benefited from infrastructure that we all built together. And we're not saying they can't be successful. All we're saying is that make sure you give something back to the country that made your success possible. Make sure there's a ladder for the next guy coming up. Right. I mean, I think that we should be investing and taking a chance on the CEOs in their garage, not the CEOs on their mega yacht, because that's where the next great American company is going to come from. I've seen that when people talk about being pro-business, what that usually means is being pro-big business,

31:51right? Like all the tax breaks go to the giant multinational corporations, you know, Walmart. We basically subsidize Walmart through Medicaid because they don't give their employees quality healthcare. So we, the taxpayers, are giving Walmart employees quality healthcare. So again, socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the rest of us. And what I'm trying to get back to is an economy where the folks who work for Tesla, the folks who generate that wealth are also getting to benefit from that prosperity. And this is not a radical vision. It's what we had before. And we had the most productive, innovative economy in the world. And I think we can rebuild that through better tax policy, better healthcare policy, better education policy. Public policy

32:30can help us unrig this system so that those productivity gains, the wealth that's created is more evenly shared across people in our communities. Because in the case of Elon, his wealth is equity value in the companies that he owns. It's not necessarily cash in a bank account. So I'm wondering what any governor or government or senator could do to redistribute that, which would have prevented him from becoming a trillionaire in the first place. Yes. When there isn't necessarily a transaction taking place. It's not like he's necessarily sold down huge amounts of that equity. your mega yacht as business expenses, right? The carried interest loophole, capital gains. I mean, this whole tax system that we have now

33:29really allows the people at the very top to accumulate and amass more wealth without any taxation. I mean, I was reading that if we just collected the taxes that the top 1% owes, no new taxes, just collecting what's already owed. It would raise something like $172 billion every year. And that's enough to end poverty in America. That they already owe? But if they hadn't paid it, presumably they're going to be in jail, aren't they? Well, no. I mean, one, there are no resources that actually go to cracking down on these tax cheats. Oh, they're using loopholes, is what you're saying? Yeah, loopholes in the system and people who are cheating the system too. It's both. It's both the legalized loopholes that you can get away with, but it's also people who just know

34:16they're not going to get, no one's going to crack down on them. And so I just say that as an example of how much this system benefits those who can afford to buy politicians, those who can afford to curry favor with elected officials, those who can write the rules of the game so that they're the only ones who win. And that's what I think people are angry about. That's what I think people are tired of across the political spectrum. I don't think this is a democratic thing that I'm saying. I really do get the sense that most people in this country, they want success. They want businesses to thrive. They want business leaders to thrive, but they don't want all the gains in our economy just to go to a few guys at the very top at our expense. Right now, it's three men, Elon Musk, Mark

35:01Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos, who now own more wealth than the entire middle class. I mean, that's crazy. And you're not a socialist or a communist if you say that that's crazy. So what would you do about that, though? Like at this point, so historically you could have done something, but now this is where we are. Yep. So how would you redistribute that wealth? A fair tax system to start with. A lot of these guys don't pay tax because then they're taking loans against their equity. I mean, there's all kinds of ideas for being able to tax not only income but also wealth to make sure that those assets that you have are being taxed fairly. So you're pro-wealth tax? I'm interested in what kind of wealth taxes we could actually

35:45implement. I know there's challenges on implementation, but I think we should explore every avenue to make the wealthiest people in this country pay their fair share. I mean, just as a percentage of income, if we just want to talk about income, I mean, working Texans are paying more as a percentage of their take-home pay than the wealthiest people in our state. And that just- How come? What's the tax rate? I mean, this is the problem, is that the tax system has been transformed by those who can afford to pay politicians for access and for control. And so it's why I say we don't have capitalism, we have crony capitalism, because it is rewarding those who can influence the political process. Because it's elected officials who write those rules, right, who create the tax code, who set education policy, who set healthcare policy.

36:34And if you can buy off those elected officials so they no longer work for the people but work for their donors, then you get the rigged system that we have currently. And that's what I think people are really disillusioned about. They just feel like the whole thing is hopelessly corrupt. One of the rebuttals people have when they hear about wealth taxes or just raising taxes generally is that these successful people, these billionaires will just move to a different state. And I think over the last couple of months, california were threatening to do a wealth tax there's been a lot of the you know the famous well-known founders have departed california the mark zuckerbergs of the world i think a few others i've got a long list of them here but but is that something you

37:18think about as well in a world that is increasingly global but also just well you know these founders can have their businesses online on the internet they can quite easily move their residents to a state that's more preferential, whether it's Florida or other places. I mean, much of the reason why a lot of founders have moved to Texas is because there's a, what is it, a 0% state tax? We don't have a state income tax, yes. Which is a good thing. And I don't want a state income tax, our citizens are taxed enough with property and sales taxes. But this is the reason we need good federal policy, right? And it's the reason why states can't really tackle this problem on their own. And again, I had an event with Mark Cuban up in Dallas, Fort Worth. And the moderator

38:01interviewed both of us. And it was a little awkward because she's like, James, you've you've had some tough words for billionaires and you got a billionaire sitting right next to you. And I joked that Mark Cuban is one of the good ones, meaning Mark Cuban uses his wealth, his power, his influence to help working people. If you've seen the work he's done on prescription drugs, Cost Plus Drugs is a great company that is actively making it easier for people to afford their medicine. And that's true throughout American history. If I think of Franklin Roosevelt, I think of Bobby Kennedy. These were political heroes of mine. They were trust fund babies. These were the billionaires of their day. But they used their power to take on these systems

38:43that are hurting people. And it wasn't just through charity. Charity is important. But what's more important is addressing the systems that make charity necessary. And that's exactly what people like Mark Cuban are doing. So again, I don't mean to, I'm not interested in punishing success. I'm not interested in banning billionaires. All I want is to ensure that we are acting like a community again as a country, that we have a responsibility to each other. And you can be successful while also paying your fair share and ensuring that we're investing in young entrepreneurs. We've got an education system that's empowering the next great business leader. So you're saying that the tax changes will need to happen on the federal level?

39:23Yes, along with a lot more. It's not just tax. I mean, I'm talking about major changes in education and early childhood and in health care, in blocking consolidation. One of the things that Mark Cuban and I laid out together was going after health care monopolies because you basically, you can now have one company that owns the health insurance company, the hospital, and the pharmacy all in one. And so there's, again, when I say this is not capitalism, less competition means fewer choices, which means higher prices for people. So these monopolies in our healthcare system, that's an example of crony capitalism. CVS owns one of the largest PBMs. They own a pharmacy benefit manager. It's basically like a middleman between you and the prescription drugs

40:11you buy. But they own one of the big PBMs. They own one of the big health insurance companies, and they own the largest network of drugstores in the country. So Mark Cuban and I were talking about a plan to actually break up those healthcare monopolies and create more choices, more competition, more capitalism so that we can lower prices. Because at the end of the day, if you can't afford your prescription drugs, you get sick and sometimes you die because of it. The big ugly bill that passed last year in Washington made a lot of cuts to healthcare. The nonpartisan estimates were that as a result of those cuts, 51,000 Americans were going to die needlessly every year. So I just want to ground us also in

40:52the real world ramifications of these policy decisions. It's not just theoretical. We're talking about our neighbors dying because we have a system that determines your healthcare care based on how much money you make, based on how much money your parents make. A lot of these are kids who don't even work yet. And so there is a real urgency that I feel, that a lot of Americans feel, that we have to pursue wholesale transformational change in our political and economic system. I want to speak to the business owners listening and watching right now. I know what it's like to be personally responsible for every decision. I founded my first company at 21 years old and honestly the pressure can be immense. It's the

41:35kind of mental load that takes its toll below the surface. I recently did some tests through our sponsor Function which got me thinking about that invisible impact. I found that I had low levels of omega-3s, I had deficient levels of vitamin D probably because I sit inside this dark room all day and that has totally changed how I construct my day going forward. I get up in the morning and the first thing I now do is I go for a walk outside in the sunshine in part to help my vitamin D levels increase but also because it helps to reset my circadian rhythm. With Function, you can check your brain health, your aging, your stress, and so much more. They provide over 160 lab tests for what is equal to a dollar a day and member pricing on advanced imaging. Head to

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43:04hot water on it, and it tastes like nothing you've tasted before. You can also make delicious iced coffee drinks as well. Just pour it in. No machine, no brewing with plastic and all that nasty stuff. And you can get $30 off your first order at cometeer.com slash steven today that's cometeer.com slash steven in terms of the the economic system and we were talking there a little bit about you know average workers and their pay and their livelihoods one of the big sort of protagonists in this story is now artificial intelligence and how disruptive that's going to be and i've sat here with so many of the like you of the stakeholders in that industry and heard some of the most crazy predictions around robotics and generally around AI. I mean, one of the sort of big headlines at

43:56the moment is that there'll be significant job disruption. And a lot of that value is going to accrue to the big technology companies that are the Frontier Labs and the Navidias of the world. It appears to me, when I ask very, very smart people in technology, what is the biggest concern at the moment for the US economy, it is dealing with this AI challenge. Bernie Sanders has been very vocal about it recently. Donald Trump has said that we need to win against China. How are you thinking about AI and the impact it's going to have on Texans? Yeah, I think when I travel around the state of Texas, I get this question a lot. A lot of people are thinking about AI and there's competing reactions to it. A lot of us, including

44:36me, feel excited about some of the benefits of artificial intelligence. I met with an AI entrepreneur who's talking about how he's going to cure chronic diseases, maybe cure cancer. I mean, that's exciting for me. I think it's exciting for most people. And then a lot of Texans, including me, feel a lot of anxiety because our leaders, those who should be writing the rules of the game, have their head in the sand. I mean, it is shocking that our U.S. Senate, our Congress, our federal government has really been MIA as this technology has developed faster and faster and has done so in dangerous ways, as we saw with the recent hacking from OpenAI's model. And so I think what people are hungry for

45:28is a regulatory framework to ensure that we are developing these technologies, that we're winning the AI race, and we're doing it responsibly. We're doing it safely. We're doing it in a way that's going to ensure AI works for us and not against us. And I think that is what I think most people want to see from their leaders, from their policymakers. Because right now it's just no one is minding the store. Do you know, what does that mean specifically? Do you have any ideas? Yeah. I think if I was in the US Senate helping develop this regulatory framework, there are three things I would prioritize. One is protecting our workers, protecting our economy, making sure that AI technologies are improving jobs, making jobs easier, allowing workers to spend less time on the job and more

46:18time doing the things they love with the people they love. The second thing I would prioritize is children. We've seen how social media companies have preyed on our kids, have taken advantage of our kids, have led to a spike in self-harm and depression and anxiety among young people. I very much worry that without regulation, AI technologies may do the same thing to young people, to future generations. You've seen the horror stories of kids going to AI for therapy, for counseling. And sometimes those AI chatbot have helped those kids harm themselves. The third thing I would prioritize is our democracy because we've already seen AI deep fake ads in political campaigns. We've seen it in this campaign in Texas for the U.S. Senate.

47:11And, you know, I've always prided myself as a millennial on being able to differentiate between fact and fiction online, right? A lot of millennials like me will roll our eyes at our grandparents who get tricked by stuff on Facebook. But, I mean, I'm seeing it happen to me, right? I increasingly can't tell the difference between AI deep fakes and reality. And I think a lot of people feel that alarm that these technologies are being so good that you really can't tell the difference between fact and fiction. And most of the time, there's no disclaimer required. And so again, there's a lot that needs to happen. But if I was developing a framework of regulation for AI, those would be the three things that I would prioritize.

47:56So Elon said that there will be, within the decade, over a billion humanoid robots. Over a billion humanoid robots over a billion humanoid robots and that those robots will be at least five times the output of a human and he's i think it's these robots are being built in your state in texas yeah at the gigafactory there um and at the other sort of tesla factories that he has but how is it possible to protect workers when there's a billion humanoid robots in the world? Now, like Elon's timelines have sometimes missed a little bit. Yeah, sure. But generally, you know, he as an entrepreneur and his companies have been able to do things that are like almost indistinguishable from magic at times. Well, here's the key and

48:37connects to the conversation we were just having. We cannot let AI or robotics become yet another arena where billionaires are writing the rules for the rest of us. You think about, I try to always think about historical parallels. And the only parallels I can think of in modern history are the Manhattan Project, the development of nuclear weapons, the space race, and the development of the internet. This AI probably will be more consequential than those three innovations. But the thing that's different is that all three of those innovations were done as a public-private partnership, right? We as a country were deciding the rules of the game. Right. And we were doing it in partnership with great private sector companies.

49:31This innovation is very different. This is being done in the hands of a very small number of people running for-profit corporations without input from any of the rest of us. And we can't allow that to happen. We've seen already, we talked to the last 50 years, when you let the richest people in this country, the most powerful people in this country, write all the rules, all of the gains, all of the benefits benefiting from the wealth that these technologies create because they're using our collective intellectual property. If they're going to use our ideas, if they're going to use our ingenuity, then we deserve to get compensated for the use of that intellectual property. If the technology plays out how they're forecasting and how on the current direction of travel,

50:35then if you just think about driving as an occupation, we all watched those videos of these new cybercabs rolling out around Texas where they have no steering wheel, no pedals at all, and two seats in the front and the car just drives itself autonomously. From my rough estimates, approximately 400,000 people in Texas work as professional drivers as their primary payroll occupation. But if you factor in like gig workers that are on the Ubers, the DoorDashes, which by the way, you know, the founder of the CEO of Uber sat there and told me those jobs are going away. It's more than half a million people that rely on driving as an occupation. Texas is leading the charge towards autonomous vehicles where you need no driver.

51:14It would appear to me logically that on this direction of travel, there's going to be significant job disruption. This is even outside of humanoid robots and so on. And I wonder like how, you know, there's an AI dividend. But I just wonder how people like you are thinking about that level of disruption. Yeah. Theoretically could happen really, really quickly. And rejecting the false choices, right? Because it is possible to benefit from some of these technologies. Some of these self-driving cars will make us all safer on the roads, which is great. But the idea that that has to replace a human being, the idea that these technologies don't need a human supervisor, to me, that's a false choice. Why would it need a human supervisor?

51:56I mean, I would hope, especially if we're talking about like 18 wheelers barreling down Texas highways, I would hope there's a human being there to monitor these technologies. If you think about- Even if the data suggests that it's more safe without the human. You think, I'm all for taking advantage of the safety features. I just think about airplanes, right? The fact that airplanes mostly fly themselves, I'm still very comforted by the fact that there is a trained professional behind the controls in case anything goes wrong. And so again, if we're making these decisions together, instead of just a few billionaire CEOs making the decisions for all of us, then we can reject some of these false choices that are presented to us. And we can figure out a

52:37way to both take advantage of the benefits of these technologies, like making our roads safer, making cars safer, reducing fatalities, and ensuring that we are protecting human beings in the process. I just fundamentally reject the idea that we have to choose between those two things. I watched a video the other day of a factory and they had the humanoid robot doing the packaging process and they had a human next to them. And they were just demonstrating the productivity difference between the humanoid robot that was flipping the packages versus a person who had to sleep and go to the toilet and all those kinds of things. And it's a video by Figure AI. And the video concludes with the fact that the humanoid robot was more productive, essentially.

53:15And it did need to sleep and obviously all those kinds of things. So I think also about that level of work. And I don't know, I've just, I'm in search of a good answer to this question of like job disruption that seems to be logically on the way. The big frontier labs, their CEOs in AI have all forecasted job disruption increasingly. They change their tone a little bit when it becomes unpopular. But if you look through their writing since 2016, they're saying that the economy is going to have to drastically change in light of this technology. So I spoke with an expert on AI because I'm, you know, when you're in these positions, when you're in elected office, you suddenly realize all the things you don't know. You're having to make crucial decisions on things that you may not

53:55be an expert on yet. And so I'm trying to get smarter on this every day. And I was speaking to someone who's done a lot of work in AI, and he said he's worried that we are headed toward five trillionaires and 30% unemployment. And that terrifies me, right? As someone who cares about the people in my state, that's not the future I want. And there's still time for us to make these decisions together. What kind of AI future do we want? This is not something we're subjected to. Yes, we're going to see disruption. We've seen disruption from past technologies. But if we're making decisions together as a country, then we can both weather some of those disruptions and we can come out stronger on the other side.

54:35You know, I think about the need to invest and double down on what only human beings can do, doubling down on human creativity, on human ingenuity, right? I've talked about the need for entrepreneurship grants. You know, if we're taxing these AI companies, some of that revenue can go toward investing in folks who have a great idea for a business or an invention or a piece of art. But these people don't know a bunch of wealthy investors. And so we're going to invest in the little guy, just like we did with Tesla, just like we did with the internet. And those innovations have more than paid for themselves. And so I want us to do more of that, finding out what is it that human beings alone can do and doubling down on that creativity,

55:23that ingenuity. Again, that's just an example of if we all come together and we think seriously about this problem and decide that we're going to make decisions together, the AI future can look very differently than the path that we're headed on. Do you have faith that elected officials can pass through this and arrive at a conclusion? Because if you think through, I don't know, how social media was handled. We tend to handle it after the fact. That example. Yeah. Like that's, that should be a, uh, a negative example, right? Because we let social media companies run wild and they ended up preying on our children. They ended up, um, hurting our kids. They ended up hurting all of us, not just kids. And, and so we should learn

56:05from that example and, and realize that if we're going to do this and if this technology is coming, if this innovation is coming, let's figure out as a community, as a nation, how we're going to respond and what policy frameworks we need to put in place to ensure that, again, AI is making our lives better and easier and less stressful and not hurting people. This is a fundamental belief that I have that the economy is for people. People aren't for the economy, right? That is a guiding star for me. And so if we are headed down a path where people are going to get hurt needlessly because a few guys in Silicon Valley say it's necessary, I think we have to reject that. And our elected officials

56:48who in a democracy are tasked with making these big decisions, they need to get in the game. Politics has shifted over the last couple of, over the last couple of years. There was quite a distinct shift, I think, when Elon purchased Twitter. No. It seemed like the world changed a lot. And this, one of the terms within politics was this word, wokeism. And it predominantly seemed to exist, it was like a weapon that the right hit the left with sure recently um aoc came out and said that woke 1.0 was crazy sort of distancing herself from the 2020 progressive political narratives um but i think maybe in hindsight have hurt the party a little bit or at least had the perception of the party a little bit do you have a point of view on this this idea of wokeism and the sort of journey

57:34we've been on yeah i mean it's hard because um you know people define woke or wokeism very differently i do think that there was a rise in in performative politics in people who are more concerned about using the right words, usually determined by academia, versus bringing people together around some common values like racism is wrong, right? That everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Those are unifying values that we all agree on. But when you start policing people's language, when you start judging people because they're not on the right terminology, you're no longer building a coalition to address those real problems that need addressing. Instead, you're performing a kind of politics that's about your

58:25own intellectual and emotional needs and not about actually making change. Why did the Democrats lose to Trump in your view? In what year? The Democrats have lost to Trump twice now. Yeah, I think really in both years, but I guess in the more recent election cycle. Yeah. What is the diagnosis? Well, everywhere I went across the state of Texas in 2024, people were struggling with the high cost of living. I talked with a lot of Texans who didn't like the way Trump talked to people. They didn't like January 6th. They had deep concerns about him as a leader, but they thought he could get the economy back on track. Because if you remember, the economy of 2017, 2018, 2019, that's a pretty good economy

59:08and costs were a lot lower. And it was easier for middle-class people to get ahead. I do think we have to separate, I've talked about the last 50 years of this trend toward consolidation of wealth and power at the top. All of that became more acute, more urgent after the pandemic and the rise of inflation. The increase in inflation was the straw that broke the camel's back. The increase in inflation was kind of like the straw that broke the camel's back, right? You'd had 50 years of trickle-down economics, of stagnant wages for middle-class and working-class people, systematic attacks on education and healthcare. You had all of that happening, but you had cheap goods. So it felt like we were getting something, right? My income's not going up. I'm not able to get

59:50ahead like maybe my grandparents were able to get ahead. It's hard to start a business, but at least things are cheap. And then when that changed, suddenly people realized that we are all getting screwed by this system. Because not only is our pay going down or staying flat, but now the cost of living has gone up. So you're getting squeezed from both ends. So when that happened, I think people were looking for someone who was going to help. And that's not an unreasonable thing to look for when you're hurting. And so people put their faith in President Trump for good reasons, right? They thought he was going to lower costs. They thought he was going to end the forever wars that we were all sick and tired of.

1:00:29They thought he was going to release the Epstein files. They thought he was going to drain the swamp. I mean, I have members of kept. Everything is now more expensive, largely because of tariffs. We have a new war in Iran that no one asked for. It's costing us a billion dollars a day that's driving up gas prices. The Epstein files have still not fully been released. And the swamp is bigger than it's ever been before. And so people are feeling like they've been conned. And my job as a candidate, our job as a campaign is to extend an open hand to our neighbors who are disillusioned, who misplaced their trust in a leader and invite them to join this movement that we're building in Texas, which is honestly bigger than Donald Trump. It's bigger than any one political party. It really is on the ground. It feels like a movement of working people across the spectrum who are ready to take on this broken, corrupt system. And, you know, God willing, as the next U.S. senator from Texas, I will have the opportunity to work with President Trump to try

1:01:52to deliver for my constituents. What do you think of him as a person? Well, I don't know him, so it's hard for me to judge. But I think all of us have strengths and weaknesses. I think the president does have clear strengths. I think he's able to communicate in a way that's clear and concise and powerful to people. He is willing to take action when there's so much gridlock. He's willing to just kind of bust through walls to deliver for people. And he has a sense of humor, which I feel like is really missing in politics. He has a lighthearted way about him. Those are, I think, some of the redeeming qualities. I think all of us know his willingness to put his ego above everything else, his willingness to make chaotic

1:02:38decisions without much forethought, his penchant for corruption and self-enrichment for himself and his family, and his desire to be popular. And all politicians have a desire to be popular and all politicians have a desire to be popular. But he does seem to place that above almost any other principle or conviction that he may have. And so, you know, I think it's important to consider both the good and the bad of any leader and that includes the president. What about immigration? That's one of the issues that is both very relevant to Texas, but also that frankly helped him get elected. Yeah. By him talking about some of these stats around border crossings in Texas. Yeah. And he was right about this. The Biden administration failed us on our southern border.

1:03:23I remember talking with my colleagues in the statehouse who represented border communities, and they talked about the utter chaos on our border. And our border communities in Texas mean a lot to me. My mom is from Laredo, which is on our Texas-Mexico border. And so this system was out of control in the Biden era, and you see it on this map. My worry is that we have replaced one extremism on immigration in the Biden years with a new extremism on immigration, with masked men and unmarked vehicles kidnapping people off the street, deporting small business owners who have been here for years and decades, taking children as young as five years old and throwing them in detention centers. So my sense is that most Texans, most Americans want the same thing

1:04:09when it comes to immigration. They want security and they want to welcome hardworking immigrants who want to live the American dream. And in our politics, those two things are pitted against each other. Again, back to false choices. Those are not mutually exclusive. You can have a secure border. It is not racist to want to know who's coming into this country, right? You can do all that while also building more legal pathways for folks to come here the right way. Folks who want to start a business, who want to contribute to this economy, who want to live that American dream and make us richer and stronger in the process, as immigrants have always done. And so I'm trying to, on the trail, uphold both of those moral values.

1:04:53Safety, which public safety is the most important thing the government does. More important than public education, more important than public health, public safety is the most important thing. And we are a nation of immigrants. It is the lifeblood of our economy. It is what has made Texas and America so great. And so we can uphold both of those values at the same time and pass comprehensive immigration reform that can do both of those things simultaneously. What would you do about the issue of undocumented young people that have come here that are in the country that maybe were brought here by no fault of their own, but now find themselves in the US without documents? Yeah, I taught a lot of DACA students,

1:05:34a lot of dreamers in room 112 at Rhodes Middle School on the west side of San Antonio. My students who were undocumented, they loved this country in a profound way. It feels like they understand something about America that many of our leaders have forgotten, that this is supposed to be the land of opportunity. This is supposed to be the place where dreams come true. And so I would be very interested as part of a comprehensive immigration reform package, which includes border security, to create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented folks who have been here for years, for decades, for kids who were brought over as kids. So they have an opportunity to come out of the shadows and fully join us as citizens of this country.

1:06:18This is something that I've made for you. I realize that the Divers here audience are strivers, whether it's in business or health, we all have big goals that we want to accomplish. And one of the things I've learned is that when you aim at the big, big, big goal, it can feel incredibly psychologically uncomfortable, because it's kind of like being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards. The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into tiny, small steps. And we call this in our team, the 1%. And actually, this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success here. So, what we've done so that you at home can accomplish any big goal that you have, is we've made these 1% diaries, and we released these last year, and they all sold out. So,

1:07:01I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back, but also to introduce some new colors and to make some minor tweaks to the diary. So, now we have a better range for you so if you have a big goal in mind and you need a framework and a process and some motivation then i highly recommend you get one of these diaries before they all sell out once again and you can get yours at thediary.com and if you want the link the link is in the description below one of the um issues that i know is going to be front of mind for a lot of people at the moment, and one of the issues I think that's going to result in the Republican Party struggling in the midterms is this issue you mentioned earlier of Iran. If you are a US senator,

1:07:41you would be voting on foreign policy and war powers and military spending and things like that, including in the Middle East. So I wanted to get your perspective on what the hell is going on. That's a good question. How do you get out of this situation now? It seems like there's no golden bridge out of this situation. Yeah, I mean, we shouldn't have been in this situation to begin with. We should start with that. How did we get in this situation? Again, this is just from an outsider perspective, but it seems like after the operation in Venezuela, there was a hubris and overconfidence that toppling the leadership in Iran would be an easy thing and would be a quick fix to a problem that has long plagued the region and plagued the United States.

1:08:26And maybe a lack of foresight and consideration. I mean, it's not that hard to predict that what Iran would do when they're cornered is take control of the Strait of Hormuz. In fact, previous administrations had played out these war games and had come to the same conclusion. So what do you do now? Because you're going to be doing this stuff. Yeah. I mean, one, I think we need checks and balances. Right now we have something the founders, I think, couldn't have envisioned, which is parties, political parties, factions is what the founders would have called them, coordinating across branches of our government. So instead of the ambitions of the legislative branch checking the ambitions of the executive branch, you now have members of

1:09:13one party coordinating across those branches. And what that looks like now is a legislative branch, which is supposed to be the most important branch in our government, right? It's the first one listed in the constitution. It has now become completely subservient to the executive branch, to the will of the president and his administration. And so one, I think you have to restore those checks and balances. And it doesn't have to be in a hostile, unproductive way. It can be in a healthy way where the legislative branch is asking questions about what is the military strategy? What are the military objectives that we're trying to accomplish? Because we've seen over the course of this disastrous war,

1:09:49those objectives change over time. But this is the thing. It doesn't appear that they know what the objectives are anymore. It appears- Well, and I think this is key. If we cannot clearly articulate an objective, then it is the responsibility of the legislative branch to intervene and withhold funding for these operations until we can get a clear idea of why we are sending our brave young men and women into another forever war in the Middle East. I think ultimately how you untangle this is through regional partnerships. It has to involve, I mean, we kind of know the contours of what a deal would look like. Free passage through the Strait. We have to deal with the nuclear issue. I worry that we've actually lost ground on this problem because I don't want to see Iran get a nuclear weapon. I don't think anybody

1:10:36wants to see that. And I think we were on track to preventing that through the nuclear deal we had. So trying to get back to that diplomacy we had before this invasion. I think that's probably going to be the ultimate objectives for how to salvage this situation. But it is a mess from top to bottom. And I came of age after 9-11. I was 12 years old when 9-11 happened. And so I understand the importance of keeping this country safe. I also saw as a millennial how military disasters like the Iraq war robbed this nation of young lives, of billions of dollars, and of our moral standing in the world. I can't believe that we are making the same mistakes just 20 years later in Iran. The proposal there sounds a little bit like the memorandum of understanding that was pitched to Iran that ultimately failed. You know, free passage of the Strait of Hormuz, there was a clause in there

1:11:36about nuclear weapons, and a few other things, and it failed within a couple of days. So, you know, because I think Iran are playing to a different timeframe than Trump is able to, considering this sort of four-year election cycle. It appears to me, I don't really know what I'm talking about, but it appears to me that Iran is saying, you know, we have the cards. You can drop as many bombs as you like. We're decentralized in our nature. They're split into lots of these smaller factions that are weaponized in their own way. There's not particular... I remember one press conference, I think it was Marco Rubio or Pete Hegseth, saying that they're not even necessarily sure who is in charge in Iran. And he made a remark that it takes a while to get the

1:12:16carrier pigeons down to the front lines, i.e. the people they're negotiating with might not even be connected with the people that are launching the missiles and the drones, etc. It just appears to be a total mess. And I just can't – sooner than that. And I think that's going to have to involve some of this economic pressure in addition to the regional partnerships, because we're ultimately going to have to rely on regional partners in order to actually push through a final resolution. So I'm not giving up hope that we can resolve this. We have to. I mean, we just lost one of our own, our fellow Texan, Isabella Gonzalez lost her life because of an Iranian airstrike in Jordan. And she was 19 years old. She had just graduated from Hebron High School in Dallas, Texas. And the fact that we would send brave members of the armed services like Isabella off to die in another forever war without any exit strategy, without any clear military objective, to me is deeply immoral.

1:13:34Isabella Gonzalez died a patriot. She died a hero. And we are grateful for her sacrifice. But our gratitude for her sacrifice should not be mistaken for an acceptance of her death. In terms of what one can do about it, is there any specifics that you have in mind for a way out of this? Because I really, I mean, I'm in search of them. Well, again, this is why you need checks and balances, because we need the legislative branch to start exerting pressure on the executive branch so that we can start to see what the objectives are. We can come to a consensus about an exit strategy. The U.S. can't afford to lose here. Agreed. Yeah, agreed. They can't even afford to be seen as losing. That's right.

1:14:16Because you're going to embolden the Middle East. That's right. And Iran is an adversary. We should not lose sight of that. A nuclear Iran would be a disaster for the region and for the world. So it's imperative that we win. If you had a phone call with Trump and you had an opportunity to, if he said, listen, James, I need some advice. This Iran situation's got out of hand. I thought it would be like a Venezuela. I thought I'd drop the bombs. There'd be an uprising and then it would sort of correct itself, but it's got out of hand. James, what advice have you got for me? That'd be tough. You know, I think that humility is good and that self-awareness is good and hopefully can help him and the administration avoid future mistakes.

1:14:55I would urge him to call the leadership in the legislative branch together, leadership of both parties, Democrats and Republicans, and work with them as well as our allies around the world to try to come to a consensus on a strategic direction. The president and his administration have not only pushed away Congress, they've also done everything they can to alienate our allies across the globe. And there's a reason that this country spent so much political and economic capital on these partnerships and these allies. It's because when you get in a jam, you need your friends. And so I would urge the president to start building that big coalition. I would tell him, frankly, that he's not going to get out of this on his own.

1:15:42And it's going to require bipartisan collaboration at home and regional collaboration abroad. Are you hopeful? Yes. Yeah. You think Trump's going to fix it? I don't know if I'm hopeful about that, but you want to know what I am hopeful about? In these midterms, if the people of Texas, if the people of this country elect leaders who are going to check the president, I think it could be a rebirth for his presidency. I think after these kinds of midterms, especially when you get walloped in the midterm, executives have kind of two reactions to it. One is to kind of double down and retreat to their partisan corner. We saw on January 6th what that looks like for President Trump. The other path is to hear the response from the people, listen to the feedback that you're

1:16:39getting, and adjust course. And I would love, as the next U.S. Senator from Texas, to work with Donald Trump to actually fulfill some of the promise of his political project. Because the promise of MAGA was that we were going to transform this government so that it delivered for the people who have been left behind, the people who have been forgotten in this country. And there's still time to do that. There's still time to do that on a bipartisan basis. If the president wants to work with me or with any Democrat to expand healthcare access, I'm there. If he wants to make sure that every single kid in this country gets high quality build millions of new homes and ensure everyone in this country has a place to call home, I'm there. I'll work with them to do it. I would love to do that.

1:17:36So my hope is that this midterm will be a wake-up call for the president, for his administration. And as a result, they will reverse course. They will decide to engage with leaders in both parties to actually deliver for the working people who sent him there. I have this book here, the Bible. Yes. And I also have some photos showing, I think you as a young boy here, at eight years old at St. Andrew's Church. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yep. how's the acolyte usually the kids um are tasked with lighting the candle at the beginning of service and then putting it out so basically this thing i'm holding here the this part has the the flame where you light the candle the other parts not in this picture is like a hood and it covers the candle to put it out. And so this was my very important job at the service that day.

1:18:33So have you been religious since you were a young boy? Yes. Yeah, I mentioned that my granddad was a Baptist preacher. The church that I still attend to this day has been my church since I was two years old. And my faith has really been the foundation of my life. It's home base for me. But the work I do, whether it's as a public school teacher or as a public official, stems, grows out of my faith. My faith is kind of the soil of my life. And what is your faith? I know there's lots of different denominations in Christianity. What is your faith? My granddad, the Baptist preacher, told me that as Christians, we're supposed to follow the two commandments that Jesus gave us, to love God and love neighbor. And that's in the New Testament when a lawyer, it's always the

1:19:22lawyers, asked Jesus to define neighbor. And that's when he tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, maybe one of Jesus's most famous parables. And he tells the story of a man who is beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. A priest walks by and does nothing. A religious man walks by and does nothing. And then a Samaritan walks by. And, you know, when we hear Samaritan in our modern context, it doesn't really mean a whole lot. Most people associate it with helping people on the side of the road. But in Jesus's time and for Jesus's listeners, the Samaritans were not just a different religious group. They were their sworn enemy. And so in Jesus's story, the Samaritan is the one who stops and bandages the man's wounds, nurses him back to health,

1:20:08takes him to an inn, pays the innkeeper to look after him until he comes back. And in Jesus's story, the Samaritan is the ultimate example of loving thy neighbor as thyself. And it would have been a shocking story. I'm a Texas Longhorn football fan. It's as if Jesus was standing in the middle of Daryl K. Royal Memorial Stadium at the University of Texas and told a story called the Good Aggie. Right? Like people would be outraged by the story. Because they're the opposing team. Right. They're the rivals. Right? But he's reminding us that we're not just called to love our neighbors who look like us or pray like us or vote like us. We're called to actively love those who are the most different from us, maybe those we hate the most.

1:20:58And that 2,000 years later is still a radical teaching. And so I have tried imperfectly because we're all imperfect Christians. I have tried to follow those two commandments, to love God and to love my neighbor as myself. It's why I decided to become a public school teacher. It's why I ran for office. And the work that I do in the legislature, I think of as, again, as a form of ministry. I am trying to love my neighbor through public policy. So Ken Paxton is your, yes, I guess he's your sort of adversary. He's the Republican. My rival, yes. My Samaritan. He's the candidate you're running against. Yes. You said that Ken is one of the most corrupt politicians in America. Yes. Do you love him?

1:21:42Yes. Ken Paxton is a child of God. He is my brother in Christ. It doesn't mean there's not accountability, right? Love requires accountability. We talked about the story of my mom and her love meant standing up to a bully. And, you know, if you think about when you're like out having a drink with your friends and your friend grabs their car keys to drive home under the influence, your job as their friend is to take those keys away, to physically block them from getting in the car. And that feels aggressive. It feels maybe even hostile, but it is done out of love for that person and for everybody else, for all of your neighbors. Ken Paxton, from every, I don't know Ken Paxton personally, but from everything I've been able to read and

1:22:34learn about his service and his life, he has clearly shown that he only cares about himself. He was indicted for investment fraud because he was defrauding his own friends. He convinced his friends to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into a tech company, but he didn't tell them that he was making a commission off those investments. So he got indicted because he was screwing over his own friends. He was reported to the FBI by his own staff. He was impeached by his own party. And of course, his relationships with his own family have now become well-known and infamous. And so if I was to sit down with Ken Paxton, which I would love to do- You'd grab the keys. I would grab the keys. And I would urge him to get his own house in order

1:23:24before he tries to tell all of us what to do with our own houses. And so I am trying both to protect the people of Texas from the most corrupt politician in our state, one of the most corrupt in the country. And in a weird way, I feel like I'm trying to protect Ken Paxton, because I hope if he loses this race, it will be an opportunity for him to take stock and to reevaluate some of his priorities. And I just want to, I am not saying that as a perfect person. I'm really not. What I'm trying to do is be honest about the clear choice in this race and about the ramifications of electing someone with Ken Paxton's track record to the U.S. Senate. At 31 years old, you went off to Bible school. Yeah. You know, I had always, I looked up to my grandfather, still do, looked up to my pastor, still do.

1:24:13And I, you know, always kind of harbored this wish to one day preach and lead a church. I saw how my granddad and my pastor, I just really, I saw how they helped people, how they helped people make sense of their own lives, how they helped people ask some of the deepest questions. Who am I? What does it mean to be a human being? What is the purpose of life? I saw them doing that on a, not on a big podcast, but, you know, at a small neighborhood church in like a very intimate way with people. I saw them comfort people who were grieving in our community when someone loses a loved one, when someone is dying themselves, like their first call is to Dr. Jim, my pastor. So I always had this idea that I may want to go into that line of work one day.

1:25:05And so I was in my second term in the state house and my first term had been great. It was 2019. Democrats had flipped all these districts. There was a close competitive election statewide that year in 2018. So the very next session in 2019, suddenly the Republican majority was ready to work on a bipartisan basis with us Democrats. And it was great because we passed this historic school finance reform package that invested a lot of new money into our schools. And we provided property tax relief to working people. It was awesome. And I was like, I have the best job in the world. Fast forward to the next session in 2021. And it was one of the most partisan, one of the most unproductive legislative sessions in modern Texas history.

1:25:51That's when you saw the most extreme abortion ban in the country go into effect. You saw permitless carry, one of these crazy gun laws that allows people to carry these weapons without any kind of background check, without any kind of license. You saw efforts to ban books and whitewash curriculum. Voter suppression, trying to make it harder for people to vote in Texas. Texas is one of the hardest places to vote in the country. So it was a really difficult session. And I just started to doubt that I was really making an impact, that I was really doing what I was supposed to do. And after meeting with my pastor about it, sitting down with my granddad about it, both of them reminded me that Jesus gave us these two commandments for a reason, right? I had been so focused on that

1:26:37second commandment to love my neighbor in the classroom, in the halls of power, in serving my community, that despite going to church on Sunday, I really wasn't giving enough attention and time to that first commandment to love God, to love that sacred something that we are all an expression of. And so I made the decision to go to seminary, to follow that first commandment. And what I've discovered, because now I'm a seminarian and a lawmaker at the same time, and I've realized that these two commandments, again, given to us as a whole by Jesus, those two commandments, they sustain, they enrich, they challenge each other. They're in relationship. And at least for me, personally speaking, it helped balance me out. Because if I'm being honest, if you're devoting all of your energy to loving your neighbor,

1:27:36especially your neighbors who you disagree with, it's really easy to burn out. And I think anyone who does service work can tell you that. And it's why we have to be in touch with the ground of our own being, the God that all of us express every day. To me, you need both the inner life and the outer life. You need prayer and action. Those two things go hand in hand, and without it, you burn out. Or if you're only focused on loving God and not loving our neighbors, which a lot of people do that too, you become self-centered. You become disconnected from the world. And so going to seminary was my way of trying to unite these two commandments in my own life. And honestly, it was, I think it's the best decision

1:28:20I've ever made to go to seminary. Where does your faith in a God, in Jesus come from? Like, what is the, you know, faith is probably kind of maybe the answer to the question, but what makes you believe that there is a higher power, that Jesus is who he pledged to be back all those years ago? Yeah. As a seminary student, I had to learn Greek and Hebrew because in our Christian Bible, the Hebrew scriptures are written in Hebrew and the New Testament is written in Greek. And so we learn both original languages so that we don't have to be reliant on translations, right? Because things get lost in translation. And so I was studying this word faith, and I realized that it can be translated both as belief, which is how it's often translated,

1:29:08you know, a commitment to some kind of value, some kind of concept, an idea, right? That's a belief. But it can also be translated as trust. And suddenly, you know, this was like my first year of seminary and I was already having like a light bulb moment. And I realized like, that's how my faith feels to me. It feels much more like trust than it does belief. It's not a commitment to some abstract concept, some intellectual idea. It is a visceral bodily experience of almost like relaxing. The best analogy I can think of, because when we talk about God, we're always talking in analogies. I learned to swim at the Wells Branch Pool in the neighborhood where I grew up. And I remember when I was learning how to swim, my swim instructor, she said,

1:30:04she told me, don't fight the water. Don't hold onto the water. Let the water hold onto you. And it, and it, it was, it was a big moment for me and in learning how to swim, but that's exactly how my faith feels. So much of our lives is trying to control our surroundings, right? Trying to control the people. And when you realize that we are an expression of something much deeper and much bigger, you're suddenly able to let that hold you instead of trying to hold on to it. And why this religion versus all the other available religions? Why are you trusting in this one? We all inherit a religious tradition, and it is an inheritance that's passed on from one generation to the next. And it's such a gift.

1:30:47It's such a gift that I feel like a lot of people nowadays are abandoning for understandable reasons. I mean, we have seen religious corruption in our religious institutions across this country, across the world, including my home state of Texas. We've seen religious leaders abuse children. We've seen them lie. We've seen them amass wealth and power for themselves at the expense of the people of God. And so I understand where that temptation to just reject the whole thing comes from. But there is a baby in that bathwater. I do worry that a lot of young people are growing up in an incoherent universe because we have discarded the traditions that have been passed down to us through the generations.

1:31:38And whether it's the Christian tradition, the Jewish tradition, the Hindu tradition, there is, I think, beauty and truth and love at the heart of these great faith traditions. And it's up to all of us, it's up to every new generation to reclaim that and to live it out. And that's what I'm trying to do in my small corner of the world. James, what's the most important thing we haven't talked about that we should have talked about as it relates to your work, your mission, or anything else that the audience might find of value? Oh my gosh, that's a good question. Just wondering if there's anything at all that you wanted to, as a closing message for the audience, anyone listening? Oh, this has really been great.

1:32:19And grateful for what you do. I mean, I feel like we no longer have town squares like we once had. And for better or for worse, it is new media, social media podcasts that have become our collective town squares where we have these conversations, these debates, this kind of discourse. And the way you and your team have structured these conversations and encourage these conversations has been, I think, very important for the country, for the world. So very thankful. I think one of the questions that I think all, everybody's always asking about politicians these days is like, how are you different? Because, you know, every politician will come here or they'll, you know, when I speak to them, they'll say that they are different. But then when you speak to people, one of the great grievances

1:33:11they have is that like politics is the same in terms of, I mean, you've seen this on the, probably on the doorstep is everybody says it's going to be different this time, but it ends up being kind of more of the same, broadly speaking. How are you different? The issue is not personalities. This I think is the central problem is we think, you know, the reason this economy is off track, the reason I can't get ahead, the reason that we see corruption is because of politician X, right, or political party Y. no matter what good intentions we have going in. It's partly why I told you I've put in place a self-imposed term limit, because I know that the system eventually, unless it's reformed, will bring out the worst in all of us, including me. And so what we need is to focus on systemic

1:34:07reform. Don't focus on the personalities. Don't focus on replacing the guy you don't like or voting in the guy you do like. We have to focus on transforming this broken, corrupt system so that it's bringing out the best in every elected official. Because in my experience, like a lot of people run for office for the right reasons. They want to help people. They want to improve their community that they love. And it is a broken, corrupt system that transforms them, transforms our public policy, so that the system only benefits those at the top. And until we transform that system, you're not going to see anything change. So I guess I would say we're asking the wrong question. And it's not, how will I be different? How will the system be

1:34:53different if we remake it in our own image? And that's hopefully an empowering message. Because if you're just focused on what you don't like about certain politicians, you kind of take more of a passive role. I think it's going to require a mass movement of working people in places like Texas joining together across all the divisions in our society to force that kind of systemic change. And hopefully that's an empowering message and one that leaves people with a little bit of hope. James, we have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for. The question for you is, what is your biggest challenge and how are you working to fix it?

1:35:38Oh, that's a great question. You know, winning Texas is a challenge, to say the least. We got 18 million registered voters. We got 20 media markets. We got two time zones. Texas was once a nation and it still very much feels like a nation. So trying to reach all of those Texans, trying to listen to them and their needs, trying to share my values and my vision, it is a logistical and physical and spiritual challenge to say the least. I'm thankful that I'm not doing this alone. We have 59,000 people who have signed up to volunteer for the campaign. We have more than a million people who have donated to the campaign. And I have many more people who are praying for me on a regular basis. And you're winning, according to some of the polls that

1:36:27we saw by a couple of points. The only poll that matters is on election day. So, you know, I do think that we are the underdogs until the last vote is counted. We talked about Elon Musk. He's already committed to spending millions of dollars in our race to try to defeat us. And I have nothing against Elon Musk. So I don't know why he's trying to stop our campaign. But that, you know, if you're speaking truth to power, if you're going up against the world's first trillionaire, you're always going to be the underdog. And so we're campaigning like we are five points behind. And so, you know, I would ask anyone watching to spare a thought or a prayer for me. I really do believe that when you put energy out into the universe, It has a ripple effect. And so I hope wherever people are watching

1:37:11or listening, even if they don't agree with my politics, even if they're going to vote for the other candidate, I hope they'll keep me in their thoughts and their prayers. We're done. Thank you, James. This was so great. Thank you. as a founder building a business when i was in my early 20s, I think I always had a deep sense of imposter syndrome because there was something that I wasn't good at. And that thing was finances. Finance and understanding your financial position as a small business is the great enabler of all of your dreams. I was running from it until I discovered a platform called Xero. Xero is an accounting and financial management platform specifically for small businesses and it brings accounting payments payroll and analytics all into one place even for

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