Michael Bennet (Senator of Colorado)
speaker
53 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Michael Bennet (Senator of Colorado)’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I'm Michael Bennett, and I approve this message because now it's time to clean up Washington.
They were 9, 7, and 4, Mark, and they're 25, 24, and 22 now. Yeah. And what do you think in looking at that spot? Have you seen that lately? Yeah, I haven't seen it for many years. And I think, first of all, that was a fairly insightful thing to say back then. It turns out it wasn't even close to the truth of how screwed up this place is. Yeah.
I mean, it's the most important thing that I've ever done and the most satisfying thing that I've ever done. I'm so proud of my daughters, like every parent is. And I think also, Mark, the time that I spent as the school superintendent in Denver, where two of my three daughters or actually all three were students.
uh has made me feel that their lives are deeply connected to the lives of other kids in my community across the country and that we all rise and fall together i don't mean that politically i mean that and my kids feel that way themselves you know they have a sense that the world is much bigger than their world.
They have a sense that there are a lot of people in America who struggle with things that they really have not had to struggle with. And they've struggled with things that lots of other kids struggle with.
When I see the mental health epidemic that is raging across my state among young people and across the country among young people, I think about the challenges my own kids have had throughout COVID and And with the effects of social media and their poisonous algorithms, you know, like any parent, I worry about those things, too. So for me, it's been a motivation of my wife.
It's why I became the superintendent of schools to begin with and why I went to the Senate, I guess.
It's fun. How old is your kid, Mark?
Eight. Yeah, so yours is actually the same age, basically, mine were when I came here. That is a... Every year is incredible. When I thought... When my kids were first going off to college, I thought how devastating it would be to have them leave the house. And, of course, what you realize is they have to go.
There's not one minute that they should stay with you, and it becomes a whole other relationship. But there's not much better than having an 8-year-old kid. And the answer to your question on the busy jobs, it's interesting. I just had that discussion because when people – There were a couple of people that came to see me and said, we think you should run for governor this time.
And my first reaction was, there is no way I can go home to my kids. And it explained to them, having been away 50 percent of their childhood in the Senate in D.C., that I'm now coming home after they have gone, which they are hopefully momentarily. from Colorado and they said, are you sure about that?
And I checked and Caroline, who's the oldest one of those three girls said, are you under the illusion that we, uh, that we wanted to see more than we did? Uh, you know, from their perspective, it was great having me gone half the time. And, uh, it's, you know, they, they've obviously thought about that themselves and were encouraging about my running. Yeah.
Bobby Kennedy, the HHS secretary? Yeah, HHS. Yeah, I think he... Well, I think he left probably for craven reasons, which were his own ambition. But in the end, he found himself a place in the Trump administration that's allowing him to do what he wants to do with respect to the vaccines and other things. I do think that his...
there are, even though I think his vaccine denial is really dangerous. And as a former school superintendent and a parent, I really feel that way. I think the fundamental frustration with our healthcare system that Bobby Kennedy has is something that I also believe.
I mean, the American people are being crushed by our healthcare system, which is in many ways the worst system in the industrialized world. And all the time when I'm home, You know, I am meeting people who are experiencing our health care system on behalf of their children as an exercise in scarcity, scarcity, scarcity.
Whether it's the mental health care that I was mentioning a minute ago, which they desperately need for their kids, or it's being stuck on a telephone. fighting an insurance company to get paid or it's taken care even of a parent who's been prescribed a drug that they can't get.
You know, our families in this country are fighting against a system that that no other country, no other parents in the industrialized world are fighting against. And I think Bobby Kennedy, you know, in some ways has called the question in this election on that. And I think he's been rewarded for that.
Well, I think we should be open to outside opinions. I think a much more important question for the Democratic Party was whether Joe Biden should have run for reelection. And I don't think he should have run for reelection. I think that was a huge mistake. In some sense, the original sin of the Democratic failure in this election, not the only sin, not the only sin, but an important one.
Should he not have run because of mental decline or for some other reason? I think he shouldn't have run because he was, I think that he had gotten to a point, I wouldn't say a mental decline, but of decline that put him in a position of not being able to wage a vigorous campaign against Donald Trump. And there's no way you can beat Donald Trump unless you can wage a vigorous campaign.
And he couldn't do it. Why wouldn't you say mental decline? Did you not see that publicly? I didn't see. Well, look, when the first thing that I really saw other than one visit to the White House on an immigration matter, there was about, I think, six weeks before this was when I saw his debate with Donald Trump.
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