Senator Brian Schatz
Appearances
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
I think a better way to do this is to just make sure that every dollar of income is taxed for Social Security purposes, right? There's currently a cap above which you pay no Social Security tax. So if you're doing well but not that well, you know, if you make $80,000 or something and you're a firefighter or a teacher, all of that money is taxed for Social Security purposes. If you make $800,000...
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
then most of that money is not taxed for Social Security purposes. So there's a relatively easy, I think, equitable and fair way to do this, which is to say, hey, every dollar of income is taxed for Social Security purposes. And, you know, fair is fair. I'd also point out that means testing doesn't really save you enough money to impact the sort of fiscal future of the program.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
Sort of sounds good. And I used to be... earlier in my career, more interested in means testing. But the thing that I have figured out is you usually end up spending more money and creating more administrative friction and turning a program into a bigger pain in the ass that has less political support if it's not just available to everybody.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
It's like if we had, you know, free public libraries, unless your income was 180 grand, and then you got to go to the remaining Barnes and Noble or go on Amazon. I Like free public service that's broad based and available to everybody ends up meaning that the politics are better because everybody benefits from it, including people who have done well in their lives.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
They still care about their Social Security income. I would worry if we turned it into a program only for the poor that it would be more vulnerable to attacks.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
Well, first of all, it's a total outrage. And it's not just some sort of like... You know, Trump taking some papers back to Mar-a-Lago or Biden taking some papers back to his residence. Like, both of those are improper, and frankly, I was gobsmacked by it. Like, when I go into a classified session, I just go in, you know, sort of hands-free so that I don't accidentally walk out with anything.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
The idea that you need to take stuff back to your personal residence, I get it if you're a president. It may be different, but you should still have an assistant who, like, handles that material. But this is different stuff. These were operational plans and people could have died. Our people could have died. So it's really, really serious matter.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
I mean, we'll see whether he can do it, but I'll just say that Strom Thurmond's record—and it was a filibuster against civil rights— was 24 hours and 18 minutes. That's the longest that anyone has ever spoken consecutively on the Senate floor. So he removed his own chair from the Senate floor so he wasn't tempted to sit down.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
And I think we're also learning that they're just using Signal to circumvent the Presidential Records Act, the Freedom of Information Act, and, you know, just not at all respecting the need to protect, not confidentiality, right? People are like, well, it's encrypted. That's not the point.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
I am told – and listen, I'm on the Foreign Relations Committee and the Defense Committee and I'm a member of Senate leadership, but I'm not under any illusions that I'm like the secretary of defense in terms of how interesting my content is. But I still operate under the assumption that the whole phone is compromised, right? Right.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
And sure, do I use Signal for not classified but sensitive conversations? Sure, I think everybody should use an encrypted app if they can. But that's not what this is. They decided to put specific attack plans into a Signal string. And there's no way he typed that up himself. So the other question I think sort of forensically is where did he get that thing? Who typed it up?
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
Is that from one of the component commanders? Like how did that end up in his phone? Did he copy it and paste it into the string? So that's number one. Number two is this is an opportunity for Democrats to not outsmart themselves, to not outsmart themselves. We are causing some real political bleeding here. They are on their heels. They have no excuse for this.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
This also has a resonance with some of the voters that we've lost over the last decade or two. So it's not just that this kind of like scratches the itch of the suburban progressives who we want to be enthused, and we do, right? We really do want them to be enthused.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
This also makes national security folks, veterans, anyone who's ever been adjacent to any of this stuff go, well, that seems terrible.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
And what I worry about, and I haven't seen it happen yet, so I don't want to get too much into trashing fellow Democrats, but I do worry about someone coming to us and going like, you know, we have this poll and this doesn't do as well as the Social Security attack. And my view is, are you kidding me? This thing has... stickiness. This thing is interesting.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
And this goes to one of the fundamental critiques of this presidency, which is that these dudes are incompetent. Like they actually don't know how to govern at all. And that what we're seeing now in terms of polling dropping is mostly people observing what's happening. but they haven't quite experienced what's happening because that stuff kind of lags.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
But all of that incompetence is going to come home to roost in terms of people's personal safety and security and hope in the future. And so I think this is not dissimilar to the Afghanistan withdrawal, which I'm sure if you had told the Republicans, to take a poll, that thing wasn't going to poll very high until they made it an issue.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
And I'm really sort of proud of the Democratic coalition for sort of like, you know, not letting this go and saying, hey, did you know that we should probably talk about ACA subsidies? Of course we should talk about that. But they screwed up in an enormous way. They won't even admit that they were on the string. It's a catastrophe for them and we shouldn't let go.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
And he's got a little, you know, he's got a little array of chocolate-covered espresso beans and something to settle his stomach and I think Tylenol and ibuprofen. And he's been rocking and rolling all night. So I think his goal was to manage expectations just in case his knees gave out.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
Sure, but I think the similarity to me is at the kind of presidential level, it was the moment at which people decided, fairly or unfairly, that maybe Joe Biden wasn't on the ball, right? And again, I don't want to relitigate the last election, but it was a moment where people said, like, shouldn't we have a more engaged commander in chief?
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
And I think this is the moment where people are saying, hey, all this chaos that he was sort of nodding towards, tweeting about, yammering about, you know, on television or at one of his rallies, like it is actually starting to happen. And as you know, there are probably, I don't know, 10 to 15% of the voters who, who voted for Donald Trump saying, he's just going to say stuff, but it's worth it.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
And I think what's different about this term than the first Trump term is he's going through with it. He's going to do the tariffs. He has illegally... you know, laid off people from the National Park Service and the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Education. He is having his agents arrest people without due process. He is aligning with Putin and North Korea.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
That's actually happening. This is no longer some theoretical thing where someone on Fox or some center-left pundit can tell me, oh, you always say that, and he always pivots back to the center. This dude is going through with all the crazy things, and I think Signalgate is an indicator that, oh, God, they weren't kidding. Like, they don't believe that they are responsible for following the law.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
The reason I voted for the continuing resolution is pretty straightforward. I read the Anti-Deficiency Act. The Anti-Deficiency Act only kicks in when there's a lapse in appropriations. When there's a lapse in appropriations, then the executive branch basically has total control over what parts of the government are able to open and not open. And the only criteria is life-saving.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
And Russ Vogt had a series of plans to essentially riff, reductions in force, lay off the entire federal workforce minus whomever he decided was lifesaving, which presumably would have been like ICE. Nobody. Well, ICE border protection, you know, his sort of the law enforcement arm of the Office of Management and Budget. And so for me, it was not like a tough call in terms of the policy of it.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
But I also think that You know, we we Democrats did a very bad job of communicating amongst ourselves. Right. Between the House and the Senate, we were not on the same page. And then maybe more importantly, one of the things that gives me the most hope is this pluralistic people power movement out there for America.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
And it's a little different than Resistance 1.0 in the sense that it doesn't have quite the progressive, I'm an unreconstructed progressive, but I think the thing that's happening now is like veterans and federal workers and retirees and just regular folks are like, I guess I'm a Democrat or I've never been a Democrat or whatever. But it's not this kind of like left-leaning movement.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
It's like a what the hell is happening to our country movement movement. And what I regret the most about what happened with the CR was that disconnection between the electeds and the grassroots. So we've got to do better at our additional points of leverage throughout the Congress. We will have them. And we just have to be on the same page with ourselves. Right.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
He definitely wanted to take the floor and to indicate to the public that he understands, that we understand, that we are not in normal times, that there are lots of things that we ought to be able to do on a bipartisan basis. But the bones of democracy are being tested, and he wanted to make that case.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
If we're going to be an effective opposition party and it's been a minute. Right. We were in power and enacting really important legislation. But now we're in the minority, which means it's even more important to be a unified opposition. And that just takes practice and work and a recognition that if something didn't go well, there's no spinning it.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
You just say, look, that was we didn't execute well. It's a good thing that happened in February of this year and not August of next year. But we got to get better because we got to learn how to be a more effective opposition party.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
Yes, I do. I just think we've got to talk more, think more, and be willing to do things that sort of match both in intensity and in unusualness, sort of like widen the array of tactics that we're willing to use. And I think one of the most powerful tactics that I am observing— is people, Democrats, going into Republican U.S. House districts and holding town halls where they won't, right?
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
And that one is an absolute political killer. And so I'm happy to see, I saw Maxwell Frost and Chris Murphy doing it. Chuck did it in some New York House districts. I think this can cause real political pain more so than, you know, social media posts. But, you know, social media posts are important too.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
Well, you know, this is important to most parents across the country. And this is something that unites, you know, the sort of apolitical, the right wing, the left wing, the moderates. I cannot find a parent who is in favor of permitting a kid, a nine-year-old, to be on TikTok or Instagram or anything else. It is... directly correlated to being anxious.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
It is directly correlated to being sedentary. It is directly correlated to the polarization, both socially and politically, of our country. And there's no real First Amendment right when you're talking about protecting a nine-year-old from these adverse outcomes. And then for 13 through adulthood, it's those algorithms that are capturing kids who don't have a fully developed brain and
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
And, you know, there's this kind of argument within the Democratic coalition, which I think is absurd, which is do we argue about – do we talk about the threats to democracy or do we talk about economic fairness and economic opportunity? And I think the answer is like quite plainly, we do it all. First of all, people are – capable of keeping a couple of things in their head at the same time.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
and don't have a fully developed sense of themselves, and causing them to have eating disorders or violent tendencies or otherwise unhealthy relationships with their peers or with their parents or with their teachers. And so I think the use case for social media for the very young child is, you know, pretty close to zero.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
And, you know, I sat with my staff, we came up with this bill, and we started shopping it around with Republicans and Ted and Katie Britt, And Dan Sullivan and other Republicans are on board. And so I think we can enact this thing because there is broad bipartisan support for something like this.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
And, you know, I'm not going to try to trash my fellow senators, other legislative proposals, but I will say it this way. This thing is simple and easy to understand, right? And there are lots of things in the AI space and the kids' privacy space gets really complicated. There are lots of edge cases to consider and all the rest of it.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
But can't we just agree that there's no real use case for an eight-year-old staring at Instagram? Like, can't we just get that one done? And so I'm relatively hopeful we can get that done in this Congress.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
Oh, I've seen pushback. Absolutely. You know, they do a lot of, well, we're already doing this. And then I go back to them and say, well, if you're already doing this, it shouldn't be a problem, should it? And, oh, this is impossible to administer. That's also bullshit.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
And so I would be a little worried if I weren't getting any pushback because I'd be thinking, well, what do they know that I don't? If they're fine with your bill passing, your bill is probably not going to accomplish much to change the sort of equation here. But look, we've got a public health crisis. We've got a mental health crisis. And it's almost beyond that.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
It's a societal crisis that we are creating. And it's not like it'll instantly go away. But if we can just delay the onset. of the kind of maniacal phone use, we can allow kids to have some semblance of a childhood. And I just don't see how that's a, you know, progressive view or a conservative view. It's just a kind of common sense.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
If you're a parent, you kind of run up to me at the airport or in the, you know, in the Safeway in Honolulu and go, oh, my God, thank you so much for this.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
I think there are tremendous opportunities with AI. And I mean, you know, I sort of have to do the throat clearing talking about how much how big the electricity needs are going to be for AI, right? So they are going to need lots of new generation. It's unclear in the short run whether or not we're going to be able to provide that generation with clean energy. So that's that.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
But you're right that so much of what happens as we try to integrate, you know, increasing percentages of clean energy, which is sometimes intermittent onto the grid, is that it's sorting, right?
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
I've been in the Hawaiian electric control room and yeah, they have some good technology, but they're still like dudes with switches and communicating on the phone and they're using increasingly high quality tech, including AI, but eventually we should just know where the electrons are and have it automated where it goes. And that's what people meant by a smart grid
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
But second of all, what's happening is the same story, right? It's a different aspect of the same story, which is that we have these rich billionaires, these oligarchs who are doing a smash and grab on the federal government. And that means that people are going to be hurt. But the whole purpose here from the Republican side is to generate enough savings to
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
And those are the kinds of things that can be automated. And we can generate tons and tons and tons of savings. The other thing we can do, they always talk about megawatts of clean energy. The lowest hanging fruit economically is what they call the megawatt. It's energy not consumed, right? And AI can find where you're wasting energy.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
and help you to not waste that energy without any, you know, diminishment of the kind of service that you're getting. And so AI has got lots of potential. I think we've got to be, you know, vigilant about what it's going to do to employment in particular. and the creative arts and the creative acts in particular.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
But the use cases, I think, in making government work better for people so you don't have to be on the phone for four or five hours, the use case for smart grid and clean energy implementation, I think are really, really exciting. And obviously healthcare and the ability to find new discoveries if and when the NIH is still standing.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
I'm still in just I can barely contain myself about what's happening to USAID. And I'm still pissed at Democratic pundits who said, well, don't focus on USAID. It's not the most popular program. Listen, the reason I'm focusing on USAID is because I happen to be the top Democrat on the committee that does the funding for this. And also because people are dying.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
thousands of kids every week are getting HIV AIDS from their mom because we've basically turned off the spigot on the program called PEPFAR. Like that is pain that the United States government is causing. And I don't give a shit what a pundit says. I'm going to keep talking about it until we resolve that. So I'm still in that fight every day, morning, noon, and night.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
What I think people need to chill about is the third term talk. Not everything that Trump does is a distraction, but I do think when he's eating shit politically with tariffs and the stock market and polling numbers and presumably like suboptimal data coming from Florida and elsewhere and maybe even the Wisconsin race, I don't know.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
But when the vibes are bad, he usually does something provocative just to kind of push something weird into the headlines. And so on that one, I think we should not take the bait. Obviously, be vigilant and don't have a failure of imagination. But on that one, that actually did feel like a trap.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
to finance the biggest tax cuts in American history and to double the national debt, not the deficit, not the annual operating deficit, but double the national debt. And so, look, we've got a case to make. And I think we need to do less of talking to each other about how exactly to say the thing and how exactly to
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
you know, do our emphasis and which lane is best and which moderate or liberal or progressive or center right person has the right approach. And all of us just need to, this is rhetorical now, pick up whatever rock we can find and start whipping it at the opposition because the fight is on now.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
Yeah, I think everybody should be a little freaked out, but the challenge right now is to remain... Look, I think of, you know, President Zelensky, right? And when you interact with him, it's not that he doesn't understand that his country is under siege. It's not that he doesn't understand the death toll, the economic challenges, the suffering, but he also remains calm. And so...
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
There is a real threat to the American system of government right now, and it is personified in Donald Trump and his movement. That is real. But that doesn't mean that the most effective way to fight it is to look like you've lost your damn mind. And so... I think what people want to see is a level of alarm that matches the facts on the ground.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
And I think Democrats have done only an OK job of conveying that level of alarm. On the other hand, we do need to remain calm and strategic and work collectively because this is serious business. So but you're right. I mean, you know, every day I'm trying to assess two things. there are kind of two lines that may intersect.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
One is in a normal, traditional political context, everything that Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans are doing is diminishing their popularity and positions us well for elections upcoming. At the same time, some of the things they're doing are seizing the reins of the organs of democracy, the organs of power, in ways that feel a little more durable
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
than like, oh, great, we won the House in the midterms. Now what? And so are these things related? Yeah, we can push back better when Donald Trump is in the 30s or low 40s than if he's in the 50s and 60s. So these things are related, but they are not the same. And it is important to kind of treat those two enterprises as related, but not the exact same thing. I fight on the kind of
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
democracy front as much as i can but i also understand that the winning issues for us are going to be protecting social security reversing all the layoffs of the veterans frankly protecting national parks and the national park service the faa all of those things are the kinds of things that are going to move voters back into our column and let them know that we are not part of the problem is from covid
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
to Trump and then Trump again, we've been saying that the sky is falling for quite a long time. And there's a pretty good argument that, you know, the truth was it was a global pandemic and the truth was Donald Trump is a unique threat. But it doesn't matter. If you do that for 10 years, you kind of... People stop listening.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
What will move voters is a recognition that they are currently suffering economically from what's going on. And that doesn't mean I don't understand the threats to the rule of law, the fact that they're just putting on masks. And sending people to foreign prisons without justification is a terrifying thing.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
But it's also true that if we want to win a swing voter back, it's probably going to be on tariffs and not that question.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
Sure. They have to go through a multi-step process, which is super boring. But the point is they are going to, at least currently, their plan is to literally double the deficit. to do something called current policy baseline. You don't need to know why they call it that, but essentially to say that whatever the current policy is in the 11th year and beyond doesn't cost a penny.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
So from an accounting standpoint, like that sounds awesome. My mortgage is only a liability on my books for the next nine and a half years. And then after that, it's pretty much free. Well, that's not actually true. But if my accountant told me I could do that, I might make some very, very bad decisions for the national fiscal situation.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
So that's what they're going to do is they're going to increase the debt, not the deficit by about double. They're going to cut taxes for trillionaires and they still need to find more More savings in order to enact all of that stuff. And they're looking very, very hard at Medicaid cuts.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
And so this is an opportunity for Democrats to be clear from, you know, John Fetterman to Bernie Sanders and everyone in between. We all agree. that cutting Medicaid and using that savings to kind of shovel it to the wealthiest billionaire corporations that have ever existed on the planet is a very bad idea politically and policy-wise. So we're going to fight like hell this week.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
The problem is this is like step two in a three-step process. So the Republicans are going to claim, hey, this is just a framework, the cuts are not in there, blah, blah, blah. And what we have to do is say, yeah, yeah, yeah, That's all bullshit. We all know where this is landing.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
You want the tariff revenue, which is another way of saying money regular people pay when they go to the grocery store or the Home Depot or the Best Buy or to the car dealership. Extra money that they pay gets counted as revenue, and that revenue is going to be the reason that they claim that their tax cuts for the wealthy are so-called deficit neutral.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
And I think it's a really important point to make because it's one of those things where Democrats are – everyone is prone to rhetorical excess. And so you would forgive a regular listener for thinking, well, that's probably not exactly what they're doing. They're not actually going to take the money that I pay –
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
When I have to pay more for an avocado or a bottle of tequila or a flat screen TV, they're not actually going to give it to the wealthy, are they? And they literally are. That's their budget plan. And I think if we can't make hay of that, that we should probably dissolve the party and reconstitute ourselves someplace else.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
Yeah. Yeah, I'm excited to be a part of this. You know, when I ran for my first election in the United States Senate, I made Social Security my signature issue. And it's, you know, for two reasons. First, 300,000 people in Hawaii depend on Social Security. And the vast majority of those people, it's either their only source of income or their primary source of income.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
The amount of Social Security that people receive in Hawaii, the average amount is just under $2,000. That is less than than a two-bedroom apartment costs in the city of Honolulu. So it's just literally not enough. And the idea that the way we're going to find a balanced budget is on the backs of seniors who have paid into this program is preposterous to me.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
I am from the best place.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
So we're actually rolling this out in a couple of hours with Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden and others. to not just fight back on the kind of communications level, which I think is very important, but also to troubleshoot what they're doing as a kind of first step as a trial balloon to try to eviscerate the program, and that is to make the service delivery suck. right?
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
Closing down offices, reducing the number of people available to answer the phone, requiring that you, but first of all, closing down offices and then requiring that you physically show up in those offices means that people like my father-in-law, he's in his 80s, he's got COPD. He was actually social security disability before he was social security for the elderly.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
But I do feel like I have one of the best jobs in the world, but I truly represent one of the best places on the planet in one of the best jobs in the world. So I count my blessings constantly.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
He's legally blind, although functional around the house. He can't go to a social security office. Right. You know, and I'm home whenever I'm home. I could take him. But not everybody has those resources. And then you have language access problems and all the rest of it.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
So if people can't access the Social Security program, then Social Security is being cut even without actually enacting those cuts. But I do think honestly, I think that's where they want to land. I think they want to cut Social Security. But the first step to cutting Social Security is to get everybody to believe two things. First, that it sucks, right?
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
You can't get your program, you know, you can't get on the phone and start to have people think of it like the DMV, where it's a big pain, it's a big bureaucracy, it doesn't work. And then second, and they do this especially to young people, to get people to believe that Social Security will not exist in the future. That is bullshit. Does it have some fiscal challenges, like in the 2030 Sure.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
But like these are absolutely from a numerical standpoint, not difficult to solve. But the right wing has gone out of its way to cause everybody probably under 40 to think this program will not be here for me in the future. That's bullshit. That's a question of political will. And as long as I'm around, we're going to fight to keep Social Security.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
I'm at 2.8 million miles in the last 13.
Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Keeping Kids Off Social Media & Betting on AI for Climate Action (feat. Sen. Brian Schatz)
So rude. I'm in London and I just paid for this damn fat drug I take. I said, it's not working.