What Life After Trump Could Look Like (ft. Pete Buttigieg)

Security program on spreadsheets, new regulations piling up, and audit thread? It's time for Vanta. Vanta automates security and compliance, brings evidence into one place, and cuts audit prep by 82%. Less manual work, clearer visibility, faster deals, zero chaos. Call it compliance or call it Com-Pliance. Get it? Join the 15,000 companies using Vanta to prove trust. Go to vant.com. Go to vant.com. What's up y'all? I'm Skylar Diggins, 7-time WNBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for New Yearly, 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is and mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds, dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. I think our party is still struggling to have this idea of what happens when Trump leaves the scene as a beginning point instead of the be all and all goal of what we're doing. By the way, I think an increasing number of Republicans are doing. If you look at the defection of Margie Taylor Greene, if you look at the Indiana State House Republicans defying the president on redistricting, I think what a lot of them are thinking to themselves is, you know what, I'm going to be in politics longer than he is. And yet that's actually a real struggle for Democrats. I think because we are understandably so horrified by all of the abuses that are going on right now, but it's just not enough. Welcome, Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway. And I'm Jessica Tarlove. Joining us today is someone who's been part of the national conversation for a while now. First as Mayor Pete, then as a presidential candidate, and most recently as secretary of transportation. But more than that, he's been one of the few Democrats consistently trying to answer the questions, what actually comes next. Pete Buttigieg, welcome. This is so exciting. You're so happy. This is more about us. This means we have finally arrived. Yeah, this is it. Welcome, Mayor Pete. Our moment. Gosh. Well, I'm flattered. Thanks for having me on. This is super, this is super exciting. I haven't seen Scott smile, by the way, in like months. So thank you for coming. I feel so special. Thank you. Let's get into it. You said Trump launched a war without planning and called what we're seeing amateur hour at the Pentagon and the White House. We want to play you a clip from Pete Hexett this morning, giving us an update on the war. Let's take a look. The world, the Middle East, our ungrateful allies in Europe, even segments of our own press should be saying one thing to President Trump. Thank you. Thank you for the courage to stop this terror state from holding the world hostage with missiles while building or attempting to build a nuclear bomb. Thank you for doing the work of the free world. So, Mayor Pete, when you hear that, what do you see as the real, the real world risk of this kind of leadership? And how are you thinking about the Pentagon's reported 200 billion supplemental funding requests making the rounds right now? Well, first of all, I'm just thinking about how much that costs us, literally. I mean, if you just do the napkin math, $200 billion in a country our size, it's something like 600 bucks for every man, woman, and child in this country on top of what's already the largest Pentagon budget in history, all for a war that the American people didn't ask for and don't want. And we hear the Secretary carrying on like that. I mean, it sounds more like the Iraqi information minister that many of us remember from the early 2000s or a Soviet propaganda minister, not a serious American leader, which is really disturbing, because this is a serious American situation. We are now at war. It's not as if we're at war. We are literally at war. American service members have been killed, and Americans at home are paying the price higher mortgage rates, higher food prices, which we're about to get even higher because of what's happening in agriculture, obviously higher gas prices. And now just every day, at least a billion dollars that we all literally paid going into the furnace of this conflict. Do you think we're going to have boots on the ground here? And what are your thoughts on that? Well, they're certainly making some of those noises. There's fresh reporting, I think, just today that they're contemplating sending more troops into the region and depending which goal they pick for the war, and it seems like he keeps changing, some of those would require troops on the ground to achieve. And you just think about American conflicts, all of them, but especially the ones that ended in the most in tears. You think about Vietnam. Nobody thought that that was going to last a long time. Nobody thought that was really going to lead to major troops on the ground. It started with advisors, and then it was troops, and then it was more troops, and then it was years and years and years. When I got to Afghanistan as a lieutenant, that was 13 years into the war. And I thought I was one of the last troops turning out the lights, and it was almost a decade more before that conflict was over. So they've unleashed forces that I don't think even they know how to contain, and we don't know what the consequences will be to our economy or in terms of how many more troops have to go out there. You bring up the kind of like what is going on here aspect. And Donald Trump has said that himself. He said no one could have predicted this. There are a number of people on his team who did predict this and wrote articles about it, and the Iranians themselves predicted it because they put a letter to the UN saying this is what we're going to do. How do we get out of here successfully? Because it seems to me there's a big contrast between definitive military successes that have occurred and what a long-term solution looks like unless we want to be a peacekeeping force in the region in perpetuity, which nobody wants to do. So how are you thinking about how those two issues kind of interact? Yeah, you have to start with mission clarity. Look, it is not our job to make sure that the Iranian people have excellent government. I hope they someday will. Obviously, we're rooting for that, but it is not our job to deliver thoroughgoing regime change, nor is there any reason to think that we're capable of that. What we do need to do is to keep the homeland safe, and that means making sure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon, which by the way was achieved by diplomacy before the first Trump administration blew that up, and which the Trump administration claims to have achieved by force almost a year ago now when the president assured us that the nuclear program was obliterated. But anyway, that's one thing that has to be achieved, and the other is to contain any of the kind of malignant activities that the Iranian regime tends to pursue beyond its borders. And remember, this is still the same regime. We went from one Ayatollah to another Ayatollah. We went from Ayatollah Khomeini to Ayatollah Khomeini, Jr. We think we don't exactly know what condition he's in. So they have started something, this government, this president, this White House, started something that they do not know how to finish. What do you think is going on inside the administration? You've been part of a White House, with a bevy of characters, right? Different personalities and different goals. And I watched someone like Tulsi Gabber testifying yesterday with the Senate. She's on the Hill right now fending off questions about what the intelligence community actually told the president. And she is, you know, bobbin' and weaving and trying to get around it. Scott Besin is saying we might lift sanctions on Iranian oil now. He just gave an interview a couple hours ago saying that. We've already done that for the Russians. I mean, what do you think is going on inside the White House? Well, a lot of what's inside the White House isn't even literally inside the White House. Remember, this war was launched from, not from the Situation Room, but from Mar-a-Lago, a literal club for millionaires that the president owns as a side hustle. So I think that tells you a lot about whose opinions matter the most right now. And it's kind of the Mar-a-Lago set, right? We saw senior economic advisors say this isn't going to cause any problems. Well, maybe for consumers, but that's the least of our worries. And I think we're seeing that play out in a lot of ways where you've got just a total disconnect between the people who are paying the price, whether we're talking about the people paying the ultimate price, which is the troops, or just people all around the country paying the price in terms of our costs and the people making the decision. Add to that the fact that this president arrived by promising his base that there would be no new regime change wars in general and, you know, many times saying that there would be an Iran war in particular. So if you got a lot of people who believed him, who didn't just vote for him, but came into the administration, like presumably Tulsi Gabbard, I have to think that you just got an extreme level of confusion and very little cohesion in that White House. It's why you're seeing things you don't see often, like J.D. Vance kind of shutting up right now, which is not what he usually does. It's a nice relief though. I'm not mad at it. We can be thankful to be hearing a little less from the vice president, I guess, but it's also telling, right, that you're not hearing much from the vice president, whose job is to be the top cheerleader for whatever the president happens to be doing any given day. 42 of the last 42 years, the State Department under vastly different administrations has labeled Iran as the premier sponsor of terror. If the Trump administration had managed to build something resembling a coalition of Gulf states and some European nations, had consulted Congress, do you see any justification for military action against Iran beyond what happened at Fordo? Not based on what's happened so far, not based on what we've seen, right? And even the highest counterterrorism official in the intelligence community said when he resigned in disgust the other day that there was no imminent threat. I mean, don't get me wrong, and I think this might be part of what your question is getting at. There are certainly a lot of scenarios where military action could be appropriate against this regime. It's just we're not in one of them, right? The most important grave decision that the commander in chief can make is to send troops into conflict. And if there's anything that we've learned throughout history or just throughout our lifetimes, it's that you only send troops into conflict when there is no other good alternative. And if that's the case here, they have failed to even attempt to show it. And what do you think some of those good alternatives might have been? Well, again, the best alternative was the neutralization of their nuclear program through diplomacy that was achieved now two or three administrations ago, right? So you had the Obama administration with our allies, with our partners, figuring out a way to have an Iran nuclear deal that kept them from off the path of getting a nuclear weapon. And then you had Trump blow that up. And I think it would make it sound like he could get a better deal, fail to get a better deal, and now resort to force. But it's not clear what the force is about if he really did obliterate the nuclear program when he bombed them last year. So look, there will always be, at least as long as we have a malignant regime like we have in Iran, there will always be a need for military and kinetic options and all of the things you do to contain a regime that does what they do. I mean, let's be clear again, we should have no illusions about them, right? I mean, it's not just a matter of attacking the homeland with a missile. I mean, they were attacking our troops all through the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. We knew that the IEDs that could have killed me and my buddies when we were in Afghanistan were in large measure supplied or enhanced by Iran. So we definitely need to be able to contain them. Having troops go in is a different matter. And overthrowing a foreign leader if you don't have a plan on what to do next is a different matter. And this just never met the test for that being the right thing to do. So it's intellectually consistent for progressives to say, okay, no forever wars, and we need a smaller military. What I don't understand is on the right, where, okay, it's no forever wars, but we're in favor of a $1.1 trillion military budget. As someone who is, you know, Canada is not invading us anytime soon. As someone who's served, as someone who potentially might seek higher office, do you believe that we should be spending $1.1 trillion on our military? I think there are clear savings to be found in a lot of the contracts and other things that are going on in the Pentagon. Again, I saw it for myself as a relative, a very junior kind of part of that whole military apparatus when I was in uniform. And yeah, I've seen more generally in government how money gets shoveled into a furnace sometimes. Look, we should and must make sure that we have by far the strongest military in the world, and that costs money. And that's okay. But the whole point of having the strongest military in the world is to make sure it's so strong that you almost never have to use it. And what we're seeing now, and what the $200 billion they're talking about adding in to foot the bill for this conflict tells us is that you're kind of getting the worst of both worlds. You're getting all the spending, none of the peace that's supposed to come from having a dominant position. So for the last 12 minutes, I think we've been going, you have been doing what I think you do, best, which is communicating. And you've kind of been a beacon in our party for someone who is able to articulate the things that a lot of us are feeling and often doing that in tough environments. I, as a Fox Newser, have always appreciated when you've come on. And I think it's done us a lot of good and also done the right a lot of good to be met with someone who wants to have a real conversation and can get things out there clearly. I'm curious how you are thinking about the party right now and how we are responding to this moment. And you've always been focused on what comes next, right? Like Trump will go away if we're going to win an election. It has to be about more than just we're the alternative or we don't like that guy and you don't like that guy. So vote for us. So how are you assessing this moment in terms of our party? Yeah, I think our party is still struggling to have this idea of what happens when Trump leaves the scene as a beginning point instead of the be all and all goal of what we're doing. We need to do what, by the way, I think an increasing number of Republicans are doing. If you look at the defection of Margie Taylor Greene, if you look at the Indiana State House Republicans defying the president on redistricting, I think what a lot of them are thinking to themselves is, you know what, I'm going to be in politics longer than he is. And yet that's actually a real struggle for Democrats. I think because we are understandably so horrified by all of the abuses that are going on right now, but it's just not enough. Maybe it's enough for 26, but it's not actually enough to be a governing vision, especially because so much has changed. And by the way, it hasn't only changed because of everything that the Trump administration burned down. Some of these things are changing anyway. We're going to need probably a completely new social contract in our economy because of what artificial intelligence is likely to do to jobs and communities just in the next few years. Obviously, on the global front, we're going to have to redesign everything from our systems for handling international trade to our security frameworks and alliances. We got to have answers about not just how to end the horrible things we're seeing right now, but what we're supposed to do about it. And the really amazing thing is on so many of the answers, including things we've been saying all along, like making sure that the wealthiest pay their fair share in taxes or making sure that there's a better solution for people to get health care, or you name it, issue after issue, it's like two thirds of Americans agree with us. And so we have to be asking ourselves some pretty hard questions if there's issue after issue where two thirds of Americans are with us. And we're not always getting 50% in the election. How are we talking about these things? And where are we talking about these things? Whether that's people like me going on Fox and I admire what you do in the lines done there every day. Or whether it's going to these spaces where more people get their information that aren't on TV at all, right? And maybe on their face aren't even about politics at all, sports and culture and comedy venues that are actually how a lot of younger people form their impression about what's happening in the world. If we're not contesting that territory, if we're not reaching out and engaging there, we're going to be left behind because I know for a fact that the other side is doing it every day. Yeah. Your turn on flagrant was one of my favorite, I have flagrants one of my favorite pods in general, but it was funny to see like that Bernie could hang and you could hang. And then you think about kind of some of the other folks with leading roles in the party and how they might survive two and a half hours with Andrew Schultz and it was not a pretty sight. Let's take a quick break. Stay with us. But I was definitely the driving force, I think in the conviction about Angel City. Check out Pretty Tough, new episodes on Wednesdays. You can watch it on YouTube or listen in your favorite podcast app. Complex and unprecedented, the Spanish authorities are calling it. Passengers who'd been stuck aboard the Hanta or maybe Hantavirus-stricken Dutch cruise ship disembarked in the Canary Islands this weekend, prompting the highest stakes game of where are they now since maybe COVID? Some of the evacuees, American and French, have since tested positive for the virus and yet public health officials seem remarkably calm. We do have one individual who was taken to the biocontainment unit early, early this morning and we assessed that individual. Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over. Today Explained drops every weekday afternoon. This week on Net Worth and Chill, I'm telling you my entrepreneurial origin story, how I went from working a 9 to 5 and making internet videos on the side to walking away from a $625,000 a year job to take your HBFF full time. I'm breaking down exactly how I knew it was time to make the leap, how I set myself up financially so I wasn't just winging it and what it actually takes to survive and thrive as your own boss. From cash flow to taxes to building multiple income streams, because let's be real, becoming an entrepreneur sounds amazing until you realize you have to figure out all of this yourself. I did and now I'm giving you the blueprint. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on youtube.com slash your rich BFF. Welcome back. I want to talk about the media environment but before that because you brought up AI and you talk about rebuilding global alliances and things like that, what are a few policies that you think should be central to the democratic platform like where we could say in the first 100 days, this is what you're going to get from us if you give us back the keys? Well we start with the basics. We're going to make sure that you are able to afford living and there's some specific policies that help with that, making sure that you do get that support you need on your premiums for the ACA for example, which is much more affordable than this war on Iran in budget terms. Making sure you get things like things I believe in that would help people raise families from access to pre-K to things like parental leave. We're going to make sure that the wealth you're paying there fair share, which most Americans think we need to do, and we're going to make sure that one job is enough, which means making sure your wages are good enough and having policies that support you getting benefits and benefits you can take with you if you're a more of the Gen Z millennial style worker who might change employers or even careers a dozen times. Meanwhile in the background we got to work on the shape of our democracy. That stuff's not as sexy, but we definitely need to take action to deal with money and politics. It could take a long time to get something like a constitutional change done. That means we should be working on it from day one. On artificial intelligence, one of two things is going to happen. Either it's going to lead to a shorter work week and more money in your pocket, which is the outcome I would like to see, or it's going to lead to even more extreme concentrations of wealth and power than we already have, which is what will happen if we don't intervene with good smart policies to do something about that. I think that probably involves making sure that Americans get a share of the enormous wealth that is being created in and for these firms, especially because they're making that wealth from data that we all put out into the world using infrastructure like the internet that taxpayers invented in the first, or taxpayer funded research invented in the first place. I think these are very commonsensical policies, but we've really struggled to get them through. And I think we struggled to convey our focus on those things, which is why I think a lot of working and middle class voters weren't sure what Democrats had to say to them. We got to put that right. Now's an obligation and also an opportunity to do that. So the wealthy paying their fair share, and there's just no getting around it. The wealthy have done much better than any other cohort, but let's get specific. So if you're a married couple and one person is a baller or law firm making a couple million bucks a year, the other is a chiropractor with three clients, I mean, played by the rules, super hardworking, super successful, super fortunate, making two, three million dollars a year. They likely have to be in a blue city in a blue state to have access to that type of information economy. And Pete, they're likely paying 48 to 52% incremental tax rates. At the same time, billionaires are paying a lot less than that. Owners versus earners. Can you be more specific about specific policies that get to the notion of the wealthy paying their fair share? Yeah. I mean, this is a great point, right? I mean, not only is it a real problem that billionaires are paying less percentage wise than firefighters or teachers, but it's also interesting that billionaires are paying much less than millionaires. So if we at least had the wealthiest billionaires and multi-billionaires paying as much as somebody who's making one or two million dollars, that would actually be a lot more money coming into the treasury that would make it possible to deliver on things like getting everybody health care and getting everybody childcare. That means closing loopholes. That means going further down the route of making sure that there's not some advantage to offshoring your wealth. A lot of it is on the corporate side, right? People who make the very most wealth in this country aren't booking it as a salary. It's got a lot to do with ownership of corporate equity. A lot of these corporations are literally paying zero because of all the loopholes and the write-offs that they have. If we true that up, not to mention just making sure we do better on things like tax evasion, that the IRS has lost capability to make sure people just pay what they're actually supposed to be paying on paper. We're talking about enormous resources that become available for the things that people expect their government to be on top of, like infrastructure and national defense, and make sure that our schools and our health are in good shape. So we can do this. We have to choose to do it. I'm not saying that a high salary earner has to go back to the JFK years when your income tax federally was like 80 or 90% on the top marginal rate. It doesn't have to be that, but we do need to true things up for multi-billionaires, for giant corporations, and for what Andrew Schultz memorably called on that podcast. You mentioned the middle rich. People aren't billionaires, but are in good shape. They might be paying a little more too, but to your point, the folks who are getting away with the most are the folks who are actually much richer than, quote, unquote, ordinary millionaires. What does that look like at a policy level? Is it an alternative of a minimum tax? Is it a wealth tax? There's been new tax proposals from Rokana, Cory Booker, Senator Warren, and they're vastly different approaches. What would the Buttigieg's approach to fairness at the high end, what does that actual policy, tax policy, look like? Scott's making you a presidential candidate, by the way. Yeah, I was going to say, like, I'm not here to present a fully articulated tax policy, although I will say, when I did run for president a few years ago, I was proud of making sure, I think I was the only one to do this, that every penny that we proposed in spending, we specified how we were going to pay for it in taxes, because I think that's important if you're doing something like running for president. Obviously, I'm not running for anything at the moment right now, but I think that the qualities of a fair tax code are that those who do the best contribute the most, not punitive, not unreasonable, but fair. I think that that can be based on income, that can be based on corporate earnings. There are a lot of different ways to make it harder to shelter or shield money with things like mark to market that have been talked about, not to get too wonky. And look, a wealth tax is like a property tax. It is not, to me, there's nothing wrong in kind with the idea of a property tax or a tax on wealth, but it needs to be well calibrated, it needs to be fair, it needs to be smart. And I think some of the proposals that there are better at that than others. You mentioned healthcare, 13,000 per capita spending versus 6,506 of the other G7. Do you think it's time for single payer or socialized medicine? Because even subsidizing ACA payments is not going to be healthcare reform. It's a short-term fix that we need, but healthcare in the United States is broke. The best way to describe it would be expensive but bad, right? Higher infant mortality, more anxious, more obese, but we pay twice what everyone else pays. It feels like we need big dramatic reform. Can you, and again, be as specific as possible around, well, let me just ask straight up, do you believe in single payer or socialized medicine? So I believe in what I proposed a few years ago. I think it's aged really well. We called it Medicare for All Who Wanted. You set up a public payer. If I'm right, that it's going to be better than the others, then it will evolve into the single payer because everybody will want it. But we don't command everybody to use it if there's something they'd rather have, if they get a better deal through their union or some other available offering. So I'm foresetting up a public payer. I'm skeptical of the idea that you should just make everybody do it on day one. Now, I also think that we can do more to address the cost side. So even though I'm concerned and skeptical about the trajectory that we're on when it comes to artificial intelligence, I also think there's a huge opportunity here. If so much of the healthcare dollar is going not into patient care, not into directly making somebody better off, but into administrative via, that's the first thing we should be looking to automate. Automate the bureaucracy. And I think there's a lot of opportunity there if we use these tools in the right way. And if we make sure, I mean, you have to have somebody looking over the shoulder, I think, of the healthcare sector, that they're not just extracting it in massive profits. I want, obviously, company that does a good job and plays by the rules ought to be profitable. But you look at this vertical integration going on where you got the insurer and the provider and the pharmacy sometimes or the PBM, they're all part of the same corporate agglomeration. That's not adding value. At least it's not adding value for us, for the patient or the customer. It's adding value for the profits of the corporation. I'm sure that a lot of the ideas that you were just talking about come not only from your 2020 campaign, but also what you're hearing from real life people on the ground. And you have been all over the place. You live in Michigan, which is a huge battleground for us, Wisconsin, Nevada, you've gone to Pennsylvania, Alabama. Can you talk about what you're hearing from the real live folks who don't live in these bubbles with us when you are in these places or even just at home where there's a big marquee senate race that's coming up? Yeah, you definitely feel that people are getting squeezed. I was out knocking on doors with a candidate yesterday up for a special election in a state senate district in Michigan, which includes Saginaw and Bay City and Midland. We're knocking on doors in Midland. We meet one family that, their story is one I've heard a lot in the Midwest, which is people who were living in California or on one of the coast and decide to relocate to the Midwest because it's more affordable. They said they got here and now they're shocked by how much they're paying, even living here in the Midwest. They were talking about their electric bill and they're feeling that it's out of control. And again, I think this connects directly to policy because you got the White House killing energy projects right and left that could be adding supply, adding capacity, by the way, adding clean capacity in this country and help take a bite out of people's power bills. So, things that used to be something that in this part of the country where I live were something you thought about happening on the coasts are now happening everywhere, housing costs, health care costs, utility costs. And more and more people feel like nobody hears them when they're saying how squeezed they are. And that just continues to be such a central issue. And you know, it's one thing if you have people who are trying to lower those costs, but they just can't quite get it done. It's another one you have a government make specific choices that directly increase the costs, right? That's true about the war. That's true about killing the clean energy projects. Obviously, by definition, it's true about the tariffs. I think a typical family paid about a thousand bucks to the government in the form of those tariffs that are not popular. And it turns out largely not legal. So, this stuff is very real. It's in your face. It's kitchen table. And I'm hearing about it everywhere I go. The other thing I would say that I found on the road that is surprising, or at least striking, is how many people who considered themselves Republicans even through the first few years or the last few years of the ups and downs with Trump now want a change. I mean, I'm away to Alabama. And then on my way back, I mean, both flights, somebody came up to me and talked about being a lifelong Republican. One of them didn't even say, I used to be a Republican, said I'm a Republican. And then said that he hoped that Democrats win in November this year. So, I think there's a chance to have a bigger coalition right now than we're used to, where it's not just people who always vote Democrats, not just people in the blue areas. I mean, we were in Northwest Georgia. This is Marjorie Taylor Greene's old district. We had hundreds of people come when I was campaigning with Sean Harris, a Democratic candidate in this very conservative area. It was actually, we were told, not that I'm super into crowd sizes, but we were told it was more than President Trump was able to get when he was campaigning in the same community a few weeks earlier. So, just saying something's going on out there in terms of people's readiness to step up and a lot's going out there in terms of people's stability to afford getting through their day. Do they not think that we're woken week anymore? I think that they are more interested in who's going to make their life better. And I think a lot of folks took a chance on this president. Maybe they didn't even like him, but they said, I'm going to vote for anybody who's going to shake things up, not expecting things to be shaken up at their expense. So, what I say to Democrats is the current situation, the fact that the American people have turned against the president, even on issues like immigration and the economy that he used to do well on, that's not the answer for us. That's not a solution for us. It's an opening for us. And our job is to explain how your life gets better and more affordable when we have fairer taxes, when we have more support for healthcare, all of those things that we need. We talk a lot on this show about the struggles of not only a younger generation that is 24% less wealthy than they were 40 years ago versus my generation, which is 72% wealthier, and per your comments about a more just tax system. But we talk a lot specifically about the cohort that I would argue is falling further faster than any other cohort in that as young men. And when talking to young men, oftentimes the option of military service comes up. You know, good young men trying to find their way, quite frankly, are just not the kind of people are going to graduate from an elite school. They're just, they don't have the skills, they don't have those resources right now. You are an officer, but talk a little bit about enlisted service as relates to the opportunity for young men and women and your observations around who military service is the right fit for, and also just as importantly, who it's not the right fit for. Look, military service isn't for everybody. And you need to go in with your eyes wide open about what it means, because you don't know what conflicts the country will be in while you're in service. You don't know who the commander in chief will be throughout the whole time that you're in uniform. And so you really are writing a blank check to the United States of America. What you get in return for that is the knowledge that you have contributed to this country's defense and survival and so much more, whether we're talking about very concrete things like skills that a lot of people gain in the military, technical skills, but also just life skills, how to deal with other people, how to handle yourself around people who are different from you. And, you know, that could be true for a 19 year old enlisted kid. That was true for me, you know, as an officer with a really fortunate education. I learned so much, including how to trust my life to somebody I just met who definitely had very different background and politics and values than I did, because that was our job. I think we would be better off if more Americans had the experience of working together on something hard. And you get that in the military, but you don't, the military is not the only place you can get that. That's why I'm a big believer in extending more opportunities for service in more ways. Military is great for many people, if that's not for you. We should have more opportunities for volunteer service, things like AmeriCorps that unfortunately are being dismantled or defunded in this administration, but we should have more and not less on that, especially because it's not just a great development in the life of a young person, definitely in life of a young man who is trying to develop a sense of self and a sense of purpose, but also because it helps build a sense of broader trust and cohesion in this country. And it forces us to deal with each other offline, but the people that you engage with in a volunteer unit, definitely in a military unit, you're not doing it from behind a keyboard. It's not, you know, an avatar of a cartoon character or an emoji behind some obscure user handle on Twitter or Discord or whatever as a human being that you've got to work with. And, you know, one of the best descriptions I've ever heard about politics, Jedediah Purdy, one of my, the thinkers I really admire, said that politics is the process of finding terms of alliance for people who need each other and are in each other's way. And I think that's true just societally for all of us. We all need each other as Americans, we're in each other's way, but also in a more immediate sense, putting yourself in a situation where you learn to work with people that you depend on each other and sometimes you can get in each other's way. This is part of how we as human beings can be better formed, can develop better and then come back and be better citizens. Pete Buttigieg is a former U.S. Secretary of Transportation, 2020 presidential candidate and a former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who helped put a new generation of Democratic leadership on the map. Also, Mayor Pete, I just think you're a wonderful role model for young men. You're fearless, you're always the sense of service and everything you say, wonderful committed partner, engaged father. I just think you're sending a wonderful signal to young people and specifically young men. Very much appreciate your role and your service and the message you're sending to the next generation. Well, I'll try to live up to that. Thanks for having me. Jess, what'd you think? I've been waiting a long time to talk to Mayor Pete and it definitely lived up to it. I have always admired how seamlessly he can go between different subject areas with a lot of depth to his answers and we took him on a roller coaster all over the world and then, you know, like what do we do about the Democratic brand and then young men and service. He's just a standout communicator. I'm excited to see him in the 2028 primary battle, which will have a lot of folks in it, but I think he's really good. What'd you think? I just think that country is in desperate need of making intelligence and decency cool again. And I think he does that. It's very reasoned, very decent, doesn't make personal attacks. Good family, man. I think he's going to run and I very much hope he's going to run because whether he wins or not, and I think Kelsey has him down at like 4% right now, I bet that goes up. He's just going to be a very positive voice in the race. He's fact-based. He's logical. He's rational. He's a critical thinker. I just think he's a great, and he's not only a great voice for the Democratic Party, I think he's a great voice for a new generation of Democrats. So I just think he's just a positive, he feels like he's just generally speaking a positive force in the world. Yeah, 100%. He's so chill also, like for somebody that- Yeah, not easily rattled. Certainly not easily rattled, but for somebody who's very smart, what does he speak like six languages or something like that? He has a very down-to-earth presentation that you can tell why there are folks who usually vote the other way that like him or coming up to him, you know, to talk about their experiences. And yeah, I think he makes the Democratic Party better. And I love people like that. And he's always honest about in reflecting on where we've gone wrong and will do that publicly. And I think that's a very healthy and good thing. Even as someone who served in the administration. All right, before we go, a reminder that not only is Raging Moderates five days a week, which we hope you've been enjoying, but we're also now on sub-stacks. Subscribers get ad-free episodes, live streams like the one we did with James Chalorico last weekend, and a place to engage with me and Scott and the other listeners and the whole ProfG fam. So find us at ragingmoderates.prophgmedia.com. That's all for this episode. Thank you so much for joining us today.