Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand, marketing tools that get your products out there, integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time, from startups to scale-ups, online, in-person and on-the-go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com. Welcome back to the Tara Palmeri Show and the red letter. We have a very special guest today, Congressman Jason Crowe, a Democrat from Colorado who just launched an anti-corruption caucus. And corruption caucus, excuse me, with Alexandria, and Mike Levin. And they just announced this last week. So we want to get all the scoop on what exactly they have in mind. Thank you so much for joining the show, Congressman Crowe. Thanks for having me on. I look forward to the chat. Yeah. So I wonder how is this different than the anti-corruption and democracy reform task force that Congressman Joe Morrell and Kevin Mullen and Delia Ramirez and Nakima Williams launched in April this year? Well, you know, there's so much corruption. I'm of the view that we're going to let a thousand flowers bloom here. There is more than enough work to go around. This is not competitive in any way. We're not, you know, we don't see this as binary, right? There's so much to do. It's almost overwhelming, actually, in some days. The level of corruption is going to take us years, literally years, to unravel all of the corruption that we have seen in just the first year and a half of the Trump administration. So what we're doing is we're creating this caucus of folks that are committed to do a couple of things. Number one, pursue legislation, packages of legislation, a standalone legislation to get to the core of why we're seeing this corruption possible, because what we've seen under the last 10 years is so many of these things are just norms and customs and traditions of our democracy that both parties just follow. And when you have a president that just throws it out the window, in some cases there aren't statutes and laws that deal with it. So we're going to do that. The second is we've also realized that there are so many things that elected officials can just do today. You don't need to pass a law. You don't need regulation. Like you can just decide not to take corporate PAC money. Like an elected official can just swear it off today. You can just decide to post your public meeting schedule on your websites that your constituents know who you're meeting with and who's coming into your office. You can just decide not to engage in stock trading. If you're an elected official, like there's no law that has to be passed for somebody to lead by example and do those things. So we're trying to put pressure on our colleagues through this caucus to join that effort and to lead by example. Yeah. I mean, I do want to pull up some stats for you on, according to the campaign legal center, 258 members of Congress own individual stocks. That's 41% are Democrats and 59% are Republicans. So it does seem like that is a bipartisan issue of owning stocks. Yeah, no, it is. I mean, I certainly am not getting any wealthier doing this. I wasn't wealthy when I came into office and I certainly am not now, right? Like my net worth has gone down as a result of my time in Congress. And that's public service. My definition of service is you're giving more than you're getting, right? You shouldn't be getting more out of this job personally than you're giving to it. Whether that's, you know, your net worth, your stock trading or what have you. So, you know, that's servant leadership in my view. That's what I learned and practiced in the army. And it should be no different here. In fact, we should be setting the standard here, not trailing other institutions like our military and others in terms of, you know, avoiding conflicts of interest. And you're right about bipartisanship, by the way, like I am the battleground co-chair for House Democrats. I spend a lot of time in red country now, red territory, visiting battleground districts, talking to our candidates. And what I can tell you is that the appetite for ending corruption and addressing the corruption in our system is very high on the right and the left. Totally. It's the one thing I think that actually finds people from both sides of the aisle. And I think you really saw that through the Epstein case and the way that it attracted people from both sides of the aisle, because it was rooted in corruption and government cover up and the feeling that the elites were getting away with something. And I think that's partially why Congress has such a low approval rating is because people see, you know, their members going to Congress and or the Senate and leaving a lot richer than where they spend when they started. And President Trump, I mean, since inauguration day, he traded AI chips, the UAE in exchange for money. I mean, he made nearly $100 million to his meme coin. I accepted $56 million from someone and it's under, you know, SEC investigation. So that's obviously a minefield for Democrats. But ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand, marketing tools that get your products out there, integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time from startups to scale ups online in person and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at shopify.com. Set up. He seems this sort of personal enrichment seems to not really bother his base. I don't, I'm not sure that's, that's true. I mean, there's certainly, there's certainly that the hardcore elements of the mega base that remain unwavering, right? Like we've seen that, you know, there's some kind of hard hardcore floor there. But you know, his popularity, his approval continues to go down, right? And it's inching down slower as we, you know, kind of carve deeper into that base, but it's pretty damn low, historic lows. Yeah. And then you start, I mean, that's, yeah, that's, but that's his base is 30%. So he's still holding on. That's right. Yeah, there are some folks that are just, you know, that, that, you know, once you tell yourself something for so long, you know, and you, and you believe something for so long, it becomes so core to who you are, and it's going to be very hard, I think, to make the case to those folks, not to say that I'm not going to try. I don't give up on anybody ever, right? Like I'm always going to try to bring people back into the fold and make the case as to why, you know, I'm going to work to make your life better, because certainly these, these folks, even his base, they're not better off because of Trump. They're worse off in many cases. And in most cases, they're the ones who are the most vulnerable to what Trump is doing. Right. These are people that I grew up with. I'm a conservative working class family. Like most of my family, most people I love, who are closest to me are Trump supporters. Right. My, my, my, it's awkward, but you know, my, you know, my, my focus groups are called thanks getting. So, oh yeah, I have been told that everything is off the record from now on after I wrote a few times that my MAGA family was starting to turn on Trump. And I, yeah, so I told them not really welcome back home. If I continue to use my family as a focus group, that'll be really hard for me by the way, because you, when you're, when you're sitting on the dinner table and you start asking questions and then you follow up the question was, and can you rate on a level of one to five, how important this is to you? Then the jig is up. Then they understand what's going on. I know I was just at my brother's wedding and like he was angry at me for reporting that he was unhappy with Trump and the war on, but his friends at the wedding liked the piece that I wrote. And so some of them came up to me and they're like, I voted for him and he hasn't done anything for me. You could write this down. I'm like, wait, I'm at his wedding and now his friends like want me to write about their feelings about Trump. And I'm like, I will show restraint. I will show restraint. But I did. And these guys are like in their twenties, you know, he's, he's a bit younger than me. So yeah. All, all politics are local as they say. And sometimes it's very local. So yeah, yeah, we tried to make the wedding as we tried to keep the politics off the table, although obviously they're the leads of ants that, you know, come up to you and it's just a way, but, but that also though, you know, not to go too far astray, but that also is a great skimming. But what a great skill set and opportunity to like test your own beliefs, right? When, when you go up against someone and under uncle and, you know, they've been fed this Fox news line for so long. You know, there are shreds of truth in some of these things, right? I always, that's what I was going out to like. I'm a journalist. I don't vote. Like I am truly like, I consider both sides. And I think part of the reason I decide to become a journalist is like, I saw these political stories playing out in front of me like all the time, the dinner table. And I, I, I don't think that their concerns are based, are mirrorless. Like I do think that they have, they feel something, they see something, they have a gut reaction to it. And they're being told often, like, don't believe or see what you're feeling. And a strong man is often seems like a more promising prospect, I guess, to fix their problems. But I just, it's, it's, it's a matter of getting people to tune back in and see what's really happening behind the veneer. But I want to go into your goals. We did, you know, we obviously did a pre, we saw some of the news around this and what you guys have, which I think that they're pretty ambitious, but you've got a pretty strong team alongside of you. So you say you want to remove the influence of dark money, corporate tax and special interests. I mean, that's a pretty big one. A lot of Democrats and Republicans, especially the PACs, sorry, especially the leadership groups like the D triple C, and that's the Democratic congressional committee, and they, they fund a lot of the campaigns. I mean, they take super PAC money, pop up presidents, presidential candidate, they take super PAC money. Now senators are launching their own PACs, like individual super PACs. It's kind of crazy. And so it just feels like Pandora's box is open. How do you close it? And I also just want to bring up the fact that, you know, I see, I wanted to check out and make sure you practice what you preach because I'm a reporter, right? Yeah. And, you know, you still take money from unions and from interests that you agree and agree with. And those are still technically special interests. Yeah. Well, so here's the here's the distinction. I don't take corporate PAC money because I don't believe that the companies are individuals. I don't believe that a company has the same rights as a person or a group of individuals. And I think that uniquely corporations have contributed to the corruption in our political system. And I'm not anti-business, by the way, at all. I just don't believe that businesses as entities should be involved and be able to funnel money into our election system. And that's a huge distinction, huge, between a labor union. I am pro-labor, full stop, right? And I will defend labor every single day of the week because there's a direct correlation between the middle class in America and strong labor membership, right? The height of union membership in America corresponded with the height of the middle class. And the distinction between, you know, these labor donations, you know how these work? You get individual union members, electricians, plumbers, pipe fitters, carpenters, and they're giving you a scent of everyone to their paycheck into this pot to support elected officials that have their back. That's a great thing, right? These are union members that are coming together to do it. I know that the head was an electrician, okay? And he was not a union member and he actually didn't like the union. So not everybody's pro-union, you know? Most are. There are exceptions to everything. I mean, that's always the case. But listen, the point being, you know, these are organizations that I'm behind. They're funded radically different from the corporate PACs, which is why I don't take it. I'm the only member of the delegation from Colorado that has taken the Unrig Washington pledge because I'm putting, you know, my money where my mouth is. I don't take a dime of corporate PAC money. I don't trade stocks. And those are big things that differentiate people. So yeah, we want massive reform. And I want massive reform. You know, my first bill I ever introduced as a member of Congress is called the in dark money act. And this is the first bill I always introduce at the beginning of every Congress, right? To draw back the curtain on this dark money, disclosure and transparency. So we see where it's coming from and the influence of these super PACs. We ultimately want to do that. But we need to build a coalition big enough so that it's on the right and the left, right? I don't believe in unilateral disarmament. Look at Jerry, look at Jerry Mandarin. Like we need to have as a national prohibition on Jerry Mandarin, but I'm not going to sit back and let Donald Trump and his cronies take over our democracy and in democracy as we know it by trying to steal election with Jerry Mandarin. We're going to fight fire with fire there. Yeah, they've been playing back and they've been doing it for a while too, but we're going to get into Jerry Mandarin. I do want to ask you though, because one, you know, we like to include the audience and one of our audience members asked if you accept money from a PAC, which has obviously become very controversial. A PAC is a Jewish lobby that supports members from both sides of the aisle. I don't, I don't take money from a pack. Okay. Okay, well, Betsy Braverman who's on Sub-Sac is asking what are congressional Democrats doing to advocate for public election financing or other financing reforms that limit the influence of special interest. I mean, that's it. That's an interesting point. You know, I covered European politics and it was, you know, primarily it was public, public financing. And yeah, you had weird parties that got influenced like the pirate party in the Nazi party. Very strange, right? Skinheads had influence in elections because of this, but it did feel like there was less money and less influence from outside groups in politics there. Right. I believe in public financing. So I actually think that when you prohibit, I think it has to be coupled with the prohibition on dark money and special interest. I think what we need to do is you need to end, you know, the influence of super PACs, which will require in some part a constitutional amendment, but until we can get that there are transparency things we can do. And there are things that the states can do. So the states are doing very interesting things. Hawaii and now Montana are looking at prohibiting the super PACs at the state level by tying it to business licensing and licensure. So there's, you know, there's a question about whether that's going to be challenged in the courts. I think it will be and I think it will stand up. But tying that to public financing, I think is really important, right? So that we level the playing field and allow people to be able to access the political system who might not otherwise have those connections to be involved with it. Like when I ran in 2018, I had never run for anything. Never won office, right? And my race ended up being the most expensive race in Colorado history, about, you know, 20, almost $20 million. And I had no political connection. So I had to like figure out how do you raise this money? How do you do it? And it was a real, it was a real slog in public financing would have helped level that playing field a little bit. So certainly a supporter there. Okay. I just learned that you have to leave in a few minutes. I did not realize, and I did not realize this, but you want to, so I have to wrap up. So you want to shut down the lobbying revolving door. And I think that's a huge problem right now is that there are so many people close to the president who are lobbyists have worked for him are now lobbyists were lobbyists in the past work for foreign governments. I mean, it's just it feels very, it feels like Washington is a town that it's completely run on K Street run by K Street. But you know, this isn't something that that only the Trump administration. This isn't a problem that's only existed with Trump administration. I mean, Biden brought in a number of lobbyists with him, like Steve Buschetti, Anita Dunne was a special government employee and she was one of his senior advisors and when you are a special government employee, it's a temporary status that you know allows someone to serve for 130 days, so that they can maintain their outside employment while she owned a lobbying firm called SDK D and D stands for done, while her husband also in the White House as a chief attorney so I mean, you know, it's not like the Democrats have been have their hands clean with a lot of this stuff. Yeah, so first of all, we can I think we have until 1130s we don't need to we don't need to cut it short and complete the conversation so. As far as I know, unless your team is trying to trying to give you the gong early but I'm good. So, yeah, I mean, listen, we go in the country and you travel around as I'm doing. And what you know Democrats need to realize is most of the country views the whole system, the same, right Republican and Democrat they view that the same now. I know there's not a false equivalency right you know the Democrats are not perfect I'm a proud Democrat but I'm going to call my own party out when I need to, because that's how you change right and I have a long history of calling my own party out. Right. The Biden administration included right I called them out on Afghanistan I called them out on Ukraine. I called them out on, you know, Israel Gaza so I have a long history of doing that. And you have to do that to have legitimacy right because otherwise you're not, you're not legitimate and people won't believe you anyhow. Right so certainly we got to make sure we're cleaning our own house and that's actually a big part of what this caucus is all about is coming together in enforcing our colleagues. To join us with this right like I think every member of the House, at least the Democrats should be part of the on rig Washington pledge. Right, I think we should all do those things we can do tomorrow that I just described to lead by example so certainly we need to do it, but you do go out in the rest of the country and people that aren't living and breathing politics like like we are Tara. They're like hey the system is is just rigged on both sides, and I'm just going to detach from the system I'm going to take a step back. I'm going to disconnect I'm not going to be involved in that apathy is, in my view, our biggest challenge. Right. It's not it's not Donald Trump it's not. Don't get me wrong, he's a huge threat, but it's the voter apathy in the people disconnecting from the system, because they don't believe in it anymore is ultimately what I think will threaten our democracy the most. And it's that that we're trying to go to the core of, and it's that that we're trying to combat. So yeah clean in our house and making sure that we aren't leading from a position of hypocrisy is wildly important, if not the most important thing we do. Because the contrast has to be very clear. Right. If we're, if we're talking about the the rank corruption of the Trump administration, which is like out of this world right out of this universe like we've never seen anything like it in the history of America. This is, this is without a doubt, the most corrupt administration in the history of this nation. But we have to make sure if we're going into that that battle that people don't feel like we're doing it in a hypocritical way. So we have to consider publishing a list of the most corrupt members of Congress. Well that's your job, Tara. I don't know if you're doing an anti corrupt, you know, an end corruption caucus, don't you have to call people out, not part of it. Well, I'm doing it, I'm trying to do it in a more positive way. We have created an organization that we are joining where we're asking. By, you know, they need to often be called out. I mean that's part of the truth. Yeah, but when you're building a congressional hearings, like, that's why we have accountability, right. Otherwise, going if they're not brought to account. That's what all these all I think I think you know what we're doing is we're creating a caucus which we've done. And there again, I encourage people to go to the Unreg Washington pledge which you can look at you can look it up. It's run by in Citizens United, and people can look at and see who's made that commitment who's doing it and who's not. That is that is that is available. That is available today. You have to put pressure on people like there I don't I don't see if people are already doing things that are shady you have to put pressure on. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what we're doing. Okay, so we can see hearings, you're going to launch investigations. Well, we are going to do accountability that's one of the principles of our caucus right there's oversight committee led by Robert Garcia he's, you know, he's doing a phenomenal job by the way Robert is is killing it as the oversight of the Unreg Washington. And if we retake the majority, we're going to be able to push more on the Epstein front, we're going to be able to push more on the corruption. I'm on the armed services and the intelligence committee, the amount of kind of pay to play and conflicts of interest that we're starting to see come out of Department of Defense is pretty stunning. You know I had the chance to question Pete Hegseth a month ago and I don't know if you saw that hearing or not, but I pushed him. I was a federal government employees. I pushed him on their use of these loopholes so what he's done. This is interesting. He's actually taken one of his, one of his best friends also his personal lawyer, who actually used to be one of the Trump campaigns lawyers, but was fired by the Trump administration right and drummed out and was called a liar by Donald Trump and in the White House. So this is what Pete Hegseth did. He took this guy and he gave him a direct commission himself as a Navy reserve commander. And by giving him a direct commission as a Navy commander, they bypassed the White House PPO process and no voting by the White House. They bypassed the Senate confirmation process because this guy's a special advisor, the Secretary of Defense, that is a high level political appointment that always goes through either PPO or both actually PPO vetting and Senate confirmations. They bypassed this because he made this guy a Navy officer, a commander, and he did it as a Navy reservist. So even though this guy is going to full time advisor, they made him a Navy reservist. And by making him a reservist, it has allowed this guy, his name is Tim Pallatory, has allowed this guy to maintain his private law firm and to keep his law firm active and to take clients. And law firm clients are confidential. So I asked Pete Hegseth, does this guy represent foreign countries? Does he represent foreign clients? Does he represent officers in the DOD who are up for promotion by Hegseth? Right. And he either wouldn't or couldn't answer those questions, both of which are very disturbing. So that's just one of many examples of how they're using those loopholes in the system that to try to jam through people and create these pay to play schemes, essentially. Right. And you mentioned foreign influence, I think of Jared Kushner. I mean, let's talk about a person who does not have top secret security clearance and yet is leading our negotiations in the Middle East. He is our Middle East peace envoy. He is a real estate developer. He's also doing this with Trump's very good friend Steve Wittkopf, another real estate developer. And Steve Wittkopf borrowed 100, oh no, he sold one of his Park Palace hotels to cover for $100 million. Right. And the real. Billions of dollars. Billions, they appear to have made billions of dollars in the last few years. Yeah, I mean, the real estate that Trump and his family that they're gobbling up in the Middle East. I mean, even when I was in Dubai recently, in the UAE, you just see Trump properties everywhere. They're coming up in Saudi Arabia. How is this ethical? I mean, I'm just going to play a short clip, by the way, from Jared Kushner. Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard? But not the pipeline. That's bull spend. And marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions. My boss asked for results. So I opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had. Impressions. Count the bull spend. See revenue, not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend 200 pounds on your first campaign and get a 200 pound credit. Go to LinkedIn.com. Terms and conditions apply. There is one thing I'm looking at from a more of a personal interest. I don't know if it will qualify for the fund, but obviously been, you know, helping Steve and to promote the Abraham Accords to, you know, make the ones that are existing stick and then also to find new opportunities. I have a partner, my partner, I mentioned before he's actually a Moroccan descent and actually a Syrian descent. So we've been looking maybe there's some opportunities to bring investment to Morocco, a country that I know you're very proud of to really help them create dividends from the Abraham Accords. And so to show the people there that there can be great rewards because leaders who joined the Abraham Accords, it shows that they're thinking about the future. They're pushing for stability. It shows a lot of wisdom and a lot of forward thinking. So those are the environments where I think investors would want to be in. And I have a lot of, you know, American investors who are very, who love the Abraham Accords, who want to join us in that. So we're looking at opportunities to invest in countries who have joined the Abraham Accords. Yeah, so basically what they're saying is he will bring wealth power and status to countries that joined the Abraham Accords. He will create economic packages to encourage these countries to join the Abraham Accords. How would that not pay for play? Well, it is. I mean, clearly it is right. And here's the problem. Donald Trump and those around him, they don't believe in public service. They don't believe in it. They don't understand it. The idea, the notion, in fact, Donald Trump has even said this himself, the idea that someone would commit to something bigger than themselves or beyond themselves or to sacrifice for something. They can't even comprehend that, right? Which is why he continues to malign our service members who have fallen, you know, our fallen service members. He has maligned them because the idea that you would sacrifice for something to him is a stupid notion, right? Because you always have to get something out of it. Everything is just a series of business transactions to these people, right? And that's what's happening. They have turned the government into their personal piggy bank. And it is out of control. So we have our work cut out for us. We're going to be aggressive about this. And people sometimes say they're like, well, if you retake the majority, are you going to do accountability work or are you going to legislate on costs and kitchen table issues? The answer is yes, right? Because I actually don't have the choice whether or not to do that. The Constitution says that's our job. The United States Constitution has set explicitly and structured the United States Congress to do both. Our job is to legislate, it's to appropriate, to make the budget, and it's to do accountability, to ensure the laws are being followed and we're serving as a check against a runaway executive branch. And I'm not going to shy away from doing all of those components of the job and we shouldn't apologize for that either. We have to be smart about it. We have to be strategic about it and we have to have a plan because we can't do everything at once. And if you try to do everything at once, then it collapses under its own weight. We have to have a plan and we have to sequence this to go about it in a smart way and prioritize our oversight. Yeah. You know, I mean, we keep hearing from a lot of commentators about impeachment, right? And we've obviously gone through that twice and it doesn't seem like there really are the votes in the Senate to actually lead to anything further, right? For removal from office. So is that something you see happening? Do you think it's a waste of time? Will the public be annoyed if there isn't a payoff again? Well, I always say, and by the way, impeachment is something I know a lot about because I was a prosecutor. I prosecuted the first impeachment trial in the Senate against Donald Trump. I was one of the seven impeachment managers. So I won't hesitate to use that as a tool, but that is one of many tools. Yeah. If the answer is no, then we have to look at another tool that's available, right? Am I holding my breath that right now Jim Jordan is going to impeach Donald Trump or anybody in this administration as the chair of the judiciary committee? No. Of course he's not going to do that. So right now that's not the most appropriate tool. Will it be in the future? Maybe. And we have to assess that as we go. Right. I know I said that was the last question, but I can't help myself but asking you this. What about these sexual harassment slush funds like the one that went to Eric Swallow? Are you going to do anything about that? Yeah. The leader Jeffries has deputized a number of members to look into what additional reforms we need to make to try to prevent those types of payouts and to make sure that again, we're leading by example and that the integrity of the institution of the members is where it needs to be. So that is one of, because there have to be a lot of reforms within Congress, right? On those payouts, on prediction markets, on stock trading. There are things that we need to do to make sure we're shoring up our own house. And we are again leading by example so that the American people look at us as a standard bearer of values and not a drag on it, unfortunately, as many Americans do right now. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for your time, Congressman Crow. Thank you. We look forward to seeing what you are able to do. And hopefully you will be effective in holding both parties, you know, fire and making America a less corrupt country. That's great. Thanks for having me back and thanks for pushing on the issue. It's a big one. Yep. We appreciate you too. Okay. Thanks so much. Bye-bye. Bye. Hi, I'm Tamsen Fidel, journalist and author of How to Menopause and host of The Tamsen Show, a weekly podcast with your roadmap to midlife and beyond. We cover it all from dating to divorce, aging to ADHD, sleep to sex, brain health to body fat, and even how perimenopause can affect your relationships. And trust me, it can. Each week I sit down with doctors, experts and leaders in longevity for unfiltered conversations packed with advice on everything from hormones to happiness. And of course, how to stay sane during what can be, well, let's face it, a pretty chaotic chapter of life. Think of us as your midlife survival guide. New episodes released every Wednesday. 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