To maximize the odds of Congress working for you—to get both parties to cut spending, chop away at red tape, tackle the debt—we will have to replace the quiet but immense scam the two-party aristocracy has perpetuated with a populist sense of urgency and non-crony priorities. That will have to mean some turnover in Congress, I’m sure. It also means working with the populists on the Left when it suits us strategically, even if we know they want to turn America into a dystopian Woketopia.
I’ve sponsored legislation with Bernie Sanders’s national campaign cochairman Rep. Ro Khanna to stand against Middle East wars. AOC and I have taken on the drug companies to research and democratize access to marijuana, MDMA, and psilocybin for veterans. Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California and I work together to stop warrantless government spying on Americans. This is a more productive, populist bipartisanship to take on the establishment of both parties!
The 116th Congress has some heroes and fighters in it, but the establishment is people as well as an almost perpetual mindset. We’ll need more populists, more people in both parties who are frankly disgusted by what Washington has become and thus motivated to do things differently.
For now, I think only the Republican Party—and we’re lucky if we even win over that party—is going to rise to the challenge. But if there is to be a bipartisan consensus in the future, a time after the fierce and necessary fighting ahead, let that consensus be a populist one, not an exploitative elite one. Let future congresses be filled with people committed to reducing the level of nonsense in Washington, not swamp creatures who pride themselves on being seen at the annual Gridiron Dinner.
The establishment won’t roll over or disappear just because a few of us tell it to get lost, but if we are persistent—and the establishment, by its very nature, remains lazy and unimaginative—we populists might at least be able to lead here. A vocal enough minority can make a big difference, and if the parties we have don’t offer voters real choices and real differences, our vocal populist minority will have to behave like a party unto itself.
I think it’s the unofficial new party America will end up supporting. They’ve been duped by the other two for far too long.
June 18, 2019
Air Force One. Presidential Office. Traveling to Orlando for Trump 2020 campaign launch.
“It’s going to be harder for them to impeach me now that I’ve announced for reelection, right?”
I replied, “No, it isn’t. They’re still going to impeach you. They can’t help themselves. We will make them pay for it, sir, I promise. And the people will return you to the White House to keep winning.”
My response wasn’t as uplifting as I had hoped. The president half shrugged and returned to the final edits of his speech. He didn’t want to be impeached. “It’s not good for the resume,” he would half joke.
Impeachment may very well be the best thing that ever happened to President Trump, though. He faced their toughest political weapon and withstood it resiliently. All Democrats and even some Republicans indulged it. Bipartisanship at its worst, at least until we got the rest of the Republicans properly aligned and some healthy fighting between the two parties started. In a second term, to solve America’s major challenges, President Trump will have to take on the establishment in both parties again. He will have to prioritize immigration reform and trade. He’s just the leader to do it. The uniparty is on notice.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ending Endless Wars
January 10, 2020
Arlington Cemetery. Funeral of SFC Mike Goble. 7th SFG. U.S. Army.
“Do what you can to bring them home, Matt.”
The fallen hero’s godfather had long hair and a beard. Neither had seen a brush in a while. He had more important things to do. If he didn’t have time for a pressed shirt, he surely didn’t care to use protocols, titles, or last names. “Matt” was fine by me. We don’t put on airs when we put our people in the ground.
A tear-drenched godmother showed me a wrinkled photo of my fallen constituent proudly waving a Trump flag with one arm and hugging his military brothers with the other. “Tell the president Mike loved him.”
“Sir, the president has been trying to reach you.” My outstanding military aide Charles Truxal knew why, as did I. He handed me the phone as we walked out, past the flag-draped casket. I always cry at military funerals. Sometimes I ugly cry. I wish I didn’t. It is weakness in the presence of strength. But a great country should shed tears for those who shed blood for her. We should feel the pain of every life lost and carry it with us as long as we live, especially when we carry the weight of the decision to send them there. The dead die twice when we forget them and what they lived for. There is something so painful about losing one of our best in the middle of his service to country. A life cut down before it could grow full. So many other lives changed forever.
President Trump wanted me to vote against legislation I helped draft that would limit his ability to begin an extended war against Iran. No president has been more anti-war in my lifetime than Donald Trump. Still, no president, including Trump, should be able to draw our people into endless, unfocused, undisciplined, unconstitutional wars—especially in the sands of the Middle East, which have been soaked in too much proud, patriotic, American blood. Castles in the sand and democracies in the sky can never be built. Self-government means self-sacrifice. We can’t do it for others any more than they can do it for us.
It’s
