Is Nuking Iran an “Illegal Order?” - with Sen. Mark Kelly

(soft piano music) Lemonade. - Thanks for listening to Hussam Minhaj doesn't know. Listen to and follow Hussam Minhaj doesn't know ad-free on Amazon music or just ask Alexa. Alexa, play the podcast, Hussam Minhaj doesn't know on Amazon music. Also, with Amazon music unlimited, you can now listen to your favorite music, podcasts and audio books, all in the Amazon music app. Listen to Hussam Minhaj doesn't know on Amazon music. - A few months after the president posted about killing you, he posted about killing 93 million people on shoot social. A whole civilization will die tonight. If the president made the call to Newk Iran, would you classify that right there as an illegal order? - I wasn't worried about Donald Trump. You know, under these circumstances, opening up the briefcase and saying, "Hey, I'm gonna actually eliminate this situation." - Why? - Because he says crazy sh*t all the time. - Senator Mark Kelly is the fourth astronaut elected to Congress. And I'm surprised there's not more because even if someone hates your politics, if you're an astronaut, everyone has to admit three things. One, you're very smart. Two, you've done objectively cool sh*t. And three, you're not implicated in the Epstein and/or Diddy files. Now, Senator Kelly was first elected to office in 2020, winning John McCain's vacant seat in Arizona. Then, in 2022, he was re-elected after running against the creepiest Republican candidate in history, Blake Masters. Whisper Quiet. It's pretty cool. - Now there are signs he may be considering a run for president in 2028. So I sat down with the Senator to talk about his PSA to soldiers to disobey illegal orders and Trump's reaction to it. - Within a day, the president said I should be hanged, executed, prosecuted. How Europeans are reacting to Trump's latest moves. - The kids in Greenland are now afraid of Americans. - Usually that's only for Iraqi or Afghan or brown children, but children of Greenland should not be afraid of the United States of America. And I got a very, very precise explanation of how to go number two in space. - Even though there's some suction, but keeping the solids in, the hole, what you call the transfer to. So you got a glove on, you got a mirror. - It has a camera on the bottom with a monitor. - This is big stuff here, folks. So strap in and create an airtight seal between your seat and buttocks because it's gonna get messy. - Great. ♪ Hurry right away, don't be late, don't be ♪ ♪ Make your daddy pass, I pass, I pass ♪ - My two children, I have an eight-year-old, I have a six-year-old, obsessed with space. - Oh, good. - So my children gave me a few questions to ask you about space travel. May I ask you those questions? - Yes. Number one, how fast does a rocket go? - Well, it depends on the rocket, but the space shuttle, when 17,500 miles an hour, which is 25 times a speed of sound, takes about eight and a half minutes to get that fast. Seven and a half million pounds of thrust. The rocket that just went around the moon, those guys went about 25,000 miles an hour, which is about 35 times a speed of sound. So it depends on the destination and where you're going, but lower the orbit, where the space station is, a little over 17,000 miles an hour. - Is it scary to go up in a rocket? Is it scary? So you understand the risk you're taking. The space shuttle killed 14 people that flew on it. Two out of a 135 missions. It is operating at like extremes of pressure and temperature and parts, turbo pumps, or revolving at 36,000 revolutions a minute. You make a mistake, everybody dies. - How do you pee and poop in space? - Very carefully. You pee into a tube that has some vacuum, but the toilet is rather complicated, right? So you have to turn the toilet on. - Okay. - Rather expensive toilet. I'm talking about the space shuttle toilet, the only one I've ever used in space. So you got to turn it on. And you pull the tube thing out of its holder. And if you have it in an auto, the toilet will come on automatically, create suction. You pee into the tube. Everybody has their own personal adapter for the end of it. - Understanding women. - Got it. - Same process. - You attach it to your genitals and then this is the kind of USB-C adapter. - You pee into it. Got it. - You get your own personal one. - Understood. - Right? And then you clean it up, you put it away. Now to do the other thing. - Yes. - You're gonna take a crap in space? - Sure. - More complicated. So the toilet holds all the solids in it. And because it's zero gravity, even though there's some suction, but keeping the solids in the hole, which we call the transfer tube, that you have to aim through is about that big. - So we're talking about just that you got to aim at this big. - A little smaller than this. - Yeah, a little bigger. - Okay. - Right there. Now halfway between. - Halfway. - So you got to get good aim. So you got to know where to sit on the toilet. So to do that, we have a trainer. So get this. - Yes. - We have a trainer in the building that has a simulator in it, special room. That is the toilet. Now it's not functional. - Has a camera on the bottom with a monitor. So beforehand, you can figure out how to align yourself on the toilet. - Okay. - This is a view of yourself. You never thought you would see. And you probably didn't expect I would get into this. - No, I can go further. - Please, 'cause we're gonna get into NATO and other things in AI later. - Okay. - So then, because it's zero gravity. - Yes. - You got to make sure the stuff gets in there. - Okay. - So you put on a glove. Your feet go into thing. You got these bars that go over your hips to keep you to try to make a seal. - Yes. - But you can't make a great seal. So you got a glove on. You got a mirror to make sure stuff goes down that little tiny hole. And sometimes you gotta help it. You gotta just move it along in the right direction to get it to go there. And you have like a mirror to put over here to see see what's going on. - So you have to hand-frag to get it moving? - Sometimes you gotta do an assist. So the glue. - Do you have any follow-up questions on this? Is there anything I'm missing? Because this is a very interesting topic. It's actually quite interesting. - Well, let me see the other thing. You don't want to, let me say more more about that. - Sure, sure, sure, please. I don't really want to look down there because it's not only your stuff, it's everybody else's. - Right. - And it's their freeze-dried. And it's like their zero gravity. So sometimes it looks like there's a party going on down there. - We're having this conversation in the wake of the Artemis II landing. As an American, I felt very proud. But as an American, I also get most of my news from @complexnews. And I saw some of the comments. I want to take a look at them with you as a retired astronaut. So one of the top comments right now is they never left their universal studios. This is from @hask19. Now this is a father, he does drop off and pick up. He is an American citizen. He gets to vote in elections. No, this is just one of our fellow Americans. Now that wasn't the only one. That's the top comment. There are dozens. Now this one was big. This was from Big D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D. Epstein files were so bad, they started World War Three and then faked another moon mission. What does this indicate to you? What are you sensing here? Well, I think it says something about maybe where public education has gone in this country, which is something I'm like fighting to try to fix. And we used to have one of the best public education systems in the world. But I think it's a couple things. Maybe it's a little bit of that. Maybe people aren't getting their information from the right place. But I think people like to be skeptical about things. And some level of skepticism is not necessarily a bad thing. Some somebody who really believes in science and data and facts. My theory number one is, for the American public in these comments on at complex, is that every institution over the past few decades, for many Americans, it feels like it has failed us. Education has failed us. Infrastructure has failed us. The executive branch has failed us. These are things that people genuinely feel. When has the government health care is another one? When has the government come in and made my life better? And because of these institutional failures, why would I believe this? What do you say to that feeling? Well, I say, I understand why people feel the government has failed them. And they can't afford their health care. Health care, child care, education. Price went up. Half of Americans right now cannot afford food. We're having a hard time. They're having a hard time putting groceries on the table. Parents can, there's no hope of ever taking their family on a vacation. And they can't afford child care. Kids getting a crappier education than they were previously. So I understand why people are upset. Totally get it. And they should be. They have a right to be. And the government's elected by the people to do good for the people of this country, to make us more prosperous and safer. And there are ways that we could have made that happen. Instead, what happened is you get big corporations and the wealthiest Americans get to say, get the biggest say as to the direction of this country. And what it's produced is a system that, you know, it used to be like when I was younger, when I was in my 20s, that hard work paid off. Here's the thing. [BLANK_AUDIO] still pays off. It just pays off for somebody else. Here's theory number two as to why those people think that was fake. Theory number two. Physics is hard. This is the equation for how to qualify work. I could show this to that comment section and ask them straight up, physics or hieroglyphics. And they may not know the difference. Yeah. King Tuts too. Did you learn this in high school because this? Well, I mean, you could learn this in high school and not remember it as an adult and there's no need to if your job has nothing to do with this. No, no, but those guys look at that and they go fake, woke, DEI agenda. To be honest, doesn't really bother me. Why not? Because most of Americans get it. Most of Americans with regards to I think this stuff feel, you know, they're proud of our space program. They know we send people to space. They know no other country can do this in the world. There's always going to be a couple of nuts out there. Doesn't bother me. What does, you know, bother me is, you know, when we wind up with people in powerful positions that make decisions for everybody that is not grounded in facts and data and science, that really bothers me because that impacts all of us. What these people say doesn't impact me. I mean, well, you keep bringing this back to. And I think this could be the theme of our conversation, which is it sounds like you are calling for a level of competency and discernment that you are not seeing. In November of last year, you were featured in a PSA, but instead of telling people to not do drugs or to get their prostate checked, you told members of the military that they had a duty to disobey illegal orders. Let's take a look. You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our constitution. We know this is hard and that it's a difficult time to be a public servant, but whether you're serving in the CIA, the Army, or Navy, the Air Force, your vigilance is critical. I do have other shirts. I happen to be wearing this shirt. Okay. And happy. You didn't notice? Oh, I didn't notice. And I got the same shirt on. No, I was focusing on the red tie. No, it was a shirt. Wait a second, Senator. And I have a have other shirts. Wait, Senator. Do you understand? This is a very important question. This is a whole disobey illegal orders PSA analysis. I was focused on my shirt. And then you went full tan France and you're you're you're doing a sartorial analysis of what you're wearing. Yes. With all due respect, Senator, let's stay focused. I should have wore the white shirt today. If I knew you were going to play the video and remembered that I was wearing this, but you're really tapping into your vanity bag in a way that I want to stay focused here. All right. Okay. What we said was something that was, you know, basically follow the law in the uniform code of military justice. This is the law for the US military. It actually says you do not follow illegal orders. When the orders and the law and conflict, you follow the law. Every service member is trained on that. Now, when we said this within a day, the president said, I should be hanged, executed, prosecuted. Yep. This guy, all caps, all caps, seditious, and punishable by death. Yes. Well, how do you interpret that, Senator? How do I interpret the president? Yeah. When you see that, it's ever, well, the first time he's ever, well, I mean, the way I found out about it, I was in the skiff, which is a secure facility sitting there next to a list of slokin. And she gets a note, you know, that says something about like the president and she walks out and she comes back in. And it's said on there, the president's called for your execution. And I saw it. I was sitting next door. And then she gets up, walks out five minutes later, she comes back in and she says, well, he called for your execution too. Like, that's how we were notified. That was your George W. Bush kindergarten class. I'm reading to them 9/11 moment. Yeah. You're sitting in a briefing. Yep. Someone comes in by the way. Yeah. No cameras. The camera, the president wants you dead. Yes. Yeah. Which is never, I mean, people think, well, Donald Trump, he says stuff. Right. No other president has ever called for the execution of a member of Congress. And by the way, for something we said that was lawful, for something that the secretary of defense Pete Hague says said on JV multiple times. Right. The exact same thing that people are trained on. President didn't like it. He thought maybe we're, you know, I mean, we're Democrats in the Senate. He's the Republican president. Our job is oversight and accountability. I'm on the Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee. My job is to pay attention to these things. And was concerned that this president could do things that would step over that line. I mean, hey, he called for shooting protesters in the legs. American citizens in his first term in office. You know, and then he was talking about sending troops to American cities so they can train on US civilians. I mean, this is like, this stuff is crazy. So we thought this was like the right thing to do is remind members of the military that, hey, your responsibility is to follow the law, do not obey legal orders, and we have your back. Imagine setting your makeup then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new groupie setting mist from Mavily New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours with flexible all-day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue. Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new groupie setting mist from Mavily New York. Maybe it's Mavily. Now, here's what's really fascinating. You have an identical twin brother. So is he catching strays for this? Well, maybe walking around Disneyland with his family and someone just may just come up to him and start screaming at him. Well, I mean, that's not happened to me. People come up to me and thank me for this every single day. I haven't had one single person. Now, we get death threats, like the number of death threats to me went up dramatically. People calling my office, sending in emails because of what the president said. I have to have security. Yeah. I mean, you saw the guy here. Two guys. Three guys. Yeah. Yes. I have to have security for that. But actually, somebody coming up to me hasn't happened yet. Every single day, they thank me. Service members thank me. Parents of service members repeatedly, thank me for the message that we sent because it means something to them. It reminds them that hey, there are people there in Washington that have powerful jobs that are serious and are looking out for their kids. So we're talking about political violence. And a few months after the president posted about killing you, he posted about killing 93 million people on truth social. Maybe something revolutionary, wonderful can happen. Who knows? Now, I want to ask you something. We have a policy, you know, in our country with regards to nuclear weapons. And we do not have, we have never said, we haven't known a president to say, say that we don't have like a first-use, non-first-use policy, right? What does that mean? Well, whether you would use nuclear weapons against a country before they were used against us, obviously, we know the history of World War II. How we got here. You know, right now, where we are in the world, you know, we have nuclear weapons to protect ourselves from other countries who have nuclear weapons. I would say that if this president or any other president under the circumstances we're at today, I would hope that when the brief case is opened up, and he picks up the phone and calls Stratcom, that there would be, you know, some kind of serious discussion about like, what the fuck are we doing here? This is fucking crazy. Well, we had Annie Jacobson on the show and she said that everybody in Stratcom has been trained to not flinch and to press the button. There's no room to refuse the command. You become the general in charge because you know how to follow orders. That's your job. That's how the military works. It's not like groupthink, you know, it's doctrine. You know, you know, I worry under the circumstances of this administration. When I saw that, yeah, perfectly honest with you, I know, and I'm always going to keep it real. Please. I did not, I wasn't worried about Donald Trump, you know, under these circumstances, opening up the briefcase and saying, hey, I'm going to actually eliminate this situation. Why? Because he says crazy shit all the time. He does who he is. It's dangerous. It affects our relationships in the region. People look at us and say, what the hell has happened to the United States of America? It has diminished us. Our NATO allies. I mean, those relationships are much weaker because of this president. And who he is. Right. Of course, that would be unlawful for him to do that. We have to have a higher standard as the United States of America. And we always have. We don't go in an intentionally murder women and children in a conflict. So yeah, that's disturbing. You know, I responded, you know, to this, this kind of language. It's not appropriate. I didn't think it was going to happen, you know, that day or actually, you know, any day. And I'm against this war against Iran. This was not well thought out. He went into this thing without a strategic goal, without a plan, without a timeline, without an exit strategy. And, you know, you think about like one side playing chess and the other side playing checkers. This guy Donald Trump is not even playing checkers. He's he's moving two of these red cups around on the on the table. Well, what do you think the strategy is here? What's the strategy? His point. He doesn't have a point. He's he just says he just says dumb things. And he doesn't understand the consequences of doing that. And it is it harms us as a nation. It makes us less safe. And now the American people have to pay more for just about everything because of this president's bad decisions. So how do you communicate this to the president or your fellow servicemen and women, which is, look, I don't want to get partisan about this. Here's the team I'm on. I'm on team chill out. America. Let's chill out. I'm on team America. But I'm on team like we got to make decisions that that are, it's in the best interest of all of us. But everyone needs to chill out. He's a chill out. Chill. President. Chill. Totally. nudity in season three of euphoria. Chill. Everyone. Can we just chill? What's euphoria? Euphoria is on HBO. There's a lot of nudity and it's too much. I'm a parent. I have two children. I don't know who the show is for Senator. But don't watch it. Please don't. I don't have time. No, and don't spend your time doing it. But that's my thing. And if you want to, if you want to take me to the Hague and prosecute me, if you want to put me in front of the house committee, yeah, I'll testify. I'm on team. Chill out. You'll testify on chilling out. Please tone it down volume. 100%. Yep. Yeah. I mean, we don't need more of this. This is not, this is not helpful. I want to talk about it. And then like, how does he get out of this? I don't know. Now the strategic goal is to open the straight of Hormuz. There's one person responsible for it being closed. And they're not on the other side of the planet. It's the actions that Donald Trump took. Well, you've talked about this idea of no plan, right? You've said, quote, "Donald Trump went into this without a strategic plan with no vision, with no goal, with no timeline, and no exit strategy." Do any of these things matter if this whole thing was completely illegal? Well, they all matter. I mean, that's how you wind up in a place. He's painted himself into a corner. I mean, if he had a well-articulated goal in the beginning, and he was able to get DOD to strategically approach that problem, and we're good. We're the best military in the world tactically. We're really good at things strategically. In this case, this has been like a fiasco. You remember when this thing started? It was like, well, we have to go in there and bomb them, because if we bomb them, then the protesters will overthrow the government, a nominee, and get rid of him, and get rid of all those people, and they'll, they'll, they'll either be dead, they'll go to Russia. And then we'll have a peaceful Iran with a leadership that we can work with, and maybe, you know, Donald Trump's thinking he can do some hotel deal. I don't know. I don't know what goes through. You really thought he was going to do that? Well, he wants a government that he thinks he can work with. That's not how these things go. If you look at our history of getting involved in regime change and other countries, South Vietnam, didn't go well. Cuba didn't go well. Iraq, Iraq did not go well. Over three. Afghanistan. Over four. Over four. Right. It does not go well. Many areas. So that was a flawed approach and a flawed goal. So, yeah, there, there, there was no coherent strategy or plan. Then it became about nuclear weapons, which by the way, they said last summer, they obliterated them. And I immediately said, based on what I know about doing this, I've dropped a lot of bombs on things. Really hard to completely destroy stuff. It's really challenging. What does that mean? Well, it's, when you drop a bomb on a building, it's hard to like take out the whole building. You know, it's, it's hard to take, you know, take out things. This stuff was buried underground. And even with the massive ordinance penetrator rounds that we used, saying the whole thing is like destroyed, which he said over and over again. And the Secretary of Defense said, their nuclear program has been obliterated. It's a bunch of bullshit. And then it became recently, we have to get rid of their nuclear program. Well, if it was obliterated in June, why, why are you even mentioning it now? And it's obvious because it wasn't obliterated. So they were lying to the American people last summer. And now they're in a, in a thing, if you want to try to get rid of this nuclear material, it's going to be really, really hard to do. And it's, it would likely cost the lives of more Americans. So who do you think pulled him into this? Because he was famously known to be the anti-war president. I don't think Donald Trump, at least that's what he campaigned on. Yeah, I don't think Donald Trump, you know, spends a lot of time like thinking a step or two or three I had. I think he's kind of like a, you know, like a random number generator. I think he is a random decision generator. I think this guy forgets what he said last week about anything. And he shows up, people say stuff to him. He says, I think that's a good idea. Let's go do this. Let's go bomb another country without really having a goal. And without thinking, and I know he was told that the outcome you could get here as you have the straight or moves closed down. I've been through that straight number of times. I've fallen the first Gulf War. I was there before hand with the Iranians threatening to shut down the straight or or moves. It's rather easy to do. And now where are we? They now realize because of the steps Donald Trump took that they have this strategic asset that they can use to their benefit to the detriment of every U.S. citizen and people around the world. You've said the Secretary of Defense is the second most powerful position. Yeah, probably in the country right after the president. Yep. Now, as a retired Navy captain, it must be wild seeing Pete Hegseth as the Secretary of Defense. And I see you smirking. Because for comedians, that would be like watching Blippi host the Oscars. Like, I know who you are. I don't know. Blippi fit. Blippi. I have the orange glasses. He does children's programming. What was your reaction when you saw this tweet back in December? Now, your children's book author, the turtle. Yes. So Pete Hegseth tweets for your Christmas wish list, a classic Franklin story. Franklin targets Narco terrorists. What was your reaction to this? 29.3 million views. My reaction was that my Republican colleagues in the Senate should not have voted for this guy to be Secretary of Defense. That was my reaction when I saw that. And they should have known better. And many of them did. And they voted for him anyway. Because the administration put tremendous pressure on him. You recently attended the Munich security conference and met with several foreign leaders. What do they make of all of this? Are they just like, hey, look, just call us in 2028. No, lose my number. No, what they blocking you now. They're, uh, so I was over there. I met with a lot of prime ministers, deputy prime ministers, foreign ministers, defense ministers. They kind of hate us right now. They're not happy. And I'll tell you what, if you're the prime minister of Greenland and Denmark, met with the two of them, they, the prime minister of Greenland told me that the kids in Greenland are now afraid of Americans, afraid children are afraid of us because of what this administration I mean, that's why children in Greenland, that usually that's only for Iraq year of Ghana, year brown children, but children of Greenland should not be afraid of the United States of America. It's sad. And it's, and it's not called me in 20 years. It's like this, this relationship with these countries has been damaged for a generation or two. So what do you tell them? I said, what you're seeing is not America. And it's not even everybody in this administration. It's the president and a bunch of sycophants he put around him. That's, it's not the American people. You know, most of the Americans, do they believe what you're saying? And is the international community just holding the idea that just hold the plank until 2028? Well, here's the problem. You know, we get to January 20th of 2029. We get a, you know, Democrat in the White House. We get these relationships back on track. I also don't necessarily think we need to get to the same place we were at. Maybe we could even get to a a better place that's in our best interests, but also helps them. And when our allies in the United States, when we all work together, that does really benefit us a lot. But here's the problem. They're going to be wondering, who comes next? Do we wind up with somebody that's like Donald Trump again? Well, they know that 77 million people voted for Donald Trump. So they're aware. They're concerned. Yeah. They get it. So that's the problem we have like right now. And, you know, over the next decade is trying to convince them that what I said is, hey, the America that you know, I mean, these, we're still, I believe, we're still a country with a moral compass and ethics and can be a good partner. And we're stronger together than we are by by ourselves. I think that's the worst thing that Donald Trump has done is he has damaged these relationships. So now we are stuck on an island all by ourselves. When he went calling after, you know, he screwed up in Iran here, started this thing with, uh, as I said, with no goal or plan. And then he, he, then he wants help. He wants help opening up the Strait of Hormuz, which by the way, is really hard to do because the way they keep this close now is different than they did 30 years ago if they wanted to do that. You know, then it was just like mines and boats. Now you can do it with a long range. She had drone coming from a thousand miles away. You hit one ship. Nobody's going to want to go through there. So he went asking our NATO allies, give us some help. And they said, well, you didn't even talk to us before you started this thing. And by the way, you've talked about getting out of NATO, you talked about attacking a NATO country. Yeah. You know, why are they going to come to our system? I'm really glad you brought up NATO. Can I ask you a question about NATO? Okay. First of all, this is a multi part question. Number one, do you like ice cream? I don't think I have ever in my life passed up an opportunity to have ice cream question. Number two, do you like Ben and Jerry's? The best, I think the best ice cream in the world is cherry garci. This is not a sponsored post. Now I strongly disagree. And I got a lot of heat for saying this. I think cherry garci is horrible. I think combination of cherry with dark chocolate. These two things shall not. Now I spoke to Ben Cohen, who was the co founder of Ben and Jerry's recently. He is a long time anti-war activist. And he said, NATO should have been disbanded when the Soviet Union collapsed. And what China and Russia want is a multipolar world. And they would rather have that than total American military domination. What is your argument in support of why we need NATO? Well, for the reason that Ben Cohen stated, yeah, China and Russia want a multipolar world to prevent that, it's important that we hold NATO together and strengthen NATO. That prevents the things getting sideways with the Russians. What's wrong with a multipolar? Let's all chill world. Well, I'll tell you. So as an American, yes, we since World War II, so for 80 years, we have been very fortunate that we get to set a lot of the conditions. And I strongly believe that we have done a lot of positive things in the world. We've supported other countries. We stop famine. We look at George W. Bush did with PEPFAR. We save people's lives. One of the benefits we also get from being the leader of the free world, NATO, our Asian allies in the Gulf is we have benefited economically from having that as the conditions. Why would you want to give that up? Let me just say I don't want to take Senator super chill. Now, oftentimes in discourse, there's these two ideas, which is in defense of America. This is for America's defense. And then this is for America's interests. Now, I'm going to be candid with you. The straight up hormone is that we've been talking about. That sounds like it's more about America's interests in terms of shell and Chevron and other companies. Sometimes these things get conflated. How do you navigate that? I think it's not just about shell and Chevron and Exxon. It's about the plumber in Iowa who's got to put gas in his truck. And now he had a successful business and now the increase in gas prices are just eating at his profits. Or small businesses, manufacturing, President's tariff policy. Price of energy goes into everything manufactured in the United States. Including it hurts farmers and they have to raise their prices and then food prices go up. So it's not just about the big companies. And we have to do more to make sure that these big companies don't continue to extract an enormous amount of this country's wealth away from hardworking people. But at the same time, that does affect people. So that is a strategic problem for us, you know, right now. But I want to get back to that multipolar world thing, please. So the Chinese would like, the Russians, Chinese would like a multipolar world right now. But especially the Chinese, their view is they will supplant us at some point. They have 100 year strategy to become us, right, to have a worldwide Navy. You know, their Navy is now stretching out into the Pacific and you got to respect the notion. You got to respect that 100 year plan is 100 year plan. Wall Street can't handle a bad quarter. Right. The Chinese are like, we'll eat shit. And we're thinking for three generations. And in Congress, this dysfunctional Congress thinks like just weeks ahead. For months or maybe we can do, but the Chinese defense plan for a year, they're taking, they go Chuck Grassley, you're 90 at 10 years. That's how long our plan is. They, they want to become us. They want to control the conditions. They want to build the relationships to their benefit. What we've had for 80 years has benefited us as a nation. We got to figure out how to fix this before, I mean, before we, it goes completely sideways on us. Now, how do you frame that? Say hypothetically, you're the Secretary of Defense. How do you frame this argument to say allies and African nations? If you're a country in Africa, you may not see a big difference between American dominance and Chinese dominance. How do you show them, hey, let us build your Silk Road. Don't let them. Well, I would point them to other countries in Africa. Many of them have done deals with Chinese. And these, the Chinese government comes in there and say, hey, we're going to invest. We're going to build a port for you. You're going to own this port. You're going to have to pay us some money back here for this investment. And don't tell them that in the small print, when they get behind on their payments in, you know, repaying for this investment, they wind up with the Chinese owning the entire port. That has happened over and over again. Chinese government is ripping off these African countries left and right and building crappy infrastructure. We're a country of laws. They have recourse. They can even come to the United States. If they feel they're getting a bad deal, they could come to the US court system. So we are a much better partner than the Chinese anywhere you go in a world. I mean, a lot of these African countries and South American countries are now feeling burned by the Chinese that they're really good at giving other countries bad deals. We're a much better partner. Chinese bad deal, Donald Trump bad deal. Senator, you know, I did not support this president. You know this. And I worked hard to make sure, look, yeah. Hey, I've had Verizon. I've had AT&T. My goal here is to win the election in November. This is a multi polarity badness, you know, but it's got to be another way. Again, I am on team America here. I'm fighting for the future of this country. We're going to get rid of this, this guy here eventually two and a half years. Well, that's great. Let's the segue into the downfall of authoritarianism, right? Fighting authoritarianism. Do you hear about what happened in Hungary? Yeah. All right. We're talking about a week after Victor Orbán was defeated in Hungary. What impact do you think that will have on Europe and this whole right wing nationalist movement happening around the world? Well, what I hope happens is that in other countries that there are candidates that are supporters of democracy that can run really good campaigns, get the attention of the people and win despite forces that are working against them. In this case, Orbán, you know, state-run media, he wouldn't let his opponent go on TV, took other steps to try to change the outcome of an election, he won by a lot. When candidates win by a lot, much harder to take it away from them. The Hungarians, you know, figured out that Victor Orbán was not a good leader and despite JD pants going over there on stage and rallying for Orbán. And Donald Trump thinking, I'm going to endorse this guy, it's going to get him across the finish line. He lost big Lee as Donald Trump says. As Donald Trump says, look, we have an upcoming midterm here. Okay. President Trump's approval rating is at an all time low. It's at about 41% right now. 35. I checked the other day. 35. 35. 31 on the economy. Right. Now, let's not get too cocky here. The Democrats approval rating is 36%. So there is a third party that's running here. That third party is I'm staying my ass home, by the way, Senator, you can have your team look into this. Go to complex and at complex news, filled, stay in my ass home. Okay. The Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the political establishment at large has the same problem the movie business has. You need to encourage people on that Tuesday to get up, leave their house, and participate in democracy. Senator, what I'm saying is the Democratic Party and the Republican Party has to Christopher Nolan, the American public. You need to blow my mind. What are you guys going to do to get people out? Because are you taking the threat of people saying, "Effat, I'm staying home as seriously as you should?" I think we're, yes, I mean, I understand that we run the risk of people just checking out. But let me start by saying, this is not a movie. I get the movie analogy, you know, they can't put the butts in the seats. That's a problem, that's fiction. This is like people's real lives. This affects their future. I just took my daughter, who's 30, to see the house that she lived in when she was born. We moved when she was one and a half when I went to be an astronaut. It was by the Navy base I was stationed at. For bedroom house, good neighborhood, end of a cul-de-sac. We went in there and knocked on the door. The guy that I sold the house to was still there, you know, 30 years later. And she walked around the house. My grandkids was there, my son-in-law. We get in the car and she says to me, "Dad, I don't understand what happened. You were a lieutenant in the Navy, and you could afford that house in that neighborhood." I mean, she was shocked. Yeah. And I had explained to her, yeah, the government like really screwed this up. Sure, I mean, billionaires can buy two and three yachts and buy another airplane. By the way, on a one-year depreciation cycle, fully depreciating Donald Trump's bill. And young people can't afford rent. Forget about the house. They can't afford to pay rent. So, people need to understand that who we put into these jobs affect their lives. And they need to vote in their own best interest. I want to talk about AI because that's something that you're very passionate about. You released a policy roadmap called AI for America, which said we could see 12 million job transitions by 2030. Here's my question. Of those 12 million Americans that are going to get shit canned, how do we ensure that they don't all become YouTubers and we actually get them real jobs where they can provide for their family? So that's what's in my plan here and it's called AI for America, AI Horizon Fund. We're working to get this into legislation and get it passed. What that means is like right now, the range of possibilities for how this can turn out is really wide, right? We have all these AI companies that are trying to make money, right? They're trying to develop products that people will buy. We'll see how they pay for all this stuff someday. These are making decisions on how they how they use AI right now. We do know that there's going to be some disruption here. We got to figure out how to get from like this range of possibilities to a future where this benefits working Americans and where the benefit just doesn't go to a bunch more rich people and big companies where the American people benefit. So here's what we do. So first of all, we're going to have to get these companies to contribute into finding the solutions to the big problems here. So what that means is they support a fund that supports things like job training. There are jobs available, even though we have pretty relatively higher unemployment now, especially for young people, there are jobs out there. You got to figure out how this person who just lost their job can go into this job doing something else and then train them, give them the skills to do that job. At the same time, we can't let utility rates skyrocket for American families, but especially people like on fixed incomes and small businesses that are just trying to get by. So we got to build the infrastructure necessary, the power infrastructure necessary to make sure that there is enough energy available. To some extent, this is supply and demand, right? Demand goes up, supply doesn't go up, prices go up. So I have a plan to do this, to get us to the right point, the right end point at the right time. Here's where things get murky. You have a new burgeoning technology that also meets policy and politics. AI companies spent at least $83 million on federal elections last year and that money will keep flowing into the midterms coming up in 2028. Now, how can voters trust Democrats to protect them from AI companies when they're also accepting money from them? Well, I don't take any corporate pack money. I am the only person in Congress that doesn't take corporate pack money that has a public schedule. So people know what I am doing in this job and that has my money in a blind trust. I don't trade stocks. So up 535 members of Congress, I'm the only one that applies that standard. We've got to get this corporate money out of our political system. If there is one thing I could do policy right now and snap my fingers and it would change, it would be that citizens united, citizens united and just get it all, all the corporate money out because that would allow us to fix so many problems. It would be more bipartisanship, get that fixed that. My predecessor, John McCain, took some positive steps in that direction with McCain fine gold, got unwound. I think largely because of the efforts of Mitch McConnell over a couple of decades. If we could fix that problem, we could solve many others. I'm not here to put you on the spot, Senator, but we recently had Roman manual on the podcast. He said he may be considering running for president. Kamala Harris recently said she may be considering running for president. Senator Mark Kelly, you going for the ring? I haven't decided. I'll decide at the appropriate time here. Something I have considered. I think we need the right person at the right time. I've got a different kind of background than most of the people in this job, you know, like you, science, data, facts, no bullshit, failed at science, went to political science, which is a fake science. You have a mantra, which is posted on a wall at NASA in a room used by the mission management team. What's that quote? None of us is as dumb as all of us. Is that what you're talking about? Yes. Now, on one hand, I had to read that back three times, and again, as a polycyme major, that is again highly disappointing, because it sounds the first time you read it, it sounds like you're trolling us, but repeat that back to me. None of us. What that means is a group of people, like a bunch of knuckleheads in Washington, DC, can make bad decisions, like it's not like this thing called like groupthink and set him. The team of people could go off in a direction that sometimes maybe not even a single individual on that team would have gone in if it was their job to make the decision on their own. Now, having said that, I think it's always important to try to collaborate, and you want leaders that will accept when people that work for them will tell them they're full of shit. You want somebody to be able to accept, okay, I got that wrong. That was a bad idea. That's not the current president, right? He put a bunch of sycophants around him, a bunch of yes people to tell him what he wants to hear. That is a recipe for disaster. But at the same time, I think you also need to be aware that the team, together, can make a bad decision. That's what that means on that. That's the, that's in the mission management team room where the team has to come together to make very technical decisions when we have people in space. Right. Well, what I think is beautiful about that is it is an acknowledgement that the hard physics reality and science of what we're, we're sending a rocket filled with people into space. If this goes, if anything goes wrong, people die. It requires a level of rigor to say, hey, if you're going to be a pedantic nitpicker, you should, because the tail risk of us going wrong means everyone dies. How do you incept this mantra into MAGA? I don't think you get that into MAGA at all. I don't, I think, you know, I think MAGA's MAGA, whatever you want to call it, fallen apart. I think MAGA's Donald Trump. He said it himself. And it is, we, you know, we, to some extent, right? It's fallen apart. He's losing. I have no idea. I really don't know. He's losing like, you know, some of his former supporters, Tucker Carlson, others are going off on on their own and Marjorie Taylor Greene, not happy with this president. President turned against her. She turned against him. You know, I think she finally realizes who this guy is and what he stands for. And it's not what she stands for. And I disagree with her on so many things, right? And however, I mean, this, the, the MAGA thing is Donald Trump. And there's going to be a certain percentage of them that no matter what this president says or does, they will support him. That's not consistent with any kind of, you know, values that I've had or the way any team that I've ever led the way I do my job is, I wouldn't say it's the exact opposite, you know, of Donald Trump, but it is, it's on another planet, you know, the way that I tried to you know, manage my office in the Senate, the way I, when I was a commander of the space shuttle, you know, I would require my crew members to disagree with my decisions. Like, I do not want to hear from you what you think my view on this subject is. You got to give your own opinion. And it's different than mine. And if it turns out that I had it wrong and I'm full of shit, perfectly fine with that, we'll do, we'll do it a different way, especially if it affected safety and mission success. President of the United States, no matter who he is, almost every decision this guy has to make is about safety and mission success, the success of our country. So, you know, that's why, you know, what I see in him is a man who lacks every leadership quality that I've ever held to be important in any leader after 25 years in the Navy. I've, I've never seen any leader that, you know, lacks so much of those qualities. Well, you're, you're talking about something that's I think really important here, which is, and it's a foundational element of leadership, which is moral clarity and what matters to you. I want to end our conversation with something that I, I thought was really, really cool. And I'd love for you to share it with our audience. Before your final space mission that you took in 2011, you wrote a letter to be opened in the event of your demise. If you don't mind me asking Senator, what did you write in that letter? Well, I wrote one to my wife, Gabby, one each to my two children, Claudia and Claire, and one to my brother. My brothers was rather like matter of fact. Sure. Also an astronaut. Sure. Hey, here's what I need you to do. Uh-huh. If you're, if you're reading this, I'm dead. They get the trash on Tuesday over it. Sure, yeah, yeah, sure. Have a party. You know, make sure there's enough food and beer. Wow. You know, that kind of thing. Really? And then your twin brother, we cool, bro. Yeah. Yeah. And then, then went into like what I need him to do to help my kids. Right. And help Gabby. You know, Gabby'd been shot in the head. Um, in January, I flew in space in May. Um, you know, to my children, it was like, you know, I'm sorry, you know, I took risks in my life. And I knew these were real risks. But also I knew that there was tremendous upside for our country. You know, that's why I do this. You know, I risk my life flying in combat, flying on a spaceship. Um, because I see there is tremendous benefit for all of us. And I'm sorry, it didn't, you know, work out. And I'm not going to be there for you. But your tough kids, you know, you're going to grow up and be successful and there'll be people to help you. And then the same, same thing to, you know, my wife, you know, who, um, nearly died, nearly assassinated, serving, you know, her constituents as a member of Congress, but also understood public service and the different kinds of public service. You know, she was a member of Congress. I was a pilot in an astronaut. By the way, I never thought I would become a US Senator, you know, even after I got back from space successfully, um, sometimes I think to myself, if I was the person who would have been injured, would she have become an astronaut? Uh, wow. She probably, she says, yes, really, very, very forceful, despite having a degree in urban planning. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. She could plan the, you know, Elon Musk's city on Mars. Um, yes. So I, you know, it's, those are hard letters to write. What did you, you know, I have two kids as well. Yeah. What, did you leave them any, um, nuggets of wisdom or any advice on what life is about or how they should live. Oh, it's a long time ago, right? 15 years ago, my daughters were 16 and 14 at the time. They were teenagers. Uh, I think I did, but I can't remember what it was. Do they have the letters? No, I have the letters. I still have them. You don't want them to open it? I, I haven't given a lot of thought. My daughters know those letters exist. You should for sure have them open up. Yeah. I'm saying this, they're now 30, they're now 31 and 28. Totally. Uh, I would die to get any, anything like that, any, any sort of written letter from my father in that way. I'll think about it. I think you should. I think it'd be a great gift. They'll probably watch this. If you include this, they'll come to me and say, Dad, give me the letter. You have permission to ask me the letter. I'd get the letter. Last question. Speaking of space, does it piss you off when Jeff Bezos puts on a cowboy hat and is like, woo, I'm an astronaut. Uh, no. Why? I mean, I mean, there's obviously a different. I mean, these guys go straight up. They come straight down. It's a two-minute flight. What I give Jeff and Elon and others, tremendous credit for is they're pushing that industry and our ability to get to space forward. And they're, they're doing it less expensively, especially SpaceX. You know, I've always had this not always. A year ago, I went to Ukraine, Elon, who I sort of knew a little bit, not really well. I used to do a little consulting for SpaceX. Occasionally, I would be in a meeting with him. You go to Boca Chica. You're out there. No, I was never. I've never been there. I need to go. But anyway, I, uh, so Elon, uh, I go to Ukraine. Elon calls me a traitor. Then I called him an asshole, my Tesla. Um, but having said that, like, so we have a little bit of a personal, personal thing. Personal. I always try to give him a ton of credit because he has transformed this industry in a positive way. And as it's been a huge service to our country, you know, I separate the political stuff. I think him being involved is a richest man in the world politically, bad for our country. He shouldn't do it. I also think it's bad for his companies to do that. But from a engineering perspective, he's done a lot for us. So I always give him credit. Same thing with Bezos, what he's trying to do with Blue Origin, flew his new Glenn rocket the first time they get another flight coming up. And both of these companies are critical if we want to put people on the surface of the moon. How do you get that message to them? Thank you for moving civilization forward when it comes to space travel less expensively, but more obnoxious. Well, I don't, I don't feel like it's my job to get get it to them. I just try to keep it real, try to be honest, try to keep the partisanship and the politics out of things. I could be pretty hard on Donald Trump. There's a reason for that because I really think he's taking our country in the wrong direction. And when Elon does stuff that I think is bad for our country, I'm going to call him out on it when he does things that are really good for our country, which he has multiple times. I'll be the first one to give him credit. Hey, you know, this is where we're agreeing by the way, Senator. All roads, all roads, lead back to chill out, get back into the textbooks. Yep. That's right. All roads lead back to that. Yes. Because by the way, yes, Elon made it less expensive, but the moment his brain gets fried on Twitter, he starts buying elections for a quarter of a billion dollars. Bad. Yeah. That's bad news for us. Get back to mitosis. Yes. Crabs cycle. Get the money out of politics. Fix public education. I'm working really hard on that right now. They're trying to make it worse. You know, sending all this like you get a tax credit. Money goes to private schools. Public schools. Public schools get hurt. Poor kids get crappy educations. I was one of those kids. I mean, my parents were both police officers. We didn't have a lot of money. I benefited from a really good public school system. - Same. - So. - Senator Markelli, thank you so much for joining us on this show. - About a fun being on your show. - It was a really, really great conversation. - Thank you. - Thank you. ♪ I'll be right away ♪ ♪ No, they may stop me ♪ ♪ Make your daddy go ♪ ♪ I can't touch your dad ♪ - Have you subscribed to Lemon Out of Premium yet? You can listen completely ad-free and get access to exclusive bonus content. You won't hear anywhere else. Like my discussion with Malala on how therapy changed her life or my convo with Mel Robbins on how her let them theory applies to parenting. Tap subscribe on Apple Podcasts or head to lemonautopremium.com to sign up on any app. That's lemonautopremium.com.