- [Presenter] No pressure.

- Thank you.

When you look at the Congress, I have this feeling that there's a massive majority, there's only a two point or three piece majority.

And so if this was this close, it would seem like the minority would have more power.

That's what really frustrates me, that with a two or three vote major majority, we ought to be able to do a whole lot more than we're doing.

- Yeah.

- What's going on there?

- Yeah, so I absolutely agree with you.

You know, so long as we stand together, the power only comes in our unity.

So long as they know that they can pick some of us off, then we don't have the leverage that we need.

And unfortunately we've got one member that has cancer and has not been in the entire time that we've been in.

He's not been able to take any votes.

And then we recently just this week lost Sylvester Turner.

So now we're down two more people and so that complicates it a little bit more.

But like when we look at things such as censoring Al Green and that we aren't able to hold the line, it gives them fodder.

- Some number of Democrats voted with the Republicans to contend right.

- Yeah.

- Yes.

- 10 voted to censure him.

And so, you know, and we didn't whip on that particular issue, which there are people that are kind of upset that we didn't whip and we didn't kind of get a little bit more strategic around that as well.

We, you know, when it comes to the budget, they're in a, they've got a problem.

I was surprised that they got the budget resolution passed in general because they kept us on the floor for an hour because they were trying to count votes.

So we took one vote and they saw that all, but the one member who's out because of cancer, we all voted and we all voted together.

So then what they did is they held the vote open for an hour 'cause the next vote was the vote to get them to the budget resolution.

Well, it's my understanding, Trump was on the phone with Victoria Sparks out of.

- Indiana.

- Yeah, who's Ukrainian of all things.

But nevertheless on the phone with her trying to convince her to switch over, I don't know if he was talking to anybody else, but he was making phone calls.

So then finally they just took us to recess.

They took us to recess 'cause they didn't have the votes.

So we leave and then all of a sudden, maybe within 15 minutes they call us back.

So we were like, oh, they were trying to catch us to where we wouldn't make it back so that they could try to get it passed.

But as it turns out, they ended up getting the votes.

And so, you know, but we stood together and that was great.

They lost one vote.

Thomas Massie is never gonna vote for any of this.

He's standing on principle.

They have tried to challenge it.

They have done all things.

- You respect him for doing that?

- I do.

I respect him for at least saying that he believes something and following through.

I can disagree, but I appreciate him because basically he's one of these guys like, you know what, our debt is too high.

And so these cuts aren't deep enough, which I'm just like, sir, we, you know, so we disagree on all of that.

But he says the debt is too high, we should not go any higher.

Well here's the deal.

They want the debt ceiling raised.

So why are people losing their jobs?

Why are people losing their healthcare?

And we still have to raise the debt ceiling because they have decided that they want these deep tax cuts for the billionaires who already are enjoying tax cuts.

Right, so literally everybody else in this country should suffer.

They are literally, when I said Russia Junior, they literally are trying to make us a third world country.

Third world countries don't have middle classes.

The reason that people immigrate to our country is because we are supposed to be the land of opportunity and the land of the free.

It is because anybody can become anything that they want to here.

What they are trying to do is choke us off and make it to where only it's the haves versus the have nots.

And the haves are the only ones that can get anything.

And they are still surviving on our backs.

And that is why I don't get, and I get frustrated when there's the conversations about, well, the Democrats have left the middle class.

No we haven't, we haven't.

Look at our policies.

We've never done anything to hurt the middle class.

- You disagree with Senator Sanders?

Senator Sanders said right after the Election.

He believed that the party deserted the working class.

- No.

- You don't agree with him?

- No.

No, I mean, we weren't the ones taking away people's healthcare, taking away people's food, taking we were the ones that were pushing for student loan forgiveness.

We were the ones that were continuously investing in the American people.

When we passed the infrastructure act, you know what that invested in middle class folk.

That meant that infrastructure was taking place.

That meant we were creating jobs.

We, I mean, Biden created new manufacturing jobs with the Chips and Science Act.

Right, like we were doing everything for middle class people.

So our policies matched.

Now whether or not we speak to middle class people's a whole other issue now.

When you start to sound like you're a professor and trying to talk, okay, I get it.

Right, when you're like, oh, we've got this million page bill and it's great when me tell you big word, big word, big word.

Like yeah, okay.

Communication wise, yes, we failed.

Right, and we still are, 'cause you know, like you said about the comms and you know, they don't want me anywhere near it.

They hate what I say a lot of times, but it is what it is.

I'm gonna speak my mind and I'm gonna speak real, but at the same time, I am trained in communications to the extent that when you work as a public defender, like I did, I tell people all the time when I walked into jails and had to deal with real killers, I cannot walk in and first of all, start off talking to a bunch of legalese.

They knew I was a lawyer 'cause I was appointed to 'em.

So that's that but I needed to talk to them real.

And I could not allow them to believe that I was scared.

And so I'm like, if I wasn't scared of real killers, why am I be scared of y'all?

So that's, you know, so that part.

(audience applauding) - All right.

- I'm gonna finish - Your staff member's having a heart attack.

- He'll be fine.

- Is he okay?

- He'll be fine, I'm gonna finish and now I'm coming, - Man, I tried, you see, I tried.

- So that was, so when I would sit in jail, I would talk to, I would meet them where they were in my conversation, I would translate my best friend who's also a lawyer.

When you're in, when you're in law school, the legal dictionary is called the Blacks Law Dictionary.

Right, so he'd be like, give me the Blacks law version and he would be basically saying talk like you talk to a black person.

So that's, so that's what I would do, but then when I walk into a jury, I never know their background.

I just know it's somebody from the county.

And so you've got all different levels of education and you've gotta be able to convince them of your argument.

You can't do that if they don't understand what you're saying.

But then when it's time for me to talk to the judge, even though the jury may be looking and my client, maybe looking, I need the judge to rule in my favor.

So I gotta talk the talk, right.

So I've always known to like figure out who my audience is and make sure I communicate in that way.

And so some people don't really like some of the things that I say and that's fine.

But it's all good.

- Okay, all right.

Big hands, thank you.

All right, very good.

(audience applauding) (audience cheering)