Rahm, I was just in Israel for a long reporting trip,<\/p>\n
and while I was there, you showed up,<\/p>\n
and you delivered some pretty bitter medicine<\/p>\n
to the Israelis.<\/p>\n
You gave a speech at Tel Aviv University.<\/p>\n
You basically said to Israelis,<\/p>\n
You don’t have a problem with the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n
You have a problem with America.<\/p>\n
What was your message that you wanted to bring to Israelis,<\/p>\n
and why did you bring it?<\/p>\n
Why now?<\/p>\n
You’re a small country and an important ally.<\/p>\n
So let’s step back.<\/p>\n
Somebody’s spent time as ambassador of Japan.<\/p>\n
Japan’s quite popular.<\/p>\n
It’s a long pole of America’s Indo-Pacific policy.<\/p>\n
NATO enjoys not only bipartisan support<\/p>\n
in the House and Senate,<\/p>\n
but bipartisan support in the United States is above,<\/p>\n
I think, the last time I saw 57%, 58% support.<\/p>\n
You’re the one ally with unbelievable degradation.<\/p>\n
Its numbers are 32% support, used to be 64%.<\/p>\n
And among kids 30 or younger,<\/p>\n
my own three children’s generation,<\/p>\n
you’re in the low 20s, sometimes high teens.<\/p>\n
In 22 years, the country that my father fought<\/p>\n
for its existence and my uncle who the family’s named after,<\/p>\n
will be 100.<\/p>\n
We just celebrated 250 years.<\/p>\n
It’s not sustainable politically.<\/p>\n
You’ve decided that your military power isn’t a tool,<\/p>\n
but is your national security toolbox.<\/p>\n
And to you, every security challenge is a nail.<\/p>\n
Israel has more Nobel science winners<\/p>\n
than any other country on a per capita basis.<\/p>\n
Yet those scientists can’t go to international conferences<\/p>\n
and join on research papers.<\/p>\n
And many of them may leave if Netanyahu wins<\/p>\n
the election again. Yes.<\/p>\n
But I met with the CEO<\/p>\n
of a top, top, top cybersecurity firm.<\/p>\n
He said if the government wins again,<\/p>\n
people will already leave.<\/p>\n
Many companies today that are Israeli-based,<\/p>\n
Israeli-founded, are setting up their companies<\/p>\n
outside the state of Israel.<\/p>\n
Did you find that Israelis understand<\/p>\n
that this is not an ideologically narrow feeling?<\/p>\n
This ranges from J.D. Vance to Zohran Mamdani and now you,<\/p>\n
who I think can be described as a centrist Democrat.<\/p>\n
Yeah. Well, I am.<\/p>\n
I laid out a 23-state solution that is actually…<\/p>\n
It’s a variation of the Arab League’s proposal<\/p>\n
that would give Israel 21 countries<\/p>\n
with full diplomatic relations in the region<\/p>\n
to an economic strategy<\/p>\n
that also breaks out of its isolation<\/p>\n
and dependence on Europe,<\/p>\n
but makes both of them, heads and tails,<\/p>\n
makes Israel a member of the Middle East,<\/p>\n
a full participant in the Middle East,<\/p>\n
rather than standing apart from the Middle East.<\/p>\n
But part of your message, Rahm,<\/p>\n
was that unconditional support from the U.S. has to stop.<\/p>\n
It has to be conditional.<\/p>\n
It has to change.<\/p>\n
Now, this is not a recent problem or a recent idea.<\/p>\n
You’ve worked for the Clinton administration<\/p>\n
and then later for the Obama administration.<\/p>\n
Was our support for Israel too unconditional in those days?<\/p>\n
Yeah.<\/p>\n
So short answer is yes,<\/p>\n
but not just limited to those two presidents.<\/p>\n
Well, I did work with President Clinton<\/p>\n
on both the Oslo Accords, the Wye Plantation.<\/p>\n
And while I wasn’t an employee,<\/p>\n
I consulted with him often on Camp David<\/p>\n
with Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat.<\/p>\n
When I worked for President Obama,<\/p>\n
I was direct to the prime minister.<\/p>\n
This is 18 years ago.<\/p>\n
I didn’t need a war to realize there was a problem.<\/p>\n
I said, What you’re doing on housing in the West Bank<\/p>\n
not only undermines the possibility of a two-state solution<\/p>\n
will lead to the isolation of Israel<\/p>\n
and will lead to perpetual conflict.<\/p>\n
And your reward for that<\/p>\n
was that he called you a self-hating Jew?<\/p>\n
Loathing.<\/p>\n
Ah, well. Okay.<\/p>\n
That’s better. Self-loathing.<\/p>\n
Publicly.<\/p>\n
I was also in the room…<\/p>\n
And I think these two go together.<\/p>\n
I was in the room when President Obama made a decision.<\/p>\n
I encouraged him to make this decision<\/p>\n
to fund the Iron Dome.<\/p>\n
I happen to think being against<\/p>\n
provocative housing on the West Bank<\/p>\n
that undermines a two-state solution<\/p>\n
and funding the Iron Dome<\/p>\n
that saves thousands of Israeli civilians’ lives<\/p>\n
are complementary, not contradictory.<\/p>\n
I do get the politics in Israel today<\/p>\n
doesn’t support a two-state.<\/p>\n
So you have to make it more valuable.<\/p>\n
A 23-state solution is a more valuable solution<\/p>\n
both for the Israelis, Palestinians, and the Arabs.<\/p>\n
The Arab League gets stability<\/p>\n
so they can get the economic big bang<\/p>\n
that they’re looking for.<\/p>\n
Israel gets security, and they get a problem,<\/p>\n
meaning the West Bank, removed.<\/p>\n
And the Palestinians get sovereignty<\/p>\n
and get the determination of their own.<\/p>\n
So you make the politics actually work together<\/p>\n
rather than against the policy.<\/p>\n
The other thing is-<\/p>\n
How did you feel about the way<\/p>\n
the Israelis prosecuted the war in Gaza?<\/p>\n
Somebody like David Grossman, who’s hardly,<\/p>\n
you know, a self-loathing Israeli,<\/p>\n
used the word genocide.<\/p>\n
With great pain used the word genocide.<\/p>\n
Other people like Ehud Olmert, former prime minister,<\/p>\n
has talked about war crimes.<\/p>\n
This is not just an opinion on the far, far left in Europe<\/p>\n
or something like that.<\/p>\n
How would you describe the prosecution of the war?<\/p>\n
I think Israel was reckless.<\/p>\n
You had no day-after plan.<\/p>\n
Your own military begged for a day-after plan.<\/p>\n
And now what you have is occupation and isolation.<\/p>\n
And again, look, I say this out of care for a country<\/p>\n
that’s not only our allies as an American.<\/p>\n
This was a country my father fought for its existence.<\/p>\n
My uncle lost his life trying to create.<\/p>\n
You can’t have,<\/p>\n
and this is the first kind of canary in the coal mine<\/p>\n
by way of example: Israel’s 78 years old.<\/p>\n
The last two years, something happened<\/p>\n
that’s never happened in the first 76:<\/p>\n
more people left than came.<\/p>\n
You think you’re gonna occupy the West Bank and Gaza,<\/p>\n
suppress the Palestinians’ rights to self-determination,<\/p>\n
which I happen to think are legitimate.<\/p>\n
Not more legitimate than Israel security.<\/p>\n
One example that gets lost in this:<\/p>\n
for 50 years, there’s been an Assad in Syria,<\/p>\n
father and son.<\/p>\n
You now have a Syrian president<\/p>\n
who has said publicly to Israel,<\/p>\n
We share a common enemy in Iran.<\/p>\n
He has asked for and seeking a security agreement.<\/p>\n
I will give you my AT&T calling card.<\/p>\n
Call him.<\/p>\n
Have the United States,<\/p>\n
where he’s very desirous of United States for economic<\/p>\n
and political and military relationship,<\/p>\n
have them facilitate the conversation.<\/p>\n
You could have peace on the east with Jordan,<\/p>\n
which you have in 1994, peace in the south with Egypt 1979.<\/p>\n
And the Northern Galilee, you can have peace.<\/p>\n
Every piece of what was the threat for since 1967<\/p>\n
would be either ally, diplomatic, or neutralized.<\/p>\n
Call him.<\/p>\n
You’re not exercising what is part of your security tools.<\/p>\n
Rahm, when I got back just the other day,<\/p>\n
I was on the phone doing a reporting call<\/p>\n
with Naftali Bennett.<\/p>\n
Former prime minister, minister of many other departments,<\/p>\n
former ally of Netanyahu.<\/p>\n
Chief of staff.<\/p>\n
Exactly. [laughs] Think of that. [laughing]<\/p>\n
Even that. Even that.<\/p>\n
That degraded office.<\/p>\n
He’s not a doctor, but he could be a spin doctor.<\/p>\n
Think of that. Exactly.<\/p>\n
And I said, So what did you think<\/p>\n
of Rahm Emanuel’s speech?<\/p>\n
He said, Well, yeah, I don’t like it when people come here<\/p>\n
and angrily lecture us on our security.<\/p>\n
Even somebody who’s now in the opposition was not pleased.<\/p>\n
I don’t imagine you made that speech to please anyone.<\/p>\n
How much of it was for domestic consumption<\/p>\n
here in the United States?<\/p>\n
It is very likely that you’re gonna run for president.<\/p>\n
We’ll talk about that in a bit.<\/p>\n
How much was this speech directed<\/p>\n
toward particularly Democratic Party voters<\/p>\n
for, I don’t know, a primary down the line?<\/p>\n
Maybe possibly a primary.<\/p>\n
David, since you wrote about<\/p>\n
my upfrontness to the prime minister in 2009,<\/p>\n
I wasn’t thinking about a Democratic primary<\/p>\n
for president then.<\/p>\n
I was thinking about what was in the interest of both peace<\/p>\n
and Israel security.<\/p>\n
The through line<\/p>\n
from working with President Clinton on the Oslo Accords<\/p>\n
and the peace with Egypt all the way through to this moment,<\/p>\n
that speech at Tel Aviv University,<\/p>\n
this is one man’s view of myself, I’ve been consistent.<\/p>\n
Has he changed?<\/p>\n
Has Netanyahu changed in your view?<\/p>\n
Well, there’s no doubt.<\/p>\n
I mean, Netanyahu once called for two-state solution.<\/p>\n
Under pressure from the Obama administration<\/p>\n
at the Bar-Ilan speech.<\/p>\n
And then when he got off…<\/p>\n
I should say, as soon as he made that speech,<\/p>\n
he came off the stage, and he looked at Martin Indyk,<\/p>\n
an American diplomat, and said, Okay, there, I’ve said it.<\/p>\n
Now can we move on?<\/p>\n
With respect, I have to tell you<\/p>\n
that I feel sometimes the Americans are deluded by this.<\/p>\n
There’s a famous clip of Netanyahu in an apartment.<\/p>\n
And he says in the ear of one of the people,<\/p>\n
loud enough for the cameras, of course, to pick it up,<\/p>\n
Don’t worry about the Americans.<\/p>\n
I know how to handle them.<\/p>\n
In other words, he’s had full confidence<\/p>\n
that he can manipulate American public opinion,<\/p>\n
not least American Jewish public opinion,<\/p>\n
by going over the heads of presidents.<\/p>\n
You remember all too well he came to the United States-<\/p>\n
2015.<\/p>\n
And he managed to get an invitation to Congress<\/p>\n
from the Republicans<\/p>\n
and got standing ovation after standing ovation,<\/p>\n
after standing ovation. But David, even then,<\/p>\n
and I was mayor, but I said it publicly as others did,<\/p>\n
you have now made Israel a partisan political issue.<\/p>\n
And he has mismanaged U.S.-Israel relationships.<\/p>\n
I’m not gonna live with myself being biting my tongue.<\/p>\n
Now, I have told the prime minister 18 years ago the truth.<\/p>\n
When I’ve been here,<\/p>\n
I have been honest about to the Democratic Party<\/p>\n
how the cultural cul-de-sac has led us into a dead end.<\/p>\n
I took on interest groups from the health insurance industry<\/p>\n
to give 10 million kids their healthcare,<\/p>\n
or whether it was on the banking financial.<\/p>\n
And I took on the educational bureaucracy<\/p>\n
and infrastructure of Chicago.<\/p>\n
How does your view differ on Israel<\/p>\n
from the critique from the left of the Democratic Party?<\/p>\n
How do you differ on your view of Israel<\/p>\n
from Zohran Mamdani?<\/p>\n
Yeah.<\/p>\n
Well, this actually is a classic thing.<\/p>\n
So the mayor wins his first election, but not the final.<\/p>\n
His team knew that I was coming<\/p>\n
and asked if he would like to have a meeting.<\/p>\n
So we met.<\/p>\n
And the bulk…<\/p>\n
And I want to be clear, the bulk of the conversation was<\/p>\n
Tell me about when you were mayor of Chicago,<\/p>\n
things like that.<\/p>\n
It was mayor to mayor,<\/p>\n
you know, What’s the combination to the lock? kind of.<\/p>\n
It’s a big job.<\/p>\n
So when he walks in, I said to him, I said,<\/p>\n
So who’s gonna hate this more, AOC or my rabbi?<\/p>\n
And he started laughing,<\/p>\n
and I said, And I’ve listened to my rabbi’s sermon.<\/p>\n
I listen to Israel.<\/p>\n
I prefer my rabbi’s sermons, okay?<\/p>\n
Last 20 minutes of an hour and a half breakfast,<\/p>\n
I said to him, I said, Look, we got to the Middle East,<\/p>\n
and I said, Because being mayor of New York, like Chicago,<\/p>\n
you do do foreign policy. [laughs]<\/p>\n
Whether you like it or not.<\/p>\n
I said to him, I said, Look, I’m gonna be clear to you.<\/p>\n
The river to the sea will never happen<\/p>\n
because you’re calling for the elimination<\/p>\n
of a Jewish democratic state and the Jewish people.<\/p>\n
Now I don’t believe-<\/p>\n
How did he react?<\/p>\n
Hold on one second.<\/p>\n
I don’t believe, and I said that.<\/p>\n
I don’t believe in a greater Israel<\/p>\n
because it means there will be never ever<\/p>\n
the self-determination of Palestinian people.<\/p>\n
And the difference between-<\/p>\n
Greater Israel meaning the annexation<\/p>\n
of the West Bank and Gaza?<\/p>\n
Yes.<\/p>\n
And I said, The difference between you and I<\/p>\n
is want to acknowledge Palestinian people’s right<\/p>\n
to self-determination.<\/p>\n
You don’t want to acknowledge the state of Israel<\/p>\n
or the Jewish people.<\/p>\n
But how did he reply to you?<\/p>\n
I haven’t really thought about it in about a year.<\/p>\n
I think he was in the receptive mode.<\/p>\n
We didn’t get into an argument because I don’t think he…<\/p>\n
I think he probably made a decision.<\/p>\n
I asked because I want to be fair to him<\/p>\n
that he’s not taking…<\/p>\n
Yeah, that he didn’t just take<\/p>\n
your description of his views.<\/p>\n
No.<\/p>\n
I mean, he didn’t do that, but we didn’t…<\/p>\n
Listen, this was…<\/p>\n
I don’t know if I was just getting something off my chest,<\/p>\n
but I told him, I said, You have to understand…<\/p>\n
And one part of the conversation, I said,<\/p>\n
You are your father’s son.<\/p>\n
I’m my father’s son.<\/p>\n
When I hear what you say,<\/p>\n
I hear the elimination of the state of Israel<\/p>\n
and the home of the Jewish people,<\/p>\n
God forbid the world comes to an end.<\/p>\n
And I said, That will never happen.<\/p>\n
And so when you ask me, how do I differentiate?<\/p>\n
There are elements in the Democratic socialists<\/p>\n
and maybe even activists in the Democratic Party<\/p>\n
that do not believe in the state of Israel.<\/p>\n
I at least, in my own view,<\/p>\n
support something you’re advocating,<\/p>\n
which I happen to think is in Israel’s interest,<\/p>\n
which is the Palestinian people<\/p>\n
will finally have a homeland.<\/p>\n
They have to spend money.<\/p>\n
And part of my visit was what I call healthcare diplomacy.<\/p>\n
We’ll get to that maybe in this conversation,<\/p>\n
of how to build that up.<\/p>\n
I said, You have to understand when you say what you say,<\/p>\n
don’t give me your crap about one nation.<\/p>\n
Well, everybody will live together.<\/p>\n
There’s no kumbaya.<\/p>\n
I said, I hear what you say.<\/p>\n
There’s no binational state.<\/p>\n
No.<\/p>\n
And I said, I at least understand<\/p>\n
the legitimacy of the Palestinian sovereignty<\/p>\n
and self-determination.<\/p>\n
You do not understand the Jewish people<\/p>\n
and what Israel means to them.<\/p>\n
Now, we didn’t get into a big discussion<\/p>\n
because we weren’t gonna persuade each other.<\/p>\n
I made my point.<\/p>\n
He heard it.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t something you wanted to argue about.<\/p>\n
Let me ask you this.<\/p>\n
There is an election going on.<\/p>\n
Gadi Eisenkot, who is a 40-year army veteran, a general,<\/p>\n
maybe you know him, is suddenly leading the polls,<\/p>\n
and he has the possibility,<\/p>\n
when there’s an election in October,<\/p>\n
that he may form a government.<\/p>\n
What difference would Gadi Eisenkot-led Israel mean,<\/p>\n
and one in which Netanyahu, after 19 years in office,<\/p>\n
is eclipsed?<\/p>\n
Do I think a new government would exercise the muscle<\/p>\n
of the political diplomatic front of Israel<\/p>\n
that’s been atrophying?<\/p>\n
I do.<\/p>\n
Do I think they’ll do it on day one?<\/p>\n
No.<\/p>\n
But I think there’s opportunities<\/p>\n
besides just Palestinian front.<\/p>\n
There’s an opportunity on the Syrian front,<\/p>\n
and there’s opportunities beyond<\/p>\n
occupation isolation in Gaza.<\/p>\n
That’s why the 23-state, when you’re a pariah,<\/p>\n
is a valuable political…<\/p>\n
You get 21 countries that will have<\/p>\n
full diplomatic relationship with Israel.<\/p>\n
All members of the Arab League sign on to this proposal.<\/p>\n
So my attitude is, game on, it’s your proposal.<\/p>\n
The difference between 1990s and now,<\/p>\n
you actually have to stand up a Palestinian Authority<\/p>\n
that doesn’t exist.<\/p>\n
The Palestinian Authority doesn’t have a right<\/p>\n
to reject something that you get 98%.<\/p>\n
The other piece of this today,<\/p>\n
while you and I are talking, David,<\/p>\n
there’s a story about how the UAE is building new ports<\/p>\n
around the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
The India, Mid-East, European trade corridor<\/p>\n
that I outlined as the IMEC,<\/p>\n
that is the economic lifeline<\/p>\n
for the most technologically sophisticated country<\/p>\n
of that corridor.<\/p>\n
And it will bypass the Strait of Hormuz,<\/p>\n
which is what Iran is trying to hold<\/p>\n
the world economy hostage.<\/p>\n
That too offers a complement.<\/p>\n
You can’t beat something with nothing.<\/p>\n
You don’t like my ideas?<\/p>\n
Fine.<\/p>\n
I can find fault with my ideas.<\/p>\n
I can tell you what the weakest are.<\/p>\n
Tell me what yours are, besides more occupation.<\/p>\n
I have to tell you, as you indicated,<\/p>\n
in all the debate I’ve been hearing<\/p>\n
in the run for prime minister and for Knesset,<\/p>\n
it’s obviously a parliamentary system,<\/p>\n
the impermissible thing is to mention<\/p>\n
the Palestinian question.<\/p>\n
Correct. The Arab-Israeli.<\/p>\n
It is not to be discussed.<\/p>\n
Even Yair Golan on the left<\/p>\n
barely does, except to say<\/p>\n
there needs to be some resolution.<\/p>\n
And you’re not even allowed to say that<\/p>\n
we’ll make an alliance with the Arab parties<\/p>\n
when Palestinian citizens of Israel<\/p>\n
are 20% of the population.<\/p>\n
22. Yeah.<\/p>\n
And they’re 10% of your Knesset.<\/p>\n
They are 1\/3 of the entire medical staff.<\/p>\n
Exactly. And hopefully<\/p>\n
we can talk about that, of all of Israel.<\/p>\n
The reason we have also an interest in changing this,<\/p>\n
the United States, as you and I are talking today,<\/p>\n
is involved in one war right now with Iran.<\/p>\n
I don’t want to be led into not only<\/p>\n
led or engage or make a decision to go to war.<\/p>\n
I want a different type of Middle East.<\/p>\n
And that means changing up the dynamics.<\/p>\n
I spoke the other day with Danny Citrinowicz,<\/p>\n
who was years and years in Israeli military intelligence.<\/p>\n
And he said this war has been a strategic disaster-<\/p>\n
Yes. For Israel,<\/p>\n
for the United States, and for the entire Middle East.<\/p>\n
Who do you blame for it?<\/p>\n
Well, I blame the president.<\/p>\n
President Trump?<\/p>\n
Yes.<\/p>\n
The prime minister has shopped this idea of military action<\/p>\n
to George Bush, turned it down, and did the Olympic Games.<\/p>\n
To Barack Obama, turned it down<\/p>\n
and did more than the Olympic Games.<\/p>\n
To Donald Trump 1.0, he turned it down.<\/p>\n
To Joe Biden, turned it down.<\/p>\n
So I blame the president for saying yes to something<\/p>\n
because you have agency and you are responsible<\/p>\n
for the men and women of this country.<\/p>\n
The JCPOA by President Obama.<\/p>\n
You had Russia and China on the side of enforcement.<\/p>\n
Today, they’re backing Iran<\/p>\n
and funding them to kill allies and American soldiers.<\/p>\n
Two, you had all the uranium moved out.<\/p>\n
Today, the uranium is in the country.<\/p>\n
Three, the uranium was at 3%.<\/p>\n
Today it’s at 90% and in the country.<\/p>\n
Four, Europe and the rest of the world<\/p>\n
was part of this agreement.<\/p>\n
Now the world is split on not only that agreement,<\/p>\n
but how to approach Iran.<\/p>\n
Five, you had international eyes and ears on the ground<\/p>\n
inspecting the nuclear facilities.<\/p>\n
They have been kicked out and haven’t been in the region.<\/p>\n
Six, the Strait of Hormuz was open.<\/p>\n
Today you fought a war,<\/p>\n
and all your negotiating is the Strait of Hormuz<\/p>\n
getting open. That’s a great triumph<\/p>\n
all around. Okay. [laughs]<\/p>\n
So when I looked down this list, and again, I was for JCPOA,<\/p>\n
but I wasn’t like, This is Nirvana.<\/p>\n
It was a 51\/49, a 52\/48,<\/p>\n
and I thought it was worth the equity.<\/p>\n
Now you’ve taken the military action,<\/p>\n
and these are the consequences.<\/p>\n
They now not only have built,<\/p>\n
trying to build a nuclear weapon,<\/p>\n
they have a nuclear option,<\/p>\n
and it’s called the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
That is a disaster.<\/p>\n
And others in Israel’s security know that this war<\/p>\n
was a total debacle,<\/p>\n
and the prime minister has been shopping this<\/p>\n
for 19 of his 20 years.<\/p>\n
Rahm, I don’t think you’re gonna<\/p>\n
announce one way or another on this program-<\/p>\n
I am not.<\/p>\n
Whether you’re gonna run for president.<\/p>\n
But you haven’t been shy<\/p>\n
about critiquing the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n
[laughs] Your ability to spot the obvious is a gift.<\/p>\n
It’s amazing.<\/p>\n
It’s taken years.<\/p>\n
You say you’re, quote, Done with the discussion<\/p>\n
of locker rooms.<\/p>\n
I’m done with the discussion of bathrooms,<\/p>\n
and we better start having a conversation<\/p>\n
about the classroom.<\/p>\n
Now, bathrooms in this context,<\/p>\n
this means transgender rights in general.<\/p>\n
You’d like Democrats to be done with that,<\/p>\n
but Republicans clearly aren’t.<\/p>\n
Should Democrats really be silent<\/p>\n
in response to attacks on trans people?<\/p>\n
It just seems that this line is clever,<\/p>\n
but it doesn’t do service to some human beings<\/p>\n
who want their rights.<\/p>\n
Well, two things.<\/p>\n
Since it’s about education,<\/p>\n
and I spent a good part of my tenure,<\/p>\n
the entire tenure as mayor,<\/p>\n
taking the worst public school system<\/p>\n
to what Sean Reardon and Stanford called the single best.<\/p>\n
In 2016, I passed a law, a decade ago, on bathroom access.<\/p>\n
Did I take my eye off in the graduation rates<\/p>\n
that we took from 56% to 84%?<\/p>\n
Not a chance.<\/p>\n
That’s why parents send kids to school.<\/p>\n
Did I take my eye off- Why can’t you do both?<\/p>\n
Why can’t you do both?<\/p>\n
Because you have an issue, in which coming out of COVID also<\/p>\n
is a lightning rod that distracted.<\/p>\n
I didn’t take Abraham Lincoln’s name off of school<\/p>\n
in San Francisco.<\/p>\n
I didn’t ask for defunding the police.<\/p>\n
I didn’t get yourselves wrapped around the axle<\/p>\n
on the term Latinx, which nobody identifies with.<\/p>\n
It was an example, David, not just of this particular issue,<\/p>\n
of a party when people’s backs are against the wall.<\/p>\n
They’re holding on to that windowsill,<\/p>\n
and they can’t make a college payment.<\/p>\n
They can’t make a home mortgage payment.<\/p>\n
Their healthcare is now being denied to them.<\/p>\n
They expect us Democrats to show up.<\/p>\n
And we’re showing up talking about bathroom access,<\/p>\n
sporting events, who gets to participate?<\/p>\n
We just come out of COVID.<\/p>\n
Our reading scores and math scores are in the tank.<\/p>\n
50% of our kids cannot read or do math at grade level.<\/p>\n
And we’re gonna talk about bathroom access.<\/p>\n
So my view is if you want to win elections<\/p>\n
and you also want to help kids get prepared for the future,<\/p>\n
focus on the bottom line of what schools, I did do-<\/p>\n
I understand that, Rahm,<\/p>\n
but all I would say that there were times and earlier times<\/p>\n
with other groups that didn’t have their rights,<\/p>\n
and they were told to be patient too,<\/p>\n
and focus on their rights was distracting.<\/p>\n
That’s what Letter from Birmingham Jail<\/p>\n
is all about: patience.<\/p>\n
Okay.<\/p>\n
Versus urgency.<\/p>\n
Well, as a country, we proved we couldn’t do it<\/p>\n
because you haven’t told me and asked me a single question<\/p>\n
how to get 50% of our kids-<\/p>\n
We’ll get there.<\/p>\n
We will get there. No, no, wait a second.<\/p>\n
Wait a second.<\/p>\n
You started where you thought was a priority.<\/p>\n
I’m gonna tell you, you may not get-<\/p>\n
No, but I’m asking you, Rahm, about what’s become,<\/p>\n
in a lot of your speeches and interviews,<\/p>\n
a kind of a tagline to differentiate yourself.<\/p>\n
I think that’s the motivation.<\/p>\n
It’s not just a tagline.<\/p>\n
I passed a bill in 2016, 10 years beforehand.<\/p>\n
I made sure the kids had access to a bathroom.<\/p>\n
I just didn’t let it distract<\/p>\n
from reading, math, or graduation rates.<\/p>\n
This is why I went down to Mississippi<\/p>\n
before anybody knew about the reading scores,<\/p>\n
because I pay attention to this.<\/p>\n
Not that others don’t, but they went from 49 to ninth.<\/p>\n
You have a president of the United States<\/p>\n
who’s never mentioned it.<\/p>\n
No governor has called for an emergency meeting<\/p>\n
like you had other governors of both parties.<\/p>\n
Mayors aren’t doing anything.<\/p>\n
You don’t have a Department of Education,<\/p>\n
and people have accepted failure.<\/p>\n
And 50% of our kids can’t read in third-grade level,<\/p>\n
which doesn’t make fourth and fifth<\/p>\n
and sixth grade in high school any easier.<\/p>\n
You have to prioritize what’s an A and a B.<\/p>\n
I’m gonna make sure children feel accepted.<\/p>\n
And the best way to make sure they feel accepted<\/p>\n
is they know reading, math, and high school graduation.<\/p>\n
One of the things we did in Chicago, only city to do it,<\/p>\n
only education system, nobody gets a high school degree<\/p>\n
without showing us a letter of acceptance from a college,<\/p>\n
a community college, a branch of the armed forces,<\/p>\n
or a vocational school.<\/p>\n
I want to ask you about the- That makes every child ready<\/p>\n
for tomorrow.<\/p>\n
I want to ask you a little bit about the political moment.<\/p>\n
How much will Trumpism trail after him in 2028?<\/p>\n
How much of it is a cleanup operation<\/p>\n
if a Democrat wins of any kind?<\/p>\n
A centrist like yourself, somebody more to the left,<\/p>\n
whatever it might be.<\/p>\n
How much does the hangover of Trumpism persist?<\/p>\n
Last week we had on Atul Gawande,<\/p>\n
and Atul Gawande estimates that the destruction of USAID<\/p>\n
has led already to 700,000 deaths<\/p>\n
and demonstrably will run into the seven figures.<\/p>\n
That’s one little part of Trumpism.<\/p>\n
What is the damage report<\/p>\n
that a new president is gonna have to deal with?<\/p>\n
The presidency, whoever wins it,<\/p>\n
will be known as Hurt Locker.<\/p>\n
You’re gonna be cutting the wires everywhere,<\/p>\n
making sure that the bomb doesn’t blow.<\/p>\n
There’s gonna be one on the fiscal side.<\/p>\n
You’re gonna have the level of corruption<\/p>\n
that has been normalized<\/p>\n
and that degrades people’s conscious support<\/p>\n
for a government that can meet their needs,<\/p>\n
not just serve those in office.<\/p>\n
You’re gonna have an economy…<\/p>\n
And I don’t think, and I want to say this,<\/p>\n
you can’t have a free market system with corruption.<\/p>\n
They’re inconsistent.<\/p>\n
And for all these corporate leaders<\/p>\n
that have bitten their tongue<\/p>\n
in the destruction of the rule of law and replacing kinda<\/p>\n
how much you can buy access and influence<\/p>\n
and making it the norm,<\/p>\n
it is undermining the most important thing,<\/p>\n
which is a system based on law and free of corruption<\/p>\n
and doesn’t accept the degradation corruption brings<\/p>\n
to the free market.<\/p>\n
I think across the board, the failure in education,<\/p>\n
the failure I think in enforcing good environmental laws<\/p>\n
that bring advance our public health.<\/p>\n
Every year he has proposed and actually driven cuts<\/p>\n
in our major research at the National Institutes of Health,<\/p>\n
National Science Foundation, DARPA, the Defense Department.<\/p>\n
At very time that China’s advancing on research<\/p>\n
and increasing their funding,<\/p>\n
the genius, with the Republican Congress support,<\/p>\n
is cutting funding.<\/p>\n
I don’t see how you win the future<\/p>\n
by cutting your way there.<\/p>\n
And so across the board, there will be not really cleanup,<\/p>\n
but I think there will be crises that have been delayed<\/p>\n
that are gonna be accelerated.<\/p>\n
Rahm, we have midterm elections<\/p>\n
coming in a very few months.<\/p>\n
And the presidential race-<\/p>\n
I noticed that too.<\/p>\n
The presidential race is already taking<\/p>\n
at least some form.<\/p>\n
How do you see that race shaping up?<\/p>\n
Here’s what I think is exciting.<\/p>\n
We’ve had two presidents, both President Biden and Trump,<\/p>\n
when you really step back, are trying to restore a past<\/p>\n
that’s not coming back, David.<\/p>\n
Build Back Better, MAGA, while different in values,<\/p>\n
it’s retrospective.<\/p>\n
2028, both for the Democratic Party<\/p>\n
and, more importantly for the country,<\/p>\n
will be the first election<\/p>\n
since, I think, Obama ’08 versus McCain<\/p>\n
that will be about the future.<\/p>\n
The reason I’ve been going to Mississippi<\/p>\n
or laying out ideas on research, education, high school,<\/p>\n
affordability of college education,<\/p>\n
political reform, 75 years you’re up and out.<\/p>\n
You can’t be involved in the prediction markets<\/p>\n
because I think we not only need fundamental change,<\/p>\n
but it’s most importantly is how to make sure…<\/p>\n
To your core question a minute ago,<\/p>\n
how do you make sure the next 75 years of the 21st century<\/p>\n
are not China’s, but America’s?<\/p>\n
To the second point, a little more granular.<\/p>\n
2024 Democrats didn’t have a choice.<\/p>\n
We were told who our nominee was.<\/p>\n
Truth is 2020, we didn’t have a choice.<\/p>\n
Biden versus Bernie, Biden.<\/p>\n
It was over like that [clicks fingers]<\/p>\n
even though Biden lost Iowa and New Hampshire, bad.<\/p>\n
2016, not really also.<\/p>\n
You’re gonna have 31 flavors.<\/p>\n
It’s gonna be Baskin-Robbins.<\/p>\n
As I said, if I decide to do this,<\/p>\n
I’m gonna be Rocky Road.<\/p>\n
That’s the flavor I’m gonna go with, brother.<\/p>\n
Okay?<\/p>\n
And I think that’s-<\/p>\n
No, but you remember very well that one of the advantages<\/p>\n
that Barack Obama had in 2008<\/p>\n
was he was all potential.<\/p>\n
There was not much of a record there, right?<\/p>\n
He was a senator for 25 minutes.<\/p>\n
24.<\/p>\n
Ah.<\/p>\n
[laughs] And a state senator.<\/p>\n
And so there was nothing to really hold onto.<\/p>\n
You have a record as long as your arm,<\/p>\n
as they say in the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n
Did you have to use that metaphor?<\/p>\n
[laughs] You’ve had ups, and you’ve had some things<\/p>\n
that people are gonna bang away at.<\/p>\n
They’re gonna bang away at, was NAFTA the right thing to do<\/p>\n
in the Clinton administration. Sure.<\/p>\n
Whereas, as mayor of Chicago,<\/p>\n
the Laquan McDonald case will trail you.<\/p>\n
The crime bill in 1994 will trail you.<\/p>\n
Do you see the fact that you have such long experience<\/p>\n
and arguably mistakes as well<\/p>\n
as triumphs to your record<\/p>\n
as something that can drag you down<\/p>\n
in a race that’s all about the future?<\/p>\n
The only thing I can offer you<\/p>\n
is I’ve learned from my mistakes.<\/p>\n
And hopefully, like John F. Kennedy<\/p>\n
learned from the Bay of Pigs<\/p>\n
and he applied it to the Cuban Missile Crisis.<\/p>\n
I’ve learned from my mistakes.<\/p>\n
I’ve made them.<\/p>\n
Give me an example of that.<\/p>\n
A serious one.<\/p>\n
Not that you love too well,<\/p>\n
but give me a serious mistake that you’ve learned from.<\/p>\n
Look, I’m very proud of the record<\/p>\n
I’ve built on education.<\/p>\n
Very proud of what we did in Chicago.<\/p>\n
I made a mistake cornering the teachers’ union early<\/p>\n
when I pulled the last year of Rich Daley’s<\/p>\n
contract with the teachers, 4%.<\/p>\n
And I made Karen Lewis,<\/p>\n
who was then the president of the teachers’ union,<\/p>\n
put her back against the wall.<\/p>\n
We would have our disagreements,<\/p>\n
but I made it existential for her,<\/p>\n
and it made everything we were trying to do<\/p>\n
much more difficult.<\/p>\n
I own that.<\/p>\n
When we had the second contract,<\/p>\n
they worked a year without a contract, which is unusual<\/p>\n
because Karen and I were trying to solve the pension,<\/p>\n
and we did.<\/p>\n
Second is on all the other contracts<\/p>\n
I did with the other labor unions<\/p>\n
across the city on everything,<\/p>\n
about four weeks before you would commence,<\/p>\n
I would ask the president to come in<\/p>\n
and say, Give me your five priorities for this contract.<\/p>\n
Know when you come in, I’m gonna give you five from me.<\/p>\n
I want you to take those five.<\/p>\n
I want you to tell me what you can live with,<\/p>\n
what you can’t live with, or what you would like to change,<\/p>\n
or maybe meet me on the 50-yard line.<\/p>\n
And I’m gonna do the same to yours.<\/p>\n
So that before the contract started,<\/p>\n
we had a meeting of the minds and understanding<\/p>\n
what was an A, what was a B, and where was the compromise.<\/p>\n
That’s before everybody got into their<\/p>\n
other side of the table.<\/p>\n
And so did I make mistakes?<\/p>\n
Damn right, I made a mistake.<\/p>\n
Did I learn from it? Yes.<\/p>\n
Did I apply it forward?<\/p>\n
The biggest supporters I had when I ran for mayor<\/p>\n
and ran for reelection, rather, the building trades.<\/p>\n
Rahm, I think you’ve made clear<\/p>\n
that you have no truck with socialism as an economic system.<\/p>\n
But I think you’d also agree<\/p>\n
that the level of income inequality in this country<\/p>\n
has gotten so radical.<\/p>\n
Yes. And the flagrant behavior<\/p>\n
of the ultra, ultra rich has gotten so distant that-<\/p>\n
Yeah, they’ve walled themselves off<\/p>\n
from the rest of the country at every level.<\/p>\n
But you know that world too.<\/p>\n
Your brother, one could arguably say,<\/p>\n
is a big Hollywood mogul, knows Trump well;<\/p>\n
he’s done business in his area.<\/p>\n
Yeah.<\/p>\n
Is he wrong to live like that?<\/p>\n
Is there something systemically wrong with the country<\/p>\n
that you can live like that?<\/p>\n
I know that world, which is why I can upend it.<\/p>\n
So how would you upend it?<\/p>\n
Look, I don’t accept redistribution,<\/p>\n
and I don’t accept crony capitalism in the corruption.<\/p>\n
I believe in growth.<\/p>\n
I think there are five pillars to it.<\/p>\n
One is turning a tax code away<\/p>\n
from preservation of wealth to creation.<\/p>\n
Two, which is true about American history.<\/p>\n
We live in an age where you earn what you learn,<\/p>\n
making sure everybody has something post-high school.<\/p>\n
Everybody, 100%, set it as a goal,<\/p>\n
and I’ve laid out a plan from pre-K to BA<\/p>\n
and everything between.<\/p>\n
Three, double our research.<\/p>\n
I’m gonna tax the prediction markets,<\/p>\n
and I’m gonna attack online sport gaming.<\/p>\n
And it goes into an innovation fund for R&D.<\/p>\n
NIH, National Science Foundation, DARPA,<\/p>\n
not replacing money, doubling it.<\/p>\n
Four, modernize our energy and digital infrastructure.<\/p>\n
And then fifth, as I proposed in the Dignity Act,<\/p>\n
where you have 23 Republicans and 23 Democrats,<\/p>\n
an immigration bill<\/p>\n
that’s true to being a nation of immigrants<\/p>\n
and a nation of laws.<\/p>\n
And I tell you this one example from a bike trip<\/p>\n
I just had in New Hampshire.<\/p>\n
Met a couple not far from Hanover.<\/p>\n
He’s a plumber.<\/p>\n
She sells real estate.<\/p>\n
They both are on the ACA for Obama, separate<\/p>\n
Their premiums just went up 150 bucks a month.<\/p>\n
And he wants to move into a home,<\/p>\n
they’re not sure they can afford their healthcare.<\/p>\n
The whole system of the middle-class dream<\/p>\n
that I not took for granted, but I know I could achieve<\/p>\n
and I know my kids can, it’s broken for everybody else.<\/p>\n
I think being an American<\/p>\n
is winning the lottery ticket of life.<\/p>\n
And if I decide to do it, it is to restore confidence<\/p>\n
that that possibility still is open,<\/p>\n
doesn’t mean you’re gonna walk through that door,<\/p>\n
but the door’s open to you.<\/p>\n
And for a lot of people, they feel it’s shut.<\/p>\n
Rahm Emanuel, thanks so much.<\/p>\n
Thanks, David.<\/p>\n
[bright upbeat music]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rahm, I was just in Israel for a long reporting trip, and while I was there, you showed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-551558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}