I don't hear you right now, Zach, it kind of went away.
All right.
Can you hear me now?
Now I can.
Yep.
Okay.
Something happened, but we're good.
All right.
That sounds good.
Stand by.
Getting rid of upstairs.
Okay.
Yeah.
We're pushing buttons and dials somewhere in the building, so we'll be ready in a minute
or so.
I know where he sakes.
Did you get in last night?
Yeah.
Did you get up?
Yeah.
I mean, you know, it's hard for two weeks, your home, you're doing a bunch of stuff, getting
things done.
You get back out there.
There's nothing of consequence to vote on, you know, your life legislatively is utterly
meaningless.
So it's been a bit of a challenge kind of reorienting after a couple of weeks, but that's why just
getting home is good.
I'm sure.
All right.
We are ready.
Well, and then we'll start.
Sure.
If there's one constant with Donald Trump as president, it's that he creates a firehose
of news.
And just as it appears, one topic will dominate the national conversation and another issue
pops up.
Joining us now to talk about the democratic response to the first 100 days of Trump's
second term in office is Congressman Mark Pokan.
Thanks for your time today.
Yeah.
Thanks, Zach.
I appreciate having me.
So from doge to immigration to tariffs, have Democrats really found an issue to focus
on when it comes to responding to Trump?
Well, I mean, I think we all should be focused on the economy, right?
That was the number one issue for Donald Trump when he got elected, half the people in exit
polls said they voted on the economy.
And it's also the number one issue hurting Donald Trump right now, whether it be the
indiscriminate use of tariffs that's, you know, blowing the stock market up and causing
prices to continue to rise, his inability to lower costs, he promised to do a day one.
It's been just the opposite in most areas.
And you know, the rule of law and the chaos and the flooding of the zone of so much is
really hard and it's kind of exhausting for people who are calling into the office trying
to keep up with what's going on.
Well, so many of Trump's actions have come through executive orders and many of those
are now being fought over in court.
And even on the topic of tariffs, some of them are announced and then rolled back.
So do you think the general public actually understands what's happened versus what is
just being talked about?
You know, one of the things Donald Trump does well for himself, and that's usually how he
does things for himself, is he floods the zone with a lot of different messages on any given
issue.
So you may hear what you want to hear, but you know, just take tariffs.
You know, I would defy anyone to tell me exactly where we're at on tariffs right now because
I don't know if I could tell you, they're on, they're off, summer on, summer off, a
bunch are on, penguins are paying tariffs, and I'm not sure where we're at today, right?
I think tomatoes just got tariffs in Mexico.
So you really can't keep up with it, but the problem is we're hearing from a lot of business
people their costs are going up because of tariffs and things that aren't even tariff
they're going up because this is a backdoor way for people to raise other costs.
So at the end of the day, people are going to start paying more and more for things as
Donald Trump throws these tariffs out without a real plan.
And you know, targeted tariffs can be done well.
If China is dumping cheap steel in the United States, we should absolutely respond with targeted
tariffs.
It's a very effective tool.
But if you use a screwdriver to pound a nail in, it's not as effective.
You can't use the same tool for everything, and that's what Donald Trump is doing.
And at the end of the day, it's just costing people in Wisconsin and across the country
more money out of their pockets, which is the opposite of what he promised.
I mean, historically, you don't want to go back more than a few decades to the Democrats
were the party of targeted tariffs and protecting certain American industries.
So how do you message that when there are still members of your party that remember when tariffs
were part of the Democratic platform?
Yeah, I think just the way I did, you know, you wouldn't use a screwdriver to do every
single job in your house, right?
If you're pounding a nail end to put a picture on the wall, you're probably not going to
use the back end of a screwdriver for that, right?
And he's using one tool, tariffs, for absolutely everything.
We should renegotiate trade deals.
We should use targeted tariffs.
Those are all valid ways of addressing the economy.
But when you throw them out on all kinds of countries, including major trading partners
that we rely on in Wisconsin, like Canada and Mexico, when it comes to agriculture, for
example, you know, you're not doing tariffs the right way.
You're just throwing them all out there.
I mean, when a country that only has penguins gets tariffs, someone's not really thinking
through this.
And that's the real problem right now.
They're used in a way that becomes a tax on all of us, and people are going to see their
costs keep going up.
And that's the opposite again, but what we were promised.
We had your colleague, Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany, on last week, and he said tariffs
are a negotiation tactic that will ultimately lead to lower tariffs globally.
He said, quote, you would hope over the next couple of months that with these active negotiations
going on, that we're going to see some good things happen.
What would you make of his assessment?
You know, I think he's going to Minnesota and getting some medical marijuana or something
because I'm not sure that is an answer that anyone else honestly believes, including
other Republican members of Congress I talked to, they're concerned about tariffs.
I just had a company from in our area, I'm not going to say the name of the company, but
they sell a lot to China because it's a higher medical device, let's just say.
And because of that with the tariffs right now, they're leading market, they're going
to have a much harder time of selling to that market.
And most of their stuff, 70% here is sourced in the United States, 48% just in Wisconsin.
So if you start stopping those sales because of the response tariffs and the indiscriminate
use the way the president's doing, they're feeling a real impact.
And I hear that from manufacturer after manufacturer in the area.
So it's not just that consumers are paying more, it's that companies are going to start
feeling this.
And we've even heard of some building projects starting to be canceled because of increased
costs, untaired goods like some of the lumber that has been coming from both Canada and
Mexico and aluminum costs.
So right now, there is not a plan, right?
I think when Donald Trump answered the question in the debate about a health care, they said
you have a plan, he said he had a concept of a plan.
Everything seems to be a concept of a plan, not a plan.
At some point, we really need plans.
Eight years ago, there was Paul Ryan leading the House during Trump's first two years.
And Republicans were largely focused on passing tax cuts.
It really seemed to ignore most of Trump's other agenda.
A lot of those Republicans have been replaced in Congress with Trump loyalists.
So what, from your perspective, what is the difference between then and now when it comes
to the Republican majority in Congress?
Let me clarify one thing.
The holy grail for the Republicans is still this tax cut for the wealthiest.
That's what they're trying to get done by Memorial Day.
I don't think they'll get it done by then.
But the trillion and a half dollars they're trying to steal from the middle class and those
who aspire to be in the middle class through things like health care and long term care
through Medicaid, food assistance for kids, the number one program that keeps kids out of poverty,
a 45 percent cut to federal funding for education.
All of that is to pay off this tax cut that originally was estimated at four and a half
trillion dollars to extend it.
Now, the Joint Committee on Taxation said no, it's five and a half trillion dollars.
And that's all money literally stolen from working class people to go to Elon Musk and Donald Trump
and people who can afford to go to Marlago.
So even though the faces may have changed, the holy grail has not.
But when you flood the zone and make people think that we're going to talk about Greenland
or Canada becoming the 51st state, things that are never going to happen,
then you're not talking about the money that's being stolen out of your wallets
in order to give Elon Musk a tax cut.
And that's why I think it's really important that we remember.
There is no difference in their agenda.
It is always about their donors and the wealthiest in this country.
Even more so now that you've got Donald Trump in office and Elon Musk
in an elected billionaire turning on and off federal funds,
turning off funds for programs that middle class people rely on.
So I really just want to keep the focus on that.
You've been part of a trend of Democratic members of Congress holding town halls
in Republican districts.
And part of this is to call out Republicans for not holding their own public forums.
But what are you hearing from people?
Are they just local Democrats coming to talk to a Democrat or are they other constituents?
Yeah, this is the ultimate common sense test, right?
It doesn't pass the smell test.
If you say you're doing something good for the American people,
but instead of doing town halls to share that information,
you'd want to go on the rooftop, right, with a megaphone and scream it.
If you're doing something good, you're hiding in your basement and not doing town halls.
And Republican leadership has told Republican members not to do town halls.
Well, I smell that and that smells pretty bad.
What they're doing, again, is stealing money from us to do this tax cut.
So I'm going to make sure that people in Wisconsin aren't getting ripped off.
So I've done several town halls in Derrick Van Ordon's district.
He's never done an open public town hall in two and a half years.
So people want to be heard.
I did one last week in La Crosse and 350 plus people showed up.
They want to talk about those cuts to Medicaid long-term care.
Don't forget, that's 1.3 million people in Wisconsin.
55% of seniors in nursing homes get help from Medicaid.
One out of three kids in Wisconsin gets their health insurance.
From Medicaid.
So, you know, that's why they're hiding in their basements,
because they don't want to talk about what they're actually doing.
And just the opposite needs to happen.
People need to be heard.
That's why the turnout was so big in that April election.
People just want to be heard.
And that's why we're doing the town halls to make sure people can be heard.
When it comes to people being heard, if the economy continues to slow down,
it is people really feel the pain of these cuts and the tariffs.
Do you think your colleagues in Congress will be more responsive to their voters
or more loyal to Trump in that area?
Well, you know, that's the problem.
I was told there were four Republican senators
that would have voted against some of these bad cabinet picks.
But they had death threats against their family members,
not just them.
You know, unfortunately, that's part of what we sign up for.
But when your family members are getting the death threats,
they just said that was a step too far and they couldn't vote against the nominees.
And that is part of the problem.
Republicans privately will tell you that they don't know what Doge is doing either.
They'll tell you some of this, but they'll never say it publicly,
because of retribution, whether it be from MAGA or Donald Trump,
or Elon Musk directly by putting money against you.
So that's the problem.
What we need is some backbone right now,
and we don't have that in the Republican Party.
You're not going to add a lot of profiles and courage.
I think this next two years in the Republican Party,
but we need more Liz Cheney's and Adam Kingsinger's
and maybe fewer sycophants,
which is what we've got a lot of people right now in Congress acting like.
Last week, the FBI arrested a Milwaukee County judge.
She faces a felony charge for obstruction
for allegedly helping a suspect avoid immigration officials who want to do arrest him.
What message does that send both in Wisconsin and nationally?
Well, it's a very targeted message.
I mean, Donald Trump, where he's losing the most,
has been in lawsuits.
There's over 160 lawsuits because he's doing so many illegal actions,
and there's been positive adjudications in over 60 of those cases by over 40 judges.
So it's not like it's one court, 40 different judges,
including judges appointed by Donald Trump are ruling against him.
And he is by and large following those.
There's a couple of high-profile cases,
Mr. Garcia and El Salvador, and I think the AP News case.
But everything else, he is the caver in chief.
He is following the court orders as he should,
because what he's doing has been against the law.
And I think that's what he's trying to do,
is send a message to the courts,
because he's not happy that this is a nation that follows the rule of law,
and that's why he's losing.
So he's trying to now target and go after the courts.
And this is an action that is kind of over and beyond,
I think what anyone would expect to be the reaction for what happened.
But he wants to send a chilling message that the courts cave to him as well.
And the reality is it's Donald Trump who's caving over and over,
as these courts are saying,
this is a rule of a nation that follows the rule of law.
And that's by conservative and liberal and moderate,
and every kind of judge that's out there.
And at the end of the day, I think that's a positive thing,
and people really should celebrate that we have an independent branch of government
following the law, and that's good.
Democratic supporters have been comparing Trump to Hitler,
and even presidential nominee Kamala Harris said Trump was a fascist last fall.
Should Democrats be more careful in the language that they're using
as part of the rhetoric in this debate?
Yeah, I mean, what I use is we don't have kings,
we don't need an authoritarian leader,
because that is what Donald Trump wants.
He likes those folks around the planet that can just
make decisions, but again, we are a nation that follows a rule of law,
and that's what every leader, including myself, has to follow.
So for Donald Trump to be doing what he's doing,
and so often breaking the law without regard for what he's doing,
he does think he's a king, and I think people should call him out.
So if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck,
I think it's fair to call it a duck.
And in Donald Trump's case,
just by the sheer number of court rulings he's lost to
show you that his actions are often illegal.
All right, Congressman Mark Polcan, thanks for your time today.
Yeah, thank you.
Cut it down?
I can't hear your...
Oh, there you go.
Thank you again.
I really appreciate it.
Yeah, no worries, Zach, take care, all right?
All right, see ya.
Yeah, bye.