The (Space) Race in the Wild West, ft. Sen. Mark Kelly
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Today we are joined by Senator Mark Kelly. The astronaut. The astronaut. And we had a great conversation with him. We're recording this intro a day later. But he was really one of my favorite conversations that we've actually had with a sitting official. He's a cool guy. I mean, to be married to Gabrielle Giffords, you have to be pretty rad. He's a twin. So there's double of him out in the world doing good things. Are you sure we interviewed him? Well, I'm not sure.

What? Are you sure we interviewed him then? Do you think it was Scott? Can you imagine like that's why Mark Kelly's the best surrogate because he sends his brother out sometimes? Yeah, he's double the time. That's so like Disney. Yeah, it's so Disney Channel. Like that is definitely something that would happen. And as a millennial, I would 100% fall for it.

Such a 90s political movie. We should just do it. He's great. We had a great time with him. I think it's really cool that Kamala Saragets are out here really doing everything from podcasts to TikToks to major interviews. Like she's really, you know, her ground game is unmatched right now. Thank you.

Thank you so much for being here, Senator Kelly. Thank you. Thank you for having me on. We are thrilled to have you here. So let's talk about what is on everyone's minds. As we are recording this, a bunch of new polling just came out showing quite a tight race. But Kamala Harris was leading or tied in all six of the swing states that were...

the most critical in 2020, except for Arizona, where Trump is leading. Arizona seems to have been a harder state for the Harris campaign to crack this cycle. Do you think that's because of the border and immigration? Can you share some of the most common themes that you're hearing from your constituents? Well, Sammy, Arizona is always going to be close in a statewide election.

at least in the past several years, especially for Democrats. When Kyrsten Sinema won a Senate race as a Democrat,

Back in 2018, it had been a long time. You had to go back well over a decade, a couple decades, since Dennis DeConcini was a Democrat from Arizona. And when I was elected, it was the first time to have two Democrats in the Senate from Arizona since the 1950s, since before I was born. And I'm 60. It's been a long time. Just like Kamala Harris. Right.

Exactly. We're the same age. And Tim Walls. We're all 1964 babies. It's a big year. It's really a lot of talent coming out of that year. Last year, the baby boom as well. Well, I say that as a 1989 baby, and there is a lot of talent, namely Taylor Swift, coming out of the year 1989. And some years, they just bear a lot of fruit. So it's not easy for...

Democrats to win in Arizona. In 2022, when I won reelection, I won by about, I don't know, like 130,000 votes or so.

Chris Mays, our Democratic attorney general, won by 280 votes. Wow. That was it. Never say your vote doesn't count. Here in Arizona, they definitely count. So an election, presidential election in Arizona is going to be close. I mean, it was close in 2020. Biden-Harris won by 10,000 votes. So we're working really hard. We're meeting people where they live and work in whatever way we can do.

you know, connect with folks across the state. Kamala Harris has been here recently. Tim Walz has the second gentleman, Jill Biden. I mean, we're hitting the state pretty hard, but it is going to be a close election here in Arizona. And the issues, you asked about the issues. So we're a border state, but we're also a state that compared to some other states was, you know, hit pretty hard by,

Donald Trump's abortion ban by his destruction of Roe v. Wade. I mean, that affected Arizona because we had a 1864 pre-statehood when Arizona was barely a territory. I think it was the year it became a territory. There was an abortion ban and it was still on the books and the Arizona Supreme Court upheld that 1864 ban.

And not only did it affect abortion, it affected IVF and could even still today, I guess, not the 1864 ban, but what Donald Trump has done had an impact on contraception, IVF, abortion. We're still subject to a 15 week ban. So I'd say the combination between

You know, it's kind of like I think of it as like a kind of a tug of war a little bit on these two issues. Border typically helps Republicans. Women's reproductive rights might drive more, you know, suburban women who might be supporting Democrats. But those are the two, I would say, the two bigger issues. So when it comes down to those those two issues, what do you think ultimately will determine the outcome?

the winner? Is it who has the better ground game? Are you seeing just constant ads everywhere? I'm pointing at you right now. Yeah, it's the ground game where I just came off. As soon as you said that. I was late today because I was knocking doors, Senator, because we had to get out there. Welcome back, V. Thank you. I've been talking to a lot of folks who are going out to Canvas or are about to make phone calls.

And what I tell them is, you know, first of all, I say this is not rocket science. If it was, I could help with that. But the way I help here is just explaining it to them that what they're doing, this knocking on doors and making phone calls is

All the data shows, as we analyze campaigns, that that adds up to about 1% of the difference in the vote. Now, that doesn't sound like a lot, but it actually is everything. When you consider how close these elections are in all these battleground states, that is the difference between winning and losing. Who has the better operation? Who has more volunteers?

Kamala Harris's campaign has 120,000 volunteers here in Arizona that are doing those things right now that are knocking on doors, making phone calls, writing postcards to make sure we turn out

So that operation is the difference between winning and losing.

You laugh at the people who are kind of rude to you at the door and you get excited and high five for the people who are nice to you at the door. And if you change somebody's mind, you feel like you moved mountains. It's a really empowering experience. And I also think that ground gave makes a big difference. And the thing that makes me feel good.

really good about where we are is in Arizona and other states, we have tens of thousands, if in excess here in Arizona, of 100,000 volunteers that are doing all this work. On the other side, the Republicans are trying to buy this operation via big donors like Elon Musk as a paid operation.

where they're hiring people to do this work. I don't know if you saw this, but just the other day it was reported that at least some of these individuals are just kind of fraudulently filling out their end of day paperwork. Maybe they're hanging out at a bar or a coffee shop and they're saying they've knocked on so many doors or they're doing all this hard work of the campaign. What they're really doing is

collecting a paycheck and ripping off the Donald Trump campaign, which doesn't really bother me. Exactly. A guy who has a career of just conning people and ripping people off is now getting ripped off himself. So I'm not so bothered by that.

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I mean, I think we know with abortion on the ballot and reproductive health and so many women's issues, and it's a woman candidate finally, you know, who we're getting so close again. Getting women excited hasn't been that hard, but I feel like men have taken a turn getting very involved and feeling very protective of Kamala Harris as well. How do you speak to men about the importance of voting for Kamala Harris?

Well, I think most men are, you know, have close relationships with women, you know, with your mom. I have two daughters. I have a granddaughter right now. You know, the decisions that Donald Trump made when when he was president and what he could do in the future could have a huge but negative impact on their lives.

So I think most men get that. And my granddaughter, who's three, under a Trump presidency and what he will be able to do

It could affect her for her entire life or for decades while she's an adult. The impact that he could have over the next four years, you know, would be he'd leave behind this dumpster fire of a legacy that would affect my granddaughter as a teenager and as a young adult and maybe with regards to things like IVF.

when she one day decades from now is trying to have a family. The same is true for my two daughters. Yeah, it's things like that. And then what I found is that before Roe was overturned, there was a bit of a different understanding about what pro-choice really is about or what the reproductive rights movement is really about. And I think for so long, it was about just having the option. And it's actually not

really only about options because when you foreclose on those options, you're actually putting people in grave danger in many cases when it comes to their health.

And in a state, you know, you could tell us, what are you seeing on the ground other than women not being able to get an abortion for whatever reason? Because it actually is impacting the healthcare system, the, you know, healthcare education system. And we're seeing some delayed data out of Georgia and Texas about women who have, you

unfortunately died because they weren't able to get the proper care. So can you tell us about what's happening in Arizona with regard to those types of issues? Yeah, I think some of these cases across the country of women dying, we eventually learn of their names and their stories. Amanda Thurman in Georgia is one of those. There are others.

It didn't take too long after the Dobbs decision, so after Roe v. Wade was struck down a few years ago now, that this issue had an effect on Arizona. And I remember being on a Zoom call with an OBGYN, and I could see in his office the boxes, cardboard boxes, were piled up against the wall.

And I asked him about the boxes. It's like, what's going on? And he said, well, he was closing his office in Arizona. He had another office in Nevada. So he's going to try to treat some of his Arizona patients in Nevada. But that's not practical for most people. But for the ones that could travel, he could do that. But he was closing his office. More recently, we've seen data.

here in the state of Arizona, that the number of applications to OBGYN residency programs have dropped significantly. So even if we fortunately wind up in a situation where we elect Kamala Harris and we're able to restore

We would have to hold on to the Senate. We would have to win back the House, win the White House. And I personally have committed to temporarily for this issue, ending the filibuster to restore women's reproductive rights. And I think we would have the votes to do that. But even in that situation, and we

We undo what Donald Trump has said. You know, personally, he said he broke Roe v. Wade. If we can put it back together with Kamala Harris as president, Democratic Senate, Democratic House, the repercussions of that.

those applications to OBGYN programs, it's going to affect women here in Arizona for years and years. It'll be harder to get appointments for the healthcare that they need. Some cases, they're going to have to find themselves going to another city. And maybe in the worst case, if we can't fix this, they're going to have to go to

places like California and other states. It just makes it unhealthy and unsafe for everyone. I mean, if there's no OBGYNs, you can't have a safe delivery of children. You can't have endometriosis treated. You can't have hormones treated the same way. There's so many things that people need access to those types of doctors for, and it is already really hard to find a good OBGYN, never mind when they're starting to close up shop. Yeah, and that has happened here. And it's not just that one case. It

It has happened multiple times, and it's going to continue unless we fix this. And the only way to fix this is to make sure that Donald Trump gets nowhere near the Oval Office again.

And it's not just this issue. I mean, I served in the military for 25 years. And to think that this guy could be commander in chief again, he is fundamentally unfit. I could give you a list of thousands of people that should be president before Donald Trump. Can we talk about that for one second, the commander in chief piece? I do some work with the DOD and the Pentagon. And the thing that I've heard from them is like,

If there's one reason to vote for Kamala Harris and you're in the military, it's the fact that she will give deference to the generals in the chain of command. And he has said that he will fill the military ranks with civilian loyalists. And the civilians who work in the PX are already hate the people in the military so much and can be so difficult to work with. Do you really want someone like Elon Musk as sec def? Do you really want someone like his his one of his sons as as a joint chief of staff or whatever?

And how difficult that would be to not just readiness, but to quality of life and to structure and discipline and tradition and the way that everything goes. I mean, he's going to let Paris Island sink into the ocean with climate change. Can you just talk just a little bit more about, you know,

how a President Trump really disrupts one of the greatest traditions we have, which is the chain of command. Well, first of all, Don Jr. is not going to be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff because you've got to be a member of the military. I wouldn't be so sure.

I'm just saying this guy's crazy. I mean, what are they going to put him in as? Who's going to stop him? That's what I want to know. They're going to find Don Jr. Well, that would be the ultimate Banana Republic move, right? You take your son who never served in the military. You send him down to the uniform shop. You put some stars on his shoulder and you...

And Stalin as the chairman. That's what I'm saying. I mean, that's what people are genuinely concerned about. Or like putting, like I said, like putting Elon Musk as SecDef and then having him nuke AI. Like they say crazy stuff. Well, that's a different thing. I mean, you can, a president has, you know, every right to nominate whoever, basically whoever he wants to be the secretary of defense. And that's not out of the question. And I think when we saw from, you know, Donald Trump in version 1.0,

Donald Trump is he had some, you know, in some cases, some really qualified individuals he put into these jobs, you know, patriots who were experienced and, you know, General Mattis and General John Kelly, McMasters, even Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State. I mean, you know, very reasonable and qualified people.

I wouldn't expect anything like that. He has made it very clear that he's going to load up his cabinet with sycophants and, you know, folks. Those people won't work with him. All those people are saying that he's the biggest threat to democracy since anything.

General Milley, General Mattis, they were hardly ever moderates, these people. They're hardline, true conservative Republicans. That is what the Republican Party really was. And the scary thing is that that no longer exists.

exists. And he's just going to do what I say, what I say when when somebody is looking for the, you know, what's the strongest, you know, argument to not vote for Donald Trump. I mean, it is the fact that half of his cabinet has not endorsed him, including his vice president. And these are people that worked with him, know, and saw, you know, firsthand, you know, how just fundamentally flawed

Donald Trump is and why he, you know, has no business being president again. So I think that's probably the, you know, and should be one of the closing arguments here. On top of that, the guy's a convicted felon. I mean, as president, he's not going to be able to go to Canada. Do you, do you find that that's an effective argument that sways? And

an individual undecided voter. I imagine as a senator, you're speaking to a lot of individual constituents. Are there pieces of information, anecdotes, or specific points that you find people who are maybe on the fence or unsure if they're going to come out to vote that actually kind of like closes the deal for them? You don't know for sure ever, but I had a

Friend of my daughter's who she goes to school with here, U of A, my daughter's an architecture student who was an undecided voter who went with us to the Obama rally in Tucson last week.

I don't think she's undecided anymore. The combination of listening to President Obama, who is very good at making a closing argument and showing the contrast between an experienced prosecutor, attorney general, senator, vice president, and on the other hand, you have

a convicted felon who has spent his career trying to rip people off. And Obama didn't use these words, but he puts everybody into two categories. You're either the con man or you're the person being conned. That's the world that Donald Trump lives in.

I don't think she's an undecided voter anymore. She also rode in the car with me. So yeah. But like, why isn't that message at least getting in front of everybody? I think it is. It's if you turn on the TV or you get your news on. No one does that.

TikTok, Twitter, I don't know, YouTube. I mean, the message is there, but it does have to be like burned in. You know, it has to be burned into you. You know, you have to see something like 10 times before it registers with a voter. People are just now starting to really tune in and make up their minds. And I think the information is out there. I think when they really start to think about it, do they really want to go back to, hey,

A president who, when we had a pandemic, told people to inject bleach and take horse medicine. I mean, they should remember those things. I don't think they're forgettable moments in our history. Well, there's just so many things that I think it all just goes into this blurr.

And he, look, if there's anything he is effective at, it is getting people those 10 exposures that need to be convinced. And I mean, I think about the campaign as a marketing funnel. You have to, you do need those touch points and you need those various arguments that'll touch people sort of like and hit them where it'll convince them, not where it's an

an intellectual argument because you don't just have to get them to believe they want to vote for Kamala Harris. You have to get them to stop what they're doing on their busy schedule and actually not forget to vote. Because I believe there's a lot of people who just kind of are like busy that day. Yeah. Yeah. People don't think their one vote counts. And there have been elections that have been tied, not statewide elections that I know of, but

the Virginia House of Delegates in 20, I think it was 2016. And it was tied for a single race, but that race decided which party was in charge of the Virginia House of Delegates. So they essentially had to flip a coin. They actually picked a little piece of paper out of like a crappy old, ugly looking urn to decide. But then that decision was

uh, changed control or kept control. I think with the Republicans in the, in the, in the case of that election, there was also an election here for a state legislature seat in Arizona. I met the woman, she was a Republican. Her husband was running for the state legislature as a Democrat. She did not vote for her husband. And then the election came out tied and then he lost the coin toss. And now she,

Now, like this is years, years later, she feels pretty bad about it.

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Well, the other big issue that I heard that I know you're an unfortunate expert on is the issues of gun violence. Even when we did an activation in North Carolina called Swifties for Harris,

And we had a lot of young people come out that weren't old enough to vote yet, but that were excited for the swift deactivation and brought their parents along. And a lot of them were young boys and girls. And so we were asking them, why would you want your parents to vote? What would you want them to vote for? And they're like, I'd like them to vote so that we're not scared that we're going to get gunned down every day. And it was frequent that

Like, it wasn't like one kid heard another kid say it. It was like, this is top of mind for school-aged children. And that, like, really gave me pause because I had not really thought of anything like that. And it was like their number one thing. And they were like, you know, and I'd like to have a tree to look at when I'm older. But the big concern for them was gun violence in schools. Wouldn't it be top of mind for you if you were, like, eight? Well, sure. My three-year-old granddaughter that I mentioned has already been through a school lockdown. Not the...

Not the drill, like the real thing. Like an actual. Yeah. Now the, the shooter wasn't in the school, but was in the neighborhood. So they had to lock down the school. Now she was two at the time and it was like preschool or. That's terrifying. Yeah. Well for her, cause she was so young, she doesn't know what happened, but if for the kids in that school that were five and six, uh,

Yeah, that's terrifying. And they will have that experience if we don't make meaningful change on this issue. They're going to have that experience over and over and over again as they grow up. And some of these kids will have real shooters in their schools because unless you change something, the issue is not just going to go away.

And what we do know, you know, with my wife, Gabby Giffords, we started an organization to deal with this issue of gun violence. What we know is where the laws are weaker, more people get shot and more people get killed. If you have stronger laws, the states that have stronger laws have much lower levels of gun violence.

So, I mean, it's pretty easy to figure out what we need to do. The problem we have is we have this industry that there is billions and billions of dollars in this industry of manufacturing and selling firearms. And then there is millions of dollars of political money that's devoted to electing people that will keep the gun laws weak so guns could be sold everywhere to anybody.

So that's what we're trying to fix. And we've made some progress. You know, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act is bipartisan. We got Republicans on board with making some meaningful change.

We just have more work to do on the issue and we have to elect people. And those are usually Democrats that are willing to pass laws that'll keep people safer. Do you think we really have a shot at doing it? Like I talked to my dad in Florida and his kind of thing is like, I want to get rid of MAGA because I want my like John McCain Republican Party back, like the thing he was proud of, you know?

And do you think we really have a shot if people show up to get rid of the MAGAism, get rid of some of the extremism and maybe have that Mitt Romney, John McCain, Republican, you know, civil discourse back? I hope so. I don't think it's going to happen overnight. I don't think it's going to happen just because Kamala Harris is president. I don't think Donald Trump is just going to go, you know, quietly off into the night.

I think he'll hang around and be continue to influence the Republican Party. But my hope is that the Republican Party realizes that this has not been a good deal for them, that, you know, they reflect on the fact that they put a guy in the in the White House, that while in the White House, he spent a lot of his time and effort on trying to figure out how you can make more money.

And then he leaves the White House and he sells Bibles with his name on it and $100,000 watches. And he just continues to try to... From China. Bibles made in China. Yes. And the watch probably too. We don't know for sure. But he continues to try to grift off his supporters.

And they're going to get tired of this and and they'll they'll realize that this is not a winning formula. The other thing I think we need, you know, especially in a state like Arizona, I think it's it's good to have a you know, that the Republican Party is reasonable and rational. And, you know, we can work across the aisle on things to get stuff done for the American people. It's it's harder to do that kind of bipartisanship that that really delivers results.

for our citizens when you have an extreme, you know, right-wing Donald Trump built operation that, that just gets, you know, harder to do. So that would be a positive thing. And that's why folks like, you know, we're after this election, when, you know, Kamala Harris is president, it's going to be up to people like Mitt Romney and others to try to figure, figure this out. Liz Cheney and, you know, Adam Kinzinger and others to try to put that,

John McCain, Republican Party back together. What's your level of concern about J.D. Vance as an effective successor to Donald Trump? In either case, whether they win or lose? Well, I know J.D. I assume I'm going to have to work with J.D.,

again when he's back in the Senate on November 12th, and then on January 20th when he might be sitting next to me in the audience as Kamala Harris is sworn in to be our next president. That's what I expect to happen. I'm going to have to continue to work with him. So I'm not so sure if he's going to be the successor of

Do you think he's made himself a bit too aggressively unappealing to women to be able to continue that mantle should they lose?

hey, women, important part of the electorate. And I don't think he endeared himself to moderate women, women who, you know, care about things like reproductive rights. And, you know, there are also a lot of Republican, you know, women that don't want the government making decisions for them. We've, you know, we've seen that recently and that's,

You know, that's how you win elections here in Arizona is convincing moderate Republicans that they should vote for you. So I would I would say, you know, some of the comments that J.D. has made over the last few months hasn't put him in a position.

good position with moderate women. And I imagine that'll have an effect on him going forward. Right. Because in reality, it's not, you know, their platform doesn't end at reproductive rights. They want to come for contraception and IVF.

And you had actually recently written an article about how you and your wife were undergoing IVF at the time that she was shot. And this isn't something, you know, I think maybe a lot of people is widely known. So could you, you know, tell us a bit about that experience? So Gabby and I, um,

So I was previously married. I have two daughters. They were born in 1995 and 1997. Gabby and I got married in 2007. And she wanted, you know, we wanted to have another kid. And by the time 2011 came around, Gabby was...

uh, 40 in January of 2011, we were going through the IVF process in Washington, DC and, uh, had been, you know, doing the, she was doing the shots and the, and she was about to be, she was scheduled on a Monday to have the embryos implanted. Wow. Like that procedure was scheduled. She was going to fly back to DC, I think on Sunday for the procedure on Monday and

But she was shot the day two days before on Saturday. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. So that. Yeah. So the impact that that shooting had on, you know, our community was very public. Right. So six people died, 12 others injured, including a young, very young girl and Gabby's one of Gabby's staff members and a and a federal judge.

But it also had other personal impacts on us, the opportunity to have a child. But hey, we did have the opportunity and we didn't have the government interfering. I mean, Donald Trump's ban on abortion has had effects, has had the effect in some states that IVF was no longer available because, I mean, Alabama being a

an example now that has been fixed for now. But you could see the impact of when the government starts deciding these very personal decisions that they're, and if it might be just on abortion, it has, you know, other ramifications on IVF and contraception and

And where Donald Trump might say, well, he, you know, is what do they say? He's he's the father of IVF. Yeah. I mean, he's the guy that is preventing some women from getting IVF. I don't see how that makes. Also, he's not a scientist. Right. Usually the father of the scientific medical thing is a medical doctor or a scientist.

I'm not entirely sure he really even knows what it is beyond. There's no way Katie Britt gave him the full rundown of what it really takes. And the, cause it's not, you know, it's not just the implanting, it's the retrieval. It's a whole process. And I'm, I'm so sorry that you and Gabby went through that. It is. And I imagine that was its own grieving process as well, because it's,

At that point, you're really in a place of hope and excitement and praying that it's going to work. And it's really...

fascinating to kind of add this into the interplay of issues that were inherent with that shooting where you have this political violence angle, the, you know, access to deadly weapons angle. And now to, you know, also understand that, you know, at the time it wasn't necessarily an issue, but now we know that what some of these

are going for is like a fetal person hood amendment or something. That's what they, that's what they want. Yeah. It's just the audacity to call them pro-life when you look at the ambitions that, that you and your wife had and, and,

the ways in which policy ultimately failed your family in a way. Yeah, for us, it is interesting that there is this intersection between gun violence, political violence, and reproductive health care in IVF. For us, it all came together over one weekend. It usually doesn't impact people like that. But when you consider how those issues impact

impact Americans broadly. We're talking about millions of people across the country are going to be impacted, whether it's through school, you know, lockdowns, shootings, suicide, could be gang violence, mass shootings, reproductive rights, IVF being taken away. We're talking it has, you know, for us it was all mental health issues, yet affects millions and millions of people.

And that's why I want, you know, young people especially to really think about, you know, how this decision that they're going to make here and shortly about who's going to be the next president of the United States is it's not just going to affect them for four years while this person is in office. The decisions that that president makes is going to affect these folks for decades and

And Kamala Harris, you know, what she wants is a future of this for our country that's fair and equitable, where she can help everyday people, middle class folks, bring down the cost of housing and health care and education. Donald Trump cares about one person and one person only. And that's Donald Trump. It's absolutely true.

You have lived quite a unique life, sir. Now you've also seen the earth from space. One last question. What kind of perspective does that give you? Oh, I thought you were going to ask me if it was flat or not. Oh, is it flat? I'm fairly, fairly confident.

Where are the space lasers, Mark? Where are the space lasers and the hurricane machines? I demand to know. Oh, did you see them? The Earth is round, and I've never seen a space laser or those machines. That's because they're at my house. Yeah. The Jews have them. We all know that. Yeah.

Yeah, we're not. We are not controlling the weather. I wish we could, actually. I mean, imagine if we could. That'd be fantastic. There's all kinds of stuff we could do. We could fix the climate change issue. We could stop hurricanes. But no, we cannot control the weather. That is the theme. They do love to accuse people of controlling things. That would control them very differently if they could. And at the same time, they want to—they meaning some, not all, but some—

of my Republican colleagues and people who are running for office, they want to control people's lives in a way that people do not want their lives being controlled by the government. And is not conservative or Republican. Well, thank you so much, Senator Kelly. This has been a pleasure. And I hope that we cross paths again soon. Maybe, you know, at the inauguration, something like that.

I will be there. We'll see you in January. Hopefully it's a good day. It will be. I'm confident. I'm confident in the American people and the American voter that we will do the right thing. So are we. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Senator.

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