This Senator has an Eric Swalwell problem

He's a Democrat from Arizona, but he's been thinking about running for a higher office

and he's been pitching himself as someone who has a new message for Latino voters that can bring them back to the Democratic Party. But Gaego's running to some hot water recently because of his connection to Congress Manarex Wallwell. Eric Swall, like to all of us, my friendship with him.

Our families friendship together with him caught in my judgment, and I was wrong. I deeply, deeply regret that. This week on America, actually, we asked Gaego about predatory behavior in Washington. His plans for immigration reform and more. Let's dig in.

Senator Gaego, thank you for joining America, actually, shadowing me. I appreciate your time. I know that there's been some news this week. I want to get to it later, but I want to start with the premise of why we asked you to come on the show.

We've been thinking a lot about topics that you've been talking about, things like immigration, affordability, even the Democrats' outreach to Latino voters. I come on it to start there. Out of the groups that we've seen over the last year, Latinos may be have the biggest polling shift in terms of backlash against Donald Trump.

“Do you represent the swing state with highest percentage of Latino voters?”

I want to do know what you think is driving this backlash to the administration, at least that we see in the numbers. So two things. Number one, the affordability crisis, in number two, immigration, immigration, enforcement. The affordability crisis, Latinos are probably just also as affected by the economy as

black men.

And so when things start going south, that community first feels at first.

They're the ones that will get fired first, they're the ones that start losing contracts first. And they don't have much savings to actually kind of like get through these bumps, right? So if you see the, when the economy started going south, here, Latinos that already started moving against the president, because they were feeling it first, right?

Number two, immigration enforcement. Now the president had a message in 2024 that if you listened, it said, I want to do mass deportations. And of course, everyone in DC mine will say like, well, how does Latinos not see that? Well, in their mind, in their mind, like what they're talking about is those people that

are coming across the border right now, these massive waves, claiming asylum. They weren't thinking that, oh, you're going to go after the person in my neighborhood that's been here for 20 years, that's a good, that's a good person that works. And so they rationalized it that that's not going to happen. And then to add the fact that they were racially profiling, U.S. citizens has made them turn

and turn very, very fast.

“Yeah, I mean, I think you're isolated a couple of important points.”

Now I've heard you make this kind of case before, particularly that people were more affected to their communities around them than they may have expected from Trump. But you know, if I think back to how explicit he's been about his targeting of immigrant communities, particularly Black and Latino immigrants, I mean, if I think back to the mass deportation, now signs at the RNC, how could you not see this coming?

It did seem like the explicit promise because I think they didn't want to see it coming. They viewed the sound seeker crossing the border in those waves as not being part of their community, right? And I think people kind of forget that, you know, especially Latino communities, long-term Latino communities, did not see the waves of people coming in as being part of their cultural

culture, right? It's not like an inherent collective, right? So it's not some like shared sense of identity. I think sometimes political discussion groups folks. Exactly. Yeah, and a lot of us knew this and we were trying to tell people this because there was,

you know, just to be clear, there was fear from, you know, Democratic consultants in people on the president that if you do that, you're going to lose the Latino vote. When we knew as many of us that are very, you know, well connected to the Latino community, not just like Latino politicians, that Latinos did not see or identify with that mass migration as being part of their collective idea of who they are.

Yeah. Yeah. I hear you. I mean, that brings us to our custom important point because, you know, what you're talking about is pressure levels on president Biden to not necessarily embrace a stronger border

enforcement message that maybe some folks think he should have. But I guess I, when it feels related to the question of what is Democrats own affirmative position on immigration, you know, part of the premise of this show was kind of the try to take Donald Trump out the center. And if we do that and think about that specific immigration, I wanted to ask you like,

what do Democrats stand for when it comes to immigration reform besides just Donald Trump is bad? Number one, we want border enforcement.

And you know, when I ran for office, I led one of the first commercial had was in Spanish

about border enforcement. Mm-hmm. A lot of people understand that some people have come to this country illegally.

“And I think the majority of Americans will prefer, like, superdry will prefer that you”

come here legally. But for some reason, you, you overseaed to be as a, you cross goes, you had whatever it

Get yourself right with the government, get a background check, pay a fine, get in the back of the line.

In case there's people that have been doing this right first.

And then go from there.

“Number two, we want you to go after bad people, good people in bad people up, right?”

And so people have criminal records, people that have, you know, our danger to society, not just to, you know, the immigrant community, but to everybody else. And then lastly, a, you know, flexible and responsive immigration system, right? Because there is going to be times where we are going to need more immigrants to come and do work, do jobs.

And sometimes when we don't need immigrants, I think it's okay as a country to say, you know what? At this point right now, we don't need as many immigrants, we're going to lower the amount of immigration immigrants and visas that we're giving out, right? That's where Americans are extremely rational on this.

It's the, the politicians, I think they have really gone one way or the other. It's either absolutely nothing or absolutely everything. And I think that's just not all a winning message. Nor is that where I am, I mean, nor is where most Americans are, especially, by the way, where most Latinos are.

Half of all Americans wanted to abolish I, according to a recent poll, I just saw, you caught that position ridiculous. I wanted to know why, because if you actually asked somebody, what that means, it's different for everybody else. If you ask somebody, do you think we still need to have a deportation force in this

country? Almost 80% of Americans would say, yes, we need a deportation force, because you're going to have to deport bad people, right? The question that we have to ask is I was like, what is a proper force, what are the rights they have, how big should they be, right?

And so, you know, as I say, like, I have to win a red state.

“There's some people that can just run and say whatever they want and be fine, right?”

But I have a state where there's 300,000 more registered Republicans and Democrats. We've been severely affected by immigration, right? It is my job to have to explain the nuance in order for me to win and to get all the different questions to win in a red state. So do I want to totally tear apart ice and maybe we can move different portions, different

departments, slim it down, because it's because it's so big, it's so bloated. They're going to go after everybody, restrict them to make sure they're only going after criminals and that they're not doing nasty deportations, absolutely. If you tell me, does that mean that ice will not exist?

Sure, ice may not exist, but there's always going to be a deportation force, right?

And I think it's really incumbent upon people that are running for office to be very clear about that, because if not, you're really selling a bill of goods to the left because they're going to want to see something and also you're setting yourself up for a major hit, major hit from the right. And in this time and in this world where elections have consequences, real consequences,

your duty is to win in election. I wanted to ask two questions that we got from reporters. We talked to an advance of this interview. We talked to Caitlin Dickerson, a migratory reporter at the Atlantic. And she pointed out how some Senate Democrats, including yourself, supported the Lake and

Riley Act in 2025, which gave ice new powers to keep people in detention. And you've seen so many prominent Democrats go back and forth between assaling even these basic aspects of immigration enforcement when they're done by Trump. And then at other times in response to what they perceive to be public opinion turning against immigrants, go and vote for very restrictive legislation that makes all these problems

they've been complaining about worse. I guess that thinking about your kind of message of reforming ice now did some Democrats like yourself supporting Lake and Riley help empower the same out of control lies we see right now.

So the $135 billion, the fact that you have Stephen Miller that's leading in versus

the DHS secretaries, you have Judge Kavanaugh saying racial profiling is allowed. And then just in a general attitude from this administration that has zero kind of billy standards, whether it's investigations, pulling people actually accountable, jailing so in these ice agents, showing mass, showing IDs, things of that nature. That is the actual full scope of what they're doing right now.

We also talked with Arizona reporter locally ahead of today and one of the things that came up in that conversation, and she was talking about community pushback against data centers that the construction of data centers has caused some organizing efforts and call some resentment against some more establishment politicians who supported them. So I cover local government a lot.

“I think it has made people think about how they want government to talk to them and share”

information with them. That was a big issue here how the data center was brought forward that people didn't know about it or didn't share about it publicly. And I didn't see another issue galvanized people at quite the same level in their relationship with local government.

You've called data centers a quote, "necessary evil." I guess my question is why are they necessary? Well, two things. The necessary evil doesn't necessarily mean that you give a blank check. But the future of this economy, no matter where you are, is going to be driven by AI.

The question is, how do we tame it and how we regulate it?

Number two, there are some areas that shouldn't go because just because they have electricity,

“it does not mean that we have cheap water, cheap pair or cheap neighborhoods.”

And so we need to get to... I'm going to stay with water shortage. Exactly. So we need to give more control to the states and to the localities to regulate them. There are places where they should go.

It does not necessarily mean it has to be in Arizona. It does not mean it has to be in the cheapest land that these data centers can find. So if I hear you correctly, it's that the question of AI is like centrality in our worker economy is... You're saying that's without question.

It's important. And so it's only a choice between whether we proactively tax these data centers or give

them a place in our shared economy or focus the more workers, rather than what's happening

now, which is kind of an untamed while with it. I mean, I guess there just feels like such a big gap between the certainty that political groups, you know, tech groups, like I would say kind of elite society has about the centrality of AI and people, right? Like we know that that backlash is driven by a sentiment that folks don't necessarily

agree that AI should kind of hold a central place in their lives going forward. I guess... As far as it hasn't really... They haven't seen the benefit of it. So I mean, I could totally understand that.

What they see is their kids, you know, being glued to their phones and then AI lying to them, companies mining their data and selling them.

“And so, you know, this is something that I think both policymakers, but also it's upon the”

AI industry.

They need to show what the benefits are.

Because right now, there is no yet massive skill benefit to society when it comes to AI. We heard Bernie Sanders say to us a couple weeks back that that was a reason for a more Tory on data centers. Why don't you support a more Tory? Well, number one, because I think that we'd fall severely behind.

Then we start losing the future wealth, jobs, and growth that comes from AI. Number two, I think states need to lead also. There's, you know, when it comes to zoning things of that nature, if we could do other federal, we absolutely should. But like, you know, it's incumbent upon a lot of states to actually understand what's going

on. People do have legitimate arguments. They have legitimate rage. There's areas of Phoenix, where they're, you know, it's the middle of an urban area. They're going to put a data center all because it's cheap lands.

And they think because it's a black and brown area that there's going to have, they're going to have less space to do it. After the break, we speak to Senator Geigo about the recent allegations concerning Congressman Eric Swallwell, and how to eliminate predatory behavior in Washington. Just a quick note, we spoke to Geigo prior to Republican Congresswoman and Apollina Luna's

formal complaint against him, alleging Ms. Combs out, a spokesman for Geigo said, quote, "These are right-wing conspiracies." I'm Mitch Furz, two-time indivisible champion, championship MVP, and forward for the U.S. Women's National Team. Before I went pro, I graduated from Harvard with a degree in psychology, which comes

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“Any athlete pursuing greatness knows there's a certain mentality you have to have.”

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From Iran to Venezuela to China, what is driving President Trump's foreign policy? Both Russia and China are big losers if there's a transition in the nature of the Iranian government, which again is why I think we have to see this campaign through. I'm Jake Sullivan, and I'm John Finer, and we're the hosts of the Long Game, a weekly national security podcast.

This week, Trump's former national security adviser, A Charmic Master, and Deputy National Security Advisor, Matt Potinger, join us. The episodes out now, search for and follow the long game, wherever you get your podcasts. This week on Network and Chill, I'm breaking down the institution everyone's talking about right now, but nobody actually understands the federal reserve.

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allegations against congressman Eric Swallwell, who had called you his best friend, you chaired his 2020 presidential campaign, you were financially involved in his AI startup, did

“you have any knowledge of these allegations of misconduct, right?”

You are rumors of predatory behavior on the hill, I wanted to ask you to register. No, no clue, no knowledge of any of the allegations or predatory behavior. That was definitely not what any of us. And look, we've all been having conversations since we're all actually going back. Who do you mean by we friends, members of congress, other supporters, we're all talking

to each other to see what did we do wrong, what did we not see? I want to just follow up, though, because it seems as if the scale of the allegations makes that it causes a gut check on that, because it seems as if this was a known thing among someone in the hill, it seems as if a certainly there was a community of women who were organizing around this, you hadn't heard anything about any of that.

Not about the allegations we're talking about, the sexual assault, the predatory behavior. There is a culture in DC that is certainly existing, we're not just him, but many other politicians. We heard of someone that being, you know, flirty.

But never inappropriate, never predatory, never towards staff and things of that nature.

But look, this is the kind of thing that makes all of us relook at what we have been accepting versus not accepting. Part of the reason some of this has come back on you, though, is that you went out of your way to defend swallel just this month, writing recently on X that Eric is a fighter, considering now what you know, or considering that you saying you heard him maybe having rumors of

being flirty, why proactively defend him? Well, for two reasons, because we had heard this about him, about other politicians for a long time, and nothing had ever surfaced, right? Number two, he exactly knew what to say to me, because I had just gotten off a very hard 2024 campaign, where I had some of the worst, you know, things set about me on commercials

to tens of millions of dollars that my kids have to see, and they, they in some of his staff, push that button on me. And it was a mistake. I mean, without a doubt, it was a mistake.

Let's be clear, and knowing now everything I know of, we've never have done it, but knowing

now everything I know, especially of the sexual sexual perpetrator, we would not have had the relationship that we had. There has been some that have said that this is also a question of your judgment. I wanted you to respond to that. I mean, you've been kind of openly embracing the question of a 20 to 28 race.

Well, do you say to someone who said, who looks at this situation and causes that to question you? To be 100% as, you know, I am more human first than a politician. And my judgment was off because of many reasons, but number one, because I knew this man, it's a family on first.

We weren't just work colleagues. Our families, eight dinner together, our kids were in camps together. And I have to learn from this, and I will learn from this. But, you know, for me, it's not a 20 to 28 question.

It's about what it means to be a better first boss in my office and also a better center

to my constituents. I was reading some 20 to 25 texts of yours that were leaked, and in them, you complained them about, quote, Democrats not allowing men to be men or women to be hot. You lamented that Democrats, like, quote, are the not fun party and no longer embody things like sex, drugs, and rock, and roll.

I also recently read a report that you used the F or the most out of any Senator by a wide margin. - If I put those two things together, is there something of like a growingness, or something that I feel like is a connective tissue

in your brand of politics, or why is it necessary to communicate in that way? - It's not, it's just how I communicate. - It's just how I communicate. - It's just like, like, I, I, yes, I went to Harvard,

but most of my real collective experiences being in the Marines. And, you know, and growing up in the SSH Chicago, like, and every person, yeah, and every person, every part, back of the yards,

“I was always surrounded by working class people, right?”

And working class people, you know, we are rough around the edges. And I think I am representing, I, I'm think I'm, you know, just factually just being who I am. But it doesn't mean, again, that, you know, as a human, we should obviously try to improve,

and that's what I'm trying to do. - Yeah, I mean, I, I, I, I, I asked the questions, but I know there's been a big talk in democratic politics about the need for authenticity. - So, you know, it does feel as if, like,

I, I'm not asking folks to not be who they are, I'm not think that, that's something an elected official shouldn't have space to do. I was just wondering about, if we, if there's any, like, a reflection about what that means, particularly, you know,

as the question of masculinity and its place in democratic politics has become more prominent. - There needs to be a way to be masculine without being, you know, what people would consider toxic.

“And I think there has to be a way for Democrats”

to understand that, you know, men can be part of our coalition.

A lot of times, we deemphasize men in the democratic brand

in the democratic coalition. And, you know, I think there's a way, and this is really time for my experience running for Senate and right for Congress, where we can, you know, make sure that, you know, women feel that they are

protecting our community, that we are, as Democrats, that we are looking out for, you know, the status when it comes to rights, economics, growing their economics, things of that nature, and still also we do this same thing with men.

I don't think there is any, I don't think they conflate each other, or they counteract each other. When you talk to an everyday Latino or African-American, even women, and you tell them, like, you know, I'm gonna make sure you have great wages, you know,

I want to make sure that, you know, we take care of, you know, maternal deaths, you know, bringing it down. And you ask him, like, and I want to make sure that, you know, young men, especially young gladmen, young children, they're not doing well, statistically speaking,

have an opportunity and they feel, you know,

that they're part of our society, they don't see that as, like, well, you are de-emphasizing me. For some reason, the voters don't see it. For some reason, when it gets kind of up to the top policy level of a consultant level, that doesn't happen.

And, like, you know, some of it's like very simple stuff. I remember talking after I won my 2020 for election, some Democrats asked me, how did you do so well with the male vote? I said, look, we did some things that were specifically

designed to get the male vote out to reach out to reach out to them. And, you know, you're like, do you have any ideas? And, you know, for this one politician, I'm like, yeah, you know, Father's Day is coming up.

“You should have a Father's Day appreciation,”

brunch all around your district. And that one politician, a swing district, I don't think I could do that. I'm like, why can't you do that? I don't understand that.

You're like, oh, I'll get hit from the lefty that. I'm like, I don't think that's true. And I think that's true. Right, yeah, I think you think that's true. Yeah. And I think there's people around you

that are worried about this mythological left that's coming to hit you, but it's not true. And there's this certain over-level of self-policing that is creating this environment where we're not reaching out to men.

And not just, you know, black and Latino men, but we don't even approach white men anymore. And I think we, if we're going to have a national party, if we're going to be able to win in places that we need to win order for us to even have a chance

to ever have the majority again. We had to come for also reaching out to, you know, white men within our own values, but not just be afraid. You know, I, I too necessarily think that there aren't necessarily

spaces, particularly in politics when we talk to men directly and things like that. But sometimes, I think there's a difficulty there because the things that men can bond on can sometimes feel like they don't necessarily seem or look

like democratic values, right? Like that, you know, what's bonding men could be things that are semi-messautumnistic or semi-violet or semi-all of those things. Even the things like sports culture or things like that.

Can Democrats create a space that encourages men to come in while we're taining their values? You're, I'm saying, or is the bond between men itself at odds with those values? I think if you're a Democrat,

you can't actually go and have those conversations and be authentic enough to actually, you know,

“create that bond, especially if you have to even”

such anistic, it's not going to happen, right? If it's not in you, it's not in you, nor should you be a Democrat for your misjudges. - Yeah. - Remember what? Number two, you do have to accept

that they're not going to be perfect. You, as a politician, need to be nearest perfect as possible, right? You have to be able to, you know, hold your values and still be able to communicate on the areas that you have agreement with.

Where are those bonds? So like, I do find the bonds over sports, the sports that I particularly love, you know, for example, boxing is a big thing for me. And when I go to the boxing gyms,

when I go to the boxing tournaments, I, you know, hosted a boxing tournament recently, I don't talk politics, right? I'm just there. And a lot of what I do that is,

number I guess I'll have boxing, but I think of the position as effective is because the voter doesn't just see me as this elite elected official, 'cause the fact that I'm there with them, right?

And I think that that still can happen. I think Democrats, when they feel authentically, you know, excited about any time a sports should go in sports. Go to sports, right? Like you would just say that there's a way

that like, if you just show up to it as yourself, then, and you don't ask that voter to check off every box on the list, then you're doing that work. Don't overthink this, but don't do it,

don't do it in a campaign season. It also comes off as an authentic job. You're just like, like, oh, the sudden, I'm really into like, you know, the NBA playoffs

and like, you've never talked about the NBA playoffs.

No, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can certainly feel it when a politician feels like they're dipping into something as a means of outreach or all of a sudden when they all feel like Iowa fans that match madness.

But if you feel it by and by. Well, nobody, that's the problem. If you look at Donald Trump goes to UFC fights,

“'cause I think he actually does like UFC fights, right?”

But he also uses, use that smartly,

that were basically not following politics.

You know, he did it just recently. In the middle of a war, he goes to UFC with Marco Rubio and sits down and does it for two reasons. Number one, he knows his numbers are lagging with Latinos horribly, with Latino men especially.

What are they watching right now? It's not CNN. It's not even CNN. Spaniards, sorry. I love you guys, but this is happening right now, yeah.

But they are watching UFC. But that's definitely the plot process, yeah. I wanted to end kind of thinking about something that you've talked about openly, which is a decision process about thinking about

room for president, about 2021. I referenced it a little bit earlier. You just got to the Senate in 2024. I wanted to know how did you go from that point of that arrival to getting to this type of open decision-making

process, what was it in those steps in the way

“that made you say, hey, maybe I should take a step up here?”

Well, number one, he's, again, had many decisions and we're very far from any decisions. Yeah.

The most important thing, Cosplay should think right now,

is that we need to win elections, right? Democrats, we need to both win in 2026 and 2028, really to end hold, to be able to change the direction of this country. And the direction of this country is not going to be going

well, if we are stuck with Republicans in power or be able to obstruct. Because they still have control over the Supreme Court. They could still have a lot of strength within the Senate even if we take out the House and have the White House.

I get that, but I'm saying the question of what is the unique lane and unique voice that you think you're bringing to that discussion. If that can't be replicated, maybe by others around you, do you think there's one?

Well, I certainly think that I have a unique lane, especially when it's coming to working class people, Latinos, veterans, can either be a replicate that?

“Maybe that's why you have all these years to figure that out.”

That's why you have campaigns to suffer that. I don't think, yeah, I'm certainly not naive or consider enough to think that I am the only person that can win this, right? That's not how the world works.

We certainly will make a decision first of all based on my family situation, but secondly, based on, do I still a particular niche that can't be filled by someone else that can assure victory for the Jemperhack party?

I've always wondered about those family talks.

Like, you mentioned your children? How old are your children? Nine, almost three, and ten months. I can't imagine being those age and my parents at Stalin says,

"Hey, you think I should represent better than that." You think I should represent better than that. You talk to your wife. You talk to your wife. Let's be clear.

You're talking to your wife because in the end look, I just got off a campaign where my poor wife started the campaign pregnant and did the campaign pregnant with two different kids. That's how long the campaign was.

Another one's actually shoulder the burden of this. And so you first have to talk to them. And then you also have to make decisions about what are you willing to give up? And what I say when you're willing to give up is

when you have young kids, you're giving up some memories that may not bother them, but it will bother you.

“And if you're thinking about what you want to remember”

on your deathbed, it's not going to a rally. It's not going to a fundraising dinner. It's like, I got to see my kids recite. Oh, I got to go to my kids, literally game. I got to take my kids on vacation, not me bothered

by people around me or anything else like that. For someone like me, it does bother me. I grew up without a dad. And I kind of want to still have the full experience of being a dad. - Senator Gallagher, thank you so much for joining us.

- Yeah, thanks for that. - America actually will be in your feet every Saturday. With an interesting interview in politics or culture, you can also watch these episodes every week on the Vox YouTube channel.

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