[MUSIC]
Hi, I'm Nat Towson. You're listening to American Power.
“I'm your host, speechwriter comedian, other kinds of writer, and most nobly of course podcast host.”
I am joined as always by our panel of experts, our policy and military expert, Chad Scott,
Chad has a going. >> Go on well, super bad excited for this conversation. >> Me too, and our energy expert, Renewable Oil, the entire energy sector, you know, is Mr. Global, I'm here with Mr. Matt Randolph. >> Hey, Matt, how are you?
>> I'm doing great, and I'm very excited because we do have a special guest today, and I want to jump right into that conversation so we can get into the meet of it. Today, we are joined by Congressman Adam Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, and one of the longest serving voices in Congress on national security, military readiness, and U.S. foreign policy.
And Congressman Smith previously served as chairman of the committee, and has spent decades overseeing the Department of Defense, U.S. military operations, weapons procurement, force readiness, and America's broader strategic posture in the world. He's been deeply involved in debates surrounding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the current situation in the Middle East, China, support for Ukraine, Russia.
There's so much we're excited to talk to him about, including the current conflict with Iran, and he represents Washington's ninth congressional district. And as Wylergaard, it is one of the key congressional figures in shaping democratic defense, and national security policy. Please welcome to American power Congressman Adam Smith.
>> Well, thank you, NAP, who shared the opportunity. >> Of course, Congressman, we're really excited to talk to you today, and we want to talk initially about the -- we're currently pertaining to Iran.
“I think it's what's on people's minds right now, so I'm going to want to start with that.”
And we are well past the May 1st deadline for the war power's resolution. And I actually wanted to ask Chad, did you want to jump in and ask a more specific question about that? Because that's where I'd like to start the discussion today. >> Yeah, and that -- so as a -- and that was a looting to Congressman, certainly,
when it comes to Iran, we were past that May 1st deadline, war powers resolution to 60 days, where a president is exposed to and unauthorized hostilities, unless Congress authorizes them. The president seems to be getting around this by saying the ceasefires in place. But let's be honest, I feel it like it really only exists on paper.
We all somewhat know that a blockade is broadly seen as an act of war. The U.S. conducted further strikes on May 7th. But the administration said, quote, unquote, that was below the threshold of hostilities, which I don't know how much more hostile you can get than striking the enemy. But given the president's stance on Iran, do you believe Congress still has a meaningful
decision-making role here, or has his president see effectively taken over that article, one war power from Congress, and practically speaking, what can Congress do now? Did they pass new authorization's forth, so withdraw, restrict funding, or are you guys in Congress just left trying to catch up after the president has already committed U.S. forces?
Yeah, there's two separate conversations here. One is the policy around the Iran War itself, which is deeply troubling. And I know we'll get into that a little bit. We'll talk about that piece of it. The only problem with the analysis that you have is it sort of takes us down a procedural
“path, which is fine, and I think it is really important, who has the power to commit”
forces? How do you handle that? But right now, in the short term, the more important part is what we are stuck in a
vast place in Iran, never should have gotten there in the first place, or how do we get
out of it? But with that said, I walked down to procedural role, and yes, this is a 200-plus-year battle between the executive and the congressional branch. The founding fathers made the president, the commander-in-chief of our armed forces, which empowers him to use those armed forces as he sees fit, and then very vaguely gave Congress
the power to declare war. They do not define what war is or anything about it. And historically, the president has exercised his power as commander-in-chief in a way that Congress has been very, very hard pressed to stop. So as a practical matter, yes, the president and all presidents have had this power, and
they've used it in a variety of different ways. Gosh, President Clinton, you know, started hostilities against Serbia and Kosovo without congressional approval, that ended before 60 days, but Congress actually voted on it, and we voted it down, it was a Thai vote, but it didn't pass, and you want to head anyone. You know, Barack Obama initiated hostilities against Libya and asked for congressional approval.
Sorry, he notified Congress that this was happening.
After 60 days, he said hostilities had ceased, so there was never a vote in Congress, even
though hostilities had not ceased after 60 days. So yes, there's a practical matter, the president's a natural executive authority.
He's one person who has to make one decision.
We're 535, we have to figure out some way to agree.
That gives the executive greater power. Now I think the courts have expanded that power in a very unwise, unconstitutional way in a series of rulings, but just as a natural matter, one person, executive branch, controlling all of that is going to have more power than a body of 535 people. Now what we can do and what we've been voting on is to disapprove the world, especially
“saying, no, you have to stop this war until you get congressional approval.”
So we can do that. As far as no Republicans are sorry, a couple of Republicans have voted for. Those things haven't passed. So the other thing we can do is cut off money, something that was done to help in the Vietnam conflict.
So we can do those two things. Right now, the biggest role that Congress plays in all of this is to drive public opinion. Because most presidents, the current one seems to be an exception to this rule, but most presidents do respond to public opinion. But if a war is widely unpopular and Congress is part of driving home that message, that
will cause the president to recalculate. This president seems somewhat immune to that, and the Republican Party seems somewhat immune to public opinion right now. So that isn't working as well, but that's what we can do.
But the bottom line answer to your question is, yes, the president has a lot more power
than we do. We have to be persistent and creative to try to contain and control his use of the military. So thank you, sir, so now I know you mean you were talking offline, and you had a really great question that pertained to this that came. Yeah, I was curious, because vote on a 2023 bill about sanctions in Iran, and limiting
the president's power to add or remove sanctions. And you voted against that, and curious, if you could talk about the motivation behind that vote and whether you were granted or whether you feel, how you feel it factors into the current crisis. Well, the sanctions are different than war.
Yes, I'm very curious how you feel that it connects. Entirely different conversation, look, I want to give the executive branch power to do foreign policy, and certainly sanctions have historically been something that the president has had a fair amount of control of it. So I see it as an entirely different conversation.
And look, I am not online full of the challenge that Iran presents.
“Now, I think the maximum pressure campaign of using sanctions was actually working before”
we stupidly stumbled into this war. Iran was a player in the Hamas negotiations, and what I believe was taking place was President Biden was negotiating a release of hostages while, at the same time, we were trying to get kind of rain in the power of the public, trying to rain in the powers of the president. I didn't want to tie the president's hands to negotiate.
I have long been of the opinion, and this war I think is proving me correct, that as difficult as the Iranian problem is and as a problematic as they are, that diplomacy and negotiations is the better option than war. So yes, I wanted to preserve the president's decision space to make those decisions, to confront the Iran challenge without stumbling into the catastrophe that is the current conflict
in the Middle East.
I just want to kick it over to Mr. Global for a second and talk to you a little bit about
the energy sector. As there are a question that you'd like to lead with here, I have a few thoughts myself. Sure. Yeah. Today, the president announced that he wants gas tax holiday.
This was something that came up in 22, and one thing I noticed immediately was that a lot of the folks that were against this in 2022 or suddenly big fans of it, I heard Mike Lee came out today, and he suddenly wants to get rid of the federal gas tax permanently. In 2022, he called it every name in the book, I was just curious, because I opposed it in 22 and now, honestly, yeah, and honestly, it's one of those things that I don't think
it's the end of the world if it passes, like, it's not something I'm passionate about. I just believe in letting the markets do what they will, and I think this sort of extends things that don't need to be extended, but I just wanted to get your thoughts on the gas tax and how you look at that and how you feel about it honestly. Sure.
“Let me try to walk through this quickly, and I think it is important to frame the conflict”
and Iran, and essentially, you know, the president has said all manner of different things, but putting a part what he said, and you can see what happened, it's very clear that when he started this war, he was convinced that a three, four, five week bombing campaign could essentially break the Iranian regime, either hopefully overthrow it, or put them to the point where they would capitulate to whatever we want.
That's what the president thought that was really stupid, okay, and anyone looking at the military reality of who Iran is and what an air campaign can and cannot accomplish would have very quickly concluded that. But he did that. That's a pretty popular conclusion on this podcast as well, just so you know, he stepped
out into the street and the truck kept coming.
Now I'm standing there like, "Ooh, now what do I do?
And that's where the blockade come from, well, we'll leverage them that way.
“I won't walk down that road, but that is unlikely to be successful as well.”
So he is weakened our position by giving Iran basically the freedom to seize control of
the straight of war moves. Because Iran can argue to the world, "Hey, we're doing it because we got an existential threat coming out." So if they tried to do this without us attacking, then the rest of the world would have been far more sympathetic to our position.
Now we're kind of screwed, all right? And we need to negotiate the best settlement we can negotiate. I don't know what Trump's going to do, he doesn't know what he's going to do as bad. Now, how does this affect energy? Two pieces of this.
One, there's long been this myth that somehow we can become energy independent, that we can drill enough and produce enough oil and whatever else coal so that we're no longer dependent upon the globe. Well, and Mr. Global, I'm guessing from your name, that you understand this. It is a global marketplace, okay?
We produce more oil than we consume right now. Now, by the way, I will point out that we also produced more oil than we consume under the Biden administration. All right, this notion that he was shutting down fossil fuels is ridiculous, but it's a global market.
So if the price goes up, I mean, our oil companies are making a lot of money right now. So if you happen to live around around that, good for you, but if you happen to have to buy the product, you're screwed.
“So the only way that we're going to reduce our dependency on Middle East oil, which has”
been something we've been talking about ever since the first oil crisis in the mid-70s,
the only way to do that is to reduce our dependency on a oil itself, okay, and to give ourselves alternatives. You know, the only way you have an alternative is if when you come driving up to the gas station and gas to $7.50 a gallon, you have the option of plugging in your vehicle or getting another source of power.
And that gets us into a long conversation about developing those other sources of power, nuclear, very important, but even when solar, geothermal fusion is coming, I'm optimistic about fusion, believe it or not. So making massive investments and giving ourselves options, look, I don't blame the 20th century for what they did.
We had a clear energy policy throughout the 20th century, cheap oil. That was the policy. In that drove a lot of the politics, they had us involved in Middle East and elsewhere went to the places. But here's the thing.
They worked, you know, we grow them of growth, the most prosperous economy, the world has ever seen. And we had a affordable energy. But that's not going to work now, so let's come up with a different energy policy on the gas station.
So this is where it was enormous environmental costs, too, I feel like we should point out. Right. So that wasn't sustainable at all ever, right? But it wasn't exactly what you're saying. In our defense, when the whole thing started, we really didn't see that come.
Okay, you know, we didn't make the conscious choice to go ahead and burn everything down.
I was like, well, you got to use energy and then the planet came nine billion people.
It's true that we didn't know about carbon emissions as much in 1890 as we do that. Right. Yeah. And that's kind of my point, is once we learned that it was time to develop a different policy.
And it's just been a few decades since then. Yeah, oh, gosh, yes. Oh, he happens. Yes. This was 30 years and four years ago, mate.
And we have stubbornly insisted on not doing that. So you're absolutely right about that. As far as the gas taxes concern, look, our debt has just reached over 100% of GDP. And we are living in something for nothing, all rights, no responsibilities politics. And it's one of the things that I've been doing this for a long time.
I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to be able to do it, because my job is simply to give people something for nothing, promise them whatever they want to hear. You know, you can't run a country that way. You know, he was Trump, not only is he trying to increase the defense budget by 50%. He did $4 trillion for the tax cuts and then no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax
on anything. Yeah. No revenue. Okay. Taxes on the price you pay for civilization is the cliche goes, won't get.
And now we want to get rid of the gas tax. So what? So we can just officially bankrupt the country once and for all, you know, and here's the other thing about the gas tax. I'm not certain about this.
But oil companies price their product by and large at what they think people are going to pay. I don't know what the federal gas taxes I suppose I should. But it's probably 20, 25 cents, something like that. You get rid of it.
How much of that savings is really going to go to consumers and how much of that oil company is going to say, look, we got a used to pay in $6.00 in a quarter for gas. Let's just keep in pay in $6.00 in a quarter for gas. And at the holiday ends, our prices likely to actually decrease in response or do we think
“that they will just keep the level of the consumers already really to pay?”
I hate the idea of getting rid of the gas tax with an absolutely abiding passion is the short answer to your question. That's pretty unequivocal. I'm glad you said that because to me, it will only increase demand.
You need demand destruction in that market.
Like the cure for high prices is the high prices, people buy less that brings up to supply
it lowers the price.
“In addition to that, I think it's largely psychological and it's also meant to improve polling”
numbers. One way I framed this to my followers last week was, you know, you're going to save $10 a month on gas. If the government sent you a check, want some up for $10 to help you pay for gas. So do you be excited about that or would that actually make you angry because it's such
a pit and I think when you think about it in those terms, people are like, yeah, that would, like, I probably wouldn't even cash it. Like I'd probably throw it away. I'd be so angry. So I'm with you.
I do oppose the gas tax. I think it does. Yes. Really? Yes.
Yeah. The suspension. We should have a sense. Yeah. Yeah.
I oppose the suspension as well.
And I did in 2022. I'm only nitpicking for clarity, but so Congressman, is this just another example of the
“classic Republican strategy of like fighting sticker shock versus actual systemic change?”
Like the idea is essentially, you're saying, you know, you need taxes taxes of the price. So it frees us up. I totally agree. This is just another example of, oh, the cost that you're paying out of the pump or the, you know, people aren't doing the major calculation of how much taxes are actually
improving. You know, where that money is going, but you can see when you're spending money. Is it just relying on people misunderstanding cost at that very, very basic level? Well, I think it's simpler than that. And it's not just the Republican part, you know, it's, it's just promising people
money.
You know, and that's something I worry about, you know, right and left.
It's like, yeah, I know the easiest way to get someone's vote is to give money. Okay. Yeah, but at the end of the day, you wind up and doubt up to your eyeballs and not having made any good decisions. And I see this on the left and on the right.
We Democrats promise free healthcare, free childcare, free education, free transportation, free housing, and that really doesn't work, pass a certain point. We don't have the tendency. You're crap. So I don't think the problems that's really paid off.
I don't think we have anything that you just listed. Like, I, I, I, I, I, I, I hear what you're saying, but it hasn't failed yet. We haven't tried it yet. I mean, we know, maybe some, uh, municipal levels, but there's not a, I mean, Massachusetts has health care, you know, but yeah, these are not like, but they're not like.
Yeah. Yeah. What's that? Yeah. I mean, they have a healthcare system that, you know, that makes sense.
So yes, promising free stuff to people is a cheap way to get votes. But, you know, now the debt is, well, turning it and calculated that the publicly owned debt is at, like, I think, $32 trillion a year, I'm sorry, $32 trillion total. We don't, we just don't have a lot of space to, to, to, to, to, to promise any more free stuff.
And yet we keep doing it. Perhaps, that the opt, just spirit purely optics, right, because you're talking about giving people money, promising free stuff is very easy to be happy about, right? Um, do you think that that perhaps reframing the focus on affordability rather than free or kickbacks or things like that is a way that we can move forward?
Because I think a lot of Americans, very obviously, are feeling crunch right now. And yeah, please don't misunderstand. That's what matters. Right, the issue of costs is 100% problem and it is, and it's somewhat easy to explain this.
And I, I know this, I grew up in a blue collar family. Um, my father was a bag of Chandler at United Airlines, modest lower middle class, um, but I know what the basis were of the opportunity that I was able to have. And there's really four big costs and then there's the wages part of the equation on the other side, but housing, health care, education, energy.
When you go back to when I was born in 1965 and raised out city of C tech, what my family had to pay for those four things throughout, you know, my growing up, which I guess extends through my law degree when I was 25, it is less than 10% of what it is now. I mean, education staggering that the tuition that I paid for the seven years of education that I got, I added it up the other day. I paid like $32,000 total for seven years of education,
including a law degree from the University of Washington, I graduated in 1990. That same number to go to the same school so that I went to now is pushing $500,000. Okay. The house, my father bought for $15,000 in 1971, very small, very old. And you know, now is going for $400,000, right? So that's the crutch, that's the problem.
How do we rework that math so that a middle class exists since it's possible again?
“And there were challenges to this. That's why I say just promising people free stuff”
is not a solution. Because, I mean, we are in a more competitive globe than now than we
Were when I was growing up.
war to advantage that we had. We weren't competing with China or India or Taiwan for that
“matter or South Korea. It is other countries. Now, we are. So we're not going to be able”
to provide as much, but we can provide more. It's the other piece of his score. Is the fair distribution of wealth? I mean, so much of the wealth that we've generated in the last 50 years has gone to a very, very few people. You know, in terms of billions of dollars, wages should be higher, benefits should be higher. Yeah, we should do more for health care. And I'm not saying we shouldn't do more for health care. We just shouldn't promise
people that it's going to be free. This is not a free. So I'm going to have to pay something somewhere. So you're saying we do tax the wealthies so that we can afford to have universal health care? Well, actually, what I would like to do. Yes. I mean, I certainly think we should change the tax structure in this country. So the wealthie pay more. 100%. Or at all. The other thing you do is. Yeah, exactly. I mean, the way they've set it up structure. They're
not paying anything. Some sense. So this is just absolutely appalling. The other thing, however, is corporations. Really, it's that I was out in the Bay Area of the weekend. I sat down with open AI. And I didn't understand exactly what open AI was when they were, when they were founded, they were founded as a nonprofit. But then they moved into a sort of medium category. And I know they're having a big ugly lawsuit about that right now that I don't fully understand.
But they were basically, they were not. They weren't a sea corp. They were some other type of
corp. And in that corporation, they had an obligation to the community and to their workers that most normal corporations don't have. Okay. So things like stock buybacks where companies take their profits and instead of pouring them back into their workers or their communities, they pour them back into their shareholders. All right. If we could change that, that's such as the tax structure that's changing how corporations use their profits so that they're not just
rewarding the investors, but they're rewarding everybody. We need to comprehensively change this system because capitalism in America has become so concentrated and who benefits from it that is rotting us to our core. That whole thing needs to be changed, but it's not going to be
“changed by just saying, here's free housing. And no taxes, by the way. Yeah, I mean, I think so often,”
that's sort of why I was talking about the strategy of like sticker shop prevention of, oh, you don't want to pay your taxes. Of course, that money goes to all the services you use. We all understand this. But I do think you're right in diagnosing that so many Americans are so squeezed that any amount of affordability or any amount of kick that not kick backs, but you don't say any amount of discount refund can override your ideology because as it gets harder and harder to have,
as you're describing a middle class existence, you're going to grab it that, but let me challenge that just. I think you're right. And I think there are a lot of people who are struggling to pay the mortgage, struggling to pay rent, struggling to make for it. But look at
something like the the salt, the state and local tax issues. You know, a big deal. And basically what
this is is you can write off the state and local taxes that you pay on your federal taxes. But back in 2017 Trump, weirdly, one thing that I actually agreed with, he capped the amount that you could write down. And I think it was $10,000, which by the way, cost me I'm in a high tax state. But we're talking about a tax on the upper middle class. We're not talking about people who can't afford a house or, you know, can't afford to pay the bills. You know, we're talking about
the upper middle class, which giant, okay. And oh my God, these people just screen bloody murder
“that this was the worst thing in the world. The taxes were increased today. And so we just changed it.”
I think I think we opted like $40 or $50,000. So we saved people who are making somewhere between
250,000 and a million plus dollars a year, we saved them money on their taxes. All right,
to run the deficit up higher so that we're less able to deal with housing and health care. So it's not just the people who are struggling to pay their bills who think that they're owed. It's pretty much everybody. I mean, my God, look at Sergei Brent. All right, foods worth $25 billion. There's a tax, the billionaires tax that's going to cost him $12. And California, California, the United States of America, has much to do, had as much to do with that guy making
all the frickin money he made in the first place. It created the environment so we could start this company so it could make jobs of money. And in return, we're asking for like 2% of it to help keep things going. And he's, oh, I'm going to move. I'm moving to Nevada. This is so unfair. If I could pivot a bit, some kind of peak my interest on what you brought up. You're talking about the competition we had with place like South Korea, Japan, etc. One of the bigger events that's
going to take place here soon is this upcoming summit between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. It's going to take place. I believe on May 14th, what do you hope this summit produces when
It comes to U.
See, lowering the potential temperature over Taiwan, or even perhaps maybe getting some support
from China when it comes to Iran or dealing with Russia and Ukraine and ending those wars. Or do you just hope it focuses on some other aspect like trade or something like that? And then
“just kind of secondly, what do you actually expect will happen? So you have what you hope will happen?”
And then what do you expect will happen because obviously the current administration's policies? Yeah, I'm not. This is not going to be a short answer. I'm afraid. But what I hope happens is a movement towards a form of data. And that is not a popular opinion because everyone wants to take on China and beat China and defeat them and they're screwing us and we get a screw them back. Look, China is a big major economic player in the world and that's not changing. And we need to
figure out how to manage our relationship in a way that is less confrontation. Because China and we got major trade conflicts and we certainly we've heard about the tariffs. But now we've got China, we are trying to block other countries from buying products from Chinese companies and they are responding by trying to block US companies, any US company that agrees with that policy will now be sanctioned in China. In fact, they're blocking executives from leaving
the country if they adhere to this. So we are in a rapidly escalating piece of economic warfare that is bad for us, bad for China and bad for the globe. We need to chill. And I know, look, I know China, I know about the weagreers, I know about their threats on Taiwan, I know about how they suppress their people and a thousand different things. I'm not going to war over any of that. Okay, we have got to figure out some way to peacefully coexist with people we
disagree with. And this idea that if we disagree with people where we'll go ahead and crush them and bend them to our will, we've got to stop that. So I want to talk. I was actually in China, I led the first congressional trip to China in like six years, met with all the high-level leaders in China. I love our ambassador to China, David Perdue, former senator from Georgia, really smart guy. He's doing best. He's best to try and heal that relationship. Now, look, Trump has put us in a very
weak position. You know, he started this war in Iran. He's got us in the horrible position. I described it earlier. He started this terror of war with China and China was like,
okay, we'll just stop buying your soybeans, devastated our farmers. We'll stop giving you the critical
minerals that you need for your national security. All right, so we put ourselves in a weakened position but I hope we find some way to say, hey, look, whatever our differences may be, they are not intractable. They are not, you know, it's, it's you or us sort of differences. So I hope to move towards to time. As far as what have I expect? I mean, we've got a president in the United States with the attention span of a net. So who the hell knows what's going to happen? All right, you know, he could show up
and decide he wants to make peace. They could like, I don't know, not give him his favorite deserted dinner. So he decides that he's going to double the terror fawn him. I mean, and I'm not kidding, by the way. All right, this is what we've got running this country, a child, okay, a temperamental
“child. So is he going to be smart enough to see past that and actually negotiate an intelligent deal?”
I mean, may as well go to the roulette wheel, put it on a number and hope for the best. But what we need, and well, I mean, just said, one final piece possible here. Again, I mentioned David Purdue, his team at the embassy in China, top notch, as long as we can keep pressure and whipped cough to hell out of China and let our actually a diplomatic team do their goddamn jobs. Then I have a little bit of up. So what about our CEO delegation that we're sending to China?
You don't think, say, Elon Musk is going to negotiate a good deal first. Which CEO is he sent over there? Some of our CEOs are sensible people. Well, look, I mean, they're in the middle of this. I mean, they're trying to figure out. It's like you tell us we can't do business with China. It tells us the China tells us you can't not do business with China.
And so we're caught in the middle and being jerked all over the place. What I've always said is I'm,
“I am not a decoupler. I'm a D-risker. And yeah, that's why it's all China. It's like, look, I understand”
that you are worried that we're trying to stop your scent. And to some degree, we are because we're competing. I don't think we want to do that. But in the other hand, it's not unreasonable, us to say that we don't want to be 100% dependent upon you for things that are absolutely critical of us. So if we want to manufacture some of these in Malaysia or Vietnam or Australia or bring them back home, I mean, China right now is going all scorched earth trying to stop us from being able
to generate other sources of things like rare earth minerals and other critical manufacturers.
They got a whole bunch of tools they play to coerce other countries and not l...
They need to chill on that. We need to chill and try to block everything the China's doing.
“So like I said, some form of to Tom would be in North. One thing that I think is getting”
missed and all the messaging because there's a lot of energy experts right now shaking their heads or scratching their heads that gas hasn't hit $5 a gallon yet. Because this disruption is significantly worse than the OPEC 2020 deal plus the Russia Ukraine war and with all that going on in 2022 that
drove gas prices up, I think a lot of people are missing the fact that over 60 million EVs have
hit the market since 2022 and that has removed almost not quite but almost three million barrels of oil a day of demand from the market today that that existed in 2022. And it's if you think about it in those terms, EVs are saving us a lot of money on gas right now. I did a whole model on this this morning gas would have already eclipse its 2022 levels if it wasn't for those 62 million or whatever EVs that have been built since 2022. I just wanted to point that out because I think that's a
sort of a messaging thing a lot of people are missing. The one question I'd like to ask you Mr. Smith is when I teach my people online about how utilities work and how they're structured, they don't like it. This model where you know you have a lot of private equity coming in, a lot of very rich, a lot of money flowing into utilities buying up, they're making a lot of money, the ratepayers have to pay for everything they buy basically. And how do you feel personally
about the way our utility system is structured in the United States? Is there anything that you would change in that respect? Yeah, I'm not an expert in that area. First of all, your point about EVs is awesome. I will absolutely steal that going forward. But that's, you know,
“part of the reason is bad. If we expanded that, it would be even less bad. Look, I think”
biggest problem utilities right now is they disincentivize reducing consumption and using alternatives. Because look, in the utilities, they're selling a product. And how many
companies out there who are excited about it? Here's what we're going to do. We're going to create a
situation where we want you to sell less of your product. There's a natural entity to that. So I think we need to more intelligently regulate our utilities based on the premise that we want to generate more power and more efficiency. That one of my great frustrations in energy and I certainly have a frustration now that we're backing off on making investments in renewable sources and new sources of energy when it's so desperately needed. But the other one is, we still have an
investment in inefficiencies in this country. Yeah, we, and there's so many simple things. We could same generation of power, but if you have better light bulbs. I remember it was like 25 years ago. I was in Japan and I was that got into the airport late and I'm walking up there and I noticed I see the escalator and I'm like, yeah, shit, the escalator isn't working. I walk up to it and it starts when I get close to it because there's no point in having a fricking escalator
running all day long. If nobody's on it. Okay, lights that are on the timers and every stairwell,
things like that. Yeah, and we've just never embraced that because I think part of being an American
“is it is your God-given right to waste whatever you want of waste. That's why we came to America,”
by God. Why don't we go overseas? You know, we'll go grab a chunk of land and do what we want on it. Only not in the 21st century. So I guess the biggest thing I would change about it is I would put incentives in place to get people to use less power. And they've done it in sort of one season, two season. You probably know this better than I do. There's different elements of it, but never at the scale necessary to get us to truly invest in more efficiently using the power.
You talk about how often Republicans will do something and the Democrats do not like that it happened, but then Democrats will do the very same thing and then Republicans, then it's just a flip-flop back and forth. One of the things that I'm seeing right now, especially in your realm is the Obama administration during his term, he cut the permanent army brigade combat team presence in Europe and half going from four brigades to two and he removed roughly seven to 10,000 soldiers
when that was happening and he shifted it. He's not too as credit. He did shift to rotational deployments to places like Poland. I was actually there when that happened. And now we're seeing the Trump administration pursue another major reduction, roughly 5,000 troops being drawn down from Europe. At a time when Russia remains at war with Ukraine and frankly NATO is under pressure to increase its readiness, how do you compare those two decisions Obama's decision to reduce versus
Trump's decision? Big thanks. One, Russia had not invaded Ukraine when Obama was President.
That ought to be enough right there.
that is present. Second, Trump tends to do these things on a whim. I remember at the end of his first administration, I've Angela Merkel said something. I remember what it was, but it upset Trump. So literally the last six months of the Trump administration, there was a plan to take all of the troops out of Germany, all of them. And I sat down with European community that people are outside seriously. And they were like, it's what the commander chief said. And that was based on
some petty. So Trump does it for the pettiest of reasons on a whim like that without thinking through it. That's the problem. Those are the two differences to my mind. When Obama did it, it was part of an overall thought-out strategy, it was part of the pivot to Asia. And we didn't have Russia invading Ukraine. In fact, at the time, we were still kind of hoping we could find a way to
get along with Russia. So those are the two big things that have changed. We always try to end
on a positive note because it seems like we always are kind of talking, especially in the times we are with the administration, the darker situations. We're not trying to assume we're trying to build a path out of a gloomy. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We're just trying to inform. But it does sound like we are doom and gloom. Is there something that you can tell us that you just optimistic about whether it's broadly the United States and its future, or just something that you're working on,
or just anything that you're optimistic about, something that you just want to describe.
“Can bring us back to humanity is good. Yeah, no. I mean, I think I was just down a new”
port, new shipyard earlier today. Don't try to make that commute if you can humanly avoid it. But, and I think one of the things I'm optimistic about is workforce development.
You know, I think we've long been in this pattern of not giving people access to the training
that they need to go out and get good paying jobs and help our economy. And I'm seeing that change. We've seen a massive increase in apprenticeships. We've seen a massive increase in community and tactical colleges doing training, coordinating with businesses and with unions to give people access to the training they need to go out and get good paying jobs and live a good life. And that has significantly improved just in the last five or six years. I see a real commitment
to workforce development to meet the moment in terms of what we really need workers to do in this country. And so, yeah, no, I tend to be very optimistic about that. I thank you so much for taking the time to not only come on the show, but hearing us to hear us out about that. And I do hope that you can come back and we can continue the conversation
“because I think we have very similar ideas about the future of our country surviving and the”
Democratic Party and the left. And I think there's a lot to discuss. And I think this was really productive. So we thank you for coming on the show today. And once again for all the listeners, this has been Congressman Adam Smith. And thank you so much for your time, sir. Thank you all. Appreciate chance. And that's our interview with our first ever guest on American power, Congressman Adam Smith. I've done a lot of interesting stuff. I like his answers to your
questions on the military chat, but I'm curious what you think with your, you have more expertise than I do, of course. Well, I mean, I'll be honest on all the Iranian stuff. I agree fully with him. He, he came in with really solid answers. When it came to his discussion on the Trump Xi Jinping, that summit that's supposed to happen, I believe that that happens the day after this podcast drops. And I think he was very diplomatic about it. But what I foresee happening is that
Xi Jinping, to quote Trump, holds all the cards in this situation. I feel like what's going to happen is Trump is going to go in and he's going to see the pomp and circumstance. They're
going to put on a massive show. Military parades, they're going to make him feel like this amazing,
like the, the, the, the second, like the king of China, essentially when he walks in and making feel so good. And he, it's going to, it's going to impact him. Because that's he responds to that stuff. It's, as we say in other episodes, is the mom, Donnie, you're supposed to throw it.
“You're supposed to make your first cover approach. Yeah, absolutely. And so I think that and they”
recognize that. And what's going to happen, my concern is when you're, when he's in the group settings with all of his advisors and jeez with all his advisors, it's going to be normal discourse. They don't want to stir any, any pots. They don't want to make any waves or anything. It's, it's trying to rebuild their relationship. But if Xi Jinping and Trump get into a room alone, I think Xi Jinping is going to start offering him things that could be dangerous for the United
States, specifically what I'm talking about is perhaps he offers Trump. Hey, why don't you, why don't you build some Trump casinos or Trump hotels in Beijing or Hong Kong or China? Oh, you think it'll be like personal quit, pro quo. No, I think like American advancement. And so what's going to happen is is because of that, I think you're going to see an, and obviously I don't think the congressman could talk about this. This is obviously civilian Chad Scott that gets away with this
kind of stuff. Right. But I think in those backroom deals between the two of them and their interpreters, what you're going to see is he's going to, he's going to offer something in that he can
Give to Trump after the presidency.
Xi requires in return is, hey, maybe you just cool down, cool it with Taiwan. You back off and maybe
“maybe you say Taiwan does belong to China and it doesn't, it's not actual policy because that's a”
congressional purview, but he can, that's a powerful tool. The president, you're talking unspoken
deal anyway. Well, this is not something that we announced regardless of whether or not. Well, what will happen is Trump will absolutely do something outside of the, like he will do something like perhaps get, let off, pull some military pressure away. He might allow more chip technology or jet engine technology that is proprietary to the United States and highly sought after by China. We can give it to him. And all these Xi Jinping may say, hey, I'll all invest in your
garbage meme coin or whatever the heck it is that Trump coin. I'll, I'm a billion dollars in your coin. And that becomes dangerous because Trump is in a position where he could give real power to the
Chinese and all he gets back is individual benefit. And there's not a whole lot we can do to stop
that. And that's the biggest concern I have. And I knew the congressman couldn't talk about that. I would just want to get his feelings. But I am very concerned that this, this, we're going to see all of the, the headlines and all of the praise and Trump's going to tweet and all this stuff, but then there's going to be a background deal that we're not going to discover until later on and it's going to be very, and we'll find out it's detrimental to us. They get our chip tech, they get our
jet engines, they get our, whatever, and Trump got personal benefit after he got an office. So that's going to be presented though. We would just see the U.S. doing China
well, suddenly suddenly suddenly suddenly. So one of the things that China absolutely seeks is
like three nanometer chip technology. That's something they do not have. You require machinery that comes out of the Netherlands, only the Netherlands builds it. They have built it with the United States' help. The Netherlands, there's only a few countries on Earth that have the capability to build three nanometer chip technology. Netherlands, the United States, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Those those countries, China has been seeking that forever. There is a moratorium on those machines
going to China from the Netherlands and the United States, but also the actual chips themselves are banned from going to China. And so what ends up happening is perhaps we see, yeah, Trump gets a couple hotel deals in a meme coin deal or something like that, and all of a sudden there's three nanometer chips appearing in Chinese weapons, and we don't know where that came from, or it was part of some secret deal. That's a concern I have. I'm not saying it's going to happen, but I'm
saying in the history of the presidency, this would be the time that it would probably most likely happen. And that's my concern with that. So yeah, what about you, Matt? What do you think about what he said about the energy stuff? Yeah, I appreciate it, Matt. So the conservation answer is not. And I feel like I asked him something he wasn't prepared for, but in this day and in the
“last summer, well, you're built 30% more expensive this summer. It doesn't matter. You have to”
make, yeah, what are you going to turn off? I mean, when they're charging you 400 bucks, just to keep the electricity on, even if you don't use it, what the hell is conservation going to do for you? It's just not. It's just, it doesn't do it. And the root of that whole problem is a lot of money flowing into our utility network that that kind of money is designed to do one thing, and that's make a lot more money at the hands of American people. And I don't, you know, we've turned our
utilities into like this retail shopping thing where people should have access to electricity that they can afford. It's, it's just a basic thing. It's an infrastructure thing. The grid should be the most secure thing in this United States. It should be one of the most secure things, and it's owned by private companies like it, it makes no sense to me. No, that's the backbone of not only our economy,
“but our, our way of survival. You know, energy is essential. Well, it's definitely a helpful”
home status. But it's the compounding effect of it, too. There's a lot of people don't think about it. You know, if you're living, you know, just anywhere, like in an apartment in Dayton, Ohio, I don't know why I thought of that. But let's just say you are, and your electric bills $1200 a month. How much do you think the factory down the road is paying for theirs? And how much do you think Wal-Mart's paying for theirs? Like, all of that stuff goes across the whole economic portfolio,
and it's so when your bills a thousand dollars, everything else you buy is more expensive, too, because all of their bills are hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like, this is, this is a whole thing. Like, this isn't just people's utility bills at their homes. Well, of course, I mentioned it twice.
I believe in that conversation was there's all these people who live near are...
are being built, who are suddenly paying higher utility bills, they don't have to use open AI or grok or whatever to have their water poison. And then their energy bills go up because the utility is pumping it into this new AI data center. You just have to be near it on the grid, and that's something that we can conserve our way out of. You can't control that. That's something that we can conserve our way out of. You can't control that. Yeah, I agree with you. The conservation answer is not
I was glad that he was in support of, you know, I mean, without a clear plan, but, you know, public utilities, I think I think that's, as you said, it's a surface. This is, you know, no different from the water at this point. We need it. And I was happy to see him, I mean, obviously, Washington already has a public utility, but to be able to support. Because I do think that's a path forward away from, yeah, we've just privatized, you know, I mean, it's similar to
health in some ways. It's healthcare. Like, we've privatized something essential. And of course,
when we privatized it, it doesn't, it's not static. They have to find ways to extract more and more value out of it to the police shareholders, which means, you know, relative surplus value out of all the consumers and the workers and pay them less and we pay more over and over again. Like, these things aren't going to stay the same. I do, I was glad that he brought up that, you know, compliment to affordability is the issue that wages haven't grown up because we can talk a lot
about the increase in prices, but you know, employers, American corporations are also not paying people enough. So inflation goes, you know, they raised the prices, but it's park, it's not the only there's artificial inflation. And there's there's there's there's green, of course, but it's not the only component and affordability. So that wages are, we have the same, they were 33 years ago. And we asked him, I think, really good questions to be clear from my perspective. I'm just speaking
for my spell itself. I support probably 90% of what he has to offer. But those questions we asked,
“I think are important. He had fairly good answers for most of him, but it is worth noting that,”
yeah, I mean, I'm glad that there was pushback and I'm glad that we can have this discussion about, I mean, he was very open to talking to us, which I sure. Yeah, he was a super great guest. I mean, that for first guess. I mean, the two things that I would take issue with or, you know, similar, he's talking about this over-focus on scolding. And like, when I hear that, I'm like, these are just conservative talking points, though. It's like, oh, it's so hard to be a white man now. You're not,
you can never do the right things. Yeah, we still have the highest wages, who cares? Like,
I think this idea that we lost the cultural order to conserve it is is missing. I mean, he talks about it a lot, but this labor element, right? Where the economic element is like, you let these people become vulnerable to that kind of misinformation, and then feel like they were being scolded. That wouldn't matter if these people could afford to live comfortably. They needed a scapegoat, right? So all this stuff about how we focus too much on identity politics, I can't sign off on that,
because I'm not willing to throw trans people under the bus. And it doesn't sound like he is either. But like, I'm not willing to say, oh, it's okay if you don't get the pronouns, right? It's okay if you deny someone's identity. It's okay if you want gay people to keep it to themselves as long as you vote for clean energy. Like, I'm not, I'm not with that. We got to be intersectional about this stuff. But I think, you know, the reason that it comes off as scolding is because it's
not backed by economic policy. It's not backed by labor rights. So, you know, when someone is poor and racist,
and you tell them it's another racist problem, yeah, they're going to keep being racist. Like, you can't talk people out of it exclusively by saying, don't be racist. I agree with that. You can't
“scold people out of these things. But you have to improve their material conditions. I don't think”
you're going to say Democrats have a done that, but like, it's not scolding the cause Trump to win. That feels like, that feels like an over. It's almost like a, he's honoring the culture, the culture war argument with more culture war, essentially. I mean, a lot of, you hear this, I mean, I think some of the trouble I had, and maybe we need to define terms better in the future, saying, well, the left does this, the left does that. We're talking leftists or we're talking
Democrats who are essentially, and that's why these center left centers, party. Because I was like, I don't, I don't, I don't. It also bothers me this idea that like, you can't have just, of course, any more because people yell at you. Yeah, they're, they're watching kids get murdered on their phones. Like, they're, maybe it's more than passion. And if you don't agree with them, they won't let you talk. But like, nothing other than an absoluteist approach has gotten people to even listen to civilians
about Gaza for like two years. People going to their elected officials and saying, hey, I hate this. Why are you giving them money? So it's like, yeah, people are yelling at you. I do not condone political violence. I do not condone any kind of actors and elites that. I don't think that's activism. But I get, I, and, and, and, you know, for the sake of this conversation, I have been threatened. I have had death threats. I've had people show up at my shows and threaten me. Uh, it's scary.
And it is a position you put yourself in as a public figure. And it's something that in this country, we failed to address Africa, Africa, for it's got shot. Africa's police got shot. Like, that's a real thing. And it's on us for not actually creating consequences for that. But the fact that people get threatened in their homes is not to me an indication that people who share the beliefs with bad actors are 100% wrong. And that, that I felt like
“dominated that part of the conversation. So that's what I was like to engage in more in the future.”
You seem open to talking about it. Oh, yeah, no. And like I said, and I don't want to walk over Matt here. But like, he, it was a great conversation. She had a lot of great answers. Like, when, when it came to the discussion on the drawdown of troops, they're absolutely as a difference.
It is vengeful for Trump.
Obama throw down while he also did it to me. Yeah. And I didn't agree with the Obama drawdown. He may have. But because I, I'm biased. That was my world. I lived in NATO. And, but the pivot to the Asia was real. And that was necessary. And so I, I do appreciate that.
Yeah, he, he was, first of all, I appreciate that it came on. But he also,
yeah, absolutely solid dude for being honest stuff. So I just, yeah. But that's the thing. We can all disagree and have the discussion. And if he wants, he can come back on and we can have
“more of that and it's great. I think so. I honestly wasn't keeping track of what I either agreed”
or disagreed with him on. I mean, it was so refreshing that I just felt like I was speaking to someone that was giving genuine answers that they had thought out like, I don't care about disagreeing with someone. It's, are they being genuine? Are they telling me what they actually believe? Or are they playing some game with me? And that whole conversation, I just felt like he was being very genuine and honest. And whether I agreed with him on stuff or not, at that point
didn't matter to me because I haven't seen that in a long time. So I really appreciated that.
And I'm perfectly fine with people not agreeing with me or me, not agreeing with people as long as everyone's being genuine. And until we get the show, right? We want to have you sit with this course and actually address these issues. I mean, I, I also appreciate him engaging with us on this stuff. Yeah, definitely, I'm a little different. I didn't agree with him on a lot of things. A lot of did. It topped down a lot of it. I feel like we're in the same position of like,
oh, yeah, we're being run by a petrol and ego test. When it comes to the characterization of the left and why we got here, I feel like he and I probably differ, but he did sound like he was willing to listen and hear people out about that kind of thing. So I thought it was a really productive conversation. If he comes back, one thing I'd like to talk about more Matt is he was talking, you know,
“I think your great point about like, oh, part of the reason this crisis isn't worse is because of”
all these EVs, like EVs are actually helping us in a way that people aren't seeing or or like, well, to lay the, I hope he does run with that. As he said, he would, I'd love to talk to him more, because I know he's supported federal, federal solar bill for federal buildings. And I, I'd love to hear more how he thinks that we can structurally and culturally, because I do agree that we need to get used to waste not being a virtue. I don't agree the consumers are going to fight
climate change. We already, that's, that's an old narrative that has already been debunked. Like, we can't do buy, conserving as a consumer. Like, corporations are still just burning fossil fuels. It's not going to make a difference if I recycle. But he is right. We have a massive culture of waste. So I'd be interested, like, what is his opinion on like, yeah, how do we, how do we pivot to solar? How do we, I'd love to hear his justification for nuclear, because I am not on board, but how do we
“pivot to renewable energy sources on a federal level would be really interesting, especially considering”
who's in charge right now? I'm not going to lie. The whole reason I brought that up was because in general, the Democratic Party is pretty terrible at messaging. And I'm like, I'm just going to say this to this guy. And maybe it'll spread like, because it's like, we miss, we miss so much. And this part of it will share the clip once he starts saying it. No, I'm serious. It's, it's, it's, it's people don't realize how much of an impact
62 million more EVs are having, like, right now on the price of gas. I posted a video earlier
said, think an EV owner. If, if, if, if you're worried that gas isn't over $5 yet, that's because of EV owners. That's, that's, that's, you cannot discount 62 million EVs and how much fuel they burn. Or, you know, if they were I'm down, and pretty significant. You know, if you look at a refinery goes down in the great lakes area for a day, everyone's gas jumps by over a dollar overnight. What do you think two and a half million barrels a day over the entire length of this
conflict is doing? Like, so it's, it's a big thing. So I just put that, like a bug in his ear, like, hey, here's a little, you know, maybe work on your messaging a little bit. And then I went on to my actual question. That was good. I noticed that. You're like, anyway, I just want to say that. So here's my question. So there's power says if your gas isn't $5 yet, thank you, EV owner, unless it's a cyber truck, but that's a lot of the, a lot of the EVs are Tesla's. I don't know,
but there's other options. There's other options. I saw one of those craze and steam guys, or however you said they're laughing. I did too. You got your drug on X for buying a cyber truck. Yep. It's like he's getting canceled because he bought a cyber truck. There've been people recently, a very popular bumper sticker in liberal states. I bought this before he went crazy if you put it on your Tesla. And then I saw one the other day on a cyber truck and I was like,
not not possible. He was he was mask off. He was talking about white birthrights by the time the cyber truck came out. Like he was very close to the sigile at the inauguration, but the cyber truck was released. And I just thought that to myself. And then yesterday, I saw that someone has been putting
Community notes, like citation stickers under those being like the cyber truc...
after these events. That was like, well, like the ultimate bathroom wall of the world survives
one way or another. The discourse is alive, nevertheless. That's what it looks like bathroom house
“into a car. Honestly, it's a lot less toxic than the discourse on X. I think if you have to take”
time to print a sticker to put on some of its Tesla, you're giving a little more consideration to
your team up to your wording, your word economy. Well, several of my friends have taken their Tesla
“emblems off and replaced them with like an emblem they got from their alma mater. Like where”
were they went to college? So like if you see a Tesla with like an Arizona state emblem on the back of it, you know, that's an anti Elon Musk person right there because they did that on purpose.
“Just put like a Jaguar emblem on there at BMW. It's a BMW. Don't look at it very hard.”
Well, listeners, thank you so much for listening to our very first interview here on American
power. We hope to bring you many more in the episodes to come. We'll be back next week with a normal format episode. Once again, for Chad Scott and Mr. Global Matt Randolph, I'm Nat Tauson and remember, power corrupts, but American power corrupts, American League.
