Evan Meyer 0:00
Good afternoon, sir. Hi, Evan, how are you? How you doing? Good to see you.
Ted Lieu 0:06
Good to see you.
Evan Meyer 0:07
So let me ask you, what do you see the problem with politics, and were problems with politics in 2023.
Ted Lieu 0:20
So I started when I was on a torn city council, and then I serve a state legislature for about nine years. And now I’m in my eighth year in Congress. And for most of that time, I worked with Republicans and independents and people of all different political views. And we were able to accomplish a lot of different things. But something did change in the last four to five years. And it’s the following. If I now look at an apple, for example, my Republican House colleagues will say, No, that’s a banana. And so when you don’t agree on basic facts, it’s really hard to move forward. So for example, if I have Republican colleague who says, you know, the January 6, insurrection was like, quote, a normal tourist visit, unquote, I cannot work with him, doesn’t matter how civil he is, how nice he is, if he holds that view, I can’t work with him.
Evan Meyer 1:23
Right. So it’s interesting, the basic,
the basic facts will say, so how do we know and it’s funny, I ask this to a lot of people and I get different answers. What is a fact?
Ted Lieu 1:38
So that is a great question to ask. And that is what the foreign president wants people to think about that. Only what he says is true, and everyone else is lying. Right? He wants people to really start questioning what they read, what they see what they hear. And that is really hard for democracy. And it’s really horrible for our nation. One of the worst things a former president did was to get people to start believing all sorts of crazy things. So for example, do I know Hugo Chavez, rose from the dead and mess with our elections and stole the election and, you know, 2020? You know, I don’t actually write at some better physical level know that. But I can tell you, he didn’t do that, because he’s dead. So, you know, there are just crazy things that the former president said and that people continue to say, such as this election was stolen, that are just false, right. And even today, by the way, they cannot explain who stole the election, know how it was done, nor how over 7 million people somehow stole this election. And they can’t still can’t explain that because it’s a lie. And so yeah, at some physical level, I can’t really tell you what’s a factor or an artifact, but we know.
Evan Meyer 3:00
Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting. I’m getting all sorts of answers for this. And some the question, it’s not that simple. It, you know, sometimes is, is it something that could be true and proven? Right, but you can dive into it, you could say, well, what is true and proven and science is one of the major, you know, things that are peer reviewed, can contend to give a ton of credibility, for example, right? Peer reviewed studies. But it’s, I find just coming off what you’re saying. Like when I asked that question, no one even has the same answer to what a fact is. So then they’re like, well, well, if we don’t even agree on our basic lexicon, then what do we do? If you think a fact is that an orange is an apple? But I think a fact is that an apple is like, you know, generally crunchy with a, you know, a tough skin and can get kind of caught in the top of your tooth, then we’re gonna have very different conversations. So what do we what do we do?
Ted Lieu 3:57
So I do think it’s helpful to rely on experts. I think their attack on doctors, scientists, from the foreign president has been very damaging. And look at the end of the day. Do I actually know, for example, how the human body works the same way a doctor would, I don’t. And so I’m going to rely on doctor or on experts who study viruses, who study vaccines, who use a scientific method and trust them when they say, Hey, look, this vaccine is going to dramatically reduce your chances of going to the hospital or dying if you get COVID. And that, you know, there are no microchips in these vaccines, like do I know that for a fact? Well, no, right? Because I don’t look at these vaccines on a microscope. But I can tell you there are no microchips in these vaccines. And so when people believe crazy things, it is very harmful and I don’t know if I have the best answer to how to how to fix that but I think people need to open their eyes and trust experts way more than they do what they read on Facebook?
Evan Meyer 5:09
Yeah, well, information, reliability of information is tough. Maybe that’s the conversation right? Are you are you reading? What are you reading? What should people read? If it’s not things that their friends share in articles that could be, you know, written by anyone very often. unverified, unverified facts, I guess, what, what? What do you recommend? Where do you recommend people get like the purest source of information from?
Ted Lieu 5:35
Yeah. So, for example, there’s a difference between a statement that your cousin makes on Facebook, versus a statement, your read and a New York Times, because every article in New York Times is fact checked. And you have multiple eyes that look at all their assertions of fact, in the various articles in mainstream newspapers, the Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and so on. Santa Monica, Daily Press, for example, facts, checks, its articles. Now, is it possible someone saying something, that article might say something, it’s not true? Sure. But that quote, will be accurate. It will be Joe Smith, in fact, said X, Y, or Z. And so people, I think, if they look at mainstream newspapers, at least they’ll get articles that were fact checked, and they don’t have sort of known false things are put into mainstream newspaper articles.
Evan Meyer 6:37
Sure, okay. Yeah. And there’s, I mean, there’s just so much that can go wrong when people start on their quest for information I started reading. I mean, this may sound crazy, but I started reading the actual legislature. Hmm. Like for you? Yeah, I was, well, I there’s just too much just too much debate on things. And then it’s like, is anyone reading the contract? I always say, like, if I if I was, you know, if we were working together, and and we were talking about our relationship with a client, or like, and then you’re like, Well, I don’t know, is it A or B? You’d be like, Well, did you read the contract? So in my opinion, the answer is always in the contract, or at least the purest form, that’s as close as you can get. Right. Exactly. Why don’t people read the contract?
Ted Lieu 7:32
It’s very small print as a lot of pages. That’s one reason.
Evan Meyer 7:37
Not all the bills are, though there’s some bills that are just a few pages, I find that legalese is particularly confusing in general, you have to sort of really
Ted Lieu 7:47
worry about contracts. Yes. No, I read bills.
Evan Meyer 7:51
Yes. Sorry. That Yes. Legislature. Why aren’t people? Yeah, that was my that was my analogy. Why are people reading legislature as a source of truth? Sometimes it is only a couple pages, you do have to go through legalese, which is a whole nother conversation. But
Ted Lieu 8:08
yes, oftentimes, I’ll say just say, you know, three simple words, which is read the bill. Right. People often will say, you know, this bill does X y&z When, in fact, it does not. And so the best way to do this is in fact, to read the actual text. Absolutely.
Evan Meyer 8:26
Yeah. And why do you think they’re not doing it? It seems obvious. If you want to get to the source of the bill, why are you reading the news about a bill, it took you probably just a couple articles time you can actually read the actual bill, why do you think people don’t do that? Now? That’s
Ted Lieu 8:41
a great question. I think part of it is, it’s not exactly the easiest way to find the text of a bill. So sometimes people may not know how to do that. I think we have to make that easier for people to figure out how do you read the text of every bill in Congress, for example. So sometimes they’ll just read an article about the bill. Now, the better newspapers will put the link in that article to the text of the bill. So sometimes you can see the text of the bill by reading an article that has a link to it. Right? Well, I’ll give a perfect example. Scott wiener
Evan Meyer 9:22
was recently on and we talked about his new bill, SB 107, just because there was a lot going on about it. And some of what was going on about it was like, you know, minors can have gender surgery under 18 kind of thing without the consent of a parent. And then like, well, if you read the bill, as much as in run on sentences and legalese, it is written, it is clear that that is not what the bill says. So, tip, I was like, How many times are we getting confused? How much confusion do you think is from people just not getting to the, in this case, the root source of just what the bills This. So part of it is
Ted Lieu 10:03
confusion. Another part is maliciousness. You do have various folks that will intentionally mess or represent what bills do or don’t do. And so that’s unfortunate. It’s not part of the new that’s been happening, you know, for decades, if not centuries where people misrepresent what legislation actually does. So the best way to to break through that is really, just to read the actual bill yourself.
Evan Meyer 10:35
All right. So we can we can we can kind of stamp that is like, like a good takeaway from today. Hey, people, if you want the pure source of information, read the bill.
Ted Lieu 10:45
Yeah, it’s all publicly available. Right. All legislation is, is public. And it’s something that’s done publicly.
Evan Meyer 10:51
And I think if you type the bill number, it’s the first thing that comes up on Google. So it’s not
Ted Lieu 10:55
actually that hard to find should be exactly.
Evan Meyer 10:57
Yeah, maybe we need some legalese lessons like how to read legalese that the government can provide for people who don’t like read. I don’t know. Well, you know, a lot of this, I think contributes to this lack of trust in politicians in general, right, there seems to be this trust issue. And, you know, it’s my intention to help rebuild trust between government and its, and its people, its residents, its citizens, whoever, whoever frequencies, these spaces, and can understand how the people that manage it, manage it, and that you can trust them. And why do you think there is such to me? This is one reason that just makes things confusing. But why do you think there is a lack of trust today? And maybe there wasn’t the best to? I’m sure there was plenty. But why did it?
Ted Lieu 11:54
I think one main reason is a former president, he lied more than any other elected official ever has in US history. And he was a national figure. And when you lie them out that he does, it starts to blur the distinction between what is true and what is false. And that leads us down the road to authoritarianism. Even today, right, he still promotes a big lie that somehow the election was stolen. It was not stolen. Multiple court cases have said it was not stolen multiple audits, and multiple states have said it was not stolen and made. It’s just a lie when he says it. And so when the former president knighted states where they leave it a free world lies at that rate on big things and small things. That is incredibly damaging to our country. And there’s no both sides to this. It’s not as if, you know, people on both sides lie equally. There is one side, and probably one person that lies way more than anybody else.
Evan Meyer 13:00
Yeah, the degree you’re saying is not it’s not 5050. You’re talking about between Democrats and Republicans?
Ted Lieu 13:07
That is correct.
Evan Meyer 13:09
And that’s correct. And you’re saying his influence has has created even more of that on the Republican side, so that it’s now the imbalances, what percentage corrections to Democrats, or Republicans?
Ted Lieu 13:25
Right, their assertion that 2020 election was stolen is the big lie. And it is just it just false. Even his former Attorney General has come out publicly and privately, and said, quote, unquote, that it was bullshit, the election conspiracy theories. And you know, I’m not a great fan of the former Attorney General, but he did come out was very strong and clear on that. But it’s not even that it’s on issues such as climate change. Now, look, am I a climate scientist? No, but I can read. And when 96% or so of all the scientists in the world would say, look, climate change is happening. This is what’s going to happen. And you see that, in fact, what they said was going to happen. If that is happening, then you pretty much conclude that yeah, climate change is not a hoax perpetrated by China. And so if you know, Magga, folks are going to believe that it’s a problem, right? And so, again, I think they’re attacking experts has been very damaging. I wish people would trust experts more, because there’s a reason that they’re experts, because they learned their subject matter over many years, and they are just gonna have more knowledge than you will. And so now, should you always trust experts? Well, you don’t always trust them. But when most of them believe the same thing, then it’s a pretty good indicia that you should probably accept what they’re saying is largely true.
Evan Meyer 15:00
Yeah. Have you ever heard of Blink by Malcolm Gladwell?
Ted Lieu 15:03
I did. That was a cool book.
Evan Meyer 15:05
Yeah, it was cool. It’s relevant to this conversation at the moment. Yes. It talked about that a little bit. Right that that went it actually went to not trust that when your instinct, right when there is, I don’t know if that pertains to most of these conversations. But I did think that was a an interesting book. He’s quite an author, he gets you to
Ted Lieu 15:29
think he does. Absolutely.
Evan 15:34
So, yeah, I mean, if you had, if you had to recommend one fix for Democrats, and one fix for Republicans?
Ted Lieu 15:51
What would it be? That’s a great question. I’ve actually never been asked something like that before. So let me let me think about this. So I think on Republicans, my fix would be, look, it’s, it’s okay to support someone, if, you know, they believe in things that you believe in. But when that person just lies, you just have to call it out. Right? Or the person says, things are, are racist, and horrible. You have to call it out. And so my fix Republicans is they just show much more spine so that when the foreign press, the United States makes fun of Mitch McConnell’s wife, because of her ethnicity, you gotta slam him, you have to say you do not make fun of Asian Americans and their names based on you know, our ethnicity. And Republicans just don’t do that. It’s it’s like a cult, whatever it is a former president does or says must be true, or must be right. And so that is just very alarming to me. You know, on the Democratic side, I do think, often we, when faced with a problem, we offer 27 different solutions. And it’s very confusing and hard for someone to sometimes understand, because most people don’t pay attention to politics, they’re busy, they have lots of things to do. And a lot of times, we don’t come in with sort of a very understandable, easy solution for folks. I think we have to work on that.
Evan Meyer 17:38
Very interesting. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that. You know, I know you’re a a technophile.
Ted Lieu 17:53
Recovering computer science major.
Evan Meyer 17:57
I have I have a similar background. So I, I call, a lot of times the way that life kind of presents itself, or the way that governments create bureaucracy, or big corporations, I call It’s a bowl of spaghetti. Ah, you know, the term spaghetti code, obviously.
Ted Lieu 18:24
Right. So, so you may be noticed my laptop, which needs to get charged, so hang out one second. All right. Plug it in and make sure it doesn’t go off. There
Evan Meyer 18:39
we go No. spaghetti code? How is the government like spaghetti code? And what are some of the things you’re doing that can help reduce? Well, one, the problem that you just mentioned? Right, how can technology be support in exactly what you just said, and everything else like the DMV? So
Ted Lieu 19:08
I think they want folks to understand, the government is not set up like a business, nor, like the private sector. Government is not designed to be efficient. It is designed to have lots of people’s voices be heard. Right? So in businesses, it’s pretty much the opposite. This is not designed to have lots of voices to be heard. It’s designed to make a profit be very efficient, and to execute that way, but the way we work in government is we let lots of people voice their opinions. We let lots of people you know, introduce bills and then make amendments to bills and then we have committee hearings where we talk about the issue we’ll bring in subject matter experts will bring in you know or We’re nearing Americans who will bring in all sorts of different folks who then provide their opinions right to members of legislature. And then it goes through. Now the committee, but as it goes through the floor of the House, let’s say it’s a House Bill, and then it has to go through the US Senate where there could be, you know, Senate committee hearings, and it has to go through the Florida Senate. And then executive branch gets away in and, you know, the President gets to decide whether you sign that bill or not. And so that’s not very efficient process, right? No business would operate like that. But we do it because we believe that government has a different function. And the function is to let lots of people have their voices heard. And hopefully, their good ideas went out through that process.
Evan Meyer 20:45
Sure. Well, I know, you know, technology can solve lots of these problems. There are things that are obviously, like, easy to solve with a foreign online form. Right. And there’s, of course, it can also solve to help make us more democratic, without some of the bottlenecks. And I know you have a, you have the app Association. Right. I have a actually have a good friend, Mark Fisher with Dogtown media, who is a judge for the congressional challenge, their congressional
Ted Lieu 21:28
App Challenge. Yes, yep. So this is something I do annually. And we invite high school students to write an original app and submit it. And the creativity among our students is amazing. It gives me a lot of hope for the future. When we have a panel of judges who will look at the various apps are submitted, they always have to basically do a video and sort of explain, right what what the app does. And then we give out congressional wars based, you know, on the winners, and so it’s something that’s also done nationally, with with other members of Congress and their number one winner will then go to DC and basically present their app. And it’s pretty cool. In Washington, DC, when this happens, because you have all these folks, Mark, cross America with their super cool app, and, you know, people get to walk around and look at what these apps do. And so it’s a very neat program.
Evan Meyer 22:33
What are some of the categories that these apps kind of focus on?
Ted Lieu 22:37
Oh, it’s all all over the place. So some some of the apps or games, some might, you know, help you navigate different locations, some might help you buy groceries easier. There’s all sorts of different apps that do all sorts of different things, some help you with homework assignments, so it is different every year.
Evan Meyer 23:00
So can we use certain? Like, are there initiatives that are focused on using technology that you know of, or that work or that are still being built or that don’t work?
Ted Lieu 23:13
So technology has made it much easier for the legislature to be transparent. So for example, you know, 100 years ago, it would actually be sort of hard to figure out when legislation introduced a bill, what’s in that bill, right? Now, you can pretty much instantly go online and read it. So that has been good that the the information is much more accessible now. And additionally, social media, it’s much easier to communicate with your state or federal legislator or staff. You know, 60 years ago, imagine trying to talk to, you know, a member of Congress, you have to make the phone call, get through the various staff in that office, try to set up a time to have a phone conversation with a member of Congress. It wasn’t all that easy. Now, through Facebook and Twitter, I will have direct conversations with constituents. And it does, I think, make legislators more accessible in a way that wasn’t true. Even just a few decades ago.
Evan Meyer 24:30
Yeah. So accessibility, and information dissemination. You’d say are the two things that it really it really helped.
Ted Lieu 24:43
Yes, and it’s also much easier right to send an email to your state or federal or local elected official then to hand write a letter, put a stamp on it and mail it. Sure.
Evan Meyer 24:57
Yeah. Yes, that is true. Mmm, can we use it to create more fairness?
Ted Lieu 25:10
I think you can use it to create more input from more people across America. And so now anyone, right, can find the email address of my district or capitol office and send an email, and a member of my staff will read it. And so we’re able to, I think I’ve accumulated a lot more voices from across the country and across my district, compared to, you know, a few decades ago. Fairness is sort of an interesting question, because you can also get flooded with emails. And so if someone has a bunch of money and wants to decide to contact a lot of legislators, they’re able to do it in a way that someone who doesn’t, isn’t able to. So I think it goes both ways.
Evan Meyer 26:13
Sure. Well, you know, I’ve seen examples where, you know, the cost of democracy is high. Right? It’s expensive. To be truly democratic technology can make it less expensive. And it also can sometimes not get you what you want. There is a great example, I’m going to tell you a fun story. It’s not that fun. But there’s a there’s a mural on the corner of Lincoln and Olympic here in Santa Monica, that went through that needed to be repaired. And it was looking really bad for like a decade or two. And they wanted to repair it. And they took like, I don’t know, eight years to have conversations neighborhood meetings brought in the the artist to have a conversation about it, renamed it the mission, Moroccan, Michelle Obama, school, and they turned this really beautiful. What was originally a beautiful mural. It was dilapidated, I guess, why we were trying to change it. There was design competitions and iterations. And I mean, I can’t even eight years, I think, maybe seven. You know what it is today? A beige wall. Just a big beige wall, just a long, empty beige wall, not done anything.
Ted Lieu 27:41
That’s a great story.
Evan Meyer 27:43
I you know, as someone who believes in democracy, I always see stuff like that. And I’m like, There’s flaws in democracy? How do we know when these flaws are helping? How do we know when we’re getting hurt by too much democracy? In cases like that, which now there’s nothing there. Now, no one gets to enjoy anything. So eight years of work and effort and time and labor and energy of hundreds and hundreds of people? How do we know?
Ted Lieu 28:11
That’s a great question. And I’m a great believer in democracy, not because I think it’s an amazing system. But because I think it’s better than any other alternatives. So clearly, an authoritarian system is much more efficient, right? China is much more efficient at what it wants to do. So in China, if they want to, you know, build a bullet train, they’re just going to do it. And they don’t care about property rights. If you’re living there too bad, they’re just gonna force you out. If it’s gonna cause environmental damage, they don’t care. They’re gonna build that bullet train, and it’s going to, you know, be built. So, there are certain things that authoritarian systems can do better than, than democracies. Now, I still be really marketing these because I would rather have voices be heard property rights protected, you know, the environment protected. Democracies also have a way of self correcting, and of learning from mistakes. So for example, the United States engage in a totally racist and horrific violation of constitutional civil rights when they, in turn over 100,000 Americans who happen to be of Japanese descent. Now, the US Congress many years later, apologize for that. And Ronald Reagan signed a legislation that gave reparations to the victims of the internment. The Chinese Exclusion Act also happened early our country’s history. And it was totally discriminatory against people that look like me, the US Congress through a bill by Congress and Judy Chu, also apologize for that racist and indefensible act. So, democracies do have a way of correcting in a way that authoritarian regimes do not. Because, you know, President Xi or Vladimir Putin, they’re not never going to punish themselves. Never going to, you know, say that what they did last week was wrong, they will never do that.
Evan Meyer 30:26
Right? Well, it’s interesting, if you get down to maybe a more of a smaller level, like local level, there’s authoritarianism at some level everywhere, right. Like, if you’re a CEO of a business, you’re an authoritarian, I guess, ideally, you’re a team player, and you believe in, you know, building a culture of trust and support and communication and taking a lot of, you know, different ways of looking at things and, and that’s how you build your organization. But ultimately, a decision can will come to you or the chairman of the board, or whoever, you know, you could say very often, you know, as city manager, runs the city has a lot of unilateral, you know, unilateral approaches to things and then executes, and taxpayer dollars are used for some of those decisions. So I get, I guess, and we accept that we believe that that’s probably where authoritarianism is probably the wrong word for that. But it’s where democracy stops, to some degree on you can’t have democracy on every issue, which pothole affects, right? We’ve drawn a line. Potholes, we don’t ask the public, which popples? That’s not sorry, guys. Everyone’s accepted that. So we’ve almost like as a society started to accept where we don’t need democracy.
Ted Lieu 31:53
Very good point. That is a very good point. And people smarter than me, are going to figure out, where’s the best place to draw that line? But you’re very, you’re very right, there are lines that are drawn all the time as to when we have public input, and when we do not, because if we do have probably in front of everything, then then nothing would ever happen. And we just have beige walls everywhere, right?
Evan Meyer 32:19
That’s right. Even the wall syndrome. Right. That’s what I that’s what I call it. Every wall be beautiful. So, and I find, you know, a lot of this gets, even some of the smaller things like at the local level get caught in how the media, local media portrays issues they read. I mean, it’s, we can get back to like thinking about facts. But like, even at the local level, we can’t get to the bottom, like, there’s two sides, here in democratic Ville, Santa Monica, I think it’s like 80% of people, you have like, different sides of democracy. Right, like maybe farther left than, like, moderate left. And we still can’t get to the bottom of, of a lot of these things. And narrative is part of this, right. But people creating narrative for their own, sometimes their own self interest or for a bunch of other reasons. But a lot of what happens is it creates unrest. And people take there’s a lot of ad hominem attacks, personal attacks, we forget that humility is a civic virtue is important. And that people come from different walks of life, and that they may see things differently. And maybe there’s two rights. Do you believe often that there are two rights and and how at the local level? Can we even be thinking about campaign season when it comes to this kind of conversation?
Ted Lieu 33:57
So that that’s a very good point you make and I do think that folks should probably at a local level, understand that their local elected officials are largely volunteers, right? They’re not in this to make money. You’re a city council member. And Santa Monica is not doing it as a way of making sure that they get food on the table. That’s not why they’re doing this, right. They’re doing this because they believe in public service. And they want to make sure that Santa Monica is a great place to live, work and play. So if people sort of start from that perspective, that people really are trying to serve the public, and you wouldn’t go through the hassle of running for city council. If you didn’t, at least in your mind, want to help do good is it because it’s just not not worth it. Now, you may disagree on different issues and have different viewpoints. And I think people should try to write work out various solutions to various issues and people can disagree on you know, The best way of getting to a particular goal, but I think everyone is in it for generally the right reasons.
Evan Meyer 35:09
I would agree with that I, and we’re all neighbors here. So it’s like, you got neighbors, verse neighbors, and it’s, it’s weird, and it seems not called for it, it feels that people are particularly angry over over, really first world problems like, as first world as problems can can can get. That said, there are some things that are universally not first world problems and public safety and homelessness is a real problem. So, you know, there is there’s things like that. But it does seem like everyone wants to solve these problems. And all of the values and aspirations are the same. But the approach is different. And some people think the solution to homelessness is mental illness first, versus housing. But I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t think housing isn’t part of the conversation, for example, right? Everyone believes that there’s some degree of housing, it just depends on how much so and when, and where and how. And because of that, there’s like, a big one here, one of the big ones here, right? That there’s like a war in a sense, and there’s they’re smearing each other they’re running, they’re spending money hating each other and smearing, and it’s so sad, as a community, what do we do to change that? So
Ted Lieu 36:41
part of that, I think, is when there’s not a resources, right, that causes conflict, and people do to get into a different political fights. So at the federal level, we’ve done a relatively decent job with veterans who happen to be homeless. And that’s because there was a pretty good federal program called the HUD VASH voucher where we provide housing, plus the VASH part, which are services. So while homelessness has spiked across the board in California, and in places like Santa Monica, it hasn’t really spike among veterans who haven’t be homeless. So what I like to do is expand that kind of program to everybody else. And my view is just because the federal government hasn’t been done evolve with homeless people who aren’t veterans doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. And so Senator Feinstein, I have introduced legislation that would provide basically $4 billion over five years to local cities, and counties to address homelessness and provide services to people who are homeless. And I think we need to just get more resources to cities and counties to address this problem. Now, with any relatively large population, there’s always a lot of different reasons for why someone is homeless. So some of them may be you know, to illness, some it could be that they’re working, but they can’t pay the rent. And so they’re homeless. So you have a number of working people who are homeless, you also have people who may be homeless because of drugs, you may have people who are homeless, because they’re in between jobs, and they just didn’t have the amount of money to stay in their apartment. But if they were given some assistance, they could sort of transition back to society relatively quickly. And then you have some people who, for whatever reason, have lost their total support structure, right? When someone is homeless, they have no family, helping them, no friends, helping them, no colleagues helping them. And it’s all these different issues that they’re struggling to deal with. And it’s really hard to have any single program help all these folks. So I basically support lots of different programs to help lots of different kinds of people who happen to be homeless.
Evan Meyer 39:11
Yeah. And I think everyone really wants to do that. I just get I can’t understand why the vitriol? Yeah. Around this. Do you think that the facts are clear around what the root cause of homelessness is?
Ted Lieu 39:30
So this is an interesting issue, because everyone has the same shared goal, right? Everyone wants to reduce homelessness, but there’s no one walking around. It says, hey, I want to increase homelessness, right? Yeah. So everyone has exactly the same shared goal. But there are lots of different views of how we get there. And some of it are factual disputes. So it would matter if you happen to believe that people are homeless for X reason only, versus someone else in mind. Believe it’s for whatever reason, you might actually have very different views on what to do. So, yeah, I think the facts not only may matter, but the facts may also not be that easy to ascertain, because it’s somewhat hard right to figure out with a large population exactly why people are homeless. So there’s lots of different issues.
Evan Meyer 40:27
Yeah. I mean, this is, and this is tough, because there’s a, you know, a civil war, if you will, a vocal civil war here. But you know, all I can think is, if we can’t get to the bottom of like, the local stuff, whether it’s, I mean, homelessness is a big one, it’s a regional issue. It’s a national issue. But you know, about a development, like a building that is getting built and and the different concerns around that, and whether it should be a park or a bill, like if we can’t get to the bottom of that and get our facts straight. How when you start getting even more removed, because the local level, you’re, like, you’re pretty in touch, you can go to meetings, you can get very close to source information. At the federal level, you’re getting real far removed, you are not in the room where it happens, right? There’s ulterior motives, they own people, they’re saying what they want you to hear very often not what actually, the conversation was about. And it scares me sometimes, like, if the level of polarization right now is so strong, you know, you start to think like, is the Civil War possible? You know? And it’s scary. And I think a lot of people have that sort of a little bit of a thought, at least conversations I’ve had, we don’t want to get there. So my question for you is, is that possible? Are we on that track? Or what do we need to do to believe that we’re all on the same team?
Ted Lieu 42:04
I think you asked a very important question prior to January 6. You know, I really didn’t think that was possible. The GRE six insurrection, where you had all these people show up and literally brutalized police officers attack law enforcement, in their insane desire to go into the Capitol and stop the certification of Joe Biden as president. That that was very highly, deeply disturbing. It was a violent, a series of actions. And a lot of these, actually, most of those were just regular Americans. They got caught up in the lies that Donald Trump put out, believe them, and then somehow thought that they were being patriots by attacking our own capital to install Donald Trump illegitimately as president. And so if people believe that and are able and willing to take violent action to execute it, that is really troubling. And so we’ll we’ll see what happens in the next couple of years. I think this November’s elections are going to be important because not only do you have control the Congress and the Senate estate, but also you got law state races where you have election deniers running for governor or running for secretary of state. That is really troubling. It’s really bad for democracy. The election denier gets you elected to a very high level of office. Yeah.
Evan Meyer 43:48
I mean, a lot of this, to me, still sort of like there’s a lot of it that sounds like even with like climate deniers, like, I don’t know, any climate deniers, I know, people who think that climate isn’t the first priority, similar to homelessness, right? It’s like, no, it’s important. We need to be responsible. We need to do all these important things move to clean energy, but they don’t believe that it’s as important as the economy, for example, right? So they just that’s not in their vernacular, it’s not in their conversation. But then the narratives that were given tend to be as if the climate deniers and I’m curious to know if you think, if you agree with this, but that’s like a fringe case. These are extreme people, and that most people don’t believe that these extreme type of things we get lost in the extremism of the narrative. Most people I believe are narrow, or moderate, which was this 99% thing that was going on for a while right. Why are we so hung up on the extremes and What if it is the case that most people are? Moderate? How Why is our culture adapted to this and normalized it? We’re following extreme conversations, shouldn’t we be following them? 100 conversations?
Ted Lieu 45:18
So then this is the best way I can answer that. I think you’re accurate and correct that most people believe in climate change, and that they believe humans either have a significant role, or at least some role in causing it. The US Senate and the US Congress are not like that. So the best way to explain this is the Republican elected officials in the House of Representatives in the Senate are pretty fringe on the climate change issue, pretty extreme. You can just read their statements, a number of them do not believe in climate change, or believe that it’s naturally occurring. Or believe that okay, maybe there is climate change was not nothing to do about it. I mean, so that’s why you don’t have a lot of things happen on climate. And that’s why it basically took Democrats on a party line basis to pass inflation reduction at the largest investment and climate change project in US history. Not a single Republican voted for it.
Evan Meyer 46:32
So how do we get past all this? You’ve you’ve mentioned, you know, a fix for Dems and a fix for Republicans? But do we need to get our facts straight? Do we need to how are we going to move forward in this?
Ted Lieu 46:49
I think, continuing to tell the truth is helpful. Right? And so 30 years ago, people didn’t really know what, you know, climate change was or is 20 years ago, yeah, a lot of people denying it. But now, right, prove the younger generation, people understand it’s real. And so part of that shift and the public opinion is because people just kept telling you the truth about climate change. And most people, in fact, do trust experts. And most people do believe in physics, and chemistry and biology. And you know, the laws of nature. And I’ll give you some of this. So one fact that I found interesting, so, last year, if you watch the media, and you saw all these anti vaxxers, you know, protesting at school boards out places, you would think, Wow, a lot of people don’t believe these vaccines. And then I remember, you know, I was on a phone call with the LA County chief medical officer, earlier this year, and I said, So how many people you know, are vaccinated LA County? And the person said, Well, if you, you know, don’t count people under 12, about 85%. I was like, Whoa, that’s a really high number, which sort of tells me that most people are not ideologically opposed to vaccines. Most people actually trust scientists and most people don’t want to die from COVID. So it’s a really small handful of people that have this outsized voice, and if that 15% I, I don’t think I’ll 15% are also vaccine deniers, I think a number that either don’t have access to it or it’s hard for them to to get the shout or, or so on. So I think the relative relative percentage of people that sort of are vaccine deniers is probably pretty small. So that gave me some hope. And with climate change, I think you’re gonna reach that stage where it’s really a small minority that that think gets, you know, being caused by China,
Evan Meyer 48:58
and even actually make a good point here. And, you know, one of the things that I see, I don’t think I’ve yet to meet an anti Vaxxer This is another one of those language.
Ted Lieu 49:11
But anyways, go ahead.
Evan Meyer 49:12
They’re out there. I don’t I guess in however I interact, I don’t meet people who are like no to vaccines. There they seem to be there is some people that seem to be known to this vaccine. And, and this gets back to like, where you’re getting your data from? And why is that and if it’s really a como comorbidity and obesity, majority issue, then why am I trying this mRNA vaccine? So I think that’s the that’s the logic that I’m seeing, not necessarily no vaccinations, but like mRNA is a new thing. It’s a wonderful technology. And I guess, I guess they don’t want to be guinea pigs, in a sense, maybe. So that’s, that’s, that’s What I’m hearing and so the reason I’m bringing it up is because it kind of goes back to that climate denier is in the same category for me is like anti Vaxxer. Right? And sometimes that sort of we have this tendency of categorizing people that makes us feel better or puts people in camps. And actually, they’re not that some of them aren’t that far off. Most people I know, got vaccinated, but you know, I don’t. That’s the sentiment that I saw most of the time.
Ted Lieu 50:30
So what you said is, is absolutely fair. So I think people are gonna take the view that they don’t want to try sort of new technology. Now, if you do talk to them, you should let them know that there are vaccines that were done on the traditional basis, like the vaccines they got from measles, or mumps or so on. Yeah, not mRNA vaccine. So I’d be curious if they will take those vaccines. But it does go to this other point, which I think is interesting about COVID. Is it wasn’t Imagine if COVID operate like Ebola with a one week latency period. Everybody will be wearing masks, everyone should be vaccinated, right? Because Ebola is so deadly. A COVID. Right? Wasn’t like that it was certain this gray area where, you know, it’s true that 99% of the people who got it are going to survive. So people start making their own risk calculations. Now, that does depend on age group, if you’re older, it’s going to be less than that. But, you know, if you’re a healthy 35 year old, you might make a risk calculation, that’s different, then, you know, what government thinks is it best to protect everyone from dying or getting very sick? And I think that caused a lot of conflict society was sort of like this interesting, gray area COVID hit right, in the sweet spot where people started making risk calculations.
Evan Meyer 52:05
Yeah, sure. Yeah. And because it wasn’t as deadly, and they thought that that was an opportunity. A lot of times, I felt like the society’s is aware of the risk at their own level. And if you’re willing to take that risk, you know, but then conversation is like, it’s not about you. It’s about everyone, right? I mean, that’s the kind of ultimate. But the problem is,
Ted Lieu 52:29
right, if, let’s say, you know, it’s a 1% lethality rate apply to a country as big as United States. That is a huge amount of people. Right. So that’s why, you know, government took the steps that it took, yeah,
Evan Meyer 52:41
well, one of the interesting things that so before there was vaccines, I remember, like in my community meetings and on social media, but I was sharing a lot about like, hey, we don’t know where the vaccines are coming. But the best thing you can do is start to like, eat well. Learn about nutrition and learn about exercise and start exercising daily, some degree, start sweating every day. Because the best thing you can do is have a strong immunity. That’s the best thing you can really do. Right? Like if you’re, if you’re healthy.
Ted Lieu 53:10
There’s a whole variety of other reasons, right. So that that’s good for a whole variety of other reasons. You absolutely should exercise and eat healthy Oh, prevent all sorts of different diseases happening to you. Yeah.
Evan Meyer 53:23
And I was I was I was, I guess I was I was frustrated, because I’m like, I don’t understand why people aren’t. Why aren’t government saying, Hey, make sure you exercise. Like, exercise, this is important. You need to eat well stop eating sugar, start getting start sweating every day and learn about these things while we’re sitting at home. Not going to the office. So I was trying to be that guy for a little while. For you. Thank you. And I just never knew I didn’t get any messaging. I didn’t see it from the CDC. And you see it locally. And it’s you federally, you know this, I feel like most people know this. Why do you why do you? Why do you think it wasn’t like no one recommended that? I think,
Ted Lieu 54:07
well, government does recommend that. But I think people sort of tune that out. And I think people know they’re supposed to exercise. It’s just that it’s hard to have people don’t like exercise and you know, so I think it’s more that than anything else. I think. I think most people know that they’re supposed to exercise and exercise is a good thing. They just, they don’t want to do it because it’s it’s not like eating a doughnut, right? Eating a doughnut is much more pleasurable.
Evan Meyer 54:33
Interesting discipline required. Yes. Yeah, no. And I was like, well, you’re sick, you’re not driving to work, use that time. You did not drive to work today. So you can go put it on a YouTube video for 20 minutes. There’s tons of great 20 minute videos. So I still recommend that for people but
Ted Lieu 54:54
no, that’s good. I mean, if if everyone in the US exercise more, it will be now care costs? Absolutely.
Evan Meyer 55:03
Well, here’s to a healthier us, I suppose so we can all exercise a bit more. I really enjoyed this conversation. I, I thank you for really exploring kind of all the all the angles of these complex issues. And in taking the time to help people think about perhaps how we can treat each other just a bit better.
Ted Lieu 55:37
Thank you for advocating that I, that is actually a good thing.
Evan Meyer 55:42
Anything you want to leave everybody with today, as a as a final note, I just thought I’d
Ted Lieu 55:50
maybe give some words of optimism about our institutions. Because some of what we talked about today was sort of dark, right? So I want people to understand what happened with the Muller report and what it was right, it was an investigation of a president who was Republican, led by someone who was Republican, at a time when Republicans controlled the House, the Senate and the White House. And that investigation was allowed to go to its completion, largely without interference. That’s pretty remarkable. I don’t think many countries would have been able to do that. And so I think people should understand that our institutions are strong, they held and people should have faith in their institutions.
Evan Meyer 56:45
Yeah, I like that. I think there is some degree of hope and faith, that’s important to know that the US is a great country, whether you think it’s the best country in the world, or second, but yeah, well, outside of my personal beliefs, whatever people think they do believe they should realize that, you know, and I’ll just say like, if you want to make change, the system is sort of set up for making change. And it starts locally. And, and if you try to talk, get all crazy about federal politics, and just share nonsense and, and get hung up in the morning about this stuff, then you just sort of destroy your brain. And you don’t take a lot of action. But if you if you focus locally, you can make great change your your vote is one to one, there is no elect, throw college, you can support local candidates, and you can do things in your own backyard that are important. Learn about how recycling works, learn about how your streets work, how things get fixed. And because of that, I love the American system, it doesn’t mean it’s fair all the time. And it doesn’t mean you don’t have to deal with life stuff, but like the system is built for improvement and progress. That’s how I see it.
Ted Lieu 58:11
Absolutely. And, you know, when I came here, we were poor. And we started living in a very similar person’s home, and my parents will go to flea markets and sell gifts, and jewelry to make ends meet. Now I’m a member of Congress. And my story is not unique. It’s the same story that’s replicated across billions of people generation after generation. And there are very few countries like America that allowed this to happen. And it’s still amazing place. And just one last thing to think about. If you’re a great entrepreneur, and you want to start a business. And you have a great idea, would you want to, for example, go to China, where the government could just kidnap you, if they think you’re being too successful. Do you want to go to Russia, where people get pushed out of high rise buildings by the you know, government of, you know, KGB agents and so on. You wouldn’t do that. Right. But you might go to Santa Monica. Right. You might you might locate here in California. So I think over the long term, the United States, not only is an exceptional country, but will remain that way, especially compared to our peer competitors. Yeah.
Evan Meyer 59:25
Sir, I thank you for your time. And thank you for being someone who stands for what they believe in, in taking the hard road of being a politician. It’s hard. It’s not an easy thing, and you have the courage to go and do that. That most people don’t. So whatever side of aisles people are on I often like to thank people for their service of being doing the difficult job of being a politician. So
Ted Lieu 59:59
it’s hard Thank you so much Evan I had a lovely time today with you alright so
Evan Meyer 1:00:04
thank you so much take care