Tulsi Gabbard on the Corruptive Power of Money in Politics

What's next? Like where are you at right now? I think our initial challenge, the initial goal that we're seeking to meet here is to get, I have not qualified yet for the next debate in December. What do you have to do to qualify? We need to do two things. One is we've got to surpass 200,000 individual donors. That's hilarious. You need money. Where are you at right now? We are at, I think at about 199,000. Oh, we got that. We're close. Joe Rogan's got you covered. We'll take care of that. Guys, if you're realising to help, Tulsi2020.com. They're going to jump on that like a grenade. And then the second thing is, I think, require a certain number of polls and I think I need one more poll to meet that requirement, which is, again, is directly like, do you look at a guy like, I think, Pete Buttigieg, he spent $9 million on social media ads in order to get like a 4% bump in the polls. You look at what some of these other guys have spent, some of the billionaires, I think Steyer spent $37 million in order to qualify in the polls on the debate. And so our challenge is we just need to, we need to get out and get in front of people in order to make sure that we're bypassing the corporate media and we're actually talking directly to folks at home. Is there a real possibility that sometime in our lifetime they can take money out of politics like that? Yes, there has to be. There has to be. The more people learn about how completely lopsided our campaign finance system is that does two things. It favors those or it helps those who are taking money from corporations and PACs and lobbyists further deepening the divide between the politicians and the people that they are supposed to be serving and representing and instead you've got this insider culture of lobbyists and politicians who are just hanging out and making the decisions. Yeah, I mean, look, the second thing is that you're seeing how corrupting that influence has is on the politicians and the influence that they have over people and how much it's disproportionately helping the strength in the power of a two party system where those parties can literally take like for me if you wanted to give me a contribution you could give me the limit is twenty eight hundred dollars per the primary twenty hundred dollars that that's it. You can't no matter how much you want you can't give me any more money. But if you wanted to write a check to either the Democratic Party the Republican Party doesn't matter unlimited amount of money that you can give to the party. So what does that actually mean? It means the party has a hell of a lot of power that they can leverage over individual members of Congress elected leaders to say if you don't play ball if you don't vote the way we want you to vote we're not going to be there to help you out in your election. We're not going to run TV ads for you. We're not going to help you out when you're getting attacked by the other guy which just makes the problem that we already have worse where instead of leaders voting based on what they believe is right for their constituents or right for their the country or based on their conscience instead they're being goaded into voting for the interests of the political party putting party ahead of the interests of the country and so that that's I think the more people are learning about the consequence of our existing campaign finance system the more they're demanding change and reform so that we are electing leaders who are accountable only to the people. Have you ever had a conversation with someone where they have tried to influence your vote in one way or another in that way that you just described? I have so so you know I have met with lobbyists who will say hey here's why I want you to vote this way and and oh you know by the way we'll we'll be there at your next fundraising dinner or something like that. I have vampires. You know they hang up. You asked that question. I was like Joe come on man. That's the deal right there. And by the way years ago when I stopped taking PAC money I got no calls from any lobbyists. None. When I said no PAC money no lobbyists money automatically they're like well obviously we can't talk to her if we're not giving her money. This crazy lady's not playing games. Exactly. And then I haven't seen it you know I established very quickly in Congress that that I don't play political games and that I'm not going to be bullied into taking anybody else's position if I don't think it's the right one to take. So I have not experienced that kind of like the the the party has never helped me in any of my elections ever for City Council for state legislature for Congress. So them coming in saying well we're not going to be like dude you were never there for me ever anyway. But I've seen it happen with some of my friends who maybe represent swing districts or who are Democrats who got elected in Republican district. They're always going to have a really tough race. I have seen it happen in real time where that those bully tactics come into play.