- [Spokesperson] The following program is sponsored by National Grid.

Through its Project C, National Grid is connecting communities to clean and sustainable energy, creating a workforce to support renewable energy, working to support neighborhoods and their revitalization.

- Not everyone who votes for Trump is a racist, but racist voted for Trump.

- You sat up on the House floor and criticized without knowing what you were talking about.

- They're on opposite sides of the same issue, but can a good meal help settle their beef?

C'mon, now.

- No, I don't think so.

- It's food for thought as guests agree to eat and argue.

- Joe Biden didn't bring the virus.

- I haven't even mentioned Joe Biden.

- Let's get real.

- The only people that can destroy this country is us.

- Who's right?

Former New York State Lieutenant Governor and New York Post columnist, Betsy McCaughey, and Democratic strategist, Hank Sheinkopf, join me, Julian Phillips, in Hendrick's Tavern to dish out the facts.

- How are you?

Nice to see you.

Hello, Hank.

- Nice to see you.

- Hank.

- My brother.

- My brother.

Have a seat.

It's good to see both of you.

Hank, you know, you're an old friend.

Betsy, you're a-- - A new friend.

- A new old friend.

Absolutely.

The State of the Union is the subject today.

I just wanna read you something that Biden said on March 1st when he addressed both houses of Congress.

"I have come to report on the State of the Union "and my report is the State of the Union is strong."

Now, some would agree with that and they would say that, you know, unemployment is down record lows, it's under 4%.

But there are a lot of other people who would say hey, we're having a lot of problems right here.

Inflation is high.

People are having a hard time paying for food.

Gas is at almost record highs right now.

- Actually, record highs now.

- Okay, it is.

- Record highs as of, now.

- So the question is are we as a nation strong?

And where do we go from here with a nation that is so divided, where we can get people to either rally around not a particular party, but for the nation as a whole for the well-being of it?

Where are we now, as a nation?

- You're asking me, look, we're in a very interesting place.

We're going through a period of extraordinary change.

The complexion of the country's changing.

It is less European.

The Congress is ultimately gonna start turning away from Europe and toward Latin America and toward Asia and that's why this whole thing in Ukraine is so upsetting to so many people, one of the reasons.

The Pax Americana that has kept people from killing each other since the World War 2, with limited wars along the way, is coming to conclusion.

Our problems with China, you know, Kissinger said it, I didn't, that we're closer to war with China than we've ever been, is very serious, and the position of America in the world is something that Americans really do understand.

They've deluded themselves for so long with the belief that this could never change.

And guess what?

It's changing, right in front of them right now.

- The complexion of our nation is changing and I think there's some folks that have some fear about that.

- I think there's too much emphasis on that.

- [Julian] Okay.

- I know that racially, the nation is changing, ethnically, the nation is changing, but the people who bring their children here, the older people, the grandparents who want their families here, they have the same dream that we've always had.

They're coming to a free nation.

They're coming to a nation where, if you strive, if you work hard, you can succeed.

Those values have not disappeared.

- I think it's kind of ideal, but of the same token, you know, we have a society now, we're talking about critical race theory and such, and there are folks that are concerned that if we talk too much about slavery, for instance, that we are going to be hurting young kids.

We don't want them to feel that way about themselves.

- Hold on, hold on, I don't wanna blow anybody's brains out but let's be clear about one thing.

We're talking about the Ukraine these days.

You know what, this argument that somehow we're unique in our bloodletting or unique in our misbehavior is nonsense.

We have a lot to think about and our children ought to know about it, but few societies have done as much as this one has to try to move past it.

- That's right.

- Now, we have problems and there is a significant portion of this population that's left behind.

That's another question for another day.

Or maybe today, which is, you know, that has a lot to do with income disparity.

- We're only on our salad, we got time.

- This is a pear salad.

- It's a challenge to eat and talk, but no one is objecting to including slavery, segregation, all the horrors of the past.

I used to teach American history for many years at Vassar, at Columbia.

The issue is telling kids today that they have inherited guilt, that they're oppressors or they're victims, all the kids in the classroom should be able to look at the past and learn from the past, but not feel as if they're stuck in the past because they're not.

- I'm much more concerned, frankly, about the exclusion of books both by the right and the left that we see happening around the country with the sense of what is history can be somehow reconfigured.

- Mm-hm.

- But dwelling on it on a constant basis is a way of not dealing with the problems, you see.

I'm convinced that a lot of this has to do, and particularly with guilty whites, it has to do with that they don't want to deal with the real issues, which we've gotta make sure our schools function, and they're not functioning.

- Well here is you find the 800-pound gorilla in the room.

- It's not enough.

We need to stop lying.

Dumping money in is not the only answer.

- You know, there are more commonalities and how can we get together to get something done in the halls of Congress?

That's one problem-- - Well, and it doesn't necessarily happen there because I'll tell you, some of the most interesting viewing I've done recently is on YouTube watching local school board meetings.

The parents come up to the microphone to voice their concerns, and it's like the members of the board can barely tolerate their existence.

We need to listen to parents because nobody wants kids to do better more than their own parents.

- Sure.

- Nobody.

For example, I've been very involved with women in Connecticut now, who are extremely concerned with what's going on in the schools.

And when I see how involved they're getting, I think to myself this is really the key.

For example, Connecticut's a solidly blue state, like New York.

- Sure, mm-hm.

- But woman who are going to these suburban towns and talking about how to win a school board election, it's gonna have an impact on other races.

Because once voters see, well, that person over there who happens to be a Republican, is really making sense about the school boards, maybe I'll consider voting Republican next time.

- I see a lot of people, okay, after an election, they're all upset, you know, that either their candidate didn't win or, you know, that the issues that they've had, that they're not being seen.

But I ask, "Well, did you vote?"

No.

And it's more politics is local, Hank, you know this better than anybody else.

- I worked all over the world and I've worked on campaigns in four continents.

I can tell ya that people in other parts of the world probably take voting much more seriously than we do.

And I've seen people stand on lines for hours and hours, and hours.

We need a challenge.

In kind, if you look at the voter turnouts in the 2020 election and where the biggest numbers were, they were among African-American voters in significant fashion.

It tells you something.

But if we don't get people to participate in other, and I used to do school board elections.

I mean, I've done 'em.

I've done 'em in New Jersey, I've done 'em in, we used to have 'em in New York.

They went in February, I think, if I recall, in New York.

- Now they're in May.

- In New York City-- [Julian and Betsy laughing] We used to have 'em in New York City.

We don't have 'em anymore.

And the UFT would put up the money.

But money dominates our politics and all kinds of, and anything to do with politics.

And so long as that's the case, then the coin of the realm is not power.

The coin of the realm is money, and money that equals power.

The larger issue about voting is the fact that, I think Dr. McCaughey will agree with me, that both parties are in serious trouble.

This schism where things have moved in such extreme measures.

I did a client of intervening variables in a civic culture like religion, the Masons, the Kiwanans, the Lions, the paternal groups that people had, the communal entities that are now disappearing, these were all important to the political structure because they gave people places to meet that were not confrontational.

- And Hank's so right about that, it kept our communities together.

But it can happen again.

PTAs, that's why I think schools are so important, school elections, school meetings, school involvement, because one of the most important things most of us do in our lives is raise a family.

And we're so committed to it and we share those values with people who vote differently.

- So here we are, getting into the meat-- - This looks beautiful, by the way.

- It is, I think this is Perot's Island Salmon.

- I'm gonna have trouble focusing on politics with this meal.

- No, you're not.

[Betsy laughing] We're gonna get into Perot's Island Salmon with the sauteed spinach, capers, and mushrooms.

- My grandfather would say it's a nice fish, go ahead.

- So here we get into the meat of the issue, the crux of it here, the truth.

We are supposedly more divisive than we've ever been.

Where do we find the truth?

I have folks that listen to certain cable outfits, okay, it could be on the right or the left, and they truly believe what they're hearing is the truth and that really may not be.

- It's never been.

- Okay, but it's worse than it's ever been.

- It is more opinionated now, I think, than then.

- That is true.

Here's the other part of it.

We don't have any joining arguments in the country anymore.

What do I mean by that?

You know, there was a time in life, at 6:00 PM, I guess, it was at 6:30, you turned on whatever it was, ABC, NBC, or CBS, and you saw one guy or whoever it was, it was Barbara Walters at one point, or Uncle Walter.

- She was on ABC?

- Uh-huh, yeah, and you saw that person and that was the person that joined the nation together.

Everybody was glued to their TV sets at that particular time.

- And then we would talk about it.

- And then we'd talk about it, Uncle Walter, Walter Cronkite.

Walter Cronkite's influence was so extraordinary, we could overcome our differences if we had central points in which to discuss.

We don't have that anymore.

That's what part of the TV news has done to us.

- So you're saying the fourth estate is a problem.

- No, I'm not saying the fourth estate-- - They're responding to the marketplace.

- [Sheinkopf] That's correct.

- They're responding to the marketplace, but maybe they're not reporting and responding to what they should be reporting is the truth.

- They're responding to polls in regional variations.

- Right.

- We've recreated, in some kind of ways, the regional variations that we didn't wanna have.

We've no longer, the south is no longer part of the country.

And the people in the middle are looking at the coasts and saying who are these crazy people?

There's nothing to bring us together in that way.

- Well, but there should be, okay, and I'm being simplistic about this and that's the truth.

Let's take an example.

We have now the jobless rate is below 4%.

You had a month now, just recently, where we had 600,000 jobs that had been introduced.

- 578,000 in one month, six [talking with mouth full].

- Okay, if you listen to the Democrats, our economy is good.

But if you listen to the Republicans, we're not doing very well at all.

And inflation is an issue.

But anytime the economy is doing well, you're going to have an increase in inflation.

- Oh, no.

That is not true, Julian.

- C'mon, Betsy.

- No.

The economy, for example, grew very fast under Donald Trump and inflation was 1.4%.

Now it's 7%, 8%.

What causes inflation?

Largely, too much government spending because the marketplace is flooded with dollars chasing too few goods.

So the price of each item, each widget, goes up.

Of course, the other major reason is energy.

We're no longer an energy-independent nation and look at the price of gas.

It is a major driver-- - How about full employment is a driver of inflation?

- No, I don't think so.

- Okay, I do.

- I don't think so.

But what is true is when energy costs go up, food costs go up.

It's because the refrigeration costs more, the trucking costs more, all the things that put the food on the table.

By the way, this is.

[Julian laughing] I'm telling you, this is so delicious.

- [Sheinkopf] And the economy resulted in a breakdown-- - You beat me on this, Betsy.

- COVID resulted in a breakdown of supply chain and that is also causing the pressure on prices, which is not something that Joe Biden did.

Joe Biden didn't bring the virus.

- I haven't even mentioned Joe Biden.

- I'm just, I wanna be careful here.

I wanna get that in the offering here.

- I am not gonna attack Uncle Joe.

[Betsy laughing] - He's over there somewhere.

- I guess my question is, if we can get people and both houses of Congress to sit down and say, for instance, over a meal, and try to figure this out-- - Okay, now this is 435 meals.

[Julian laughing] - Some have a lousy taste in food, too.

[Julian and Betsy laughing] We're never gonna get there, we're gonna get government by poll.

And polling data will be the divider, the decider.

And the problem with polling data is we're getting lousy results.

The pollster's doing a lousy job.

- And tell us why, why the polls are so inaccurate.

- The pollsters are drawing the samples that they use from the same sample houses.

Also, they're lazy and when the signs are polling again, people aren't going door-to-door.

- Right.

- They're not doing that anymore.

- We are still at a point where people are looking for our politicians and I don't think that they are getting what they need in order to make-- - Well, part of it is-- - [Julian] Informed decisions.

- So many people live in areas where they really feel they don't have a choice because a one party dominates.

New York, take New York.

Republicans have very few shots at winning elections most years in New York.

Then you go to other states and they're solidly Republican.

They're called safe seats.

It's a very unfortunate thing because you have less debate and you have less feeling of a choice.

- I have a wine, you have a water.

[Betsy chuckles] - And then you have a state like Florida where it's a real horse race.

And you get a better discussion of the issues.

- But you have to have extraordinary issues to get people to pay attention anyway.

- That's right.

- Generally, turnouts are lousy.

- Right.

- Part of the reason they're lousy is there's no real choices and depending on reapportionment, which is what we've had this year, you've effectively gotten rid of I would guess 20, probably be the 25% of real competencies.

- We're also assuming that all the answers are through government.

A lot of it is what we do in our own communities raising our own families, doing the right thing, making sure your kids are getting the resources they need.

I grew up in a very blue collar household.

My dad worked in a factory.

But he would sit at the kitchen table with me every night and watch me do my homework.

I'll never forget that.

- That doesn't happen necessarily in a lotta households.

- Yeah, but a lot of this is set up for failure.

How so?

Go to the Bronx, the area they call the 40th police precinct.

- South Bronx?

- There were 60 murders last year.

Shooting starts in the morning.

It used to start in the afternoon, now it starts in the morning.

- Well, these people are getting up early.

[Betsy chuckling] Sorry.

- I think there's 100,000 residents in public housing.

We're housing people in locations where chaos runs the world.

Who believes something good's gonna come of that?

- Well, let's talk about policing because there's been such a rebellion against policing in this society and yet we know that the people who suffer most when there's a lack of effective policing are people in just the circumstances you've described.

- Okay, here's where I would disagree with you, Betsy.

I think people, even in impoverished communities want police, they've demonstrated that.

What they are against is not the police, but they're against police brutality and this blue line where the police do not want to hold themselves accountable.

- I agree with you, that all police should be accountable.

But in most places now, they're wearing cameras and there are bad apples everywhere and we're taking care of them as best we can.

But the fact is, defunding the police doesn't say defunding the bad apples.

There are cities where they literally tried to defund the police, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and the results have been staggering.

- Hold on a second, let me chime in here.

- Sure.

- I think there are catch phrases that both Democrats and Republicans use to either empower their base or put fear in their base to excite them to believe a certain thing.

You've got socialism, you've got defund the police, you have critical race theory, and it's not really bringing people together.

- It's an imperfect system by definition.

Remember that democracy is not a very widespread practice.

It is at best, fragile.

It is at best, unique.

And it is a best, under challenge all the time.

People have tried to kill each other over these ideas.

Like Shay's Rebellion is a good start.

You know, people are rebelling on the government from the day one, from day one.

Alexander Hamilton, he was absolutely eviscerated by Thomas Jefferson, the great democrat.

Went after the more conservative guy, tried to kill him, effectively, and he ultimately, you know, he got killed.

But the most negative campaign probably of that time in history.

And Jefferson paid for it out of his own pocket.

Now we have the new institutions of corporations amassing extraordinary amounts of money and putting them into political campaigns and in an unregulated fashion, which has distorted the entire system in which we live.

So how do ya fix this?

Get the money out of politics.

That's number one.

- A lot of it has to do with the consultants and the pollsters, and all these people who make so much money-- - And, and hold on a second.

Now you go into any of the, you know, and I was working in Capitol Hill.

When you go into the Rayburn Building, Longworth Building, and you go to these long, white corridors, and what do you see if you open any of those doors?

You see all these people sitting around there waiting to talk to lawmakers, and the majority of them are lobbyists.

- That's right.

I'll tell you a story.

When I was elected to be lieutenant governor, I had never been to Albany.

And I walked in to my office that first day and as Hank knows, it's one of the most beautiful buildings, one of the most beautiful rooms in the Capitol, the lieutenant governor's office.

And standing outside the door waiting for me was a long line of lobbyists.

Number one in line, the chiropractors.

Number three in line, another, my field was medicine so they were there to see me.

They wanted me to support the idea that every health plan sold in the state had to include unlimited coverage for their services.

Now that's what drives health plans to an unaffordable price.

So the lobbyists make so many aspects of life unaffordable.

- You know, you're right-- - You wanna lick the plate, Hank?

- Thank you, I will.

No, I ate the fish, but I left behind these animals.

[Betsy laughing] Baseball and mushrooms not for me.

The use of intermediaries between people and government drives up the cost of things.

- K Street, Washington, block after block of lobbyists.

- And by the way, and the other thing, the other thing that's absolutely disgusting is that we now have a permanent political class.

You know, City Council where these people have communications directors and chiefs of staff, are you kidding me?

Get rid of them.

Put 'em on the street and let 'em go to work.

The Congress looks like it's a, you have all these staff people that-- - State legislatures, too.

I, believe it or not, now I haven't been involved in New York State government in a long time.

The same people are sitting in the legislature as when I was there, 20 years later.

Some are in jail.

- They've been waxed and put there.

[Betsy laughs] - Look, we can talk about terrible things, we can talk about all of those things.

Oo, look at this.

- [Betsy] What is this?

- This is the apple-- - Looks beautiful.

- This is a kind of an apple crisp.

- [Sheinkopf] Very impressive, yeah.

- It is, and so you guys eat and I'll talk.

We need great leadership and I just don't think that we're getting it.

- What we've had is resilience because we've had a lot of inferior leaders and our system has survived them.

- Who's crazier than Andrew Jackson, I mean, are you kidding me?

He was a murderer and on top of that, he gave the White House over to a bunch of populous lunatics, who just, you know, it was January the 6th before it happened.

- But I would despair a little less and enjoy your dessert.

- I wanna enjoy my dessert in one second, but I've got to get to a point here.

We still have a lot of people in this country that believe that the election was stolen, despite the overwhelming evidence by judges, a lot of them that were Republican, that are saying otherwise.

I think you really can't even have discussion until we as a country get beyond this.

We're changing voting laws where there was not any evidence of voter fraud.

- Well, let's clarify it a bit.

- Okay, I'm listening.

- Some voting practices were changed in some states, swing states, to accommodate COVID.

Some were changed not the way they're supposed to be changed, which is only according to the constitution by the state legislature.

So there's a legitimate concern that it should only be changed by the state legislature.

That's what the Constitution says.

I don't think there's been any kind of evidence that somebody else won the election.

Let's put that behind us.

- Okay.

- But should those temporary changes that were made to accommodate COVID become permanent?

And in some cases, people argue, well, I don't think voting by mail should be universal because it invites fraud.

Every European country that's tried it has reached that conclusion.

That's why you can't vote by mail in Europe unless you can prove that you have to be out of the country at a particular time.

They've all rejected it.

- The issue is there are very passionate people out here who are good Americans that believe that we have a president that should not be there.

- Okay, good.

So what, next.

- Well, the next thing is, I mean, look, we've gotta get people to agree on that.

And that's exactly why-- - No, you can never get everybody to agree.

You just move on and take it off the table as a discussion.

- There're people that still believe that the Civil War was wrong because it destroyed the south.

You know what, they're wrong.

Next.

- Right.

I'm not trying to convince an atheist that God exists.

We're not gonna go to-- - I have very strong feelings about what happened on January 6th.

- Okay.

- It is still an amazing thing to me that sharpshooters weren't there killing all those people that tried to break in, which probably would've been the right thing to do.

'Cause to disrupt a system, to attempt to murder a vice president of the United States and members of the government's newly-elected, is criminal.

We haven't concluded this.

What are we doing here?

This is of more concern to me.

If you do that, then you won't have to worry about the other thing.

- This is my point.

- We have a very split country.

You know what, you know how you get past it?

You get past it by living.

- And redefining the agenda to the issues we can all discuss.

How's that?

- Betsy and Hank for president and vice president.

I'm not putting it in any particular order here.

[Betsy laughing] I think that's what we need more of.

We have a polarized House where things are not getting done and the average person is suffering because of it.

And we need somebody to stand up there, some lawmakers to say hey look, I'll fall on the sword for this, but we-- - When getting reelected is less important than doing the peoples' business, and when you're not worrying about how much money you're gonna get out of till for how many staff, or how many hours a day you have to spend on the phone raising money, that'll be the day when stuff happens.

I mean, if they would do the peoples' business.

I'd love to see patriotism.

- I remember how demoralized I was when I first got to Albany and saw.

I figured out, well, what are they doing out there?

- Patriotism.

- They were not doing the peoples' business.

- So let me ask you a question.

Do you think we are at a point in time now where lawmakers are not doing the peoples' business?

Is this an unusual time?

- There's been a lotta corruption for a very long time.

- I think it's the creation of a permanent political class we have as a new royalty we've created.

A permanent political class that is not responsive to the electorate.

Why?

'Cause it makes sure it can win elections.

So what does that do?

That creates conservatives because they resent the fact that this is going on.

And they look for another outlet.

In order to reduce this resentment, we're gonna have to find a place where people agree, and where they feel that they're engaged and that they're, frankly, that their resources are being used effectively.

- How do we get to a point in this country where people, if they hear, if it's on the right or the left?

I am so sick of hearing the left, the right.

Even with the whole situation with Ukraine right now, people are trying to politicize what's going on in Ukraine and we can't come together.

Who's responsible for changing the narrative?

- Individuals who rise to the occasion.

And throughout history, we've had that, times when a great individual will rise to the occasion.

- Harry Truman.

- And redefine the issues, redefine what it means to be a public servant.

- Yeah, I think you're right about that.

- Harry Truman, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Republican.

- Reform the system so it's more welcoming to more people.

Because, you know, when I talk to people who would love to run for office, when they're told they have to raise $20 million to run for something like New York State governor, they know that's way beyond them.

- It's about going back to basic arguments about right and wrong and about ideology.

We have destroyed ideology.

Instead, we've made it into television think.

We think that ideology means that if you hate this one, that's ideology - Well now, people have left television and it's social media, which is even more destructive.

It offers even less real content.

- Here we are at this table, and I call this Julian's State Dinner, and we're having a discussion from people who believe in this country but they have different points of view.

I think what we can say,-- - This is Julian's wrap.

- It is, this is my wrap.

[Betsy laughing] It's my sermon.

- It's your party and you'll cry if you want to.

- Hey look, and when I pass the plate, I don't wanna hear no noise.

Okay?

[Betsy laughing] I don't wanna hear no noise.

- I'm not getting involved.

- Listen, I think that if people listen to this discussion, they can understand that hey, look, you're not the bad person, you're not the bad person-- - Oh, then we have shared values.

Despite our different views.

- Exactly, you know, and I think that if anybody gets anything out of this discussion today, that hopefully they can understand that there are shared values and there's a way that we can get out of this.

And there's also a future for democracy in this country and a way to make sure that this great experiment called democracy in this country, can exist.

Can we toast to that?

- [Betsy] Yes.

- Yes, okay, yeah.

[glasses clanging] You have to use this glass.

Right?

I'm not good on which glass, I get confused.

- Cheers.

- Great to join you.

- Here's to cheers.

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