0:00 [Music] welcome back to careful boys yes that's true if your eyes do not deceive you this is actuallyy G Joe lives in Hawaii right now do you really I do no kidding where where about uh kakaako oh nice yeah me and my fans we decided to open up a little tea shop in white Kiki and cool yeah what's it called Jun be very nice yeah please come by I'd love to I'm going to be in Hawaii next week uh Friday oh be there for a little while how do you how do you travel back and forth Hawaiian Airlines twice a month okay yeah yeah do you do you do that too um yeah I've been doing the commute thing for over a decade um from Hawaii to DC when I was in Congress
0:50 that's crazy do you get recognized all the time cuz we get recognized all the time yeah well maybe you can give me some tips cuz it's happening more and more lately say sure thing yeah yep smile take all right just be nice do you fly like um like Air Force One like no okay how do you I'm lucky if I get an upgrade my friend but you've been on air force one I have not actually no I was going to ask if you took a napkin that's what people tend to do no you know they the they take the napkins and they take the uh little M&M boxes seen with the presidential seal on them so cool I've been given them by other people who've ridden on Airport that's like I got cheese confetti from my buddy makes me look hella cool is like a microscopic like Chiefs loo barely it's half torn I'm like I think it's probably not legit put it up on the wall yeah so
1:41 you're here today because you're you have a book yes the love of country it is out now it's out it is available for pre-sale now uh it is it is called for love of country leave the Democrat Party behind and this is a pretty massive election year 2024 not only because of a a presidential election but really with everything that's going on in the country uh and so I left the Democratic party at the end of 2022 and I'm an independent and uh this book really tells it's not a memoir in the sense of like here's my life story those books are generally pretty boring I find especially for people in politics um this this chapter by chapter really tackles to me a lot of the major issues that we're facing as a country and my
2:32 experience of having been in the Democratic party for over 20 years and the shift and and and transformation that that party has undergone over that period of time and how they are in my experience um uh undermining some of the most fundamental principles that make us who we are as Americans and and that make this country what it is things What attracted you to the Democratic party before and what has changed what has it become in your eyes now yeah you know I I was 21 years old and I ran for the state house in Hawaii wow and I I made that decision really because it was a choice of either okay I can I'm very passionate about protecting our environment Hawaii's beautiful place beautiful oceans mountains and I grew up outdoors and I saw at that time a lot of
3:22 politicians in our state who saw their job in the state legislature kind of like as a post-retirement gig kick your feet up on the table and you know go hang out with with the boys and drink and smoke cigars after work um they they didn't care about a lot of the problems that I was seeing in our state uh for example they had a big landfill developer that wanted to go build a landfill over one of our major water aquafers on the island of aahu and uh as you know we have a few of them on the island but this one in particular serve 30% of the population which is roughly 300,000 people building a landfill over our water drinking Source I mean you know I'm not a geologist but I know that that's a pretty bad idea how do you know about these smart things when 21 how did you figure that out
4:13 well what's the secret I heard I heard I heard what was going on I heard what was going on and even as a teenager um you know I don't know I was 17 or 18 at the time that this was going down when I heard about it people were like hey we got to collect signatures to stop this cuz there was a politician in the Senate who was greasing the wheels for his Landfield developer friend and and campaign donor saying like hey no worries bro I'm going to I'm going to make sure this is rubber stamped and gets through which is exactly what was happening it's a Captain Planet Villain Like plot though right that's exactly right but but in real life and so that's where I I was like well this doesn't make sense and I need to do something about it and so I was just like I was gathering signatures and we were trying to get the word out about this and it worked and we stopped it wow we stopped it who tried to stop you nobody's tried to stop me
5:04 okay but but there was a lot there was a lot of money behind the landfill developer uh who gave a lot of money to politicians who were willing to either help the process or at a minimum look the other way hoping that no one would find out about it uh people did find out about it across the island and were rightly concerned and so for me it was a a really eye-opening moment to see hey this is how the process is supposed to work and I can make a change and I can make a change I'm 17 18 years old 19 years old and to be one little small part of this movement of people saying no we're not going to let self- serving politicians poison our drinking water water is life you cannot none of us can survive without water so that pretty good on these though for a little while for a little while and the Vietnam CFE there
5:56 you go but that that's what got me interested in running for office and so I was 21 and I was either going to go back to school and you know study politics political science whatever or uh act there was an I was living in EBA Beach and there was an open State House seat and I thought you know what why talk about it when I can be about it and actually do it and so it was an Open Primary Election there were five of us running all of us running for politics for the very very first time and I I uh outworked everyone and I knocked on every door in that District almost three times and talked with voters uh I didn't know what I was doing politically like I had no training I was uh very shy and an introvert and um it was not something that came naturally to me but I was very passionate about my purpose was this
6:46 before military service yes so you became a politician before wait at 21 at 21 and so to your question Bart about um why the Democratic party it was it was when I was filing those papers with the office of elections that I had to decide which party am I going to run with and for us in Hawaii our state is a very strong Democratic state but it's rooted in the history of our state where you had wealthy Republican land owners come in and essentially build plantations all across the state ship in a whole bunch of immigrants to come and work the land treat them like crap and it was the is Wu and unions and Democrats that came in and said you know what this is not this is not cool uh we are going to fight for you immigrants from Japan the Philippines um Vietnam uh Portugal
7:37 people from all over the world coming to Hawaii for opportunity and so they fought for them they won and that's when the state shifted from being in Republican control to Democrat control which it remains strongly in Democrat control today but to me the Democratic party represented the party of the people and it was a party that cared about the environment it was a party that welcomed people from all different backgrounds different views different religions uh a party that that celebrated Free Speech even if they didn't necessarily like what you had to say and those were things that I I really aligned with uh traditional liberalism in the context of JFK yeah and Martin Luther King and that was in 2002 fast forward to where we are today 2024 2022 2020 what I saw and experience
8:27 when I ran for president in 2020 on the Democratic primary and what has happened since has uh completely flipped the whole thing on its head where the Democratic party of today is the party of the elite uh they are the party that is questioning whether or not we should have free speech in America anymore it is the party that in this White House is directly and indirectly censoring people through big Tech who whose voices or um you know statements are things that they they don't like and they do this in the N they slap a label of disinformation misinformation hate speech on this in order in order to justify this but ultimately and this is what I go into in my book and what I I'm sharing with people everywhere I go is
9:19 we have to get back to the Constitution I don't care what party you belong to I don't care whether you and I uh oh you know we can have conversations about issues but in order for us to be able to have those conversations we have to have freedom of speech we have to have the ability to express ourselves in whatever way we choose on whatever platform we choose we have to be able to have confidence that our privacy and civil liberties are being respected by the government and we don't have you know warrantless surveillance or search and seizure and all these different things that are happening um and and that that is what is on the line in this election and that's that's why I left the Democratic party do you have a chapter about being a Russian asset I talk about it a lot in the book not there there's this person uh I don't you may have heard of her name's Hillary Clinton yeah a couple times yeah
10:09 yeah uh so people go missing around their the yeah I've heard the same 30 people I think oh nervous uh so so she popularized that line of attack which is just you know it would when I it would be laughable if it wasn't effective and it really broke my heart you know I I've served in the Army National Guard and Army Reserve now for over 20 years I've deployed to three different War zones I served in Congress for eight years on the armed services and Foreign Affairs committees um I'm willing to die for our country and for what we stand for and to have her and so many other people parot this this line essentially accusing me of being a traitor to the country that I love which by the way is
11:00 an act punishable by death under US military code of justice um it it they do this because it works and they try to F suspicion and like oh I don't know about her because I heard she's like I don't know something about the Russians even if people don't even know what it is I have seen that it's really weird it's still this was back in 2019 2020 yeah I still hear it wow and it's like you scroll through the comments on any yeah exactly so if you're like at like Dick Sporting Goods buying like running shoes or something you'll see people go Russian ass probably not dick sport more like big five been yeah exactly that's how you know it was a test it was a test yes different
11:50 demographic different demographic exactly Hillary wouldn't known the Dick Sporting Goods thing no no chance no she play sports When you entered into politics in as a 21-year-old and like um did you have a shock to the system when you saw how it wasn't like for everyone thinks what happens is face Valley like it what people say and whatever there's no um kind of like uh I don't want to say deception but the but look deeper there's like things that actually work right and then there's what happens you can say deception though right cuz it these things are said with the intent to deceive right okay and to deflect and to distract and when you got in there and you saw that were you like what how did you react to the realities of politics it I mean it it it um so so this in at
12:43 least in my time in being involved with politics um this whole you know people run smear campaigns all the time in politics unfortunately it's been a part of politics for very very long time uh and and they are they are usually done because people don't want to actually address uh the substance of issues or they don't want you to pay attention to something that you know you really should be paying attention to instead and that's where this this whole Russian asset thing gets thrown out not only against me you see it against Donald Trump you see it against Bobby Kennedy you see it against Rand Paul people from all different political backgrounds um who have the audacity to challenge Like the quote unquote power elite uh in both parties how come they him back Mitt Romney has has accused me of the same thing I saw that so it's not
13:34 this is not just about like Democrats bad Republicans good it's it's something much bigger than that that to your point is intentionally used to deceive people um because they they won't have the debate and we'll use the the the Ukraine war as as an present day example uh Rand Paul tried to introduce Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky tried to introduce an amendment to a um major multi-billion dollar funding bill uh that would go to Ukraine in this proxy war that we're waging against Russia and his amendment was very simple it just said it's a well-known fact that the Ukrainian government is very corrupt and if we are going to send this money American taxpayer dollars I think it was a $40 billion bill at that time to Ukraine we should um assign An Inspector General to
14:27 keep track of where the money's going sounds common sense why don't we have an auditor in the first place I think both parties would voted for that right both parties and this is remember this is coming after over 20 years of trillions of dollars being spent on wars in Afghanistan which our own Department of Defense admittedly lost track of a lot of money trillions with a tea trillions with a te uh There Was An Inspector General assigned specifically to Afghanistan that exposed that money that was lost unaccounted for or or went to kind of the war profiter so anyway this is a common sense request to make uh it it wasn't um it did not have bipartisan support shockingly wow uh leaders from both parties said no way how dare you Rand Paul you are a puppet
15:17 of Putin wow whoa and so rather than say hey let let's have the conversation about accountability of taxpayer dollars fiscal responsibility and if you want to make the argument for hey here's why this money is so important at this time first of all why wouldn't you be for making sure it goes to where you want it to go uh they don't want to have the substantive debate and so this is the throwaway line that they use why don't we get the same guys who were so good at tracking my taxes to do that for real IRS guys are pretty good down to the dollar so damn good when they come after small internet companies man they comb through everything of course of course and they'll charge you interest you're not on it is is there a a I've always wondered this is there like a a an order of who votes yay and nay and
16:07 they Shuffle the deck kind of so you don't get too much pressure on one politician uh as far as how the vote is called yes no okay there's not uh in the House of Representatives in the Senate there there is I believe it's alphabetical okay uh because when they actually call a roll call and so they oh I'm sorry I mean like do the the heads of the parties do they go hey you already took a lot of heat for voting yes on the last bill we want this bill to pass you can say Nay it's okay on this one both parties do that on occasion M uh so they'll have members of Congress who rep usually it happens when you have members of Congress who represent what they call the swing districts that you know from one election to another often goes back and forth one year it's a Democrat the next election it's a republican uh the per the purple District that they call so if they have someone who um you know has
16:59 taken a tough boote or taken a hit uh then sometimes they'll say okay yeah you you vote your conscience and we will allow it but this this just speaks to a bigger problem I see the expression on your face we will allow it which is exactly what it is they have people who are designated as whips in both parties on the house floor whose job it is to quote unquote whip the votes go and actually count and talk to people hey how are you planning on voting on this so the leadership knows in advance okay here's here's how many votes we can expect which you know it's fine figure it out if you want your bill to pass you got to have an idea of how many people support it and you can go and try to convince those who oppose it to change their mind but um the the dirty part is when they don't have the votes or when it's a close vote it's when the
17:50 leadership in both parties goes and and I've I can speak for the Democratic side of how then speaker Nancy Pelosi would literally chase people down on the house floor um looking for them uh to to make sure that they voted her way or the way that she wanted them to vote and and it it is often times done with the threat of hey if you don't vote with us on this then you know X millions of dollars the party had set aside to help you in your re-election campaign is gone who tells you we're not going to be there for seen who like tulsy like I've seen it I've seen it yeah but you obviously were not like a a fan like you know I I um I never in in in all the campaigns I've run I served in the State House the city council and Congress and R for president I never had any party support
18:41 in any of those campaigns got it and so unlike some others who have relied heavily on that party support um that leverage exists is that why when you came in you started getting hit from all like I as soon as you came in you start gety quick it was pretty quick there there was this odd thing that that surprised me when I first got elected to congress um they didn't they didn't I mean naturally they didn't they didn't know who I was um I had I was serving on the city council at the time and so what they saw was hey here's a asian-pacific Islander woman 31 years old uh veteran of of two deployments to the Middle East kind of checking a lot of these boxes and um I was invited to go speak at the Democratic National Convention and Charlotte that Year in 2012 during
19:31 Prime Time as a soon like I had won a primary election I was not yet like truly fully elected uh but I was invited by Pelosi called me one day and she's like hey we'd love to have you come speak during prime time in front of you know a crowd of I don't know 18,000 people and to millions of people um at home about veterans it's like awesome what a great opportunity and then I got to Congress and within a couple of weeks I got a call from the White House this is Obama's re-election his second term saying would you say yes if you were asked to serve as Vice chair of the DNC that that that was exactly what I said H yeah I was and my literal response was like what is a vice chair of the DNC like I what do you what do you want me to do like we just made it up for you yeah right you're right can you say can I sleep on it for a couple days I did
20:23 actually I did I was like let me let me learn more about this um and then you know I got a call I don't know was a couple months later to my office from uh Vogue magazine they're like we want to do a profile and a spread on you I'm like what why what like there there were all of these things happening that that I I did not seek out nor did I expect and I and you know at the convention I I someone played a clip back for me recently there was someone on MSNBC like oh or maybe Sienna I don't know you're like oh you know there's this great new member of Congress from Hawaii uh I think so and so should play her like some famous actress should play her in a movie like all this stuff I'm like what is going on here but then it it was shortlived because um you know I think I think they expect
21:15 people to go and come and fall in line and be a good soldier and you know do do you know do do what the party wants you to do and in August of that year was 2013 um President Obama announced that he wanted to go and launch an attack in Syria in what would be the kind of first volley of attacks in a regime change War to top of the regime in Syria and um long story short and I go into this in detail in the book because it was a pretty this was why I ran for congress as a soldier I knew and understood firsthand what it meant to have politicians making decisions about war and where we as service members are going to go and put our lives on the line who really didn't care about us and who didn't carefully think through what
22:05 is what is the cost and consequences of this decision the short term and the long term from a human perspective from a taxpayer perspective what are the unintended consequences we may run into even if you have the best of intentions what are we really trying to accomplish what is winning look like sounds like what how do we know how do we know when it's time to go home um President Obama said he was going to come to Congress and seek authorization to go and take this military action I was a member of the Foreign Affairs committee uh this was August of that year I went and did all of my due diligence came in with an open mind to hear their case um went through all the briefings looked through all of the intelligence and information that they shared and ultimately came to the
22:55 conclusion that this would be a bad idea for our country that it would very likely spark off yet another Quagmire in the Middle East that we could potentially be stuck in for who knows how long and that they had not been able to answer these most simple questions that I just went through they couldn't answer them it's like oh well it's nothing going to happen it's is we're just going to go deliver a punch in the gut and then we're going to go home and send a strong message um so I I came out and I said I'm against President Obama's um request and here's why immediately got call from the white house within 24 hours saying how dare you go against your president wow how dare you as a freshman Democrat in Congress you just got elected like that's what they call you a few months ago yes um how dare you go against your president so that was the first sign to
23:47 them that I wasn't just going to go along to get along and be a quote unquote team player we're taking Vogue away you're not going to be on vog exactly and called me back after that figure the biopic cancel and that Cheerio sponsorship forget about it we're going to have more on Tulsi being an Assad apologist when we uh next video we'll be we'll be back
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