- [Evan Smith] Thank you very much.

Yes?

- Senator, I need some help understanding what you mean by holding people accountable.

The president has sold pardons.

Are those people who pay for the pardons gonna lose their pardons?

He has pardoned all the people who attacked the Capitol.

Are those people, are their convictions gonna resume?

The people who have made money, including his family, off of his policies, are those people going to have to give their money back?

- Well, the pardon power that the president has is in the Constitution, and it is very broad and it's absolute.

When the president pardons somebody- - That's it.

- For a crime.

That's it.

So there is no, you know, there's no addressing that issue, at this point.

For future presidents, I think we should have a discussion about putting some kind of guardrails on this kind of power, because I think this president has abused his right to pardon people.

(audience applauding) To answer your question, no, I don't think that is a thing.

There are state laws when somebody, you know, breaks a law in a state.

That's a separate issue.

Governors have pardon power.

President can't protect them, you know, those individuals from that.

But some folks are gonna get away with things because this president's broad power to pardon them.

However, you know, for the corruption that we are able to investigate, you know, there needs to be consequences for this.

And I think there needs to be investigations.

The Department of Justice, by the way, is gonna have to be put back together.

I mean, they fired some really good people, others left.

It has been decimated.

- Can you do that in short order in time for a new administration?

It seems like the un-dismantling is gonna take a hell of a lot longer than we think.

- There are folks that are planning on how do you do this quickly?

- Is that right?

- Yeah.

- Project 2029, is that what it is?

(audience laughing) - Not only in that agency, but in others.

How do you get the professionals back?

You know, what do you do about unqualified people being hired?

What do you do about all these executive actions the president put in place that are just wrong?

- So there is discussion of that backstage?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- But again, how is somebody gonna be held accountable?

I haven't heard you mention that.

You talked about something in the future that will prevent it.

But for the people who've done these evil deeds now, how would they- - Well, The president hasn't- - Let me give one more crack at that one.

- The president hasn't pardoned everybody in this universe around him.

You know, there's a lot of corruption.

There's pay for play.

I mean, could he come in at the end of administration and try to pardon thousands of individuals?

I don't know.

You know, that's something we will find out.

- Almost preemptively or proactively.

Right?

Eric and Don Jr.

- Possibly.

- Right.

Sir?

- Wanna say thank you for your service and have you considered doing what John Glenn did, as a senior go back into space?

- I consider it about 20 times a day.

(audience laughing) - Is that right?

That turns out to be a very good question.

Have you foreclosed on it?

- No.

No, I mean, like, if there was a way for me to like go back to the space station or go on a mission around the moon- - If they call, you say yes.

- Yeah.

I'm like, sign me up.

- Sign me up.

Okay.

Another one, sir.

Hi.

- Hi.

Do you, to touch on Iran, do you currently believe they have the enrichment infrastructure available to hit that 90% threshold to make nuclear weapons?

- So I gotta be careful.

I sit on the Intelligence Committee, we get a lot of, you know, information on this.

There are things we know, there are things we don't know.

They don't have the same capability they had before the Midnight Hammer operation last summer.

- Which is last year.

- But it did not obliterate all their capability.

It did not obliterate the enriched uranium.

It didn't destroy all the facilities.

There are things that were significantly damaged.

I think it's fair for me to say that in time and with some effort they could put that capability, you know, back together, and move towards getting the uranium enriched to 90%.

- In time?

- In time.

- But not now.

- Not in two weeks with the... (audience laughing) - Okay.

- Now earlier in your speech, or earlier in the talk you brought up, like you talked about like bringing families together.

Do you think there's a clear path to mitigating political polarization in modern America?

- Thank you.

And then we'll go to the next question.

Thank you.

- What I was talking about, not families, I was talking, and I know there are problems within individuals' families.

I hear that a lot.

- Thanksgiving dinner.

- Yes.

I mean, I hear all the time people don't talk to their siblings, kids don't talk to their parents because of the polarization we're currently facing.

But that started somewhere, you know?

I think maybe it didn't start with this president, you know, maybe it started with cable news, and you know, making money off of, you know, political rhetoric and not just delivering the news, but delivering opinion.

But I'll tell you what, it was accelerated by Donald Trump in an unprecedented way.

So, you know, leadership starts at the top.

My hope is that we will elect people that recognize that we're all in this together and we're much stronger united than divided.

- Thank you.

Sir?

(audience applauding) - Thank you for your service.

Maps, gerrymandering, a byzantine system, a direct popular vote would make all of that moot.

How do we get rid of the electoral college?

(audience applauding) - It would do that for the presidential election.

It still wouldn't have the same kind of effect on congressional seats.

In Arizona, we have an independent commission.

Each member of the state House and state Senate, not each member, the leadership.

So majority and minority leader in the House and the same in the Senate, each appoint somebody to a commission.

Those four people then have to find an independent chairperson for the commission.

And they then make the districts.

If we had that nationwide, we'd have a lot more competitive seats.

When Gabby was in Congress, there were maybe 45 competitive districts.

She was in one of 'em.

So she was a Democrat elected in a district that had about a 7% Republican registration advantage.

Those numbers are going down and with the redistricting that is just happening, they're practically going to zero.

Yeah, what you have is redder reds and bluer blues, don't you?

- Yes.

Absolutely.

And fewer of the purple districts.

When people are in one of those districts that is always gonna be held by a Democrat or always gonna be held by a Republican, the way they avoid losing their job, which is losing an election, is they just need to be all the way on the left or all the way on the right, and then they don't get challenged in the primary.

- The primary is the general, effectively.

- That's effectively what happens.

So then those people find it really hard to work across the aisle to get stuff done.

You wind up with a more polarized Congress and a Congress that is just stuck, that can't get anything done.

If we had nationwide, and this was in the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, that you have independent bodies make these districts, our country would be in such a better place.

And I know, I don't wanna, you guys are here from Texas, I know you didn't decide to do this, but this current redistricting thing started in Texas and then it cascaded to all these other seats.

- As we say in Austin, what starts here changes the world, right?

(audience laughing) Yeah.

- You are the Republic of Texas.

- Yeah.

Sir?

- Yes.

I was wondering, in light of the history of the Constitution and then things like "Federalist Paper Number 10" and "Federalist Paper Number 51", do you think that the current president is exactly what the founding fathers had feared and had in mind when they started writing all this down?

And then just to throw a few more numbers in there, what's to stop someone from using, say the 21st Amendment and then "Federalist Paper 72" to get rid of the 22nd?

- Well, the 25th Amendment, I think is what you're talking about.

The 21st had to do with alcohol.

- The 21st got rid of the 18th.

And I thought the 22nd was two terms.

So why would they just repeal the 22nd Amendment?

- Oh, I thought you were getting at using the 25th Amendment on this president, right?

- Well, yes, but I was more thinking of the two-term limitations.

And then saying, well we repealed the 18th, why can't we repeal the 22nd?

And then looking at Hamilton's "Federalist Number 72" that says you shouldn't restrict a president's... - Do you think, is there a chance that we're gonna be having that conversation in a couple years?

- I think it's possible.

- Yeah.

- I didn't think that about a year and a half ago when Donald Trump was being sworn into his second term.

But the way he talks about it now- - He's playing footsie with it, isn't he?

- And the way Steve Bannon and others, you know, Steve Bannon has said he is convinced Donald Trump will be sworn in as president again on January 20th of 2029 and others around him.

And he won't just discount this, it does have me worried.

He goes to Fulton County, grabs all those ballots.

Kash Patel has the FBI subpoena all the recount information in Maricopa County in Arizona on a recount that was commissioned by the Republicans in the Senate.

It's a partisan recount.

They're grabbing all that data.

So yes, I am concerned about what actions that this president is gonna take leading into the 2028 election.

You don't do those things.

You don't send the DNI to Fulton County, the Director of National Intelligence, to Fulton County, Georgia to grab ballots for no reason.

He did it, for something.

- That tells you something.

- That tells you something.

So, you know, we could get into whether we should have, you know, I think what George Washington did, which he did not have to do.

You know, not to run for a third term was a healthy thing for our democracy.

- [Speaker] Or John Adams to lose and leave.

- Exactly.

Everybody up until FDR, you know, ran a third term and a fourth term and then we passed an amendment to stop that.

I think that's healthy to have a president only for eight years.

Our founding fathers did not wanna see somebody get into office and become a king or an authoritarian.

That's not who we are.

We fought a war to get away from that.

You mentioned these, you know, essentially checks and balances.

I was in the chamber a couple weeks ago, you know, with King Charles when he mentioned that specifically, (audience laughing) sending a message.

- You think he was trolling?

- He absolutely was, like 100%.

And I thought it was kind of funny that all my Republican colleagues were clapping, and I'm like looking at him, I'm like, "He's talking about you."

- You understand that, right?"

- Exactly.

Thank you.

We are unfortunately at the time when Senator Kelly has got to go.

His hard stop.

I apologize.

Remember please, we're gonna let the senator go before we get up to leave.

Please give Senator Mark Kelly a big hand.

Thank you very much.

- Thank you very much.

- Great, thank you.

(crowd cheering and applauding)