- [Announcer] Through their housing fund, Amazon is creating and preserving affordable homes with 99 year affordability commitments, so families can live in the communities where they work for generations to come.

- At Amazon, we believe everyone should have access to a home they can afford, and we are partnering locally to help make that possible.

- Support from partners like Amazon help us continue advancing projects that are grounded in our community priorities.

- [Announcer] Amazon, proud supporter of local communities like yours.

(bright music) - [Announcer] And now the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival featuring journalists and newsmakers from around the country in conversation about the issues making headlines.

Thank you for joining us for "One Thing" from CNN Audio with Adam Schiff, moderated by David Rind.

Before we begin, a special thank you to our members.

We'd also like to thank our premiere event sponsors, Amazon and HX Expeditions, our founding sponsor, the Kerry & Linda Killinger Foundation, and our host venue, The Picklr.

(audience applauds) - If you were to make a list of President Donald Trump's perceived enemies, Democratic Senator Adam Schiff from California would be right near the top of the list.

From... (audience cheers) From spearheading the first impeachment case against President Trump to serving on the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the US Capitol, Schiff has been labeled a traitor by many on the right.

However, his vocal opposition to Trump has made him a household name on the left.

So what is it like not only to be a target of Trump's words, but to actually be actively investigated by his Department of Justice?

Senator Schiff, thank you so much for being here.

- Thank you.

That's... (audience cheers) That's quite an introduction.

- So for those who are listening or watching at home, we're actually taping this in like a pickleball gym situation.

And we were talking before the show, and it appears pickleball was actually invented in the Seattle area, which is cool.

Do you play?

- I do occasionally play.

And the fact that it was invented here means that this place has given birth to something that hundreds of thousands of people enjoy and hundreds of thousands of neighbors don't.

(audience laughs) - Well, I actually, I'm not quite a fan of it.

No offense to anybody who plays.

You can find me after the show to talk about that.

We're not here to talk about pickleball.

I wanna start with something you said during the first impeachment trial of President Trump when you were the lead impeachment manager.

You were on the floor making the case to the Senate, and at the end of it you said, "If right matters, we're lost."

I'm sorry.

"If right doesn't matter, we're lost."

(audience laughs) How do you think about that idea now six years later?

- Well, I think it's still very true.

There was a point during the trial when I realized, having been a former prosecutor, that this was not a case like you would handle in court, where you just had to prove the defendant guilty of what he was charged with, but rather that I needed to prove that he could not be left in office, that he was simply too dangerous to be left in office.

And I shifted to a different kind of an argument, which was that he did not know right from wrong, that he was incapable of telling the truth, that he was fundamentally indecent, and you couldn't leave someone like that running the country.

Not because he couldn't tell right from wrong or he couldn't tell the truth or he was indecent, but because those things mattered to the Senate and to the country that we cared about right and wrong, that we cared about the truth.

And I said to the senators, "You are decent.

"He is not who you are."

And I was saying it as much to the senators as I was to the country.

And I think that is still very much the argument, which is he is not who we are.

We are a better country than that.

(audience applauds) We don't seek to divide just to divide.

We don't seek to just accelerate hate and bile.

We do not warm to the basis instincts of human nature.

And I think that is not who we are.

I thought that then, I think that now.

- Well, I mean your opposition, some of those words has made you a target of Trump, and you're reportedly under investigation by the Justice Department looking into allegations of mortgage fraud that was referred by Bill Pulte.

As we sit here on June 6th, what is the status of that investigation as you understand it?

- Well, I honestly have no idea.

(audience laughs) I mean, they only talk about it in the press, so I really have no idea.

And I worked in the Justice Department for almost six years.

It was a fabulous department and very professional.

I worked in the Los Angeles office.

It wouldn't matter, it didn't matter whether the president was a Democrat or Republican.

You wouldn't even feel the difference except maybe that the priorities would change generally.

In one priority or another, there might be a greater emphasis on drug cases or illegal immigration cases.

But generally you didn't even notice who the president was.

It was completely apolitical.

It is so transformed and ruinous right now.

And in my old office, I think about a third of the offices quit.

We see mass defections throughout the country.

And for me, the canary in the coal mine happened very early in this iteration of the Trump administration when something absolutely unthinkable happened to anyone that had ever served in the Justice Department, it was beyond comprehension, and that is the Justice Department sought to dismiss a corruption case against the major public official, the mayor of New York, in order to secure his help in something completely unrelated, and that was enforcement of the immigration policies of the president.

That was unimaginable prior to this administration.

And as much as there are dark and bleak things to see every day with the kind of corruption of this administration, we can't ignore and shouldn't look away from the heroes that are also being revealed.

And one of my favorites was one of the attorneys on that case who had been a, I think he was a Scalia clerk, a very conservative, federalist society type, wrote to the Justice Department and said that, "I'm sure you can find some coward "or some fool to dismiss this case, "but it was never going to be me."

And you look at that, you just gotta applaud it because I tell you, those of us in the job in the US Attorney's office, we love that job.

We love that work.

And for someone to be willing to be fired or walk away is a great act of courage and self-sacrifice.

We've seen it in the head of the CDC who said she would quit or be fired before she would go along and advance the vaccine recommendations of some anti-vax group.

You see it in others who have basically said that there's something more important to me than this job I love and that is my integrity.

And we ought to look to those people as our examples, not all the horse shows that we see.

- How much of your... (audience applauds) How much of your day to day is taken up by preparing for or thinking about any kind of retribution that might come your way?

- I made the decision early on that I was not gonna let the political retribution of the president affect my performance in my job in any way.

I was not gonna hold anything back.

I was not gonna refuse to do any oversight.

I wasn't gonna shy away from any criticism of the administration.

They could throw at me whatever they're gonna throw at me.

I know that whatever they throw at me, if they ever throw anything at me, will lose, will be defeated 'cause there's nothing there.

- You have assembled a legal team, right, like in preparation?

- Yes.

Oh yes.

Even with a false case or no case, it is expensive to defend yourself.

You have to prepare and- - And where does that money come from?

I'm curious.

- Well, you have to ask people for it.

So we start a legal defense fund.

I was just talking to Mark Kelly, and Mark Kelly was complaining about his legal bills, and I said, "I bet mine are more than yours."

He said, "I bet they're not."

And actually he was right.

(audience laughs) But I mean, imagine this, you make a video where you state the obvious, you state the law, you state the constitution that you have not only a right but a duty to refuse an illegal order and you're gonna get prosecuted for it?

And you gotta go to all the expense of it.

But yes, you have to be prepared and you do, but you can't let it affect the performance of your job, because in Mark's case, in my case, we do not want to allow this to chill, not just our own work, but anyone else's.

And for Mark, he knows that there are lots of retired flag officers who were watching his case, which is on appeal right now, and thinking, can they speak out anymore?

And so it's not just those of us that are sort of in the political and justice department crosshairs.

It is a badge of honor though.

That's how I view it.

Roosevelt once said that there are times when you can judge a person by the enemies they make.

And while I would much rather be known by my friends, by Roosevelt's standard, I'm doing pretty damn well.

(audience laughs and applauds) - You and your colleagues on the January 6th committee received a preemptive pardon from President Biden as he left office.

At the time, you said that's something you weren't looking for it, you didn't necessarily want it, you said it would set a bad precedent.

But I guess I'm wondering if you look at the indictments of former FBI director James Comey, Letitia James, Lisa Cook on the Federal Reserve, are you glad you have one now?

- No, I'm not.

And I did urge administration not to do it.

I thought it was a bad precedent.

And the reality is it's of little value.

I mean, he may go after the January 6th committee or may not, but they will simply, if they can't go after you for one thing, they'll try to go after you for another thing.

They can't go after you for that.

It will be a never ending stream of things in my case.

And I think anyone else as high up on the president's enemies list, so a pardon for the work of the January 6th committee, which needed no pardon, really was of little value.

And the precedent it set I think was very dangerous.

It may very well be the case that even in the absence of what Joe Biden did, Donald Trump was planning to pardon anyone who came within 1,000 feet of the White House.

And I think we can expect there'll be a raft of pardons to his family, to his friends, to his cabinet, to all the people that are engaging in insider trading and everything else going on in and around the White House.

And the only hope we have of there being some justice at the end of this looting of the Treasury will come from state prosecutors for which pardons are no defense.

There are other safeguards in the system.

But no, it was a bad idea for Joe Biden.

And we saw on the first day of the Trump presidency what a terrible idea it has become in this administration.

- I mean, you talk about what, you know, you see as corruption coming from the White House.

You mentioned that instance with New York.

And I have to admit that even as a journalist who covers this stuff, like I could barely remember that instance, but just 'cause there's been so many different stories.

As you look ahead to the midterms and beyond, like do Democrats run the risk of, you know, just kind of flooding voters with all this stuff and running the risk of them tuning out just because there is so much of it going on?

- Well, at the risk of self-promotion, I have a YouTube channel where it started in the beginning of the second Trump term when there was so much coming at us along the lines that you're describing, the Steve Bannon muzzle velocity of just excrement being thrown at the country, that people were saying, you know, there needs to be someone trying to separate what's really important that happened today amidst all the terrors, what's really important that happened today.

And I just did one this week on just the scandals in the month of May.

(audience laughs) So yeah, the dismissal of that case against the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, that seems like forever ago.

If you look just at May, let me give you just a flavor of what happened in May.

So you've got a $1.776 billion slush fund for cop beaters and other criminals.

That's one scandal- - Has since been paused by the administration just... - We hope, we hope.

You've got the billion dollar ballroom, you've got the triumphal arch, which violates the law by the way, because it has no congressional approval.

You've got all of the no bid contracts around the fountains and the pools.

They're spending 5 million to gild, literally gild horses out of statue.

You've got the president buying Boeing stock before going to China and announcing a 200 aircraft deal with China.

You've got the president buying Oracle before the TikTok deal.

You've got the president buying Nvidia before deciding that Nvidia can export some of its advanced chips.

You've got the president buying stock in Paramount before the merger.

This is just stuff we learned in May.

And I do think it's important to not allow ourselves to be numb to this, this pillaging, but at the same time, the primary focus has to be on the fact that while the president is enriching himself and his family, he is doing nothing to address the problems of the American people.

The way I view it- - I mean, that's what I was gonna ask.

Like, are those examples that you laid out, are you able to make the case of the American people that that directly affects their day-to-day kind of existence?

- Absolutely.

And the way I frame it is this is the cost of corruption.

And the cost of corruption is the president could care less about bringing down the cost of your food or your housing or your gas.

He's too busy focused on improving his own economy.

His personal economy is doing great.

He's made more money in the first year of his administration than the rest of his life put together 10 times.

And he can't be bothered to worry about your cost of living.

And he tells you so.

I mean, look how he's spending his time.

He was out there again on the grounds of the construction of the ballroom, talking about the ballroom.

If he spent half so much time on trying to help people afford the cost of living and bringing prices down as he spends on that stupid ballroom, I mean imagine this.

We're in the midst of an economy that's simply not working for millions of Americans and the president of the United States is building a golden ballroom.

It's really incomprehensible.

And I think that the corruption issue is very salient, but is most salient in the context of the reason why your life is not improving is that the president doesn't care about you.

He's not focused on you.

He's got bigger fish to fry.

He's got his meme coin dinners.

He's too busy.

So I think the two are inextricably intertwined, and we have to make that case.

And just as Peter Magyar in Hungary made the identical case against Viktor Orban that Hungarians are suffering, their economy's not doing well.

But you know what?

Viktor Orban's childhood buddy is now the richest man in the country.

It's the same case here as we saw in Hungary.

And I hope we'll have the same result.

- Well, so if that's the pitch for Democrats in the midterms, I guess the question would turn to what are lawmakers going to do if they take control of the House?

Do you think Democrats should move to impeach Trump if they take the House, just as somebody who is very familiar with the process?

- Well, in terms of what Democrats should do when we take back the House and also it now looks very possible that we will take back the Senate as well.

Our Senate candidates... (audience applauds) Are doing phenomenally well across the country.

Our first priority ought to be doing everything we can to improve the quality of life for the American people.

We also have a significant... (audience applauds) Significant oversight responsibility since so much of the reason why that's not happening is because of the rampant corruption.

So we have to be able to do both.

In terms of whether impeachment is the right tool to be used, we'll decide that at the time.

I'm sure there will be a vigorous debate in the party about that, about whether it is viable in a Congress that even if we flip the Senate, we have seen that getting to 60 votes, getting to two-thirds even of the Senate is enormously difficult.

I had an amendment up on the Senate floor last night.

No, it was early in the morning, actually.

It was about 5:00 AM in the morning yesterday.

To put a stake through this slush fund.

And while we got five Republicans, and therefore had over 50 votes to kill the slush fund, it was not enough because it required 60.

So we'll have to decide if the threshold is too high, if the Senate is still, even if the Republicans are in the minority, in the thrall of this most corrupted presidents, whether we should focus on impeachment or whether we should focus instead on using the power of the gavel and our subpoena to look into a lot of the corruption that's taken place.

I, for one, wanna make sure that these law firms that have capitulated, these companies that have bought space in the ballroom, these media organizations that have compromised themselves by making personal extortionary payments to the president, owing to his false lawsuits, but owing to also their lust for merger, someone needs to look into this stuff.

Someone needs to expose it.

And I think that's gonna be very important as well.

(audience applauds) - So when I talk to Democratic voters, number one thing that I hear is basically that they're like incredibly frustrated, incredibly angry with the state of things, and they just want Democratic leadership, lawmakers like yourself to just do something, even if that's just talk in a way that they kind of talk.

And, you know, they're pissed off.

I guess I'm wondering, do you think Democrats have met the moment as an opposition party thus far in Trump 2.0?

- Well, I totally get the frustration people have, and I think it's well deserved, and it's a frustration with both parties.

And I say that because it took us a long time to get to where we are and why our democracy is in such a precarious place, and it's for the reason that our economy is simply not working for millions of people.

This did not happen overnight.

It did not happen just in the last year and a half, or even in the first Trump term.

This has been decades in the making.

We have seen in the last 30 or 40 years, a middle class that is increasingly struggling to get by and a working class that is finding it harder and harder to climb into the middle class.

When I was a kid, my father was in the schmatta business.

If you don't speak Yiddish, you should learn.

(audience laughs) It's very uniquely descriptive.

It's the clothing business.

He was basically a traveling salesman, and he made $18,000.

And on the strength of that single salary, my parents bought our first home for $18,000.

You could buy a house for the annual income of a clothing salesman.

Of course that would be impossible today.

The year I was born, the average new home buyer was 28.

Can you imagine 28?

At 28, our kids are still living in our basement.

I mean, not my kids literally, but lots of kids are still living at home because they can't afford a place to live.

And there's no reason it had to be so, and it is a failure of both parties that housing is unaffordable, that college is unaffordable, that young people need to get a mortgage on their education to go to school.

That's on both parties.

So I totally understand the frustration.

And I think there are people in our party who are speaking to that and speaking eloquently to that.

But we need to do more than speak eloquently to it.

We need to attack it with big ideas, with bold ideas, with non-incremental ideas.

I think the reason we lost the last presidential election was because the Democratic party became seen as the party of a deeply, deeply unsatisfactory status quo.

And we damn well better, when we take the majority and even more so when we take the White House, be ready to move dramatically to move this country in a different direction of making it possible for people to work hard and enjoy a good life and provide for themselves and their family in a world that is now global, it is automated, and is increasingly driven by AI.

And we have absolutely gotta meet that moment.

And if we don't, there is nothing we can do that will put our democracy on solid ground.

If the democracy isn't working for people, if people see the quality of life their parents had as better than what they have, then all too many are gonna entertain any demagogue who comes along promising they alone can fix it.

- I know you said you kind of put the blame on both parties for some of this frustration, but Democrats have been especially plagued by a brand problem.

A CNN poll from late March showed just 28% of Americans had a favorable view of the Democratic party.

28%.

That's bad.

- Oh yeah.

No, it's bad.

It's bad because Democrats have come to be perceived as a party of the status quo and a party of incrementalism.

And if the last year and a half has demonstrated anything, and Democrats need to pay attention to this, you can move the country far and fast if you have the courage of your convictions.

Now they're moving at far and fast in a terrible direction, a direction in which people's rights are being limited and taken away, in which we're seeing the most inhumane immigration policies and indiscriminate violence in streets and suicides in detention centers and you name it.

But just as they have moved the country horribly backward with breathtaking speed, we can move the country forward with breathtaking speed if we're prepared to use all the levers of power.

- Do you need new leadership?

Like, would you support having someone other than Chuck Schumer lead the Senate?

- You know, there's gonna be... (audience applauds) There will be a generational change in the Senate just as there has been in the House.

And I, you know- - So does that need to come sooner rather than later in your view?

- Well, I think... (audience laughs) I think that's something I will discuss within my caucus.

(audience laughs) But I think we have a very talented bench of young people who are coming to the fore, both in terms of the House and the Senate and the presidential field.

There are some really incredible talent.

I am so excited, for example, about James Talarico in Texas.

(audience applauds) And, you know, he's speaking in a different way.

He's igniting people's imagination.

In the presidential field of which there'll be no shortage of candidates, I don't know who the right person is at this moment.

And even if I thought I did, a year from now, it may be a very different moment considering what the country looked like a year ago.

But I think there's a very good chance that just as Barack Obama met his moment and Bill Clinton met his, that someone will rise to the occasion and be right for the moment that this country is going through and lead us to a very different place, a better place.

I know it's hard to see at this moment because the country's in a kind of crisis, but this too shall pass.

It will be a long period of rebuilding what has been torn down and the necessity of tearing down some things that have been built.

But I have faith in this country.

We will get through this.

- You mentioned James Talarico as somebody who's talking differently, who has a kind of exciting vision for folks.

Graham Platner in Maine is also someone who is talking very bluntly, but he also has a long list of controversies that have come up in the past couple of weeks, especially.

Do you support his candidacy in Maine?

- You know, I just met Graham last week for the first time, and I'm gonna need some time to digest, both, you know, what he had to say when we met, but also what has come out in the press.

I think as a policy matter, he has been speaking to voters in Maine in a way that really has resonated with people.

I mean, he was in a primary with a very capable and successful democratic governor of the state, and yet he was drawing these enormous crowds and energy because he was speaking in a bold, non-incrementalist way.

He was really focused on how the political system was not working for the people of Maine.

And that has made him a powerful candidate.

Now it has certainly come to the fore that there are some powerful flaws.

And- - Did he address any of those when you met with him?

- Well, you know, we certainly discussed it.

You know, I don't have the same confidence that George W. Bush once expressed when he said he could look into a man's soul.

(audience laughs) So I want a little time to sort it out.

- So it sounds like you're not full-throatedly saying, "Yes, Democrats should go vote for this guy."

- Well, I am saying that we need to win the seat in Maine.

That's the bottom line.

- But that's what I wanted to ask because I mean this is a guy who had a Nazi tattoo on his chest.

He claimed he didn't know the significance of it until October.

He has since covered it up.

But I mean, I just find it hard to imagine if it was someone else in a seat that wasn't winnable or if it was a Republican that, you know, you might be willing to speak out against him and say, "We don't want to be associated with someone like that."

Whatever kind of personal demons they've worked through, it's just not a great look to have that, right?

- Well look... I certainly wish he had a different backstory and history than he does.

And I'm not gonna make any excuses for him.

At the end of the day, it will be a decision for the people of Maine to make.

But I can tell you that this is a moment in our history when our democracy is hanging in the balance and when at the moment there is simply no check on this president, not in the House and not in the Senate.

And having a check on this president is so vitally important that it may cause me to get beyond flaws in a candidate that I would've had difficulty getting beyond.

I'm going to let Mainers make their decision next week.

That's when the primary is.

But to me there are few things of more surpassing importance than having a legislative check on the most morally bankrupt president in our history.

- I mean, that's striking though to hear you talk about the trade-offs like that so bluntly.

I guess just like what does it say about this moment?

Like, are we so polarized where that is the blunt calculation no matter what the specifics of the story?

- You know, it's not as much polarization as the fact that our country is teetering on an edge right now.

And it's not even, you know, just generically a Democrat versus Republican thing.

When I was speaking on the floor this morning, I asked my Senate colleagues as I was offering this amendment to kill the slush fund, "Do any of you think this is a good idea?

"Do any of you think it's a good idea?

"If you do, speak out."

And I let the question hang in the air for a bit.

There are a lot of rooms that abhor silence and the Senate floor is one of 'em.

No one wanted to say a word in defense of this thing.

None of my Republican colleagues think this is a good idea.

Most of them lack the courage to do anything about it.

They watch what happened to Cornyn, they watch what happened to Cassidy, and they're simply not willing to risk their position to do something about it.

Now I think that's unforgivable given the stakes of what's going on in the country.

And I have really come to reflect on something that the historian Robert Caro once said in an interview when he said that power doesn't corrupt as much as it reveals.

It doesn't always reveal us for our best.

But it says a lot about who we are.

And unless we're willing to give meaning to our oath of office and defend the constitution in more than word, but in deed, then the country's in trouble.

So I think this is an existential crisis for the country.

And yeah, the calculation is different than it would be if we were in an ideal world or even if we were in a non-ideal world.

If we were in a regular world with a regular president, then I would have a very different tolerance for personal flaws in candidates.

But we are not in that moment.

- I mean, I guess do you worry about, you know, 10, 15 years in the future, looking back on that view, and if things go, you know, a certain way that you regret like having that idea about this?

- I am not concerned about 15 years from now regretting that a candidate to the Senate got elected.

What I worry about is having any regret that there was any stone I left unturned, anything I failed to do that might have helped save the country when it was at its most grave risk and... (audience applauds) That's where I am right now.

- So to pivot a little bit.

Artificial intelligence is a big concern for a lot of people that I talk to.

Seems to be for you as well.

I want to know, do you use AI in your daily life?

- I do use AI.

I do.

I use it for probably just a small fraction of its capability, but every day I find new uses for it.

I, the other day, took it out onto my back deck and took photos of all the plants I have that are dying and asked Claude why they're dying and took photos and asked Claude, and Claude said, "Well this one's dying 'cause you over watered it, "and this one's dying because it got too cold."

And that's pretty remarkable.

So I mean, there I am finding just a small fraction of the infinite uses of this technology.

- I'm imagining a scenario where it says it's dying because there's no more water left from the... (audience laughs) You typing this in and I had to use it for the data center.

(audience laughs) - Well... There's certainly profound challenges both with the data centers, and I've introduced a bill to ensure that these large data centers bring their own energy, that they don't socialize the costs of improvements that need to be made to the grid or regional infrastructure or transformers or other technologies, that they build in an excess capacity so they can actually put power into the grid during surge times.

This is obviously just one facet of the problem.

You mentioned another, that is the environmental impacts.

There are some new technologies that are mitigating the need for water, which is I think encouraging.

But the broader concerns are still dominating.

And in addition to the data center issue, you have the fact that these models are so advanced now, they have far outpaced our cyber defenses, and you have the additional growing impact on the nature of work.

I'm most particularly concerned about that impact, that we could have really massive dislocation.

And what does that mean and how do we think about the future in terms of income protection and meaningful dignified employment?

How do we think about retirement in that context and how do we think about how we get our healthcare?

This is what I mean when I say we can't be thinking incrementally.

We're still cobbling together these systems based on a model that hasn't been the case in at least one or two generations where people were working for the same firm their whole life and had a health plan and a retirement plan.

It's just not that way anymore.

So we have to think anew about this.

We, you know, we have unemployment insurance, but maybe we need wage insurance or maybe we need a sovereign wealth fund.

I like the idea of a sovereign wealth fund.

I think we need to think also broadly about who pays, how do we pay for the structural impacts of AI, the rollout of AI?

There are certainly some things I think it makes sense for the AI industry to pay for, much as we ask telecoms to pay for the rollout of broadband.

But I also think that the fundamental problem is we don't have a progressive tax code.

If we did, we would not have a system where you could take literally a handful of families and some of them live in this neighborhood, a handful of families, aggregate their wealth, and it would be the equivalence of 40% of the rest of the country.

That precedes AI, and that is because our tax system simply is broken, and we need to fix that because it may not be easy in the future to tell what's an AI company, what's not an AI company, but there's no reason why we should have seen this dramatic growth in income and wealth inequality and we would not have seen it if we had a tax system that was truly progressive.

So even as we figure out what AI frontier companies should pay for, we also need to really focus on making sure that there are corporate minimum taxes and personal minimum taxes and that everyone pays their fair share so that we can all afford a decent life in this country.

(audience applauds) - I mean, societally though on the AI front, I get the sense that there are a lot of people who are, you know, might be a little bashful to say in public, admit to their friends or family if they use it for risk of being branded as something or another.

Like, what do you make of just how it's being perceived by the culture?

- Well, I think the data center issue is sort of the leading indicator because it's big, it's visible, it can have a profound impact on the quality of life in the neighborhood where it's located, and it's also become symbolic of AI.

So all of the fears that people have of AI, and those fears are sadly justified because it will be dramatic in its impact on the nature of our society and the workplace.

I think those fears are getting rolled up with the data center itself as the kind of leading indicator of this national alarm.

And I do think there is a certain inexorability about not just AI, but technology generally.

And I tend not to blame technology as much as I blame policymakers.

Even with globalization and even with automation, it did not have to be the case that people can't afford a college education or a house.

The fault there is on policymakers.

I will also say this, and this is something that I have only really come to appreciate over the years, and that is how capital, the concentration of capital tends to perpetuate itself.

And we see this now, this cycle of money perpetuating more money, perpetuating more money in the hands of fewer and fewer people.

And that has to be confronted head on.

I think it will be.

And it ought to happen proactively, not when there's such mass dislocation that there's rioting in the streets.

But I do think, and I certainly understand the alarm people feel.

Americans are increasingly using it.

We're not increasingly using it at the same rate as other developed countries, which is interesting.

But we're gonna need to learn how to use it if we're gonna be competitive.

- 'Cause like we saw all those graduation speeches where people were getting booed off the stage just by mentioning it.

And it seems like with young people that, I don't know, it seems like there's some kind of discontent with being told like, this is the future, we gotta go with it, this is how we do it.

- I can certainly understand.

We have two young graduates, college graduates in our family and, you know, a lot of college students were told basically get a degree in software engineering and you will never have a problem.

There just can't be too many software engineers.

It's a guaranteed ticket to employment.

And so now they're hearing it again.

And I can understand the skepticism, the suspicion, and a lot of these young people are heavily in debt as a result of their college education.

I remember speaking to a woman in Northern California, who was in tears about how she had done exactly what she was told to do.

She was told to get a good college education and she did.

And she got good student debt along with it.

Between her debt and her health insurance payments and her rent, she had nothing to save, nothing to put aside.

She was desperately worried about getting sick because her health insurance policy was not a very good one.

She couldn't afford to get sick, and she was terrified.

And this is the reality for so many young people and so many people are not young.

I remember getting a call from another friend, this was a couple years ago, but the situation is even more difficult now, asking for my help in finding a job.

She really needed to find a job to make ends meet.

She was 80 years old.

80 years old.

Now it's one thing to continue working when you're 80 if you love working and you wanna work.

It's another when you have to work because you can't afford a place to live unless you work at age 80.

No wonder people feel betrayed, that at 80 they're still scrounging to find work.

So I understand how young people who look at what their parents had, many who feel their parents don't have to work as hard as they do, and what their parents were able to achieve and enjoy, and they don't see any of that in their near future.

And it's even hard for them to see it in the dim future.

- I mean, you hear a story like that, I think a lot of voters might be, you know, feel like, wow, that's really grim.

I don't know what I'm gonna do about that.

I mean, like, just as we wrap up here, like how do democrats harness something like a positive alternative to all of that that you've laid out?

- Well, look, there are members of our caucus who are doing exactly that.

Bernie is certainly one of them.

And... (audience applauds) And whether you agree with his prescription or you don't agree with his prescription, he is speaking squarely to what the country is going through.

There is a reason why he is drawing those kind of crowds because he's speaking to exactly the experience people are living.

- So why don't more people in the party speak like that?

- Well, believe me, a lot of people in our party are trying, and I think you're starting to see some who are doing so successfully and finding their message resonating with people.

But all of us have to overcome a certain skepticism that is, the country has been told by both parties in every election cycle that they're gonna change things, that they're gonna bring about a change, that it's gonna be different.

And they've been sadly disappointed for so many times that there is a great skepticism.

It's why the party's approval ratings, both parties are so low.

Now one of the things we have to overcome is one of the parties and its party leader has made a fine art out of denigrating the ability of government to improve anyone's life, of casting great suspicion on everything from our election system to the congress, you name it.

All of our institutions, none of them are trusted now.

The media's not trusted, organized religion's not trusted, certainly the Congress isn't trusted, the Supreme Court certainly isn't trusted.

So it's enormously difficult, but we're just gonna have to be that much more focused on big, easily understood and appreciated ideas that are transformative.

I like the idea of Medicare for all because people can understand it.

It's a system that is hugely efficient.

I favor a model where anyone who wants to participate in Medicare can participate, but that we wouldn't ban private insurance if people like private insurance.

Other of my colleagues have a different view.

They would get rid of private insurance altogether.

But whether it's my view or someone else's, it has to be something that is different than what we have now.

I think that AI and the transformation it will bring presents both a danger and an opportunity.

And the opportunity is to think anew about how our society works and how we make sure that people who are working and trying are able to enjoy a good quality of life and that there is good and dignified work for people, that they can have a safe and secure retirement and access to healthcare.

It just shouldn't be too much to ask.

It's not much to ask in a country as wealthy as ours.

But we're gonna have to be much more focused on that problem, much more clear in how we message our ideas.

And I think there's gonna be someone a year from now that meets that moment, that has a clear vision and some good ideas about how to make it happen that will be very powerful and carry Democrats to success.

- Well, we're out of time, Senator Schiff.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

- Thank you.

(audience applauds) (bright music) (bright music continues)