Congressman Joe Kennedy III on His Family, Trump's Tweets, Health Care & Legalizing Pot

so just so everyone understands yeah Robert

Kennedy

grandfather grandfather John

Kennedy

grandfather's brother so great uncle great uncle Ted

Kennedy

great right on also yep Arnold Schwarzenegger was he like uncle Terminator yeah kind of keine right terminator said something is the

family

close enough that you like new Arnold Schwarzenegger as an uncle so yes I did obviously um my cousin Maria and Arnold have separated right right oh yeah I know I read that yes yeah so I haven't seen

them in a while but right yeah sure yeah you guys really are a tight group aren't you yeah there's a lot of us but we're pretty tight yeah yeah there are a lot of you and yeah a lot of you go into politics and I was thinking about this thing I was wondering like when you're a kid and I'm talking about you know like eleven years old did somebody in your

family

say to you listen be

care

ful about what you do because you're a

Kennedy

and one day you might want to run for

office one you know the eyes are on you so behave yourself no no nobody did no really yeah do that if I was a

Kennedy

yeah well I'm not by the way my parents met at a bowling alley no one we have no airports named after us it turned out okay for the most part so ya know um you grew up in a public

family

right and so for the the tribes have been very public our shortcomings like every American

family

and we all have them and they've been public too and so yeah you kind of just grow up

around the fact that what you do is gonna be under more the public eye but that's Jimmy just kind of like the way it is did you know when you're young that this is something that you want to do you wanted to go into public service no no so public service yeah probably I was a Peace Corps volunteer before I ended up running for office can I ask a very very stupid question water please what goes on in the Peace Corps I mean I hear Peace Corps I just I just I know it's not for me but I

also do they come to your house and they take you to another country no you actually gotta get on a plane you have to play this is voluntary though right that's the volunteer part okay all right so uh look for of the experiences I've had in my life there hasn't been one that has been more impactful for me grow it's just a very positive spirit it's a very positive now look it's not for everybody um you spend I spent two and a half years or so on the Dominican Republic yeah

intermittent electricity intermittent running water do you habla espanol see nobody on oh wow you know by the way and this is I don't want to be a profiler but if I were to line you up with a thousand other people and they said which one of these men speak Spanish you'd be the last one I pick which actually has its benefit of time yeah which is great I I've traveled through Latin America quite a bit and you do get some quizzical looks when I start speaking Spanish with a heavy

Dominican accent people go okay so it's it's an organization close to my heart it's one that does I think an awful lot of good around the world um and it's still alive and do great work so yeah I'm I was thrilled to be part of it and particularly given the challenges that we have around the world and in Washington Day having the opportunity to go to a country that you haven't been in a language you don't speak a culture that's a bit foreign and actually throw

yourself at it with everything you got and learn about it and try to serve that community has been a really valuable thing yeah I think it is it's probably a great experience is one that I and no one in my

family

will ever have but um they just figured out there's no age limit on volunteers is it right you can sign up today could you imagine if I did that every one thing it was a joke nobody would believe I went to volunteer for the Peace Corps I'm just saying you know if this

doesn't work out for you a Peace Corps is not is that why you're here are you here to get rid of me I when are you gonna run for president when is this happening I came here today to hope that you would announce and I could be your VP I don't think I think it would be better the other way around but this is a question you get asked all the time and a lot of it is because of your nail a lot of is because you gave the response to the State of Union address the Democratic Party did they

choose you or was this a punishment cuz usually that goes badly so that's an interesting question and the answer that is I actually think unclear so regardless I got asked and I was thrilled to do it I got asked by leader Pelosi about a week before this boat that's all well she pulled me off the House floor cleared out her office kicked all of her staff out and then I thought I was in trouble and and then she asked me to do it so I immediately obviously said yes and then walked out of

her office and went oh my god my

care

er might be over cuz everybody struggles with a speech yeah so I'll be Kindle exact Mario wha what whatever is not Marco Rubio yeah see look what happened yeah exactly yeah the good news is the biggest takeaway from me from that experience is it has solidified for me the generosity the compassion the caring of the American public I have gotten tubes of chapstick from every damn corner yeah didn't matter what I said I'm sure you're tired of

talking about the chapstick and the shiny lips and all that yeah but remember doesn't matter what you said because you did you gave a very well-received speech you were very smart in doing it in front of a group of people which usually it's so sterile and it's like I just you're set up yeah I can't do a hostage video that well right there's some people that that can I'm not one of those folks so I needed a live audience to be if that was small actually see do you

think we will ever return to a day and I'm assuming there was a day I'm not really sure where Republicans and Democrats actually work together in a meaningful way in in government yeah I do I hope so there's there's more of that going on than the public sees some of my closest friends in Washington are in fact Republican who's your best friend that's Republican my best friend would be actually an interesting one for your last guest is this guy mark Wayne Mullen who's

a former Ultimate Fighter from Oklahoma Wow really yeah that's a good best friend app because if you get beat up he'll go kick everyone's ass yeah so he got me to sign onto some bill about protection of ultimate fighters in in the industry and people wonder why I signed on it's like wait when you bring in a whole string of ultimate fighters that can kill you 16 ways from Tuesday yeah you sign anywhere well maybe that's a good plan for

Trump

because we got a lot of problems we

bring in some ultimate fighters and maybe he'll do what needs to be done do you get your

trump

news the way we all do just from sweet like Twitter and and then do you guys and I want to talk about and I don't name anybody specifically but your Republican colleagues do they also go like oh no what is this what has happened here yes they do there are couple areas in which you divert from your party number one you are against legalization of cannabis for recreational use you oppose that

mm-hmm why so I realize my views on this are not exactly in line with you'll never win California you know that's true so look I think the part of the impact of when you're talking about the law is to make sure that you get the the border cases right and I do have concerns about what an increased availability of legal marijuana means for adolescents what it means for folks that are struggle with addiction mental

health

it's also against alcohol because it seems like those very

same things apply AB so I don't drink um but obviously it's okay that everybody else does and I think Jimmy it's it's something that if we're gonna move towards legalization I think we've got to be we got to be thoughtful about what that we moved already yes in moved we have it's good so and part of this is the the federal process on what on this the the federal law and the structures on the federal law a complete and comprehensive right and what Jeff sessions in this

ministration are doing are making it worse so I just think if we're gonna move this way which clearly you know California is their my home state of Massachusetts is their I write I acknowledge the fact that they're go I'm an outlier on this I just think it's something that we want to be

care

ful and delivered about as good I don't always all the time on pop because it really doesn't matter but I do want to ask you about

health

care

um Bernie Sanders it believes in Medi

care

for all you also you're against that no no no so one

health

care

is a right that should been do it by every single

family

across this country period full stop um and I have worked very very hard of course my time in Congress to make sure that everybody does get access to quality affordable accessible

health

care

what we've seen also over the course the past year and a half is that the details matter on this and there's a couple bills out there in Congress that I think yeah those

details aren't exactly quite done up yet and I've got concerns about what that means when you actually try to implement it there are ways that we can go about doing this we have Universal essentially close to universal coverage of

health

care

in Massachusetts we've got 98 some people covered we need to make sure look the basis on this I quote you on this even though I've never mentioned before right needs to be this idea that every single person in this country nobody should

worry about whether they can afford to save the child's life right period the most powerful country in the world should be able to do that

health

care

itself in this country I think it boils down to a fundamental question it's how are we gonna treat people at their time of deepest need it's something that people don't think about very much until you need it but when you need it it's the only thing you think and we have the ability to make sure that nobody is denied because of

a pre-existing condition that we can in fact make it accessible and affordable to everybody we want to make sure I want to make sure that we do that in a way that is responsible that is accurate and that covers everybody and I think we can do that but we gotta be thoughtful about it that's all I'm asking all right well go do it cuz we need you to do it okay Hey thanks for watching if you liked that video click the subscribe button and if you didn't like it will you hurt my feelings