Rep. Joe Kennedy III: House Republicans Are Doing Nothing

Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to see you. How are we? We are awake, how are we? That is the question, how are we

doing

it? It's not great, no it's not, but every day, in every way, there's a new way to surprise you, oh yeah, it's a hard bar to get over, but he finds a way to get over it, yeah, if they just bury the bar now so we can clean it up, okay, but before we go on to anything else, I want to talk to you about your grandfather Bobby Kennedy for a moment because last month was the 50th anniversary of his assassination, which I remember when I was a kid, one One of my earliest memories was of the slow train with his grandfather's coffin on top, because the question is that all Americans feel that we have some kind of ownership and relationship with his family, we have our own stories about his grandfather, but what stories Do you count in the family?

What are the things you choose to remember the stories you like to tell? So Stephen is There are stories that I think you know and that many Americans know the role that he and his family, his brothers and sisters have played in our history, the Cuban missile crisis, the stand at the school gate, the battles for civil rights, obviously, it's a campaign for the presidency and the turmoil that we saw in 1968 and that's important and that's important to me and my family there's the other side of this that's not told, it's just that he was father, he was a brother, father of 11 and yes. which is that a lot of things go right and it's those stories that inspire me the most, it's the stories of them as a large group white water rafting down the Colorado River for large portions without a raft, just an air mattress, right ?

What changes the definition of whitewater rafting are the photos and stories they have of sailing and spending time together in the summers is playing soccer, it's those pieces that families have that I think are lost and a lot of it is that it's a public family, yes, but you know my favorite day of the year is Thanksgiving because we have most of our family around a table and it's like you have to be the first in line because if you're not okay , I am one of 11 children, yes, what you can do to remove another person's skin from their plate, you remove a damn stone in a competitive sport.

Do you use dual blood as a family reunion and still like to play soccer in everything? Yeah, really, yeah, I mean, it's a younger generation that ends up playing football, but yeah, it's fun, so in your State of the Union answer you said the state of our union is hopeful, resilient. and lasting, how do you feel seven months later? Because I agree with you, it feels that way. We're putting up with something, you know, the end of Animal House or Kevin Bacon saying everything's fine and kicking me out, you know, something like that, but look, in the end, I have the same faith in our country, it's this administration that's letting us down. to people and they are letting people down every day and I see I feel like it was talked about a couple of months ago, but at the same time you see individual Americans

doing

incredible things every day last week, there is a story of a young man who walked 11 miles to work on his first day and you know what his Boston is, they gave him his coworkers, they gave him a car.

There was a story about a teacher who got on a plane and talked about trying to explain how they did it. He didn't have enough school supplies and the passenger behind her heard the story. He slipped her a hundred dollar bill. Someone else on the plane gave him some money. She got off the plane with five hundred dollars worth of school supplies for her students, the people who decide to do it. these incredibly kind things for strangers every day, so I have a job where you actually get to see and hear those stories, talk to those people, and I have a lot of faith in the American public, my faith in this administration. last week didn't reach the same level of confidence mm-hmm well, I agree with you.

I also have faith in the American people, most of them didn't vote for this taxi, yeah, and I think the American people are good people so what. I worry about whether they've been taken to a bad place and if they're told it's a good place, they know they're putting them in a position of moral hazard by having to call out something that's a sin of virtue and what Congress is doing. You are there, obviously, you are a Democrat, you are not the majority, what do you think? How do you think Congress is letting the ball pass by reining in the Trump administration's abuses, so a Republican majority is doing

nothing

? a vote today, literally, to try to restore funding for election security for our midterm elections and it was rejected, it was withdrawn by our Republican majority, why what was the reason?

I have no idea that your great uncle, our president, said that those who make peaceful revolution it is impossible to make violent revolution inevitable what is the peaceful revolution that is more possible for us look, is to go back to those stories, I said this , I have to go and they are the stories you see if you are out and about this country every day. A single day is the 600,000 people who showed up in Austin, Texas, on the anniversary of the Women's March and all those friends of the Pope who will help my best friend get elected to the Texas Senate and defeat Ted Cruz .

Good luck, thank you. Friends Congressman Joe Kennedy everyone