Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Rahm Emanuel:

The Republican voters, and I was wrong on this originally, are not peak Trump. They’re betrayed Trump. If you listen to Marjorie Taylor Greene and you listen to the Republican debate, Donald Trump said, “I’m going to drain the swamp,” and he’s enlarged the swamp.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Rahm Emanuel. He’s had a long career in politics. He served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations. He represented Illinois in the US House. He later became mayor of Chicago. And currently, he’s seriously eyeing a bid for the US presidency. Meanwhile, he’s a regular opinion columnist for the Washington Post where he writes about global politics, the affordability crisis, education, the state of the Democratic Party, and more. We dive into all of that in today’s episode.

Then I’ll answer some questions about the shooting of Renee Nicole Goode and whether the law provides any avenues for accountability. That’s coming up. Stay tuned.

Is the American dream still possible? Potential Democratic presidential candidate, Rahm Emanuel, shares his thoughts.

Rahm Emmanuel, welcome back to the show.

Rahm Emanuel:

Thank you. How are you?

Preet Bharara:

I’m good. I’m good. I don’t know how the country is doing, but I want to just begin with a point of personal privilege. I know I did this last time, but it was five years ago in the nature of a personal anecdote and also to kiss up to the guest just as we start.

20 years and change ago, 21 years and change ago, we were expecting our third child and we thought we should name our child Rahm.

Rahm Emanuel:

Oy.

Preet Bharara:

R-E-H-M. And we discussed it. My wife is from outside of Chicago from Wilmette, so you know it well. And she consults with her mother, my mother-in-law, and says, “What do you think about the name Rahm?” And she said, “Essentially, the only Rahm I know is Rahm Emmanuel, and he’s quite handsome, so I approve.”

Rahm Emanuel:

I’m one mother-in-law closer to where I need to be, so.

Preet Bharara:

Is that because you’re running for president?

Rahm Emanuel:

What was the outcome? Did you name the child?

Preet Bharara:

Yes. His name is Rahm. Second anecdote-

Rahm Emanuel:

Is he spelled the same way?

Preet Bharara:

R-A-H-M.

Rahm Emanuel:

Oh.

Preet Bharara:

The only two Rahms I know. And then when you were running for mayor, I happened to be at a wedding with, I think, somebody who became your deputy mayor. And I made a comment that it’s really cool seeing all these “Rahm for Mayor” signs. And a week later, a plastic “Rahm for Mayor” sign appeared in our mail, which continues to be framed and in our son’s childhood bedroom because he’s a junior in college now. So now we can ask the tough questions.

Rahm Emanuel:

Speaking of anecdotes, I’ll give you an anecdote of competition. So I wrote this piece. I write for The Wall Street Journal. I wrote my piece on raising children because this most frequently asked question, “What is your parents’ secret sauce? What do you and Amy do? Blah, blah, blah, blah.” So I wrote kind of the four or five lessons now that we’re through the windshear of adolescence. And I get the data link from the Wall Street Journal to tell me how well it did.

So what do I do? I say immediately, not thank you, but I say, “I want to know how I did, not compared to every guest opinion, but how I did against Zeke.”

Preet Bharara:

Zeke.

Rahm Emanuel:

And Zeke’s piece writes about don’t eat your ice cream because he’s self-promoting his book, of which I would like to note. Zeke does not eat ice cream. He eats chocolate. He makes chocolate. Makes good chocolate, but he doesn’t eat ice cream. So the Emmanuel thing is not that I did well, but how did I do compared to Zeke? That tells you how nerotic we are.

Preet Bharara:

No, it’s very competitive. I competed with my brother in any event. So I want to talk about politics and I want to talk about policy. Some might say those are very distinct things and some might say those are the same thing. Do you think they’re the same thing or different?

Rahm Emanuel:

People used to say something about when I was an ambassador to Japan, “Oh, Deponent, can you do this?” I said, “Look, you have this vaulted image that somehow we’re all sitting in a gray flannel suit, double-breasted with a pipe thinking big thoughts.” Jim Baker, who’s the ultimate, writes a book called The Politics of Diplomacy. He didn’t write the policy of diplomacy. And diplomacy is about politics and anything that deals with relationships between people, and power is both about politics and policy. And you have to know history, you have to know culture, but it gets integrated through a prism of politics in the best of sense, not in this derisive, “Oh, it’s just politics.” So yeah, I think the two who were heads and tails are the con.

Preet Bharara:

In a way, politics comes first, right? Because what is possible is determined by politics.

Rahm Emanuel:

This is a kitchen table subject of the family, which we always discuss around… Not always, but with some frequency, about what makes a good leader, et cetera. And I always say, a good leader knows why they’re doing what they’re doing and then has the strength and determination to get it done.

And I think I’ve worked for two presidents, but also as a mayor, you have a vision, you have to have that kind of idea of where you’re going. It’s your kind of roadmap. But then you have to have the strength and will and the capacity to drive towards that and to get it done because just having a good idea and squad and having just power without a direction and a focus is also a moral. So that’s what I think.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. No, I agree. You need vision plus execution. Speaking of competition, I had an exalted position as the US attorney. My brother is and has been a very successful entrepreneur and he started a company called diapers.com, which he and his partner sold to Amazon for many hundreds of millions of dollars. And lots and lots of people would say, and it really made me angry, A, because it’s stupid, and B, because I felt some affinity for my brother and defending him. So I wish I had that idea. “Oh, you wish you had the idea of selling diapers on the internet?That’s about worth a nickel,” right? It’s all about the execution, the brilliant strategy, and the pricing, and how they kept their inventory and how they marketed. So I agree that’s true in business. It’s true in politics.

There’s a question I’ve been meaning to ask you because you have been talking about affordability, which is the word of the day, which is about politics and policy as we’ve been discussing. The new mayor of New York City gets a lot of credit for popularizing the term and spearheading it. You’ve been talking about it for a long time. In fact, if you go back to 1992, “It’s the economy, stupid.” That’s largely about affordability. If Bill Clinton were running today and you were assisting him today, and it’s Bill Clinton with none of the subsequent baggage, would his general and specific message of 1992 resonate in 2028?

Rahm Emanuel:

100%. So in 1992, he goes to accept the Democratic nomination in New York City and his message is, “To those who work hard, play by the rules, raise their kids to know right from wrong. This is your time, your tenure.” And it was a middle class economics and a middle class-driven morals and ethics and cultural issues. And the cornerstone of “the economy, stupid” was a tax cut for the middle class. That’s what it was.

And so I mean, this notion… I’m going to deviate but come back.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Rahm Emanuel:

Those who say, “Oh, it’s affordability,” well, you were the only ones that were lost in this cultural cul-de-sac that you wanted to convince people of. It has always been, especially now after the last 30 years, about the American dream becoming unaffordable, inaccessible, and expressing an outrage that that is unacceptable to us. That’s not new. It may be new to you who wanted to worry about a set of issues that were secondary at best to other Americans, but what was primary and has always been, today kids are graduating college with 30, 40, $50,000 in debt and they’re stuck in their parents’ basement. That’s why they can’t afford a down payment because it’s now going to the banks for their college education, which is why one of the things I’m so proud of as mayor was we were the first city ever, if you got to be average, community college was free. We made it free for you. So you didn’t have to go to the poor house to kind of get your ticket to the American dream.

And that should not be news. It may arrive late to other people and they say, “Oh, who knew that affordability was such an important subject?” But you have a generation of Americans who… Preet, you have a young son. I have three kids now that are out of school. One is a full-time Navy, one is a Navy reservist. The other one works on the cross-section national security and climate. They’re all making starting off from college three, four times what I made. I come home from college, I get an apartment, et cetera, and I made $16,000. My children today make three, four times what I make by my son that he gets obviously a housing stipend from the Navy. If it wasn’t for that, it would be a different challenge for him.

And that tells you the number one piece of saying you’ve made it. When we use the phrase “getting ahead,” it’s ahead of your parents, doing better. That’s gone. And it shouldn’t be a wake up that if you work hard, play by the rules, we’re going to make the American dream accessible and affordable to you. You’re not going to struggle, you’re going to strive to achieve something.

And for those who think that the system is rigged, breaking news, you’re not paranoid. It is rigged. It’s rigged to your children, Preet, my children, are going to succeed, but that’s not how we keep score in politics. That’s not how Bill Clinton would’ve kept score. He would have said, as he said in many times, “The hits on me are nothing like the hits your kids are going to take if we don’t turn this country around.” And that’s what I would say. And that’s what I am saying.

I just come back today last night from Mississippi where I went and talked about education. We’ll talk about it later because I think it’s essential component to the access of the American dream.

Preet Bharara:

From that 1992 campaign and message, what would need to be updated, if anything? I mean, you’re quoting from it wholesale. Is that the campaign? Is that the winning campaign for 2028? We’ll come to you in a minute, but is that the winning campaign?

Rahm Emanuel:

Look, I mean, there’s another component of it which our party has to work through. I’ve spoke about this. And if you’re talking about 1992, people, they do catch, like your question does, “it’s the economy, stupid”.

People, unless you were immersed in it, 40% of President Clinton’s advertising, most dominant issue and welfare as we know it, grounding himself in the cultural and ethical and moral mainstream of the United States.

In the same way, when President Obama runs in 2008, his comments about dealing with his own pastor Wright’s comments, and response, and then also about parenting and fathering and the responsibility is easy to father a child. It’s hard to be its dad. That was his terms. That grounded him so that the rest of the message of what he wanted to talk about, which was also about economic opportunity and responsibility and a sense of community, could get heard and resonate.

And so what I’m talking about, and I’ve said this on other subjects, grounding yourself, in my own view, which is why enough about bathroom access, let’s talk about classroom excellence, we are wrapped around a subject. And I did this town hall in Mississippi if I could an hour and a half or in a small town, 3,200 people, Water Valley. Open mic you could ask whatever you want. I had got somewhere close, somewhere between 15 to 20 questions. I got asked about vocational school. I got asked about kids who were homeless. I got asked about early childhood education. Nobody asked me about bathroom, locker room access, and kids of transgender playing sports. That’s preoccupying a cultural war to other people.

I was in a small town in Northern Mississippi because the Mississippi Miracle, they’ve gone from 49th to ninth on reading, and nobody asked about the cultural wars. They asked about how do we get vocational ed back into schools? How do we make sure that our kids early on are doing reading at grade level rather than accepting 50% of our kids not to read? So to me, be grounded in both the family room middle class values, which is why I’ve called, and social media apps for every child, 16, and ban it, not just end it. Ban it. Give kids the time and the focus on their education. And then remind not only the kids that they have that education, but their parents, don’t struggle to stay into the middle class. Achieve that status and can pass on both the economic opportunity and the values to their children. That’s the core of what we need to talk about, and that’s what I’m doing.

Preet Bharara:

There’s another category of issue, which I think is distinct from social issues, and we can talk about those later and economic issues. And we’ve debated this on the podcast for a long time now, given my background and what I talk about, issues relating to democracy, the fragility of democracy, people’s rights, attacks on democracy, attacks on voting, assertion of executive power, the likes of which we’ve never seen before. We have this action that just happened. It’s unfortunate killing that just happened in Minneapolis. Do you get questions about Trump and democracy and autocracy and those kinds of things?

Rahm Emanuel:

I did not.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Rahm Emanuel:

It was-

Preet Bharara:

But should politicians and leaders, particularly those who want to be president of the United States… And I’ve had this conversation with Adam Schiff and many others, some of whom have led the impeachment efforts and the January 6th investigation. If you want to lead in this country, do you just leave that stuff aside or do you pick your spots and you only talk about kitchen table? There’s no kitchen table if we don’t have democracy, right?

Rahm Emanuel:

Well, so let me … You’re correct that there hasn’t… As I’ve talked about this before, as a student of history, the moment American democracy becomes unstable is exactly the same time the American dream becomes unaffordable.

Basically 20 years ago, as the ladder gets pulled up and the double lock on the door gets put, housing becomes unaffordable, retirement becomes a reserve for your paycheck because your paycheck ain’t good enough. Your kid’s education becomes not a ticket to the middle class, but a burden of debt. And your healthcare is more vulnerable where you now spend more time on debating and confronting the insurance companies than you do spend with your doctor and nurse.

The moment the American dream becomes unaffordable is exactly when our democracy becomes unstable. So they’re not distinct issues, they’re complimentary. And if you want to restore democracy, and I get each of the examples you use about an overpowered executive branch, no checks, I would say to you, Preet… So let me finish that thought. One is focus on restoring the confidence where people think the American dream is a hoax today. Restore the confidence and the accessibility of it, and you’ll believe in the system.

But I would say on a shorthand, as somebody who fought to create motor voter, fought also to make sure that people early voting, mail in ballots, democracy is under attack, but I would put the onus on two other branches of government, not this president. The reason this president’s getting away with bloody murder is because the Republican Congress and Senate has become rubber stamp. You get five senators to vote against the president on the War Powers Act and everybody goes into a cheerleading position.

Every other time in history, every other time in history, five would be pathetic. I said to one senator once who’s a friend of a Republican Senator, privately I said, “You know why you want a Democratic president?” He goes, “I don’t.” I said, “You do. I’m going to restore your manhood. You put it in a lockbox.”

Preet Bharara:

How’d that go over?

Rahm Emanuel:

Well, he kind of chuckled. I said, “I’m serious. You guys are pathetic. You ran for office to be an equal branch of government. You and I are sitting here today, when the next day, Supreme Court’s going to rule on tariffs. You haven’t done squat. You’ve given up on war powers. You’ve given it up… There’s a shooting. You don’t ask for a hearing. The idea, the FBI tells the state agencies, forget about it. And you’re like the three monkeys. You don’t see evil, you don’t speak evil, you don’t hear evil. And then in all due respect, the Supreme Court has abandoned all the other judges at the circuit and appeals court. You know much more about this, forgot more than I know, but they’re all ruling. And then you get these shadow docket rulings where there’s no opinion, it’s just thrown out.”

And one point on the immigration decision passed, and again, I’m not a lawyer, you are. Brett Kavanaugh in the Supreme Court says, “Well, the agents can make kind of a judgment based on race.” I’ve never heard of something like this from a Supreme Court justice. Well, we trust law enforcement to make a judgment. I think democracy, the foundations are there. You just had two other branches of government that have failed in their responsibility. It’s not the voters have failed. It’s not that the public has failed. And in fact, the only people that’s going to hold up and put a checkmate on this president has come one year from now in November.

The American people are actually the thin blue line protecting democracy. The Supreme Court and the justices are pathetic failures. The Republican Congress and Senate, pathetic failures. And corporate leadership is timid moral souls. So truth is, I give a shout-out to the American people for defending democracy, and the rest of the establishment get a D at best.

Preet Bharara:

It’s always a risk to push back-

Rahm Emanuel:

Go ahead.

Preet Bharara:

… hypothetically and attack the people. I’ll do it for a moment.

Rahm Emanuel:

But I’m not attacking the people. I’m attacking-

Preet Bharara:

No. I’m talking to-

Rahm Emanuel:

I’m attacking the establishment.

Preet Bharara:

No, no, no, no. I’m talking about… My response, just to make the argument, is the people put Donald Trump in power.

Rahm Emanuel:

No, I also have a different view.

Preet Bharara:

People saw how he acted in the first administration.

Rahm Emanuel:

I have a different view.

Preet Bharara:

They saw how … I’m not saying this is necessarily my view, but I’m just playing devil’s advocate. If the people decided to throw those bums out who were Republicans, then the Republicans would vote differently. They view a threat from Trump to be more severe than a threat from their constituents. Marjorie Taylor Greene took a different path. I wonder if you have a thought about that, but there is an argument that it is … The bulwark against all the bad stuff is the people and the people have chosen unwisely. Fair?

Rahm Emanuel:

So I know you find it hard to believe that Emmanuel has a different opinion. So let me give what my namesake-

Preet Bharara:

We need to get Zeke in here.

Rahm Emanuel:

No.No, don’t do that. Neither you or I would get a word in age-wise.

Preet Bharara:

We’re definitely not getting Ari on here.

Rahm Emanuel:

Yeah. So let’s go through this. I actually think if you go back, I think the Democrats forfeited this election. I actually think it was a winnable election.

Preet Bharara:

By Kamala or by someone else?

Rahm Emanuel:

Yeah. Well, Kamala and the president, and I think two things. I don’t want to spend a lot of time, but in a shorthand, Kamala Harris gets the nomination. Biden Harris is down eight points. You run it fast-forward all the way through the debate, she’s all about change. She’s about focusing on the American people, the set of the struggle around specifically housing. That’s the point of the spear here. And she goes up plus three. That’s 11 point swing. Polling didn’t get that wrong.

And the moment after the debate, somewhere she starts to run on democracy and she adopts Joe Biden’s continent message and becomes continuity, not change. And she goes down a point and a half and loses. Even with 70% of the country saying it’s headed in the wrong direction. She was ahead of Trump by three. Not that that’s a big margin, but from down eight to up three when she was change.

And when I find the person who went from the economy and change to continuity and democracy, I’m going to strangle them. I want to know what you saw that nobody else saw. And so I personally don’t put this so much on the American people as I put it on the leadership having punted on what was a difficult but winnable race.

A lot of people thought it was baked into the numbers. I don’t. And I’m in Japan watching this and I’m a little neurotic on data, but I look at that and when you go from down eight to plus three, and then you change your message, I think that … And then you go lose by a point and a half, which means a four and a half point swing, that tells me a lot.

Preet Bharara:

I mean, there may have been other factors.

Rahm Emanuel:

Let me get back to Marjorie Taylor Green because I think this is an underappreciated point.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Rahm Emanuel:

Now, you and I talk politics and we talk about policy. In the end of the day, politics is also about psychology and emotion, something President Obama and I used to struggle with because he’s very, very cerebral.

There are three emotions in the electorate right now. Democrats are angry, angry at what the president’s doing and angry that he’s getting away with it. Swing or independent or unaffiliated voters, whatever category you want to use, are very uncomfortable with the president and uncomfortable with the fact that there’s no checkmate on them, no counter. They don’t like the chaos. They don’t like the cruelty and they don’t like the corruption, and they’re very uncomfortable, different than anger. And then the third category, which I think is underappreciated in the public and are unappreciated rather than the political debates and weirdos like me, is the Republican voters, and I was wrong on this originally, are not peak Trump. They’re betrayed Trump. If you listen to Marjorie Taylor Green and you listen to the Republican debate, Donald Trump said, “I’m going to drain the swamp,” and he’s enlarged the swamp.

Donald Trump said, “I’m going to be worried about your paycheck,” and he’s worried only about his checkbook. Donald Trump told you he was going to be America first, and he’s chasing his Nobel Peace Prize around the globe. And they feel betrayed. And if you hear what Marjorie Taylor Greene is talking about and you hear other Republicans, MAGAs, et cetera, voices, there’s a sense of betrayal. Not that Trump is riding off to the sunset, but a sense that what he pledged to do-

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be back with Ian Bremmer after this.

Rahm Emanuel:

… is abandoned. And nobody likes to be had. One example, Donald Trump will tell you more right now about the price of Greenland than he could tell you the price of groceries, and that’s why they’re betrayed. So it’s anger, uncomfortable, betrayal. Three distinct emotions in three different parts of the electorate.

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be right back with Rahm Emanuel after this.

So when you run for president in 2028, knowing that people like new and like change, when you run in the 1992 platform, how are you going to make that seem fresh and new, Rahm?

Rahm Emanuel:

I mean, personally, I think there’s three parts to this. One is for a part of-

Preet Bharara:

Let the record reflect that you did not deny the assumption in my question.

Rahm Emanuel:

Correct. You can say that, but I haven’t made that decision. I’m not going to answer it for the 728th time.

Preet Bharara:

That’s why I haven’t asked.

Rahm Emanuel:

I decided to give you a pass.

Preet Bharara:

Okay. I appreciate it. I didn’t ask the question.

Rahm Emanuel:

But if I do it… No, you think about these things.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, of course.

Rahm Emanuel:

Look, Democrats are known as weak and woke. There’s nothing about this that’s weak or woke that would be changed fundamentally. When it came to taking on the insurance companies to give 10 million kids healthcare, I was at the point of that spare. When it came to taking on the banks and doing financial reform, I was the point of that spare. When I was mayor and it came to… What was the first municipality sued the pharmaceutical companies over opiates? The city of Chicago when I was mayor. What was the city that had the largest drop in teen tobacco smoking and gave 90,000 kids free eye and dental care because we raised taxes on tobacco companies? The city of Chicago when I was mayor. And what was the first as mayor that also took on the educational bureaucracy to give our kids a full school day and full school year when they had the shortest school day in America and give free kindergarten and free pre-K that never existed?

So my whole history is fighting powerful interests and making sure the benefits get to the people. I can go on with other things. Assault weapon ban, the Brady Bill, the person that got the job to pass those and take on the National Rifle Association was myself assigned by President Clinton.

Preet Bharara:

Would have been 100,000 cops, 100,000 more cops.

Rahm Emanuel:

Yeah. Did that in the crime bill, but my point is-

Preet Bharara:

Would you be advocating for something like expanding-

Rahm Emanuel:

I mean, you asked me originally, how do you update it?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Rahm Emanuel:

You have a party known as weak and woke, and there’s nothing weak and woke about me. Number two, I don’t get caught up in the secondary issues of cultural and what you call social issues because I think we have … One is I don’t think they’re right. Two, I think we have to ground ourselves as somebody who’s been very strong about fighting crime, very strong early on in my tenure about building operation gatekeeper on the border, operation safeguard down in Nogales, Arizona, being tough on illegal immigration crossing, but also being laser- focused on affordability of a home for a first time home buyer and the type of reforms that need to happen. And I think that in every one of those cases, the update is having the strength to take on the interest. And I come back to this as an example. I called, as you know, as the first elected person in public life, banning social media apps like TikTok, Instagram, all the other social media apps for 16 year olds and younger, willing to take on big tech. I know those people and told them, “What you’re”-

Preet Bharara:

I know some of them too.

Rahm Emanuel:

… “doing is poisoning our children. You are worse than the tobacco companies. That algorithm has controlled our adolescents rather than the adults and the parents in the room.” And I said to them, “You’re wrong. We’re going to change this and it’s going to be a top priority because I’m not going to afford to lose another generation to your algorithm, which is not bringing us together, not helping our kids. What you are doing is destroying their minds and their emotional status.” And nobody else has said that to them.

Preet Bharara:

When you say this at public forums, what’s the reaction from parents?

Rahm Emanuel:

Well, I said this the other day in Mississippi, people started chuckling and laughing, but applauding. I said, “Does anybody know a single friend that has said, “You know what my kid’s missing in their life? More time on the screen.”

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. But so they have the power. Parents have the power to take the social media away from them.

Rahm Emanuel:

Preet, this where you were wrong. Yes, they do, et cetera. First of all, as a mayor of the city of Chicago, there’s a lot of people… You and I have the agency as parents. That’s not true of every parent. We have the capacity and there are other parents who are living right on the thin line. They don’t have that agency. And when it came to taking on the tobacco companies, when it came to taking on the pharmaceutical company, when it comes to taking on the insurance company to big tech, there’s a point in which the government has to step in because no parent can face off against Instagram by themselves. The idea that you said, “Oh, you have the power,” you and I have the power. We have the agency.

Preet Bharara:

Doesn’t seem like I have a lot of power to my kids anymore, but I take your point.

Rahm Emanuel:

Okay. Well, that means your kids are doing the right thing. As I used to joke about my son, who’s now a Navy lieutenant in the Navy and been there six years, which is at 15, he reduced the English language down to one word, [inaudible 00:28:56]. By 17, he actually remembered the entire English language. But my point is we have to accept … Yes, parents should show more responsibility. They don’t get a pass. But the idea that you’re going to leave parents to fight TikTok and Instagram by themselves, you don’t understand the challenges of parenthood the way I think you do, and I think you understand what I mean.

Preet Bharara:

I want to ask you one more general question about 2028 and then talk about education, which I know is very important to you and on your mind.

Rahm Emanuel:

Sure.

Preet Bharara:

If and when you sit down for that interview that every candidate does, and as Ted Kennedy famously did in 1979, which I’m sure you’ve been asked.

Rahm Emanuel:

Yeah, with Roger Mudd.

Preet Bharara:

Yes. Famous. Famous.

Rahm Emanuel:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Why are you running for president? What’s the answer to that question for you?

Rahm Emanuel:

Because I think the country’s at a crossroads. This could be the first election about the future and not the past that we’ve had in 20 years. And a future in which I know as an individual, whose father came to this country and his grandfather came to this country, what this country is. I told my kids when they were growing up, “You’re going to give one year of service to this country because it’s been good to your family, and you owe that as a contribution.”

We have lost our way. We have a country that as long as you’re part of the establishment, like you and I, who have been benefited, our children have benefited, and the rules of this system are written for our kids to win. Heads they win, tails you lose. And we’re at a crossroads. We do another four years like this, China’s going to pass us by. And we have an opportunity to take the right path right now, get this right.

I don’t care what you say about me, you can say whatever you want. My kids say the same thing plus. But if we don’t turn it around, the hits on your kids are going to be worse than the hits on my kids. And the future of this country is at stake on 2028. Not yes, about democracy, but restoring the accessibility and the affordability of the American dream. With that, we can build another generation.

And education is a building block. One piece of history. Post Civil War, turn of the 20th century, World War II, and then the 1980s. Every one of the great periods of economic growth in America underpinned by Glandgrand Colleges, Universal High School Education, the GI Bill, and a nation at risk and putting education reform at the priority.

Education is the most consistent thing to achieving and succeeding at and advancing the American dream. And the cornerstone of that, my life’s work at that is the fact that, at this point, you got to reject the Marxists, you got to reject the monopolist, and focus on the American dream and putting the capacity to achieve it back in the hands of the American people. And it’s been taken away.

Preet Bharara:

So as an immigrant family myself and as the son of a man who’s now 86, immigrant from India, one of 13, first member of his family to go to college, and he came to America with the idea instilled into my brothers and my head that education is the key to everything. It’s a key to prosperity, it’s the key to good health, it’s the key to success and mobility and all of that. And so we had an undying focus on education. My brother and I both did well in school. We both went to law school. And I get all that.

What’s interesting to me is in this country, we spend a lot of time talking about higher education. I know you want to talk about grade school education. We’ll come back to that in a moment. What would be your plan for thinking about colleges and universities? Because a lot of what drives prosperity in the country and what creates jobs is not necessarily that somebody in seventh grade is reading at a seventh grade level, but do we have the factories of innovation at our major universities where invention is possible and technology can advance, some of which you don’t like, that employs millions and millions of people? We still have the leading products in tech of any place in the world.

So first, talking about higher education. Only a-third of Americans go to college. What are we doing for the rest of them?

Rahm Emanuel:

Okay. You have like seven questions, so let me break down-

Preet Bharara:

I know. I’m sorry.

Rahm Emanuel:

No, I like it. Let me break down because they’re integrated. Let me break that down, okay?

One of the big reforms we made in Chicago when I was mayor was take the high school education from a diploma-driven to college career. First and foremost, first city, you’re in a B average, we made community college free. Tuition, books, and transportation. Second, with 50% of our kids graduated with college credit while they were in high school. So the parents didn’t have to pay for it again and gave kids in the city of Chicago from different backgrounds, the confidence that they could handle college education. And third, most importantly, we’re the only city to make this a requirement, that to get your high school diploma, you had to produce a letter of acceptance from either college, community college, or branch of the armed forces, or a vocational school. You’re not walking on graduation day, you’re telling us where you’re walking to. Your children got raised and my children got raised with expectations. Doesn’t happen everywhere.

So we have to give those expectations and support to achieve that. So you want to be a plumber? I want you to be the best plumber, but I’m okay and better than okay. I’m going to support that. You want to go to the Air Force or the Marines? I’m okay. You better be the best and we’re going to support you to do that. You want to go paralegal or nursing? We’re going to support that. You want to go be an electrical engineer? We’re going to support that, but you’re going to tell us where you’re walking. So to me, that’s number one. And that means investing in Americans and making it affordable, accessible in that effort.

Second in that area, and as this goes to corporate America, you are timid souls. You have a president of the United States attacking the research universities of America, the goose that lays the gold egg. You haven’t relayed the goose. It is all that research at our universities. And we’re in a Cold War with China, they have decided on AI, quantum computing, fusion, alternative energy and biolife sciences to beat America. And you have a President of the United States who’s declared war on the universities that you rely on their research and you don’t say a word. How pathetic?

So to me, stop attacking the engine, the creativity of the American dream. Everybody wants to replicate what the United States has, except for right now under President Trump, we’ve decided to declare war on ourselves. This is the biggest end goal I ever seen.

Third, we want people from around the globe to come to the United States to not only study, but to then buy into and nurture and promote the American dream. One anecdote from you and I, I can speak to my family, not only my father came to this country, but my grandfather and my mother’s side came to this country in 1914. Growing up in the family room was my grandmother’s purse and her passport, my two great aunts that brought them to this country. On either side of the purse and the passports were black and white photos of the relatives who never made it to America.

My parents told us, “You are not going to waste the opportunity of having been born in this great country. Those eyes laid a responsibility on all us.” One, to not be second, but to be first, and that America’s great, it’s a great country. And you have something and a responsibility here. And then to achieve it, as I say to my kids, which is what mom and dad said to us, “You’re going to get a home of love and a good education. The rest is up to you. ”

And to me, those are the ways-

Preet Bharara:

Emmanuels and the Bhararas read from the same playbook.

Rahm Emanuel:

Yeah. So it’s the same. And here’s an example, if I can get to politics. We have voices at our party who tear it down in America. Well, I’m sorry. This is a great country. Does it fall short? You name me a country that doesn’t. But on any basis, the struggles across the Atlantic, the struggles across the Pacific, the struggles up the Mississippi, and the struggles over the real, those struggles and sacrifices was for something that did not provide itself anywhere else.

And I’m going to tell you right now, freedom has a seductive pull on the human heart, and America at its best is that magnet pull. And I think it’s a tremendous country. And I think to those who all they can find out is the fault, it’s okay, but I’m telling you, you’re wrong. There’s a lot to work on, a lot to improve on, spent my life doing it, but in the end of the day, this is a great country with great promise, and the whole effort is about fulfilling that promise.

Preet Bharara:

When you say those things, are you talking about a particular side, the left or the right or both?

Rahm Emanuel:

I’m saying it more in… I was fully honest, more from progressive voices. I find progressive voices that all they do is say America is a failure, America is a horrible place or colonial imperial power, et cetera. We have to be honest about our history. It’s the good, the bad, and the ugly.

But that doesn’t describe … I just finished a great book by Joseph Ellis about slavery in the founding fathers and the Constitution and the kind of bifurcation as well as schizophrenia that existed and the acknowledgement of the schizophrenia. So that good and that bad sit side by side, has through our founding, but the idea that you ignore the good only to focus on the bad or vice versa, only focused on the good is not true to not only the history, but true to how we fulfill the future.

Preet Bharara:

As we wrap up shortly, I’m just thinking about your career, which has been very varied. In fact, I think you have a more varied public service career than anyone I can think of other than Leon Panetta in terms of different positions. You’ve been a mayor, you’ve been a chief of staff in the White House, you’ve been a very prominent high ranking member of the house, you’ve been ambassador to Japan. I’m just doing a commercial for you, Rahm.

Rahm Emanuel:

Yeah, I appreciate it.

Preet Bharara:

But the question is… And don’t say all of them. The question is, which of those jobs is the best preparation for President of the United States?

Rahm Emanuel:

So I’m going to answer you with… But I want to first tell you because Leon and I, Panetta, are very close. So every morning when Leon’s chief of staff, I’d get in at 6:45 and he was sitting at his desk. And I’d get in and I would start … I’d walk through the door and I would start yelling at Leon and say, “We got to do this. We got to do that.” And Leon would look up. He had the yellow legal pad with his blue felt pen. Anybody who worked with Leon knows that. And he’d go, “Rahmer, you Italian?” I said, “Italian enough to date your daughter?” He goes, “You’re never that Italian. You’re not that Italian.”

And so Leon and I had started every day of the morning exactly like that. With that anecdote, he said it every morning. I would start screaming, “We got to do this. We got to do that.”

Preet Bharara:

It’s like Veep.

Rahm Emanuel:

So I would tell you-

Preet Bharara:

People would guess it would be chief of staff. That’s what people would guess.

Rahm Emanuel:

I would say the two parts of it would be … The problem is I don’t know how you separate … I used to say this, Preet, which is I am so glad I was chief of staff before I was mayor, but I think I’d been better chief of staff had I been mayor first. And it’s just one of those things.

On the other hand, given what’s happening in the globe and a lot of people in politics say, “Oh, foreign policy doesn’t count.” I think that was true then. It’s not true now. Being ambassador is going to… Having been in the Indo-Pacific, knowing what the first island chain is, et cetera. So in the end of the day, I think the short answer is chief of staff with a nose-like finish to mayor. Because if I take education, just take that or take economic development, which I don’t think should be about redistribution, but should be about growth and principally growth in incomes, one of the big topics, not about affordability that people realize you got groceries, you got gas, you got utilities, you got healthcare. How about rising incomes? You got a guy talking about a trillion dollar take package. We haven’t raised the minimum wage.

So to me, the knowledge of how, what you do hits the ground at a city is essential. So yes, the reason President Obama picked me is because not only we were good friends, I had been in Congress, I was in leadership, but I had been in the White House. I understood it. I know where it is. I know how to hit the ground running, what the strengths are, what the opportunities are. Today I would just tell the Republicans, I’d bring everybody, “We have an energy crisis. You’re going to go to the Blair house. I’m giving you pizza. You come up with what we’ve got to do. Here are my principles.”

Preet Bharara:

As an Italian. As an Italian, you’re giving them pizza.

Rahm Emanuel:

“We’re going to do this. We know what the problem is. We’ve got to produce a bill in five months. And if you don’t, I’m going to go solo.” One of the things President Trump tells us, “You don’t need Congress. You can go back to sleep again. So I’m going to give you five months to actually be relevant. You don’t want to do it. I know how I can do it. So I’m giving you a chance to actually participate in pushing this country forward.”

But having that experience and knowing that both Congress, chief of staff, senior advisor to President Clinton, chief of staff to President Obama, mayor for an ambassador to Japan, but in the end of the day, as I say this example, do you have the character, the judgment to make the decision? Because everything that comes into the Oval Office is a choice between bad and worse.

Preet Bharara:

Everything?

Rahm Emanuel:

And you have to have the judgment and character to know how to distinguish between bad and worse.

Preet Bharara:

I wanted to ask you at least one question about the new mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani. What do you think of him generally? Where do you think he and the politics he represents and the ideology on the left that he represents… It’s a big tent party or it’s supposed to be. Some might have taken some of your earlier comments to be, “We don’t need those folks in the party.” How do you think about his liberalism?

Rahm Emanuel:

I don’t know if you know this, but I met with him. I met with him for an hour and a half. We had a breakfast. I said to him when he first walked in, I said, “So who’s going to hate this meeting more? My rabbi or AOC?” And he started laughing hysterical.

So I said, “The truth is I’ve heard both sermons. I’m kind of biased towards my rabbis,” and I’m honest.” So look, I think he represents a part of the Democratic Party. “I don’t think you’re going to be running a grocery store.” I told him this. And I said, “My view, when I ran for mayor, it was all about education. I’d pay any price, do anything to fix a failed school system. And at the end of the day, Sean Reardon at Stanford called it the single best education system of the top 100.

Now, I paid a lot of price to get that done. I said, “To me, your daycare is an A. Here’s what I did on food deserts in the city of Chicago. Here’s what I did on free buses in the city of Chicago. You can do certain things, but if that’s your A, okay, but you’re going to spend four years trying to figure out how to source lettuce.”

You get daycare, and I happened to think like the other day from this interview, the governor and him came out on a press conference because that is a game changer for families in New York. It’s a game changer for other people, as somebody who created universal pre-K for four year olds, getting kids in daycare, responsible, good and making it affordable so parents don’t basically work just for daycare, but work for actually a standard of living they’re trying to accomplish.

But I think as to your larger subject, there are going to be differences, respectfully, differences. I believe in just dealing with food deserts. My wife and I have seven choices within a mile. There are parts of Chicago, parts of New York that don’t have a single choice within a mile. And we have to accept that.

Now, I did certain things. I told the grocers, “You open up, give me your five-year plan. If you have a food desert in it, I’ll treat all six stores as a single application. I’ll save you a ton of money and a ton of time.” I don’t think New York City’s going to be opening a grocer store. I don’t think that’s in the business of New York. You can barely run the trains.

So you can offer that idea. You can do rent control. To me, housing is about spurring supply. And I told him this idea, I’d sit down, say, “Okay, what’s our housing regulations? What are Dallas’ housing regulations? What are Phoenix regulations? Compare them. What do we have on the books that they don’t have? What do they have on the books that we don’t have? And how do you do this? You got to figure out supply.”

Now, he’ll offer his ideas, and I think he is… And I say this as a compliment. He’s very ambitious, and that’s a good thing because an ambitious person wants to succeed.

Preet Bharara:

I agree with that.

Rahm Emanuel:

And he’s a smart politician. So I think he has the makings, as he did, with his selection on public safety, as he did on the selection of not giving up marital influence on the schools. He has the sense of what it takes to succeed, and I think he’s going to surprise people on the upside. We have our policy differences, but that’s what I think.

Preet Bharara:

Implied in what you said is it is a great political advantage, I think, generally. Not always, but generally to be underestimated, and he has that advantage at the moment.

Rahm Emanuel:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Rahm Emanuel, I wish you well. Whatever path you take. Thanks so much for being here.

Rahm Emanuel:

I wish my namesake, at school, good grades. Thank God for his mother. All right, man. Be good.

Preet Bharara:

Take care. I really appreciate it.

Rahm Emanuel:

Have a happy and healthy new year.

Preet Bharara:

Why aren’t kids today reading at grade level? My conversation with Rahm Emmanuel continues for members of the Cafe Insider community. In the bonus for Insiders, Rahm and I discuss education reform and what actually works.

Rahm Emanuel:

Somehow the country has just shrugged shoulders and accepted this failure. Trust me, in Japan where I was, they would never accept this mediocrity.

Preet Bharara:

To try out the membership, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider. Stay tuned. After the break, I’ll answer some questions about the shooting of Renee Nicole Goode and whether the law provides any avenues for accountability.

Now let’s get to your questions. Folks, last week, like so many people in this country, I was deeply, deeply saddened by the death of Renee Nicole Goode, a 37-year-old mother of three who was shot and killed by an ICE agent during an operation in Minneapolis on January 7th. If you haven’t had a chance to see it, my colleagues and friends, Elie Honig and Joyce Vance, discussed the shooting and the legal implications of it, many of them on a live Substack this past Monday.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the tragic shooting, many of you have written to us wondering what legally can be done to get some measure of accountability, whether or not the Department of Justice does anything.

Deirdre, for example, sent us a message on X asking, “What is the legal recourse against ICE’s incursions and is anyone working on it?” Sir Deirdre, there have been a number of legal actions brought by state and local authorities, but given the timing of your question, I’ll presume you’d be talking about legal options for people connected to Ms. Goode. The honest answer is that this is all quite complicated and far less clear than many people would hope. But first we need to start with what officials and witnesses say happened that morning and what the video evidence appears to show.

So according to Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, Federal law enforcement officers in Minneapolis were conducting what she described as an immigration enforcement operation when one of their vehicles became stuck in the snow. Ms. Goode had just dropped off her six-year-old child at a nearby school with her partner when they encountered a group of ICE agents on the street. People across the political spectrum have pointed to the same clips to argue opposite conclusions about what the footage shows. We’re linking to those videos in the show notes so you can review them for yourself, but chances are you probably already have.

The Department of Homeland Security quickly and kind of surprisingly framed the shooting as self-defense before any investigation was undertaken whatsoever, claiming that a violent rioter had “weaponized her vehicle” and attempted to run over and kill an ICE officer, describing the incident as an act of domestic terrorism.

So there you have it. In one official statement from the Department of Homeland Security, an immediate exoneration of the agent in question and an immediate condemnation of the victim. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey forcefully rejected that characterization, calling it bullshit and a garbage narrative. He said the available video did not support the federal government’s version of events. He hadn’t conducted an investigation either.

So getting back to your question, what legal recourse exists for Renee Nicole Goode’s family? Let’s start with the paths that are least likely to succeed. So one possible avenue and the obvious avenue and the traditional avenue would be a criminal prosecution at the state or local level, which must be preceded by, of course, an investigation. Those would be charges that depending on the facts could range from manslaughter to murder. That route faces serious obstacles. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has said that the FBI and the US Attorney’s offices decided not to conduct a joint investigation with state or local authorities. That is unusual in my experience.

Federal investigators now control a good bit of the evidence and original reports from the scene. And without access to all the evidence, it could be difficult for state prosecutors to bring a case. Even if that evidence were available, there’s another major legal challenge. Under a relevant statute that I’m familiar with, Title 28 US Code Section 1442, a federal officer who was criminally prosecuted in state court for actions taken on duty can remove, meaning move, transfer, that case to federal court.

And on the federal side, the most commonly discussed criminal civil rights statute used in police shooting cases is Title 18, United States Code, Section 242, which is familiar to many civil rights lawyers. It makes it a crime to willfully deprive someone of constitutional rights under color of law. Prosecutors have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to unanimous jury that the officer knowingly used unlawful force, not just that the decision was wrong or tragic.

That’s a high standard and lots of cop shooting cases don’t get prosecuted historically for that reason. Taken together these factors place any potential criminal case squarely in the hands really of the Department of Justice. And so far, they don’t seem inclined.

That brings us to a listener question from Joe. “Can the family of Renee Nicole Goode file a civil lawsuit against the three ICE agents as individuals who were involved in her death?” So contrary to what JD Vance, Yale Law School educated, I must point out, contrary to what he has publicly suggested, ICE agents do not have “absolute immunity.” Federal agents don’t, federal prosecutors don’t, members of the Department of Justice don’t. Instead, like most law enforcement officers, they’re protected by what’s known as qualified immunity, and under certain circumstances, they can be sued personally for their actions.

Suing federal agents personally for actions taken while on duty is what lawyers call a Bivens case, named after a Supreme Court decision from 1971. In that case, Bivens v. Six unknown named agents. The court recognized an implied right to sue federal officers in their individual capacity, not their official capacity, but individual, when they violate someone’s constitutional rights. But that doctrine has been severely narrowed over the past several decades. In fact, more recent Supreme Court decisions have limited Biven’s claims so dramatically that they now apply in very specific factual contexts, and this does not appear to be one of them.

So that brings us to a third option, and this may be the most viable legal path. Instead of suing the agents individually, Goode’s family could attempt to sue the federal government itself under what’s called the Federal Tort Claims Act, often referred to as the FTCA. Under that law, plaintiffs can seek money damages from the United States for harm caused by federal employees acting within the scope of their official duties. So to prevail under the FTCA, a plaintiff must show that a federal employee’s negligent or wrongful act or omission caused the injury or death, and that the conduct would give rise to liability under state tort law.

In cases involving deadly force under this statute, the burden on the plaintiff is considerably less than under the criminal statutes. The focus is on whether the officer’s use of force was reasonable at the moment it occurred based on what the officer perceived at the time, not in hindsight. So was it reasonable? If an officer genuinely and reasonably believed that their life or someone else’s life was an imminent danger, even if that belief later turns out to be mistaken, courts often find that the use of deadly force was legally justified or could not at least result in money damages to the plaintiff.

Some of the key questions litigated in court would be, what was the officer’s position relative to the vehicle at the moments before and during the shots? How was the vehicle moving? What was its speed, its direction, its path? Did the officer’s action contribute to the danger, for example, by where he positioned himself? In the way or out of the way? And what other options were available to him in the precise moment when he fired his shots?

Those factual details go to the heart of whether the ICE agent’s belief that he was an imminent danger was reasonable, and in turn, whether the federal government can be held civilly liable for Ms. Goode’s death. No lawsuits have been filed yet, but I would expect them to be. And when they are, we’ll obviously be following them closely. Stay tuned.

This question comes in an email from Mark who writes, “Both Stay Tuned and Insider are great. Love them both. Quick question. In the ending credits, you name six producers. What the heck do all of those people actually do?”

Well, Mark, thank you for your question. It allows me to take a moment to brag on the best team in the podcast business. So Mark, one of the reasons that you tune in to Stay Tuned and Insider, and one of the reasons you love them both is because of the contributions and efforts and commitment of those producers. To be precise, we have five producers, two engineers, and a marketing manager. I won’t list everyone’s names here. You’ll hear them at the end of the show as always, but I will tell you what all those people actually do.

First, the Stay Tuned team is responsible for three different shows, Two of them you’re probably very familiar with, Stay Tuned with Preet and The Insider Podcast, which I host with Joyce Vance. And as of last fall, our team also produces a third podcast called The Long Game, hosted by Jake Sullivan and John Feiner, which focuses on national security and foreign policy. Each of those shows requires a lot of work behind the scenes. I need to be prepped. I need to be informed. I need to be educated. I need to be edited. A lot of things people need to do when you have a fallible host like me.

Our producers also book guests, research current events, and write, as I mentioned, detailed prep memos so that I and our co-hosts are ready for every show. They help shape the questions, flag legal and factual issues, and then edit each episode so it’s clear, engaging, and accurate. Our engineers take that work and make sure everything actually sounds and looks great. They handle the audio and video editing so that I and our guests come across maybe better than we are, clearly, professionally and frankly, as I said, better than we deserve.

But the work doesn’t stop with the podcast episodes themselves. That’s where our marketing manager comes in. The team also runs our YouTube channel, where full episodes and clips are published. You should check it out. They manage social media and they produce our newsletters, including contributor notes that go out multiple times a week on Substack. In other words, when you hear one episode of Stay Tuned, what you’re really hearing is the work of a mighty team that’s producing multiple shows, multiple pieces of journalism on multiple platforms all at the same time. So Mark, that’s what all these people do, and I’m incredibly grateful for every single one of them. Thanks for the question.

So folks, just one last comment before we end today’s show. And it arises from some of the things we talked about in the last number of minutes. In the last few weeks, there have been two videos that have gotten a lot of attention and for decent reason. One video we’ve talked about depicts the shooting by an ICE agent of an unarmed mother of three who didn’t appear to be causing any menace or harm. That’s one. The second video depicts six duly elected members of our Congress, four House members and two senators, simply stating patriotically and legally correctly. The proposition that people in the military should not follow unlawful or unconstitutional orders. The shooting of an unarmed woman in dubious circumstances and the straightforward statement of American principle and legal understanding, guess which one of those incidents the DOJ is investigating? The answer to that question tells you a lot about our state of affairs.

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Rahm Emmanuel.

If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. You can reach me on Twitter or bluesky@preetbarara with a hashtag #askpreet. You can also call and leave me a message at 833-997-7338. That’s 833-99-PREET, or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com.

Stay Tuned is now on Substack. Head to staytuned.substack.com to watch live streams, get updates about new podcast episodes and more. That’s staytuned.substack.com.

Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The supervising producer is Jake Kaplan. The lead editorial producer is Jennifer Indig. The associate producer is Claudia Hernandez. The video producer is Nat Wiener. The senior audio producer is Matthew Billy. And the marketing manager is Leanna Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. Special thanks to Tori Paquette and Adam Harris. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.