Hey, everybody. Thank you for being here. I'm really excited today to talk to

Secretary, former Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg. You know him, of course. He's a former

naval officer, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, where my aunt and uncle lived,

former Secretary of Transportation, but best known now, I think, as one of the best

communicators the United States has ever had.

And I'm really excited to have him here today because it's really been notable how when many people are

paying attention to the really disastrous situation that we're in, he is not only recognizing that,

but also explicitly using this moment to call people into a new kind of future.

So I'm hoping we'll get into that today as well as into, you know, maybe one or two of the things

happening around us. So maybe we could start today, Mr. Secretary, by putting this moment in

context, and I'll let you take it anywhere you would like to take it with that introduction.

Well, thanks for the chance to speak, and I think the context fundamentally is that we're one of

those turning points that comes around in the life of our country. Not that often. Every generation

or two sees a moment like this, and we're in it.

And it's an exceptionally difficult and painful and precarious moment. And I think it's a moment where we're discovering a lot of things we assumed were just rock solid, including constitutional protections, restraint on the part of people in charge, commitments to democracy, just some really, really basic things are, in fact, up for grabs.

They are things that will not outlive this generation if we don't make sure of it. And that means anybody who is alive and in a position of responsibility,

to include the responsibility of citizen, in the United States today, has an unusually important

historic piece of work on our hands.

I'm not going to argue with that, but I wonder if you want to speak a little bit more specifically about the things that are happening at this very moment around us, specifically with the last four days of the mobilization of the National Guard, the federalization of the National Guard in California, and the mobilization of Marines, 700 Marines, into Los Angeles to protect federal buildings and federal

officers. What you have right now is the American president asserting the authority to use

American troops and turn them on American civilians exercising their First Amendment interest in protests.

If there are issues with peaceful demonstration keeping it peaceful, that's what law enforcement is there to do.

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