INTERVIEW: Isaac talks with former Congressman Ken Buck
Tangle
Isaac Saul
4.8 • 672 Ratings
🗓️ 26 April 2024
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A couple of weeks ago, we sent Tangle News YouTube and podcast editor Jon Lall to the home of former Representative Ken Buck (R-CO).
Buck, who recently retired from the House of Representatives, was enjoying his first few days of free time since leaving Congress. Long known as one of the most outspoken members of his party, Buck had been making waves in the news for criticizing the state of Congress, referring to his former colleague Marjorie Taylor Greene as "Moscow Marjorie," and breaking publicly from the House Freedom Caucus, a group he was a longtime member of.
After Jon set up Buck's computer and studio, the former Congressman sat down for a 45-minute chat with me, recording from the Tangle studio in Philadelphia. In our conversation we covered his recent comments about Green, whether he planned to endorse Trump, if he regretted voting to oust Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), his view on new Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), how broken Congress really is, why he was still so focused on the debt and deficit, and what he planned to do now that he had left Congress. It was a fascinating, wide-ranging conversation.
Given how honest and blunt Buck was even when he was in office, I was expecting him to be pretty forthright in our interview, too. Aside from one or two small dodges, he didn't disappoint.
We’ve also released the interview as a YouTube video and podcast for free. If you'd like to watch it on YouTube, you can do that here.
We just released the next episode of our new podcast series, The Undecideds. In episode 2, our undecided voters primarily talk about Trump’s legal troubles. How do they feel about his alleged crimes? How would him being convicted - or exonerated - change the way they vote? What about his claims he should have immunity as president? You’ll hear how they consider these major themes of the race, and also what they made of Haley dropping out and Biden’s State of the Union Address. You can listen to Episode 2 here.
Today’s clickables: Introduction (0:32), Resigning from Congress (2:48), The difference between conservative and MAGA (4:14), "Moscow Marjorie" (6:01), Why support Ukraine (8:37), Mike Johnson (9:58), Kevin McCarthy (11:21), Dysfunction in Congress (13:17), Got more done under Democrats control (15:12), The primary problem (18:36), How to fix the primary problem (20:13), The problem with Biden (22:02), Reforming Social Security (26:09), Endorsing Trump (28:26), Perpetual fundraising (30:00), What are you doing now? (34:20), Will you continue in public service? (35:48), "America is the greatest country in the history of the world" (37:07)
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Transcript
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| 0:35.2 | From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. |
| 0:44.8 | Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. |
| 1:00.7 | I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we've got something special for you. |
| 1:06.5 | I'm sitting down with former representative Ken Buck. |
| 1:16.7 | He had just resigned from Congress when we conducted this interview a couple weeks ago. |
| 1:19.3 | We recorded this on April 12th. |
| 1:25.5 | He was representing Colorado's fourth congressional district, and he was first elected in 2014. |
| 1:29.1 | Ken Buck is a super interesting guy. He was a member of the Freedom Caucus who has obviously been in the news a lot recently. And he's one of these guys who, |
| 1:36.2 | ironically, because of his last name, regularly bucks his own party. I mean, he is open to |
| 1:41.7 | criticizing people he works with on his side of the aisle. |
| 1:46.0 | Right before we conducted this interview, he had made a bunch of headlines for referring |
| 1:50.4 | to Marjorie Taylor Green as Moscow Marjorie. |
| 1:54.1 | He was an outspoken critic of what was happening in Congress while he was in there, |
| 1:58.7 | and now we had a chance to sit down and talk with him when he had |
| 2:02.6 | left Congress. So I was expecting him to be pretty much an open book and talk bluntly and forthrightly |
| 2:09.9 | about a lot of his opinions. And he did that for the most part. I think he kind of dodged one question |
| 2:15.0 | about how he was going to handle supporting Donald Trump |
| 2:17.9 | in the upcoming election. But aside from that, I felt like a lot of the answers he gave were pretty |
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