Welcome to Off Message. I'm Isaac Dover.

What I was really talking about is there's a lot of ideas right now that are in this country that are dark ideas.

Building walls, dividing this country, marginalizing trans members who are troops,

marginalizing kids who are transgender, not supporting DACA kids, literally polluting our air and our water.

These are the devil's schemes too?

To me, yes.

These are all things that come from the darkness that are ripping children from their

mother's arms.

That's outrageous.

Today's guest, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

In some ways, this interview has been nine years in the

making. I was there that day in Albany in January 2009 in the basement of a building on the

state capital complex when David Patterson, who was then the governor, announced that he was

appointing her to Hillary Clinton's Senate seat. It was a mess. Obama, three days into being president, called in the middle of it.

Her young son was sitting there out in front in the middle of the stage, which was full of

basically every prominent politician in New York, most of whom had already been feeding quotes to

me and other people about how they didn't know why Patterson had picked her.

And at the end of it, all the reporters rushed on to get quotes,

and the whole thing just became a free-for-all. She was not very good at being in front of people in

those days. She stumbled through the early appearances, added most of the Democrats in the state

continuing to say that she didn't deserve the job, and they were starting to look at running

against her or to support other people to run against her.

...