for a brief session in the senate. lawmakers on a two-week recess. no votes are expected while they are away. senate will come to order. the parliamentarian will read a communication to the senate. the clerk: washington, d.c., july 1, 2022, to the senate, under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3 of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honestly rabl tim -- honorable tim kaine a senator from the commonwealth of virginia to perform the duties of the chair. signed patrick j. leahy, the president pro tempore. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the senate stands adjourned until stands adjourned until >> that was a brief session and the senate today. lawmakers are on a two-week recess. they return for legislative business on july 11. as always follow the senate live here on c-span2. we take you back now to a

discussion about representative alexandria ocasio-cortez rise into politics. >> the other thing, i could also be seen as a maturing process. she came in to congress and she was very young and she had never been in congress before. she was elected on this platform of being an outsider by outsiders who believed in being outsiders. so they came into congress sort of with a lot of outsider swagger. they were empowered by that. i mean, that was what got her elected. and i think there was a moment where she started to understand that you can't be an outsider forever. like, just by virtueir of beinga member of congress for two years

you are no longer an outsider. you're walking the halls, eating lunch with people, you're on committees. it's very hard to maintain that status. and so sheur had to figure out w to retain this kind of moral line, because that is what is her stock in trade, right? that's currency. while also being a colleague, being a colleague, being a player. and i don't think that's easy for her. i think it is probably more comfortable for her to be an outsider. but she's been reelected after she has more money than almost any other member of congress. she has a lot of power, not just

inn the number of social media followers she has but in the number, amount of money she can raise overnight. so she's a kind of, in some way she's a more conventional politician then she was when she entered politics. and she had to deal with all of that. it can be easy for her. she has made some mistakes and she has alsot made some choices that ability made the far left mad that elected orher. >> one thing that really struck me when she started campaigning for bernie in 2020 was it had a little of conflict because of course medicare for all, like that's what we want.e, and then she had i think was the interview where she said would it be the worst thing and will if we don't get medicare for all but like we still get a public option? which ten years ago -- i think

that is just like oh, really, high wire act that i don't think anyone would want to be in her shoes. you cannot pay me enoughld money in the world to live like her one day because she's just dealing with so many like pressures at the same time. she has a ton of self-awareness. her limitations but at the same time she believes she can do it that i think is also arrogance that any politician should have. it's a very complicated life she lives and i don't think anyone would want to be in her shoes, to be honest. months after she'd been elected. but before she was sworn in many like around the time of the sunrise protest she was saying

over and over, you know, the maximum amount of power that a person can have to be able to say effort. and and i think that's what you're talking about andre. i think that this kind of like how do you imply how do you be a vested politician with a constituency in a lot of money in the bank and lots of people watching you and criticizing you and devoted to you and also retain the inner. knowledge that at any point you can say effort. you know, she always drops these. little hints that it's it's part of who she is. you know, she said a year or so ago like i'm gonna go and have a farm upstate and and what did she say like raised llamas or something? i don't think i'm not sure was right but like she does say over

and over that there. is this part of her that could just walk away at any moment and i think that gives her a lot of power that gives her a lot of her power. it certainly different from like the kind of power that joe crowley had which was just to you know continually amass more power more influence all for some, you know. probably long term goal becoming like speaker one day right and like aoc doesn't use power that way in fact the way it seems like she can still be an outsider is to use her incredible fundraising and her incredible social media presence to basically make the democratic party more. more liberal more progressive right with these endorsements, you know pushing. pushing the party further left and you know, what do we think about those efforts or how successful they've been or a transformative? they've been i mean, i you know, i keep thinking about texas

right? she's had her eye on texas since before she was elected. she keeps saying. we're going to turn texas blue. just watch just like watch it happen and and she said it again on the night that she was elected in the general election. she was giving her. she was giving her victory speech and that was the night that ted cruz. be better or work and and that those results were playing in the background as she was giving her acceptance speech and she stopped her speech. and she was like we're gonna we're gonna turn texas in a generation. in this generation and when you watch what she the way she handled ted cruz during the failure of the electric grid last winter. when texans were freezing to

death and ted cruz was going to to mexico on vacation with his family you all remember this. she didn't say anything directly to cruise. she merely raised. i don't know two million dollars five million dollars. i can't remember the number exactly just like a gigantic amount of money overnight. for texans who were freezing because there was no electricity and then she flew down to texas in the middle of the pandemic and gave out sandwiches and stuff. and you just think like the the images and the power that she was able to exert on this particular issue was so focused. and so aware of all of the optics what it was going to look like crew. she didn't have to say anything to or about ted cruz she could just do this and have everybody

watching and and i mean, i just thought it was an incredibly effective use of her. power um both in terms of raising money and in terms of motivating her social feeds to a cause. she can pick a politician and raise money for them. i mean it's an incredible. it's incredible toolkit. i would say too that. she's very conscious of the limitations of trying to change her colleagues like she has said before that if this was any other country in the world that did not have like a two-party system someone like joe biden and her would not be in the same party. um, so i think that she understands that like she can only push her colleagues so far what she can do however is start to move like again the overton window to make things more

accepted like something like the grenadiel, um when by an organized all these committees right before the 2020 election to kind of like come up with plans for if it was elected. she was in the environmental committee with the climate change one with john kerry and the planet came out of it was basically a green new deal without the name gray new deal, right, so she's trying to make this idea more popular in order to then push like someone like joe biden to say like, okay maybe like the type of one that we want to include and like my presential platform, right, but it's it's like she cannot do it by herself like and i think a lot of people ascribe hurts so much like almost like messianic like power right? like she's the one that's gonna save us like oh i mean lisa has said that before but in one of her first majors interviews

after she wanted her primary, i think it was in the view. she was asked when she was gonna run for president and she was not of age to room for president, right? she had not even been it in office yet and people were just like projecting all of this and her and i think that you know, she thought i mean she's very powerful, but she i don't she's that interested and trying to change her colleagues. she just wants her colleagues to adapt to the times and the way to do that is to push out her message and like make a lot of like this very lefty ideas more popular with like a lot of other communities around the country not just new york 14. well, i mean, i think even her you know sort of. most vicious haters like have to recognize that you know, aoc is a force but what do we think like, you know? what are some misstep she's made, you know, she's you know, where she maybe. you know overstepped or or

sounded a wrong note. what do you think lisa like? i mean, i think that there was definitely her first chapter in congress where she brought the justice democrats inside congress to run her staff. know that you would call that a misstep initially because you bring who you know with you. but but her director of communications and her chief of staff were both. basically the founders of brand of justice democrats and this real. sort of anti-establishment anti-institutional anti-traditional take on what politics should be like neither one of them had ever really worked on a political campaign before or staff to politician before and and she was using

them as surrogates. so when she didn't want to go on tv, she would put one of them on tv. she was violating all kinds of protocols within. on the hill and that kind of upstartness. didn't go down well with her congressional colleagues. and she initially stood by them. these are the people who brought me to the dance. these are the people who got me elected. these are the people who know me best. these are the people i know how to work with. but there were a lot of people saying to her at that moment like this is not how you make friends here. this is not how you get stuff done. this is these people are not helping you. and and in the end there was a

big conflagration with pelosi basically and and her side of the of the party the more centric side party and she had to let those guys go. and i think that that her letting them go wasn't acknowledgment that that kind of outsider brash. we're gonna do things the way we want. we're gonna we're gonna primary people we're gonna you know, it's one thing to primary people when you're a challenger. it's a completely different thing to primary people when you're sitting member of congress. i mean, it's just like the optics are different the dynamics are different the threats are different. you're gonna primary somebody that you're eating lunch with you're probably gonna primary somebody who you're sitting on a committee with you're gonna primary somebody who who could be an ally to you. i mean, that's that's a whole all those dynamics are really really different. and so i guess i think that i wouldn't say that her bringing those guys into congress or was

a misstep, but i that she was right to let them go and that she needed to assert her independence from them and from her bernie roots and from an assert her her own identity political identity. at a certain point and and to cut cut her losses, so that would be that would be one missed missed that i would. that i would i also think that like in terms of her messaging i can think of something like the met gala and her showing up to it. it's like something that you know, it didn't like a miscalculation. i think that she thought it was gonna be much more well-received at it was because i mean again like it's about optics and and like, you know, yes, there's this sort of lik