CALL ME JACKIE Rep. Jackie Speier’s Exit Interview

MELISSA CAEN: My name is Melissa Caen. I’m a longtime political analyst, journalist, lawyer, and over the years, I’ve interviewed easily 100 elected officials. And it might surprise you to know that I don’t always get the feeling they’re telling me the truth. Sometimes they just stick to talking points.

Or what’s worse is sometimes they’ll tell you one thing off camera and then they get on camera and the wall goes up and they’re just giving you whatever they want you to hear. But our guest tonight never, ever did that. It was why I always loved interviewing her, because she told you the truth and what she told you she believes.

That’s exactly what she did. And that’s why she’s going to do it again. I always appreciated that. Even people who disagreed with her politics at least always knew truthfully what she felt and where she stood, and she’s done that for decades. This kind of candor has endeared her to her constituents.

She has fought for expanded access to abortion and restricted access to guns.

Yes, she’s fought for greater access to justice for victims of sexual assault and harassment. She has fought for Bay Area values for so many decades. She is a force of nature, and I’m thrilled to welcome her here tonight for the exit interview.

Congresswoman Jackie Spear—oh, do I get to call you congresswoman or— JACKIE SPEIER: Call me Jackie.

CAEN: I think I speak for everyone when I ask what we’re all wondering, which is, Do you have classified documents? And if not, why not? [Laughter.]

SPEIER: Very important question, because I served on the Intelligence Committee for eight years. So I went down to the bowels of the Capitol, into a whole suite of offices and rooms [with] a huge door that I could have had a rotator cuff tear. Every time I opened it, I had to leave my phone, my Fitbit, everything outside. And then you go inside, you have meetings, you have hearings, you have CIA officials and DIA officials come and testify, and you have documents that [are] stamped “top secret” in red on white paper on the cover of virtually everything.

They were numbered. You never, ever got out of there with anything.

Now, of course, it’s different for a president or a vice president, but not that different. I actually fault those who were the custodians of these documents for not having a chain of custody so that, yes, the president has this information, but it’s incumbent on the person that provided that information to have it returned, because particularly for the highest-ranking people in our country, those documents contain sources and methods and could out any number of persons that we’re using as assets in countries around the world.

So there has to be a much cleaner method by which those documents are shared with the highest-ranking people in our government, for those that serve on committees. I mean, there is a process and we follow that process, and I think that we’ve got to expect the same from the executive branch as well.

CAEN: So should we be concerned? Or there have been some arguments out there that the department’s over

A Bay Area political legend discusses her career as well as the changes she sees ahead for the institution she just departed and for the Democratic Party. Excerpted from the January 30, 2023, program

“Congresswoman Jackie Speier: The Exit Interview.” classified.

SPEIER: There is a fair amount of overclassification of documents, and I think we won’t know the answer to that question until we see them. Now, there’s a big difference between a president who voluntarily turns over documents and one who for over a year persisted in not turning over the documents. That shouldn’t be lost on any of us. That’s theft when it’s identified that you have documents and you choose to ignore the archivist. You get that. That’s theft.

I will also say it appears that there’s not enough teeth in the law as it relates to the archivist and his ability to extract the documents he needed. He couldn’t do it. It was kind of, you know, “Please, may I?” Until he called on the FBI and the Department of Justice, there was no ability to get that.

You might wonder why it was that they ended up getting a search warrant, and they didn’t do that lightly. Merrick Garland wasn’t about to do anything that looked like it was a wild goose chase. I’m pretty certain—and I think there’s even been some references to someone on the inside staff of the president in Mar-A-Lago that provided that information to them.

CAEN: What about President Biden? Do you think that it was a good move to appoint a special counsel to look into that issue? I mean, given Merrick Garland is an appointee.

SPEIER: I think the attorney general had no choice. I think it was the appropriate action. It’s always interesting when you look at what would have been, could have been; I mean, he could have been a Supreme Court justice. He’s now serving as the attorney general. In some respects, I think [he] is doing probably a more important role right now than he might have been as a Supreme Court justice. Although if he had been on the Supreme Court, he might have had a different Dodds decision.

CAEN: You’ve been out of Congress now for a whole month. Things have gone straight to hell. [Laughter.] So were you watching the speakership battle? Like, with [champagne] glasses, laughing?

SPEIER: I wasn’t. I was tweeting. One of my tweets went, I think, viral when I said when Nancy Pelosi was the speaker, she knew how to count votes. She knew how to rein in her recalcitrant members, and she did it in stiletto heels.

CAEN: What do you make of this idea that the Democrats were able to hammer out the speakership issues—because there were some from time to time in the caucus—and then everyone sucks it up and then you go out to vote? What goes on in those caucus meetings. Do they cry? Do they demand weird things? What’s going on behind closed doors among Democrats before you all go out and do the thing?

SPEIER: Oh, there’s something kind of funny about Democrats and caucuses. Because for the most part, what went on in the caucus was already news to the journalists before we walked out, because there were members who are always texting like this [was] going to get them brownie points or something. A lot of the caucuses were pretty mundane.

You talked about the issues. You’d have speakers come in. It was what happened behind the scenes. It was the other caucuses, whether it was the Congressional Black Caucus or the Progressive Caucus or the Blue Dog Caucus or the New Dem Caucus. It was when they would get together and see if they could move something, and they would go to the speaker and try [to] convince her that they had the votes to mess up her schedule. Then she would always figure out that now she did have the votes.

CAEN: I saw the documentary that her daughter [Alexandria] did.

SPEIER: I was there for the opening night. I don’t know that [Alexandria’s] mom had actually seen it ahead of time. I don’t know that I would have allowed my daughter to have me on screen in my pajamas with no makeup on or talking to the vice president of the United States, fixing my bed, turning on the microwave, and doing all the important things relevant to everyday life, since she wasn’t hearing anything all that interesting on the other line.

CAEN: There’s this one scene, it has to do with the Affordable Care Act, and she’s trying to get the votes that she needs. There’s one vote that she’s having trouble with, it’s a congressperson from Indiana. So she calls the archdiocese of the district this person represents and calls literally a higher power to get him to put some pressure on this representative.

That was just one example.

SPEIER: And you know, where he is now is the ambassador to the Vatican.

CAEN: She’s got power. I get that. But are there other examples of things like that where you’ve seen her twist arms seriously, pulling levers for recalcitrant people—because it seems like something Kevin McCarthy could use some help with?

SPEIER: She knew people’s districts. She knew the names of the members’ children. She knew what they wanted. She was a master. And we are so lucky in this region that we had her leading our country for as long as she did.

CAEN: What is it about the Bay Area?

I mean, if you look at Pelosi and Kamala Harris and Dianne Feinstein, even Gavin Newsom. So many extraordinary politicians coming out of this region. Is it just something about the local politics or the forward thinking ideas?

SPEIER: For the longest time, most of the statewide officeholders in California were from Northern California, if you think about it. I think now we have [the] one secretary of state who’s from Southern California. But then again, she was appointed first. Alex Padilla would have been another example. But it’s a Democratic vote that’s very strong and very committed in Northern California. So if you can gather the votes in Northern California, you can oftentimes beat down the numbers that exist in Southern California.

CAEN: Mark Leno, who was our local supervisor and also a member of the Assembly and Senate, used to say it wasn’t even fair, because in the politics of San Francisco and the Bay Area, the entire intraparty politics among Democrats was so intense that by the time you get to Sacramento, you roll right over these people [who maybe started as] president of their PTA and now [they’re in] the Assembly, like they don’t stand a chance against folks who had to deal with the party politics that we have here in the Bay Area.

SPEIER: Well, that’s probably more true in San Francisco than in other counties, I would say. San Francisco is raw politics.

CAEN: Even today. But as you watched the speakership vote unfold, I guess what I’m trying to ask is if you could give Kevin McCarthy some advice about how to deal with members of your party that are kind of going off in different directions? What what do you think you would do in a position like that?

SPEIER: He wanted this so desperately that he really was willing to sell his soul, and that’s frankly what he did. Put your seatbelts on. This is going to be one wild ride. . . .

I think he’s going to have a hard time, but he wanted it so much and he lost it back in 2016. I guess it was when he was in line to become speaker and he had a extramarital relationship that prevented him from succeeding in that particular race.

CAEN: A simpler time, that was. Now, that doesn’t matter.

SPEIER: In fairness to him, he raised a truckload of money, got a lot of people elected, some of whom were then very happy to vote against him until they got their pound of flesh. So his hands are really tied.

CAEN: Do you miss it? . . .

SPEIER: I’m sure many of you have heard how this all evolved. It wasn’t my plan to leave Congress when I did. It was my husband’s. But I had made a promise to him that if I got sexual assault taken out of the chain of command in the military, that I would retire; and after that happened, I assumed that I could—[applause] thank you, it was a big deal—I thought that I could go and ask for a pass again. And he didn’t give me one. So I had to keep my word.

CAEN: Speaking of things that are normal now, that maybe didn’t used to be normal, it’s hard to know George Santos. I could not find another example of someone lying this hard about everything. I mean, this is not exactly the Vatican, but it seems like this is an extraordinary case. What do you make of this? And what do you think should or will happen?

SPEIER: Well you can point the fingers at a lot of people. I mean, he is a defective person. But having said that, a local weekly newspaper uncovered this, and The New York Times did not pick it up. So shame on The New York Times. Congratulations to this [other paper].

I would like to see how much money we actually on the Democratic side put into that race, because there should have been opposition research done to determine all of this. And if it wasn’t done, why wasn’t it done? You can point fingers in a number of different places. The problem now is that he’s there. He’s a vote for the speaker, and he’s not going anywhere until the U.S. attorney, the Justice Department, takes action against him, which they will because he has lied under penalty of perjury in terms of his campaign statements. And he’s probably laundered money.

So I’m sure some of that is going to come out. The problem for Kevin McCarthy now is that he sucks all of the oxygen out of the room. So whatever is their message? Their message is George Santos right now, because that’s all that people are talking about.

CAEN: As a Democrat, this is not the worst thing that can happen, to have this [distraction on] the other side that you can be like, “Look what they’re wearing.”

SPEIER: And it’s just a sad commentary that in our society and in our culture now, lying is so commonplace. We had a president who lied thousands and thousands of times, and it was acceptable to a significant part of the population. So I think that it’s going to hurt all of us in terms of getting the work done that needs to happen in Congress. I mean, the debt limit is going to have to be raised.

CAEN: What do you make of what’s coming in terms of how that’s going to potentially be negotiated? I know there’s always a push for a clean lift of the debt limit, but is that even going to be possible?

SPEIER: I think that there has to be a clean debt limit increase. The simple way of defining it is you buy things with your credit card. [At] the end of the month, you have to either pay off that credit card statement or pay down that credit card statement. We have spent this money already. We don’t have the luxury of saying, “Oh, we’re just not [paying].” It’s the full faith and credit of this government that’s at stake here. Kevin McCarthy on “Face the Nation” yesterday said he was not going to let that happen. So let’s see. They’re going to try and extract any number of things out of it. But even when you look at the budget, when you look at how much of it is mandatory spending—it’s money for Social Security, it’s money for Medicare, it’s money for Medicaid, it’s money for Veterans Affairs— you’ve got just a very limited area of discretionary funding. It’s under discretionary funding, defense and then some of the other national parks where we actually had a government shutdown. I was really concerned about people getting their checks and all those kind of daily needs.

You know what the biggest issue was [for] the American people? It was closing the national parks. They are a jewel in our crown. They’re highly regarded by the American people. And that was a big hit. CAEN: So you think that it will probably be maybe Democrats plus a few Republican.

SPEIER: There’s probably 10 to 12 Republicans who are maybe moderates and who don’t want to see the debt limit breached by not raising it. Once they’re given the okay by Kevin McCarthy to do so, they’ll proba- bly join the Democrats in doing it.

CAEN: There are certain pieces of legislation around abortion and gun rights that Democrats would like to see put forward, but is that pretty much shelved for the next two years now that we have a Republican-controlled House?

SPEIER: I do not expect anything on any of those issues. It’s very sad.

You know, as a victim of gun violence, I feel really passionate about this issue. And for us as a country to not have universal background checks—I mean, that’s the lowest bar, and we can’t even get that passed, even though that’s the law. The Brady Law was you had to get background checks, but that was before gun shows and before Internet purchases and before person-to-person purchases. So all of those are not subject to background checks. You absolutely need that. And once we registered machine guns—you used to be able to register machine guns. All of that came under control. So registering guns would be another important thing. Why is it when we did pass this so-called reform bill, after [the school shooting in] Uvalde last year, we couldn’t get something as simple as no assault weapons can be purchased by anyone between the ages of 18 and 21?

We couldn’t get that in. Do you know what they got in? They were patting themselves on the back because we had just broken the logjam after 30 years of not being able to get any reform legislation through on gun violence. It was a more enhanced background check if you’re purchasing an assault weapon between the ages of 18 and 21. Now, think of those who have been mass shooters who were between 18 and 21; they don’t have records, so it would not have affected their actions. They would still have been able to purchase those guns. So it’s a travesty.

I was in Europe at the time and I came back from a dinner, turned on the TV, and there were 14 kids that had died in Uvalde. Overnight, it was 21. The next day I was meeting with the head of [the equivalent to our] CIA I think I was in Denmark at the time. And I asked him how many mass shootings did they have last year. And he looked at me, kind of shrugged his shoulders, “None.” Now think of it. We have more mass shootings than there have been days in this year already. So then I came home and I had my staff do some research; it’s about 400 million people that live in the EU. It’s 330 million people that live here in the United States. In 2020, the last year that I had data on both entities, in the EU, there were something like 2,500 deaths by gun violence. In 2020, there were 45,000 gun violence deaths in the United States. It is abnormal.

CAEN: It seems like the NRA has declined in prominence. Or maybe it’s more powerful and we’re just not seeing [it]. But it seems like they had some budgetary problem and some leadership problems and it seems to have fizzled a bit. It appears. Are they still a force? And if not, is there a new [power] or is it more dispersed now?

SPEIER: They are still a force, although they have been, I think, wounded somewhat. But there’s the Gun Owners Association now. There’s the gun manufacturers. There are more guns in this country than there are people, more than 330 million guns in this country.

CAEN: I believe you were in Half Moon Bay recently [after] the recent shooting.

SPEIER: No, I was actually in Southern California at the time.

That’s the other thing—these profiles of these two killers in Monterey Park and in Half Moon Bay, they don’t fit the profile. One was 67 and I think one was 72.

And what were the triggering events? The triggering event in Monterey Park had something to do with his ex-wife. The triggering event in Half Moon Bay was the fact that his coworkers mocked him and that his supervisor had just fined him $100 because he was using a forklift and damaged something and the hundred dollar fine put him over the edge. And in Half Moon Bay, they were all targeted. He went after people who he felt had somehow harmed him, hurt him.

So I think that there’s a lot more that we have to do. We’ve got to rein in accountability relative to guns. I think registration has got to be part of that now. And the universal background checks and not letting kids buy guns until they’re 21. You know, why does a six year old have a gun in his backpack?

Now, the other thing that we do know is that kids know when another kid has a gun or has the potential to shoot; they hear about it. That’s why these community officers are actually helpful to have on school campuses, because the kids are more likely to go and tell them.

CAEN: Interesting. I did read that there was some knowledge beforehand; just baffling, to say the least. I guess they’re doing an investigation. And we’ll see how that fell through the cracks. But somebody did try to report.

SPEIER: I did a lot of work when I was chair of the Military Personnel Subcommittee and Armed Services. We had a huge increase in the number of suicides in Alaska. So [there were] a number of trips to Alaska last year to try and see if we could fix this situation, because it’s remote.

There are often alone. They come from Southern states, and then they’re put in this very cold environment. I had a hearing and one of the experts who spoke—when asked “What can we do?” it was amazing what he said. He said offer these service members gun safes or gun locks. Now, that sounds pretty simple, right? But just the length of time it takes to put in the combination or unlock the gun’s safe is oftentimes enough to get the person to rethink doing it. It’s impulsive. When we look at the gun deaths, of course, two thirds of them are suicides.

CAEN: Two thirds of that 45,000 number suicides? Wow.

SPEIER: So in one of these cases, it was a staff sergeant [who had] just gotten back from visiting his family, was about to go to a special program in Georgia and see some of his old buddies, went to Walmart, bought a couple of video games so they could play them, went back to his apartment to just pick up something, left the engine running, went upstairs, shot himself. For 5 hours that car was running before anyone figured out what was going on. So that impulse is something that we have to deal with as well.

CAEN: And that’s going to have to be in 2025, I suppose, now that we’ve got a Republican-controlled House, unless there are some moderates that could potentially vote with the with Democrats.

On a lighter note, are there any Republicans who sort of have a persona that they portray on Fox News or Newsmax or other really conservative outlets that you found to be sort of closeted, nice guys, nice and normal?

SPEIER: You’d be surprised how many of them are where you can sit down, have a great conversation, get to know them. Jim Banks was my ranking member on [my committee] for a period of time. We had long conversations about his children, who had some issues. One of my children had had some learning issues. So we were talking about them. I gave him a book that I thought would be very helpful. Then you’d see him ranting, and you think you were dealing with a completely different person.

CAEN: Are there any others like that? Is Matt Gaetz secretly, like, really nice?

SPEIER: Matt Gates loves himself. And he’s only been eclipsed by our liar, George Santo.

I mean, they are provocative intentionally, and that’s pretty obvious. They say something incredibly provocative and then they fund raise off of it. That’s the M.O. CAEN: That’s something that John Boehner said: “They’re looking for the clip to play on Fox News. They’re not really necessarily looking to get something specific done.”

What is next for Jackie Speier?

SPEIER: What is next for Jackie Speier? So I just made the point over and over again that I wasn’t retiring. I was coming home to make good trouble. And that’s what I plan on doing. One of the things that I have done is I started a foundation in San Mateo County, and I seeded it with $1 million that was left in my campaign coffer. And it’s for women and children. And my goal is to eradicate childhood poverty in San Mateo County. And if we do it there, I want to see it done throughout the 93 counties.

To put it in perspective, San Mateo County is the fourth richest county in the country. There are some 3,000 counties, and we’re the fourth richest. We have 20 billionaires that live there. We have 5,000 millionaires that make $4.1 million on average, and 90 percent of their giving is nationally and internationally. So we’ve got 23,000 kids who live below the federal poverty rate of a family of four living on $27,000 a year.

We’ve got kids that are homeless. We’ve got an increase in domestic violence of 20 percent, highest increase in food stamp pick-up in the entire state. So I make that case to say that I think we have hiding in plain sight a lot of poverty. We have it here in San Francisco. We have it in counties in the Bay Area.

And yet we’re not fixing the problem. So I’m hoping to do that.

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