Tom Suozzi on fighting MAGA in a district Trump won
"We can't take our eye off the prize. The big issue is, how are the things they're doing going to affect people's lives?"
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Tom Suozzi replaced the disgraced George Santos in Congress early last year. He went on to become one of just 13 House Democrats to win in a district that Trump carried. The co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus is a consummate frontline member of Congress.
Representing a Long Island district, Suozzi is moderate on policy, but he’s a fighter. He’s a regular presence on Fox News, where he makes the case against Trumpism for an audience that doesn’t often hear it.
But Suozzi also hasn’t totally forsaken bipartisanship.
“I still believe the same way I did on January 1 that we have to try and find common ground and can't just be ‘no’ to every single thing out there,” he says. “We can't be defenders of the status quo because people are unhappy with the status quo.”
With Trump’s star fading and Democrats starting to lay the groundwork for retaking at least one chamber of Congress next year, I connected with Suozzi on March 31 to get his perspective on how Democrats like him can best make the case against MAGA, why he thinks Republicans are in for an especially tough cycle next year, the importance of not getting distracted by Trump’s antics, and much more.
“One of the things I'm choosing to do is highlight those Republicans that are standing up to the administration, because we need to encourage more of them to do it,” he said. “It’s a vehicle by which I can say, ‘I think this is really wrong and I'm not being partisan. Hey, look at these Republicans that are saying the same thing.’ We have to dig out examples of Republicans that are disagreeing with the administration and highlight them as much as possible, because it gives credibility to our arguments that this is just plain wrong.”
“It is really important that we try to be as sober as possible about this stuff because if we are just burning the Teslas, that’s a wrong-headed move. Nobody’s going to listen. You're just being crazy.”
A full transcript of my conversation with Suozzi, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows.
Aaron Rupar
I’ve taken notice recently of your hits on Fox News, where I think you do a good job spreading the Democratic message to an audience that doesn’t often hear it.
As you’re probably aware, there’s a lively debate on the left right now about whether it’s a good idea to go on Fox at all, with the concern being that by doing so you’re legitimizing a network that essentially functions as a propaganda arm of the GOP. Why do you think that view is wrong?
Tom Suozzi
There are two pieces to it. One is you got to go where the viewers are, and if there's a lot more people watching Fox than are watching MSNBC or CNN — even though I do those channels too — then I go where the people are.
The second piece is that those folks are often hearing just one perspective — the pro-Trump administration view. “Everything's great and everything's wonderful.” I go there to respectfully give the other side of the story, and I do it based upon policy, not because everything is DEFCON 1. Because if everything is DEFCON 1, then nothing is DEFCON 1.
Aaron Rupar
Speaking of DEFCON 1, you wrote in the New York Times on New Year’s Day that “only by working together to find compromise on parts of Mr. Trump’s agenda can we make progress for Americans who are clearly demanding change in the economy, immigration, crime and other top issues.” I’m wondering to what extent you feel that same way now. I’m sure we agree that the lawlessness of Trump’s first 10 weeks in office has represented something close to a worst-case scenario for his presidency. Are you surprised by how much damage Trump has done so quickly, and how has that impacted your thinking about opportunities for “working together and finding compromise” with Republicans in the months and years to come?
Tom Suozzi
Well, there's no question that we've kind of been back on our heels. I think what happened was we got through the election and we were kind of licking our wounds a little bit in the party and thinking about, okay, what are we going to do going forward? Meanwhile, from Election Day until January 20, Trump and his team were holed up down in Mar-a-Lago. They had Project 2025 as a playbook, and they were totally organized, ready to go, and hit the ground running. As soon as inauguration happened it was like “boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.”
They had a strategy of flooding the zone. Maybe some people were smarter than others, but I didn't forecast the start of Trump’s presidency being as being as overwhelming as it was.
I still believe the same way I did on January 1 that we have to try and find common ground and can't just be “no” to every single thing out there. We can't be defenders of the status quo because people are unhappy with the status quo. The natural inclination is, “you punch me, I'm going to punch you back.” But if we just do that, we're not going to get anything done.
I'm in a district where Trump won by 19,000 votes. I won by 11,000 votes, so thousands of people voted for Donald Trump and me. I've got three different voices in the back of my head all the time. One voice is saying, “We’ve got to stop this. This is the end of democracy and we got to do everything we can to stop it.” And then I’ve got a second voice on the other extreme saying, “This is great. We got to blow the whole thing up because there's so much dysfunction.” And then I got another voice in the middle, which is kind of like, “We’ve got to try and get something changed and I don't know why everybody is fighting with each other.”
I’ve got to be responsive to all of them because for me to win, I've got to get my base and I've got to get the middle, and I've got to get some Republicans too. If they're going to try and cut Social Security, I've got to be willing to stand on the barricades. And if they're going to try to gut Medicaid, I've got to be in the front of the line fighting back. If they’re going to fire federal workers willy-nilly in such an irresponsible fashion, I've got to give voice to the fact that it doesn't make sense to get rid of the people that oversee the nuclear stockpile or who are supposed to be monitoring the avian flu or looking at the measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico.
So I'll fight back when I have to, and there's probably more instances where we have to fight back than I anticipated. But at the same time, I'm not rejecting the idea that we have to try to work together. As a matter of fact, I just put out a press release about supporting something the first lady is doing with her “Take It Down Act” trying to stop people from abusing the new world of AI and deepfakes.
I want to make deals. I want to negotiate a settlement on immigration. We have to secure the border and we have to fix the broken asylum system, and I want to treat people like human beings, and I want to get the Dreamers legalized and Temporary Protective Status people protected and the farm workers legalized. So all these things have to be done.
Aaron Rupar
You mentioned Trump coming for the social safety by doing things like cutting Medicaid and slashing the Social Security Administration. As chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus, I'm sure that you're in regular communication with House Republicans, and by and large publicly they're still proclaiming united support for Trump’s agenda. But I would have to think that some of Trump’s policies are giving them heartburn. Without betraying confidences, what are you hearing?
Tom Suozzi
I don't even have to go behind the scenes. Don Bacon, a member of the Problem Solvers and in a seat Harris won, has said that they’ve got to slow down and follow the law. There's a Freedom Caucus guy from Alabama named Gary Palmer who came out and said the president cannot get rid of the Department of Education by executive order and you’d have to do it through Congress. Mario Díaz-Balart from Florida said, “I'm an appropriator and Congress has the power of the purse and I'm going to zealously guard that.” Susan Collins has said similar things. Brian Fitzpatrick, head of the Problem Solvers for the Republicans, has been very, very vocal about how wrong Trump is on Ukraine, as have other Republicans like Roger Wicker, who wants to hold hearings on the Signal stuff.
One of the things I'm choosing to do is highlight those Republicans that are standing up to the administration, because we need to encourage more of them to do it. It’s a vehicle by which I can say, “I think this is really wrong and I'm not being partisan. Hey, look at these Republicans that are saying the same thing.” We have to dig out examples of Republicans that are disagreeing with the administration and highlight them as much as possible, because it gives credibility to our arguments that this is just plain wrong.
Not a single Republican has publicly said, “We have to cut Medicaid,” and at least 60 percent of them have said, “We're not going to cut Medicaid.” Let's keep highlighting that because then they can't cut Medicaid. And I think the same thing will happen with Social Security.
It is really important that we try to be as sober as possible about this stuff because if we are just burning the Teslas, that’s a wrong-headed move. Nobody’s going to listen. You're just being crazy.
Aaron Rupar
It’s one thing for Republicans to vote for a budget resolution directing unspecified cuts, but another for them to actually vote to take healthcare away from their constituents. How heavy of a lift will that be for them?
Tom Suozzi
They won't survive it. I can't imagine they're going to do it because number one, it's going to hurt too many people. And number two, it's politically untenable and I think they're going to have a really major problem.
There’s a big logical inconsistency in saying, “We need to cut all this stuff because we're concerned about the deficits, but then we’re also going to blow a hole in the budget by doing four and a half trillion dollars of tax cuts mainly going to the wealthiest people in the country.” It’s just a very bad message. That's an opening for us and we got to drive a truck through it because you can't say you're all about government efficiency and then vote to make the deficit bigger than ever.
But the bottom line is that I still am willing to work with people. Republicans are trying to go my way or the highway. That's not going to hold forever. The more pressure they get from their constituents, the more episodes like the Signal chat, the more things Trump does to try to distract everybody. I think the Signal chat was hitting them pretty hard. So what did Trump do? He said, “I'm going to increase tariffs on cars by 25 percent.” The stock market tanked. Everybody paid attention to that. Then he said he's going to run for a third term. So everybody's like, “What happened to the Signal chat?”
They do these things to try to get people all excited. We're talking about all this crazy stuff, Panama and Greenland, and meanwhile they’re trying to cut Social Security and Medicaid and give tax cuts to the richest Americans. So we can't take our eye off the prize. The big issue is, how are the things they're doing going to affect people's lives? And Social Security and Medicaid are two of the best examples of things that people really rely upon.
Two-thirds of the people in nursing homes are on Medicaid. One tenth of all the veterans are on Medicaid. Then you add all the low income folks, the disabled folks, the people that get healthcare through the Affordable Care Act, and this is serious business. People call me literally crying. A guy said to me, “Do you think I have to sell my house?” He was worried about losing his Social Security check. His house is paid off and he uses his Social Security to buy his groceries and pay his property taxes. I told him they’re not going to take away your Social Security, but they're going to try and make it more difficult for a lot of people.
Aaron Rupar
You mentioned that you’re one of only 13 House Democrats to win last November in a district that Trump carried. I’m sure you regularly hear from constituents of yours who voted for Trump. Are they surprised by how poorly things are going?
Tom Suozzi