now we've got Congressman Daniel Goldman thanks so much for taking the time oh great to be here with you so I know that we have a whole election in front of us but there are still a lot of concerns right now about the prospect of certification specifically with regard to the 12th Amendment with many people believing that Republicans are going to do their best to get a contingent election where it's decided uh based on house delegations where Republicans have a majority so I'm going to read a passage here from the 12th Amendment the person having
the greatest number of votes for president shall be the president if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed and if no person have such majority then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as president the House of Representatives shall choose immediately by ballot the president but in choosing the president the vote shall be taken by States the representation from each state having one vote so is there any worry within the House of Representatives that Republicans will refuse to certify a state
and that will bring the whole number of electors down and therefore bringing the total number of electoral votes down from 270 to something more Within Reach for Donald Trump is that a worry among those of you in the house you hit the nail on the head I I'm very concerned about this and um this is you know perhaps the most urgent reason why it's so important for Democrats to win the house is that whoever wins on Tuesday the majority will control the house on January 6 because we get sworn in on January 3rd not the
inauguration on on January 20th so um the way you described it is exactly what the concern is now there was an electoral account Reform Act that was uh passed in 2022 in part uh to correct some things or protect against some things that happened uh January 6 2021 but it still leaves a clear pathway for Bad actors uh in the Republican party to potentially uh do Donald Trump's bidding and overturn the election you need a 20% threshold to object to a particular State's electoral votes that's different from before when it was literally any person any
individual member could object but if you have 40% of the Republicans you get 20% of the house and that's not a a huge number uh even just to move into an objection right I mean often times we're looking at pretty much unanimity among Republicans Which is far far exceeds the the the you know 20% threshold of the house that they would need yeah there were about 2third of the Republicans and maybe a quarter of the entire house last time that um objected to the certification of the Electoral College that would be enough to put us
into a potential vote then it's a majority vote and if they throw out enough electors so that neither candidate has has 270 then as you point out under the 12th Amendment it goes to a contingent election where it's not a one person one vote It Is by state delegation so all the members of each state get together they vote and then that State uh determines whoever wins that vote determines who the state votes for and as you point out and it will probably remain the same the Republicans in large part because of Jerry mandering have
uh more uh St delegations than the Democrats do so I I'm very concerned about this and I believe this is what the little secret plan is that Donald Trump referenced with Mike Johnson at MSG on Sunday because Donald Trump's been laying the foundation to claim election fraud for many months and as you point out they're already talking about all sorts of uh different issues uh different reasons to object to the election and it hasn't even happened yet so now that we've uh successfully given everybody a panic attack who's watching and listening to this what's the
Bull workk against this what is the house doing to prevent this type of uh nefarious activity from going forward well first and foremost um win the majority so I mean I I think you know a lot of these contingency plans there is work on them um there are many many people in the house and elsewhere outside you know expert lawyers who who who have been spending a lot of time preparing for all sorts of scenarios but but I will tell you my perspective being in the house as a member uh I am just focused on
winning the majority on Tuesday because that will solve all of these issues and we will not have to deal with them and that is Far and Away the best best way to do it and this is going to be really close every vote is going to matter and if there is ever a time when everybody should feel like their vote count it is in this election do you feel like it was a mistake to keep the Threshold at uh 20% of the house knowing the political environment we live in the extent to which Republicans kind
of fall in line swarm and blindly accept you know whatever whatever edicts are passed down by Donald Trump I don't have that much of an issue with with the threshold um I I think that the language of what bases exist in order to desertify a state's certification of their own electoral votes are overbroad um it's not clear what it means but uh they're they're not sufficiently specific uh to um head off a bad faith effort to overturn the election and that that's really where I mean I wasn't in Congress at the time and I know
these things are intensively negotiated and um oftentimes you get to the point where it is better to have some something than than nothing so I'm not criticizing anyone but if there's anything that I would change in this electoral account Reform Act it would be to make it much more narrow and specific as to what reasons Congress could actually desertify a state's certification well I if the claims that they bring up to inevitably cry fraud are are are completely baseless maybe they've brought these claims to court within their within their postelection litigation and they're struck down
very much in the same way that that that happened in 2020 and 2021 then is that enough of a predicate to strike down these objections in Congress based on the Electoral account Reform Act so there are two bases that uh the this act um lays out and uh one is pretty narrow the first one is pretty narrow and it and it does say effectively it does say in there that you need to defer to the state or federal courts that have ruled on this but the second one is perceived a little bit as a catchall
I don't have it right in front of me but it's um it's perceived to be uh a broader um a broader uh statute or I should say a broader basis basis that can be interpreted in lots of a different ways and so it's not clear um what exactly the restrictions are on congress's power to desertify okay well then I guess the most important question is who ultimately adjudicates that claim well my guess is ultimately the Supreme Court of the United States does and that should scare everyone just as much would let's say if Democrats win
the majority and Hakim Jeff becomes the speaker would he be the initial person to judicate that claim when it's brought up the only way it would go to the courts is if it is successful in other words if the decertification is successful okay and then it will go to the courts if hakeim Jey is a speaker that means the Democrats are in the majority um and you know by the time a state has certified its own electors uh I cannot imagine a scenario in which the Democrats vote to desertify uh a particular State's electoral votes
no but I but I guess I guess the question I'm trying to ask here is is these objections are brought up and and they they they have a basis for their objection who immediately adjudicates that objection to determine whether it's valid or not of uh the House vote is effectively the adjudication of it so after you get to the 20% threshold there will be a vote by the house uh and the Senate it's joint sess it's a I believe it's a joint session um and so if the if there's enough votes to say that it
should be decertified because of whatever reason they come up with that's that's how we adjudicate in Congress we vote uh then it will go to the courts okay and so the only way it goes to the courts is if is if they get is if they hit that one threshold is that how it works no the only way it goes to the courts is if they throw out the state electoral votes which requires a majority vote the threshold is just to allow the objection to proceed then there will be a vote on the objection and
the only way that there would be litigation is if that objection is successful okay and and so in theory to your earlier point if Democrats have control of the then that is the Bull workk against against this plan succeeding 100% that's right okay so that's the Focus right now for the next four days uh and then um if necessary and hopefully it will not be necessary we'll uh we'll take the necessary um precautions to um you know to fight for our free and fair elections as Democrats do uh all the time Congressman you uh you're
obviously an elected official from New York York uh New York and California have become focal points for the house because those states have been largely ignored and that's that's in large part where Republicans were able to pick off seats to form their majority what's the state of play right now in New York from what you've seen while you've been campaigning with your with uh with with Frontline Frontline and hopeful Democratic colleagues out in out in that state the the the feeling is pretty good right now um I think in the in New York we were
taken by surprise in 2022 a little bit um there is no taking us by surprise this time around there is a extensive operation coordinated campaign a lot of money focused on it um and a lot of uh Focus just from members and others who recognize that New York is Ground Zero in many ways for this election there are seven races in New York that could go either way uh and obviously the majority in the house house right now is uh is four for the Republicans so uh two of those seats are held by democrats and
uh five of those seats are currently uh H by Republicans so um there's a lot at play here and I will tell you that uh people understand that there's energy um there's a lot of motivation and um It's a combination of of things you know that that we're focusing on obviously the kind of top of the ticket matters there's no question about it but you know when you look at the most recent congress with Republicans in control it was the most ineffective Congress in history and the Congress before that with Democrats in control was perhaps
the most consequential and effective in history and it is just very clear that the Republicans cannot govern they cannot do the basic work that Congress should do much less anything else and so it is incredibly important I think for the American people um that Democrats have the majority so that we can continue to fight for the people not for you know billionaires not for the large corporations and not for this extreme right um which has taken over the Republican party right and that and that's not just talking points either I mean you look at what
Republicans actually passed these are the two houses that had the exact same majority When Donald Trump came in he had a majority of Republicans in the house when Joe Biden was elected had a majority of Democrats with the same majorities Republicans passed a tax cut for Millionaires and billionaires 83% of the benefits overwhelmingly conferred to the wealth wealthiest Americans in this country when Democrats had control inflation reduction act American Rescue plan the gun safety law the infrastructure Bill the chips act the paact act so I mean like this again like all you have to do
is look at the actual legislation that was passed who it benefited and I think that puts on on full display uh which party is working for who in this country um but Congressman you've been focused especially on on Project 2025 I know Republicans have been trying to distance themselves from Project 2025 saying that that's not Trump's agenda what's your reaction to that it's Preposterous first of all much of project 2025 was already attempted or implemented by Donald Trump second of all the authors of project 2025 almost entirely worked in in Donald Trump's first Administration and
many are talked about as lead senior officials in a potential Trump 2.0 it's called project 2025 it's not called project 2029 or project for the future and we've known for since you know early 2021 that Donald Trump was going to be the nominee for the Republican party this is Donald Trump's efforts of course he's not digging into the details of it uh he wouldn't know where to begin but this is what his effort is to uh write the wrongs or write the mistakes that he feels he made in the first uh his first Administration when
he was not prepared to be president and then in his mind he hired too many competent people who put guardrails around him and those are the people like his chief of staff like his vice president like many cabinet secretaries 40 of 44 senior officials have come out and said said who worked for him and with him have said he is unfit and unqualified to be president and but what he has been trying to do is map out an agenda and map out a process so that he won't run into those problems and a big part
of project 2025 is getting rid of the nonpartisan career officials who are the experts who run our government dayt day and put in political lackies which will absolutely destroy our national security it will destroy our alliances with Democratic countries around the world it will allow the military to be used against Americans which is to this point illegal uh it will render us uh very isolated link us much more with Vladimir Putin and dictators we will get no intelligence of any value so our own National Security will be hampered and we will have no diplomatic relations
it it will it it is such a massive and and of course I I should mention what she tried to do the first time is to weaponize the Department of Justice to prosecute his his enemies and his adversaries and so I think that um it's hard to really quantify exactly how destructive project 2025 would be and so you know one of the things I've been trying to do is just focus on a few issues and dig deep so people understand that if you are are going to politicize the entire government that we will not have
a democratic government as we know it right and and I'm I'm so glad you brought up that that specific point within project 2025 these schedule F employees you know we have hundreds of thousands of career civil servants only a few thousand are political appointees but imagine what happens to the doj the IRS the FCC all of these agencies where uh the the FBI where there's no longer uh career civil servants but rather political appointment all of a sudden if you have if you have these bogus claims of fraud for example that even Bill bar called
when he was Trump's own attorney general well now you have people like Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman and uh Steven Miller there validating his claims if that's who staffs the doj in the FBI well suddenly these bogus claims of fraud will be validated by these people imagine what happens if they say that that um you know that nefarious ballots are being cast in Detroit or Philly or or uh or or Milwaukee for example in these swing States imagine what happens in the next election how do you how do you properly certify uh an election without
votes from the Democratic stronghold so there's a lot of problems that can come from from that part specifically so I'm glad I'm glad that you brought that up and raised the alarm about that aspect of project 2025 uh with that said Thank you for taking the time today thank you for again raising the alarm about about these issues in particular and uh thank you for the work that you're doing to get uh colleagues elected from the state of New York thank you and thank you for highlighting all of this you're you are exactly right in
your assessment and of uh the dangers and your comparison of uh Donald Trump's first two years versus Joe Biden's first two years and I think that's an excellent comparison that people should pay attention to um because that is what's at stake right now thanks for having me
