Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois is not your average progressive. He is a billionaire with an activist upbringing, in a family that prioritized advocating for the people who need it most. MSNBC’s Jen Psaki wanted to get a sense of his approach to governing in this second Trump term and why priorities like raising the minimum wage and ending his state’s grocery tax are front of mind for him. They also talk about the reality of a rigged system and the dangerous precedent set when an unelected citizen like Elon Musk is running much of our government. And the Governor is not shy about reminding Democrats to revive a core principle of making things just a little bit easier for everyday Americans.
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Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Jen Psaki: Illinois Governor JB Pritzker is not who you might picture when you think of a leading progressive governor. He’s an actual billionaire after all, but he’s also the son of an activist and grew up learning to speak up for the most vulnerable among us. And he’s not afraid to speak frankly about Democrats’ failure to connect with working people across the country.
Gov. JB Pritzker: Yes, the system is rigged against the most vulnerable and working class. And so, yeah, frankly, I’m a Democrat in part because we’re the ones who fight hardest for those people. We are the ones who fight hardest against the rigged system.
Now, Donald Trump has flipped it on its head and Democrats haven’t reacted well to it.
Jen Psaki: He’s worried about how bad it’s going to get for working people and whether or not Democrats are ready for the fight. This is “The Blueprint with Jen Psaki.”
I’ve interviewed Governor Pritzker a few times. And one of the things that has always struck me is how fearless he is in talking about progressive policy issues, like raising the minimum wage, dealing with a rigged system, and doing more to address economic inequality.
And in this moment, he was pretty direct in the risk he believes an unelected Elon Musk poses. The governor joined me last week to remind Democrats to revive a core principle of making things just a little bit easier for everyday Americans, but not before we reminisced about our shared love of a Chicago icon.
Governor Pritzker, it’s great to see you.
Gov. JB Pritzker: Great to see you. Great to be with you.
Jen Psaki: There’s so much I want to talk to you about. You have been quite vocal as per usual, and you have a lot of thoughts, I know. But I do have to start with one thing because I came in today, I’ve been a little under the weather, as you know, and I had this gift on my desk, and I asked my wonderful colleagues, well, did somebody leave this on my desk? And they were like, no, that’s from Governor Pritzker. So here we are, we’re just going to have a little dramatic opening to see what this is.
Gov. JB Pritzker: I love it.
Jen Psaki: And I can see a little bit because there’s something sticking out of the top.
Oh, guess what it is? The Chicago delicacy of Malörts.
Gov. JB Pritzker: Indeed, and something that you tried when you were in town for the Democratic National Convention. And what did I tell you when you had a shot, when I put a shot of that in front of you, what did I tell you?
Jen Psaki: You said you can’t make a face.
Gov. JB Pritzker: And —
Jen Psaki: And I said, okay, but did I?
Gov. JB Pritzker: You did not make a face, which is awesome. That means you could be a real Chicagoan. In fact, I want to offer you honorary citizenship in the city of Chicago, in the state of Illinois.
Jen Psaki: Greatest city ever. I love Chicago, as you know, so I’ll take it.
Gov. JB Pritzker: And I wanted you to know that we don’t go anywhere without a bottle of Malört. So I brought mine as well, just to show you.
Jen Psaki: We’re going to have a little cheers.
Gov. JB Pritzker: Cheers, it’s great to see you.
Jen Psaki: Now I have to do a show tonight, so I don’t know if I can take a shot again, but next time I see you, we will do one in person.
Gov. JB Pritzker: It might help with your recovery.
Jen Psaki: It might, it’s good for everything, Malört. So the last time I saw you, as you just said, we were in Chicago, and saw you in person, I should say. We were in Chicago, it was right before the convention. We were across the street from Wrigley Field, where there were hundreds of volunteers gathered. We took the shot. The vice president was about to give this barn burner of a speech in the convention hall. It felt really great at that moment, if I remember. I think Democrats felt pretty good. And then Trump won.
I’ve done a lot of reflecting on why that happened. And I want to spend most of my time talking with you about where we are now and where we go from here, but why do you think it happened?
Gov. JB Pritzker: Well, it’s not because we didn’t have a great convention in Chicago, I’ll start with that.
Jen Psaki: Definitely not, it was awesome.
Gov. JB Pritzker: It really was, and as I’ve often said, I’ve been to pretty much every convention since I was able to vote. And although I’m a little biased because it was in my hometown, in my home state but I do think this was the best Democratic convention ever. That obviously doesn’t tell you whether somebody’s going to win or not. But look, I think that there were a lot of challenges that we faced, Democrats faced, and that Kamala Harris faced. The first and foremost of which was that the president of the United States decided, long after any primaries, that he wasn’t going to stay on the ballot and run.
Jen Psaki: Joe Biden, yes.
Gov. JB Pritzker: Yes, and so that hasn’t happened in my lifetime. And I think that’s a challenge that no party has seen. And so begin with that as kind of a hobbling of our party and of whoever it is that became the nominee. And of course, Kamala Harris immediately became the nominee, appropriately. The challenge was that she hadn’t gone through a primary process. And you know that primaries, and it happened to me when I ran for governor, people didn’t know me before I ran in a primary process. They didn’t know much about me. And I was way behind the front runner when I ran.
And so I had to go through almost a full year of a primary for people to learn, you know, hey, he’s okay. Oh, I agree with the things he’s saying, right? Rather than just going on whatever the image was that was created by my opponents.
And again, Kamala Harris jumped in. And even though she was vice president of the United States, people really didn’t know her. She hadn’t run all the way through those primaries in 2020. And you know, vice president, typically you take a backseat to the president for almost everything. So that’s a huge challenge.
And then 108 days, for goodness sakes, to introduce yourself, for people to get to know you and feel comfortable with you. I would say those are two enormous things that held back our nominee, but it wasn’t just that. There was also the focus areas for messaging. And you know, Donald Trump had his focus areas that he knew he was going to stay on. But Kamala Harris, I think the challenge was, first she started out with the Joe Biden messaging, which I think was challenged from the start.
Jen Psaki: And tell me, wait, sorry to interrupt, but tell me what you mean by that, the Joe Biden messaging.
Gov. JB Pritzker: Well, remember, I don’t know if you remember, I think it was in January or February of 2024, Joe Biden gave a big speech at Valley Forge. And it was a speech about democracy.
(Begin Video Clip)
Former U.S. President Joe Biden: America, as we begin this election year, we must be clear, democracy is on the ballot. Your freedom is on the ballot.
(End of Video Clip)
Gov. JB Pritzker: And even though everything that he said was a hundred percent accurate, and he intended it to be the message of his campaign but that really doesn’t work. I have to say, you know, if you knock on 100 doors, and I’ve knocked on a lot of doors in my day.
Jen Psaki: Probably way more than 100.
Gov. JB Pritzker: A lot, a lot. And I can tell you that if you said to people that democracy is challenged, people wouldn’t know what you’re talking about. They know they go to the polls and vote every two years or every four years, and things just keep going no matter who gets elected. And so democracy being challenged or being at risk isn’t something people can even imagine.
So in my view, it was a terrible message, even though it clearly was being challenged, and we’re seeing the results of that now. But I don’t think that the average American is thinking that. So that’s one thing. I think a second thing I’ll just point out is, you know, this was, in my view, an election that should have been all about, and we should have singularly focused on, affordability.
And again, I didn’t make any of the decisions about what the messaging would be, but I can tell you that if you just go walk down the street and stop 100 people and ask them what’s really bothering them and what they’d like to see, it’s more focused on affordability. I mean, going to the grocery store and not being able to buy eggs at a reasonable price, or now, you know, with the tariffs that Donald Trump is proposing, tomatoes and lettuce and, you know, beer prices are going up. And so addressing that, trying to hone in on it, we did it here in Illinois. I eliminated the state grocery tax in Illinois, for example.
We went after some of the very costly things like healthcare, we’re going to do it again this year, that are affecting people’s lives where, you know, the cost of healthcare and healthcare premiums keeps going up and up. And I think if you’re not addressing those kind of kitchen table issues, making it cheaper and easier for kids to go to college and for their parents to be able to afford it, those things are the most important things, I think, to folks out there who were going to the polls in November. And Democrats managed not to focus on that. And we need to be really clear, really clear as Democrats, focusing on the things that really matter.
Just to give you one great example of something that never got talked about, we want to raise the minimum wage. The minimum wage federally is $7.25. You can’t live on that. $14,000 a year, you can’t live on that. $7.25. Here in Illinois, we raised the minimum wage to $15, but federally it’s $7.25. Republicans want to keep it at $7.25. Some of them want to get rid of the minimum wage altogether. So we should have been talking about that. Why was that not on the campaign trail, one of the very first things? And if you poll the question, it’s very popular. People want to raise the minimum wage.
Jen Psaki: There’s so much you just said that I agree with and so much I want to dig into further. So let me just start with these priorities, as you said. I think that’s the perfect way of describing it because as governor or as an elected official or as people who are running for office, the most important thing and valuable thing is your time, right, and your time in public. And you have to decide what it is you’re going to emphasize during that time. So it doesn’t mean to your point that democracy isn’t under threat. It doesn’t mean authoritarianism isn’t a risk. It doesn’t mean fascism isn’t real. It just is a question of what you emphasize.
So I just wanted to double down on that point because I think that is such an important takeaway of the last campaign. Let me ask you just how you decide that with your team because I, obviously, I’ve never been in elected office, never run, will never be, but I’ve been a part of these conversations with people I’ve worked with and for. You have to decide. How do you decide with your team? When they bring you, here’s 100 ideas, here’s 20 events you do, what meets the bar for you and what doesn’t?
Gov. JB Pritzker: Well, personally, I start out with what are the big things that you can get done? I mean, I understand that there are 195 of which are small, which make a difference often. But what are the five big things that you could do? And again, when I came into office in Illinois, we had a lot of big things we had to do. One was balancing the budget. You know, states, we have to balance the budget.
Illinois hadn’t done that in almost a quarter century. And so I immediately had to focus on that. My predecessor had left an enormous budget deficit, a $17 billion in unpaid bills that had to get paid off and so on. So, you know, that was one big priority for me, but also it was raising the minimum wage. We were only at $8.25 in Illinois, now 15. We needed an infrastructure bill. And every year, as you’re pointing out, when your team, or, you know, it’s really every day, your team is coming in with, maybe we should tackle this one. You know, maybe we should tackle that one.
Jen Psaki: Give a speech on this, exactly.
Gov. JB Pritzker: Yeah, but prioritizing means asking the question, well, first, are we addressing the problems of the most vulnerable people and working class people? You know, to me, that’s kind of the first question about how you’re going to spend your time. Second, is it something that has long-term benefit for the people of my state, or in this case, as you’re talking about federally, for the people of the country?
So those are the ways you can weed out. And then, you know, the last part is, there are some things that accomplish all of those and are very popular. So sometimes you can make all those things line up, but sometimes they’re, you know, maybe less popular, but still things that need to get done. I’ll give you an example. In Illinois, our prisons have been falling apart. We have some prisons that are over 100 years old, and they haven’t been renovated or upkept really, you know, in a very long time. So that’s not, going to the people of Illinois and saying we’re going to need to spend money on prisons is not a particularly popular thing, but it’s something that’s necessary, it’s humane.
Also, if you believe in rehabilitating people, if you believe that we ought to educate people so when they come out, they’re not going to recidivate and go back to being the violent criminal or committing the same crimes they committed before. You know, you want them to be law-abiding. In order to do that, you’ve got to help them get a job and figure out how they’re going to live. And if you’re not making investments in that, I think it’s a detriment to the long-term health and welfare of the people of the state.
So I give you those examples, but at the federal level, I mean, we’re missing a whole bunch of very important things in my view that we should focus on.
Jen Psaki: Let me ask you about this sort of philosophical question, I guess I’ll call it, that I think swirled around 2024, which was whether or not there should be an acknowledgement that people’s costs were higher, right? There was this unwillingness at times or decision that if, and I understand this on some level, that if Biden and his team, which I was a part of a couple of years ago, of course, weren’t telling all the good economic data stories that nobody would, so you can’t acknowledge as much that people are still paying more for groceries and things like that. I mean, Democrats control nothing in Washington, I’m sure you’ve noticed that. You were actually an executive in a state. How do you think about that question? Do you acknowledge that things are still costing too much in Illinois, there are still things that need to be fixed? How do you address it?
Gov. JB Pritzker: Yeah, you have to, and I recall exactly that problem for Joe Biden and then of course for Kamala Harris. And I can say that acknowledging that there was international inflation would have been a way to do that, right? That it happened everywhere.
Jen Psaki: I think they tried, but it’s hard to message on that particular point, but continue.
Gov. JB Pritzker: Well, you can’t stop with that though. You’ve got to say, we’ve done better than most, but there’s a whole lot more we can do.
Jen Psaki: One of the things that’s really interesting about you is that you are actually a billionaire. I mean, you’re actually a successful guy in the business world, which I know gets under Trump’s skin and drives him crazy. I mean, you talked about it in your convention speech, but you have this ability to talk about these issues as is evidenced by our conversation so far in a way that is more accessible, I think, or that’s my take. Why do you think that is? And as a second part of this, do you ever run into people who were like, you don’t know anything about this, you’ve never dealt with this before?
Gov. JB Pritzker: Sure, of course. And I understand that, especially when you look out across to Washington, D.C. or to Silicon Valley and you see Donald Trump, who’s a very wealthy person, and you see Elon Musk and you say, well, they’re not doing what’s good for average everyday Americans. You can understand why people are cynical about anybody who’s wealthy. So I get it. And yes, of course, I’ve heard that from people.
But I think what matters is what you actually do to make people’s lives better. It’s your values, your fundamental values are what drive what you actually do. And of course I had to campaign. You know, I ran for governor. I won with a pretty good margin. And I think people recognized in the end that it doesn’t matter how much money you have or how much money you’ve made. What matters is what you’re actually going to do for people and whether you’re delivering.
So I knew when I won that I had promised that I would deliver for working class people. I promised that I would deliver for the most vulnerable people in our state. And then I had to go do it. And that’s the only way, in my view, that you can overcome kind of people’s cynicism about someone who’s wealthy is actually deliver for people. And then I think they can look past that. Look, there are also people who don’t make very much money, whose values are, well, I don’t share, and who are not thinking about what’s best for working class people or for the most vulnerable.
And that’s, in my view, how much money you make doesn’t really determine who you are, what you believe. My parents did a lot to kind of instill in me what my values are and how I should look at the world and what I should do to make people’s lives better. And even though they’re no longer with us, I feel them every day, particularly my mother, in everything that I do as governor and everything I do in public life.
Jen Psaki: We’re going to take a quick break here. And when we’re back, Governor Pritzker and I explore what to do about a system that’s rigged to help the wealthiest. That’s next.
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Jen Psaki: I know one of the parts of your bio that everyone doesn’t know, which would surprise people, I think, looking at you, that you grew up going to protests a bit with your mom, right? That that was a part of your childhood in some ways.
How does that shape how you see this moment? And I ask this because I think there have been protests and people’s individual voices are incredibly powerful. They are smaller than what they were in 2017. But how does you growing up with it shape how you look at it now?
Gov. JB Pritzker: Well, first I view myself as, you know, when it’s necessary, as another protester. I’ve been there, you know, when the Muslim ban was threatened by Donald Trump back in 2017, I was there at O’Hare Airport with thousands and thousands of people. As they’re trying to take away the Supreme Court, of course, taking away women’s reproductive rights and people took to the streets. I was there out in the streets, you know, when healthcare was threatened to be taken away by Donald Trump, I was there.
So yes, it comes naturally to me in part because my mother, so many years ago, when I was nine, 10, 11 years old, was out there protesting and she was an activist. She believed in women’s reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights. And remember, this is the ‘60s and early ‘70s. So none of that could be taken for granted, right? There was no gay marriage. Women’s reproductive rights weren’t a right in some of those years. And even after Roe v. Wade, there was a whole effort to tear it down again in those subsequent years.
So I was around for that, at least as a child. I’m not saying that in the earliest years that I understood it all, but here’s what I understood. My mother cared deeply about it. My mother showed herself a woman who, remember back in the ‘60s to get a credit card and early ‘70s to get a credit card, if you were married, you had to get your husband’s permission, just for those who don’t know.
Jen Psaki: Which is wild.
Gov. JB Pritzker: Crazy. And so, you know, think about the very few rights that women really had. So she was out there, you know, at the cutting edge, in my view, of fighting for women’s individual rights. And, you know, when you’re as young as I was and you’re with your mother, and remember, she was a widow, and she would take me, I was the youngest of three, so she would take me with her. I’d go to meetings, I’d go to protests, you know, we did fundraisers, anything that she could do to advance the cause. And I was there as a young person.
Now, fast forward, you know, it came naturally to me. I sometimes say, I’m not sure if it’s nature or nurture, ‘cause I got it so early. But when I finally came into my own, I was 17, 18, 19, going to college, it came naturally to me to fight for people’s rights when you grow up around it, and when you realize so many people don’t have their rights, and that particularly people who don’t have resources available to them have the least amount of rights.
And so we got to work on economic rights, and we got to work on individual freedom.
Jen Psaki: One of the things that people have protested, sometimes in person, sometimes online, is this notion that the system is rigged against them, right, that government is rigged against them, that business is rigged against them, pharmaceutical industry is rigged against them. And some of these people seem to have voted for Trump, or it seems to be that way, and don’t feel that the Democrats recognize the system feels rigged against people. What do you think about that notion? And how do you respond to people who feel like the system is rigged against them?
Gov. JB Pritzker: So let me start with almost all of what you just said is true, that the system is rigged, rigged in the sense of it leans toward not working class people, not toward vulnerable people, but toward the wealthiest, it leans toward the powerful. So yeah, you’ve got to counteract that.
Let me give you my own example. You know, in this country, for many, many years, there was no focus at all on early childhood. What I mean is everybody thought, well, education starts in kindergarten, so we don’t need to worry about anybody that’s not six years old or younger. The people we worried about is, you know, if you show up at school, we’re responsible for you. Before that, everybody’s on their own. But the reality is that most brain development occurs between birth and age five.
So I became very involved in the early childhood development arena more than 20 years ago. It was clear to me that if you wanted to make real change, you had to focus on these very young children, and particularly very young children in the most vulnerable situations. But the youngest children are where we ought to be putting real resources, but almost none were going there.
Well, when I got real involved in that, here’s what I found out, because I lobbied in Congress on it. I mean, I went office to office. I wasn’t a lobbyist, but I, on my own, went to talk to all those folks and went state by state by state talking to governors in Republican states and legislatures in Republican states as well as Democratic states. Here’s what I found out.
No one wanted to put any money in. Why? Because the powerful special interests are not with very young, vulnerable children. In fact, they have no powerful special interests working for them. The powerful special interests for children are in the later ages, right? The unions, teachers’ unions, and advocates for education, even education reform, right? They care a lot about those older kids, but not at all about the youngest.
And so I had to work really hard to try to change the attitude toward that by pointing out to Republicans and Democrats that you save money by investing in the youngest children, that if you can prepare them for kindergarten, if you can prepare them for doing well on the fourth grade reading tests, they’re much more likely to graduate from high school, much more likely to go to college, much more likely to get a job, much less likely to end up incarcerated. And all of those things that you’re, when you’re not investing in early childhood, all those things cost more.
So yes, the system is rigged against the most vulnerable and working class. And so, yeah, frankly, I’m a Democrat in part because we’re the ones who fight hardest for those people. We are the ones who fight hardest against the rigged system. Now, Donald Trump has flipped it on its head, and Democrats haven’t reacted well to it.
Jen Psaki: Yeah. Tell me more about that.
Gov. JB Pritzker: Well, first of all, everything is a grievance to Donald Trump. And whether it’s his grievance or he plays into your grievance. And so he knows he’s very good at tapping into people’s grievances. And that is his entire political career, grievance. So pushing the idea that, you know, that protecting a transgender child is bad for you, it’s a grievance, right, that he has put in your head. The reality is that, yes, of course we need to protect every child. And many of these kids, by the way, are kids who have thought about suicide. They don’t know what to do, and their parents don’t know what to do. And you know, it’s a very small number of people. But should we protect them? Of course we should. But Donald Trump made it out like every other person you meet is transgender, and we need to do something about this.
Jen Psaki: And there’s thousands of NCAA athletes who are preventing your child from getting a scholarship. Not true at all.
Gov. JB Pritzker: Exactly. So these are the kinds of things that I think Democrats have fallen into the trap of reacting to.
Jen Psaki: Well, let me ask you about that trap, because, and this issue is a perfect one, because I think after the election, there were a couple of people, I’m going to remain nameless for this moment, in the Democratic Party who came out and said, basically, we shouldn’t be talking about transgender issues anymore, right, as if we should just put that away and that should not be an issue that Democrats stand up for morally. What do you think about that argument? It’s the argument that we can think whatever we think, but we shouldn’t be out there vocally.
Gov. JB Pritzker: Look, if you believe in freedom and individual rights, if you believe in standing up for people who are being discriminated against, which I think most Americans do, if you believe in civil rights, then of course you’ve got to react to this. Of course you’ve got to stand up for people. Do you have to believe in every choice that people make, or do you have to understand what parents are going through exactly with a child who might be transgender?
You don’t have to understand all that. What you do have to understand is often you’re dealing with a 10-year-old child, just to pick an age, who is lost and who needs help. And that’s what we need to focus on. It’s not on this idea, and by the way, these are not choices that people make typically.
So remember, I’m Jewish. I helped to build a Holocaust Museum. I’m somebody who has, you know, every Sunday I went to Hebrew school, and we had, I don’t know, three hours of Sunday school in which we learned a lot about the experience of Jews throughout history, as well as the fundamentals, the values that the Jews believe in. And I say that because when you’re Jewish and you’re aware of the Holocaust, you’re aware of how this insidious discrimination creeps up on people and becomes more and more intense and can lead to terrible, terrible, awful things.
And the United States has offered refuge for people for its entire existence, for 250 years, for people who’ve been discriminated against in so many ways. It started with religion, but it has moved on to so many other things, and we have evolved. And, you know, that expression about the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, that should be adopted into our constitution. I’m kidding, of course, but it is nevertheless something that we as Americans should take to heart and believe in.
And that arc of the moral universe bending toward justice means standing up for people who you may not fully understand what they believe in or may not understand fully their background or who they are, but you know that they’re a human being and they deserve to have rights that are protected.
Jen Psaki: I agree. I am not going to stop talking about transgender kids and the need to morally stand up for them. Politics, sometimes you have to do what’s right.
Let me ask you about what we call the oligarchy out there. Maybe we shouldn’t be calling them the oligarchy because the people know what an oligarchy is, just to go back to our theme of speaking in plain English. But one of the things I think Democrats are working through how to talk about right now is the influence of people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. They all have different influences. And what the danger is of having these very successful businesspeople have so much unfettered access to the Oval Office and to the leader of the free world.
You are somebody again who has actually been successful in business. Why does it concern you? And how do you talk about it in English in terms of how it could impact people out there in the country?
Gov. JB Pritzker: Well, first of all, those people were not elected to anything.
Jen Psaki: Correct.
Gov. JB Pritzker: So the idea that they are in control of, well, in particular, Elon Musk, let’s focus on him, is in control of what the federal government is going to deliver for people who need it most is an anathema to what government really is so much all about.
So I worry deeply about what this means when the most powerful people in the private sector are now being brought into government where sometimes government has to play the role of keeping people in check, keeping wealthy people or, you know, as you say, the oligarchs, in check. You know, we have antitrust laws, for example, precisely for that reason, right?
Jen Psaki: At least we still do now.
Gov. JB Pritzker: Well, that’s the thing. So remember, the role of government is often to keep anyone from getting too much power. And in this case, we’re taking the most powerful, wealthiest person in the world, and the president of the United States is now bringing them into the Oval Office and having them literally run government for him. That’s dangerous. I think, you know, that’s what happened in Germany in the 1930s. It did. And it’s what has happened in so many authoritarian regimes over the course of history.
I don’t know if you remember that maybe the first time that I did an interview with you, you were here in Chicago, and we talked about the feelings that I had about having built a Holocaust museum, understanding the history of antisemitism and the Holocaust, and the fact that it felt like, and this is probably a year ago.
Jen Psaki: Yeah, I think it was shortly after October 7th, and we were already starting to see kind of a rise in antisemitism in a devastating way, even at that point in time. But go ahead.
Gov. JB Pritzker: No, that’s right. But also, the sense that the beliefs, that Donald Trump’s beliefs, he was already, I think everybody assumed he would be the Republican nominee. You know, that the beliefs of MAGA and of Donald Trump, that the rise in antisemitism, that they’re all related in one fashion or another, and that it was oddly recognizable to anybody that spent any time in a Holocaust museum or studying the Holocaust in any way, because there is a moment in the history of Germany in which the constitutional republic crumbled. And it happened, frankly, in about 53 days when Adolf Hitler took power and then every day made progress toward tearing apart the constitution, invalidating it, of Germany.
And I feel very much like there is an authoritarian move today in the United States to invalidate the U.S. Constitution, and we’re seeing it in the comments of J.D. Vance on social media, in the agreement by the president with those comments. So we have a real problem facing our country where the most powerful forces are getting together essentially to deny people not only programs that they rely upon, but their individual rights.
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Jen Psaki: Next up, Governor Pritzker and I tackle how to talk about the threat of Trump in a way that resonates with people. More with the Illinois governor in a moment.
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Jen Psaki: I think there’s so much, I mean, we could be on the road to a constitutional crisis here if the Trump administration keeps ignoring the rulings from courts. There’s lots of issues here that are historic in an incredibly alarming way. In terms of making this real for people, because sometimes when you say constitutional crisis, which we may be headed there, when you say this is authoritarianism, I’m not talking about you particularly, I’m talking about people in general, it feels like what are we even talking about here? You’re seeing the impacts in Illinois. How do you articulate why it’s problematic for these budgetary cuts on communities, for the FBI to be gutted? How do you articulate that?
Gov. JB Pritzker: Yeah, we talked a little bit about the fact that people don’t really react the way you might think they would to, you know, our democracy is under attack, or the constitution is under attack. You know what they do react to is the things that affect their daily lives. So when you take away your grandmother’s Medicaid and ability to stay in a nursing home, therefore, when you take away Meals on Wheels for seniors, you take away Head Start childcare for families that just want to go to work and know that their child is safe, you know, being taken care of during the day. When you take those things away, and why are you doing it? Why are they doing it? They’re doing it because they want to pay for enormous tax cuts for Elon Musk, for Mark Zuckerberg, for the wealthiest people in this country. That’s dangerous.
And I think people do understand that that’s not something they want. They don’t want healthcare taken away so that you can pay for, you know, Elon Musk’s, I don’t know, next $10 billion, you know.
Jen Psaki: Whatever it may be. Whatever. Spaceship.
Gov. JB Pritzker: Exactly. And so I do think that, you know, it’s important for us to point those things out. It’s important for us to talk about them. And very specifically, there are programs, I’ll just give you an example of something that’s just happened here that sounds like it’s a small thing, but for Illinois, not.
They cut off funding for meat and poultry inspectors. And we have enormous, you know, we have a huge agriculture economy in the state of Illinois. When you take away those meat and poultry inspectors, you do two things. One, you basically shut down the meat and poultry industry or at least make it a whole lot harder. You know, we’re part of the supply chain that people rely upon, and you have to be able to go through an inspection process. And when there are no inspectors, you can’t do it.
Second, importantly, you’re also raising prices on people because you’re making it more difficult to deliver those goods. And third, we’re putting people out of work. So remember, this is an important program to the state of Illinois. It may not be to everyone around the country until they feel the price difference that it will make at the grocery store.
Jen Psaki: And they will feel the impact, and that is kind of maybe the next step of this. Let me ask you two about just running in the age of Trump or how we should be approaching him, because it’s very easy. I mean, my colleague, Rachel Maddow, always calls it getting your chain pulled. She’s throwing so many crazy things out there. You can get pulled into one of the crazy things. But there are things that are impacting people’s lives, of course, as we’ve been talking about.
You’ve kind of had a little bit of fun, so I wanted to ask you about this. You went out and you gave this statement, was it a week ago, two weeks ago? It’s all running in together, where you basically renamed Lake Michigan, Lake Illinois in this statement. And you, I think in an effort to get under his skin a little bit to needle him, was that why you did it?
Gov. JB Pritzker: No, I thought in a moment when there wasn’t a whole lot of humor in the world.
Jen Psaki: You needed some humor?
Gov. JB Pritzker: I thought everybody needed some humor. It really wasn’t a specific effort. Listen, I’ve been much more direct about —
Jen Psaki: You were in your convention speech, yeah.
Gov. JB Pritzker: I was just trying to point out that there’s, yeah, I also was needling my border states here, Wisconsin and Michigan. I will say that I have threatened to rename the Mississippi River because we’re in Illinois. Is it really the Mississippi River when it gets here?
Jen Psaki: I mean, maybe that’s going to be on your agenda.
So we’re kind of near the end of your time. You’re a busy guy because you’re a governor. Let me ask you just about, because we’re for solutions here too. We’ve talked about a lot of policy issues, a lot of solutions, and I think people are so hungry for that right now. We know Democrats lost everything. They run nothing in Washington. What happens now?
So if you were to have a couple of things on kind of the agenda of how Democrats would run in 2026, what would they be? Raising the minimum wage? What else would be on your list?
Gov. JB Pritzker: Well, it wouldn’t be imposing tariffs on our friends to the North and the South. And remember, I just point out that he says that the reason that he’s imposing those on Canada is because he wants to stop the importation of fentanyl. One percent of all the fentanyl comes from Canada. Also, immigration, how many Canadians are desperately running across the border? So it’s not true. He’s raising tariffs because he wants to pay for his tax cuts.
So that’s something that I think we ought to be standing up against. But what are we for? Let me start with, let’s make it easier for people to get the education that they need, go to community college to get skills that they need for a better paying job. Let’s make it cheaper for people to get their drugs. PBMs have taken terrible advantage, pharmacy benefit managers, of people who are sick, making them pay much higher drug prices. We need to deal with that problem. And again, every bit of what I would now list for you has to do with making it easier to just live, right? A little more affordable.
There was a scene in “West Wing” which for those of us who are old enough to remember it in its original run.
Jen Psaki: I will just say as an aside, I had, not made, I suggested, we suggested that the 20-somethings on our team watch “The West Wing” because it is just a reminder of what politics and government and even covering it can be. But yes.
Gov. JB Pritzker: It can. Well, there was a scene in West Wing in which some of the White House staff were stuck in Iowa trying to get back to Washington. They couldn’t get to the airport. They had to stay overnight at a motel somewhere. And in the bar, at the motel was a guy sitting on a bar stool and having a drink. And they start up a conversation and the guy says to them, “You know, if they could just make it a little bit easier for me to send my daughter to college, if they could just make it a little bit easier to live, you know, would make my life a whole lot better.” He wasn’t asking for everything. He just wanted to make it a little bit easier.
I think if we work on those all the time, if we think about what makes it a little bit easier for everybody to just survive and live, to save for retirement, to get a better job, right, to get a higher wage, just a little bit easier, I think that’s what the Democratic Party should really be all about.
There are big things we can do, like raising the minimum wage, but there are also like everyday things that we can go after that will make it easier for people to live. So that’s what I think the Democrats ought to be about. Not sounding some enormous, big theme. It’s very simple. Make life more affordable for people.
Jen Psaki: Sounds pretty common sense to me.
Well, before I let you go, I mean, one of the things and we talked about this before, I think, in one of our interviews, that I really loved is the speech you gave where you talked about how the kindest person in the room is often the smartest. And I almost want to just blow it up and have it on my desk because I think in this moment, it’s easy to be pulled into nasty, and it’s easy to be pulled into this snake oil pit or whatever we’re seeing out there.
Those of us who want to embrace that, I’m one of them. People listening may be one of them. How do people do that in this moment, staying kind when you just want to scream into the wind about what’s happening?
Gov. JB Pritzker: Well, I will say that I think, you know, I talk a lot about kindness. That speech was one place in which I’ve done it. But I really think that, particularly in public service, that, you know, when you’re setting an example for people, and I think anybody in a position of power, you are in a position of power as a television host, demonstrating it to people, just a little bit of kindness, right? Reaching out and showing people that it doesn’t all have to be nasty the way that I think Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters sometimes are.
That just reaching out and being decent to people, even if they disagree with you, even if you’re very different from them and hold different beliefs, that matters. You know, it matters a lot. It shows, it sets an example for a generation, the next generation, who are so important. Young people, so important. Many of the things that I’ve accomplished as governor have been because I’ve listened to young people, like banning assault weapons, for example, or focusing on climate change.
These are things that came out of, mostly out of young people who care deeply about their own futures and about the future of the planet. So I just, you know, I think kindness matters and demonstrating for people with acts and speaking with some kindness to people and even tolerating some nastiness that comes your direction by just looking back at people and saying, you know, I know you disagree with me, but that’s okay. You know, we can agree to disagree and even have a beer together.
So that, I think is important.
Jen Psaki: That’s very important.
Gov. JB Pritzker: And we could also have a shot of Malört together too.
Jen Psaki: Next time. Next time I see you, I’m not sure I should mix cold medicine and Malört, but next time I see you, we will have a shot of Malört and I’ll remind you not to make a face.
Governor Pritzker, thank you so much. I love that we could talk about solution-based ideas. I think a lot of people have a lot of hunger for that right now and are looking for a lot of hope. So thanks for taking the time.
Gov. JB Pritzker: Thanks Jen.
Jen Psaki: First of all, it’s not that hard to understand why Governor Pritzker gets under Trump’s skin. I mean, he’s a billionaire and somehow, he also understands how to talk about how things are impacting working people. And he never really holds back in how he talks about it. I was struck by when I asked him if the system was rigged, he basically said, yes, yes, it is rigged. He easily acknowledged that.
I also am struck by how he talks about how Trump policies impact people in Illinois. Sometimes I think people in Washington get too wrapped up in discussing important, but kind of the highbrow description of the impacts instead of talking about how things impact local communities. And he does that, I think, in a pretty effective way.
And he’s also not afraid to admit when Democrats have shortcomings, including how things were run leading up to 2024, but also how things are being handled right now. So lots of thought that will stick with me from that conversation.
Thanks for listening to “The Blueprint with Jen Psaki.” We’ll be back next Monday with new episodes. Be sure to subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts to get this and other MSNBC podcasts ad free. As a subscriber, you’ll also get exclusive bonus content like the recent conversation my colleague Chris Hayes had with Jia Tolentino of “The New Yorker” about his new book,” The Siren’s Call.” The senior producer for The Blueprint is Margaret Menefee and our producer is Vicki Vergolina. John Ball is our associate producer. Our booking producer is Michelle Hoffner with additional support from Makena Roberts. Our audio engineers are Katie Lau, Mark Yoshizumi, and Bob Mallory. And Bryson Barnes is the head of audio production. Alex Lupica is the executive producer of Inside with Jen Psaki and Aisha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC Audio.
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