How are you?

All right.

So you were here right before you announced.

That's right.

How long has it been now?

It's almost a year.

A year?

Life has changed, huh?

Just a little.

Yeah.

Like what is what is?

Has anything surprised you?

Yeah.

I mean, just the pace of it.

I mean, a year ago, I was, you know, it was mayor, But But it's just different life driving my Chevy to work.

I went on Christmas.

We don't have any staff, obviously, Christmas Day and went to start up the car they're taking around the block.

It didn't even start because it's been that long since of driven it.

And it's just, you know, most my meals now in vehicles is just a different life.

Yeah, and you're shaking a lot of hands.

I would think you worried about the Corona virus at all.

I mean, that's a lot of hands were shaking.

Policy.

Wasn't very worried about the Corona virus.

Personally speaking, Yeah, You definitely any flu or cold that's going around, We're kind of the tip of the spear.

And then, of course, you think about it.

The candidates all shake everybody's hands and then on debate nights like we just had, we shake each other's hands.

So I figure by now we must have super immunity.

Anything.

We haven't come down.

That's made everybody.

So the debate the other night, Wednesday night it got pretty heated.

Everybody was talking about how how did you feel about it?

Yeah, I think you know, the heat of competition obviously draws out our differences, but it's also important.

Remember that at the end of the day, I think Democrats share the same broad values and there's gonna be one nominee.

I hope it's me.

I'm working to make sure it's me.

But whoever it is, we have got to rally around that nominee.

If we want to defeat this president, and I'm committed to doing that, and I think we all are the moment Theo, you're all you're all pretty much yes, saying that you want to defeat Trump and you're you're hoping that but right now there's so much fighting among everybody.

I mean, you went after Bernie pretty hard.

Um and yet they're saying that Bernie is most likely looking like he would, uh, go the furthest and do do you worry about that.

How How do you then compete with that?

Yeah, I am worried about that.

I mean, the pundits are predicting a world where pretty soon the only two left standing are Mike Bloomberg because he has so many personal resource is and money toe to do ads and burning.

And, you know, I respect both of them.

But I'm really worried about our ability to defeat Donald Trump.

If those are our choices, you know, if we have to choose between somebody who wants to burn things down in a way that I think a lot of Americans just don't identify with and somebody else who thinks you could just buy this with personal fortune is a billionaire.

I don't think either of those choices is gonna make it possible for us to bring Americans together and defeat this president.

That's why I'm offering a different approach.

And I think what's going to work is inviting as many Americans as we can into this majority that we're not gonna agree on everything that's okay.

But most of us can agree that we could do a lot better than the president we've got right now and that we have to change things in this country before Theo you Do you feel like I've talked to a lot of people who feel like they've just lost hope, like, you know, I mean, how do you How do you give people the incentive to vote and to know that there is that there is something that we can do?

You say we have to do it together.

But how do you give people that hope?

Well, I think hope is what it's all about.

There's there's a reason why they call candidates hopefuls.

You ever notice this on the news?

A 2020 hopeful peak.

But a judge appeared on the show today, right?

There's that terminology, and I think that's very fitting because running for office is an act of hope.

And by running for office, I'm asking everybody else to be motivated by the hope that our lives will go better, depending on who's in charge, depending on who has their hands on the police and levers of government, and voting is an act of hope, too.

So I'm asking everybody who feels motivated enough to do anything at all rather than just accept the way that things were going to step up and do something about it because it's up to us.

I think for a lot of folks watching the for example, watching that impeachment trial play out was just exhausting and frustrating.

But we're the jury now.

The verdict is up to us because it's an election year.

This is our chance to change it, all right.