GQ: As a middle school principal, how do you deal with somebody like Trump?
JB: As a middle school principal or as a member of Congress?
GQ: Being a middle school principal, I would argue, really prepares you for Congress.
JB: You’re absolutely right. In my school, I would call him and his parents into my office. And we would have a long, honest conversation about how his behavior is harmful to himself and others. In Congress, we’ll have that conversation not just with him, but with other Republicans and with the American people at large. I’m hoping that I don’t have this problem: Hopefully, when we win our general, he loses his general, and we can get past the era of Trump. But if not, we have to hold him accountable and we have to continue to use every resource at our disposal to make sure he doesn’t further harm and kill our democracy from right underneath us. And it’s not just him. I want to emphasize that it’s him as part of a system that is already discriminatory based on race, class, gender, sexuality, and wealth. So it’s not just him, it’s the system overall. We’ve got to fix it, make sure we’re never in a position again where we have another Donald Trump as president.
GQ: So, let’s say you win in November and you get to Congress and Nancy Pelosi is there waiting for you. At one point, she dismissed “The Squad,” which is a silly name, but she just dismissed the squad as just “four people.” Do you think you would be an addition to The Squad? And what do you do with people in Congress like Nancy Pelosi, like Hakeem Jeffries, like Jim Clyburn, the establishment Democrats? Are they part of the system you’re talking about?
JB: Let me say this: I look forward to working with Congressman Clyburn, Congressman Jeffries, and Speaker Pelosi. I look forward to working with them. I have a lot of respect for them as representatives of our country and representatives of the Democratic Party. I am part of The Squad. I was a part of The Squad even before running for office, because The Squad doesn’t only include members of Congress. The Squad is much larger—as Ayana Pressley so eloquently informed us: the Squad is big and the Squad is growing. So I was already a part of it. And I expect to continue to be a part of this from inside of Congress.
You know, things shift really quickly. I think our primary election illustrates it: You look and see, “wow, Jamaal and his team ran an excellent campaign. They beat a 31-year [member of Congress, who is now] chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. They tripled voter turnout, tripled turnout among young people, tripled turnout among people of color.” And this was an election where the whole country was watching. We didn’t sneak up on anyone. And we still won by 15 points. How can we continue to build on that as opposed to squashing it? Those who have been in Congress for a long time, if they’re open and willing to work with me, which I hope they are, because I’m willing to work with them, I think we can finally create a country that works for everyone.
GQ: President Obama recently called for renewing the Voting Rights Act. Is that something you would try to do if elected to Congress?
JB: Absolutely. We need to cement the Voting Rights Act in stone, so it never gets reversed again. What happened after Obama got elected, the level of Republican organizing and gerrymandering and voter suppression that happens at every level of government was astonishing. I think many of us relaxed when Obama won, especially when he won the second time, thinking that we were now a post-racial country and we were going to pass the baton from our first Black president to our first female president, Hillary Clinton. And I think because of that relaxation, we ended up with Donald Trump. And we have to continue to organize around fighting against voter suppression and fighting to preserve all aspects of preserving our democracy, because right now we’re in a situation where we had voter suppression, we have Russian interference, and now we have Trump calling for a postponement of the election because of mail-in ballots. Republicans will lie, cheat, and steal to continue to remain in power. And they’re organizing around that. That’s what we have to fight against.