This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation between Perry Bacon and Senator Chris Van Hollen on September 30 at Persuasion 2025 DC, a conference put on by Way to Win and Swayable, two left-leaning groups.
Perry Bacon: So I’ll start with when I was young and had more hair, I covered Capitol Hill for The Washington Post. You were a House member then—you were DCCC chair, everyone knew you, and you were very smart. Everyone regarded you very highly. The rumor was that Nancy—mostly right—might hand things off to you when she decided to move on from leadership. That didn’t happen, at least not on the timetable people expected.
But here’s what I wanted to ask: At that point, I would’ve described you as very intelligent and very hardworking. What I would not have described you as is bold. And now people are describing you that way. So let me just bluntly ask: Have you changed? Has the situation changed? Did I misread you? Talk about Chris Van Hollen in 2025—what’s happened?
Senator Chris Van Hollen: Alright, Perry, maybe a little bit of all the above. I decided to go into politics because I believe in a values-based, principled approach. I’ve always taken that approach, whether in the House or in the Senate. What’s happening now is that we’re watching a country drift away from its principles, away from its values. We have a lawless president trying to take away freedom of speech and lock people up without due process. In that environment, it’s incumbent on all of us to step up.
I’ve tried to step up in the ways I can, both here at home—you mentioned Kilmar Armando Ábrego García in the introduction. A lot of people said, don’t do that, keep your finger in the wind, don’t enter that conversation. But I will not apologize for fighting for people’s constitutional rights.
I also believe we need a foreign policy that actually reflects the values we claim to hold—whether that’s dealing with Putin’s aggression in Ukraine or the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. So I haven’t changed my values or principles. I still have a principle-based approach. But the world, Perry, is rushing in the other direction.
And I agree with the comment that there’s no cavalry coming. It’s up to all of us to decide what each of us can do to stand up to this authoritarian president. And beyond that, we need to call out those who cave in, who are complicit—because when they do, they put all of our rights at risk. So I’m mad as hell about the moment we’re in, and that’s what you’re seeing.
Bacon: You said a lot of great things here. Let me follow up. OK—so you’re thinking about going to El Salvador. Do you think, in your head, Hakeem Jeffries probably doesn’t want me to do this, the polling says we shouldn’t raise the salience of immigration compared to health care? Or do you think, this is so important I have to do it anyway?
Senator Van Hollen: I was angry and I just on luck decided to go because I do believe fundamentally that when you violate one person’s right to due process, you put the rights of everybody at risk. And so what actually happened was Bukele, who by the way calls himself the world’s coolest dictator, was meeting with Trump in the White House. You may remember that scene. And when he came here, I wrote to the ambassador from El Salvador and I said, I want to talk to Bukele while he’s here in Washington about Kilmar Armando Ábrego García who just got disappeared by the Trump administration and is in CECOT. Well, they blew me off. I wrote in that letter that if he didn’t meet with me here, I was going to go there. So I got on the plane, went down there. At first they refused to let me meet with him. We got in the car, we tried to see the CECOT, they actually set up a roadblock with soldiers specifically to prevent me from reaching him.
When we came back to San Salvador, I had a press event and there a lot of local press there and pointed out that the Salvadorian government was violating international law by denying him access to talking to his wife, his lawyer. And lo and behold, a few hours later I got to see him and I got to call his wife later on, Jennifer, to hear that he was alive.
So to your question, it was really on instinct, but I think there is an important lesson there because there were a lot of pollsters and pundits who said, don’t go, you shouldn’t go because we don’t want to talk about immigration. Well, we should talk about immigration, immigration policy. But there’s one fundamental piece of this that I think every American agrees with except for some on the MAGA front. But if you ask a conservative in America whether the government should deny you the freedom without due process, most Americans say that they don’t want the government doing that.
And so I believe that that is a fight that we needed to have and will continue to have. And people who want to change the subject I think are wrong. And so I think there’s a false choice to say we either have to talk about the price of eggs and how expensive things are under Trump, which we should and we are, but we can only talk about that and we can’t talk about these assaults on our freedoms. And for a while that was the common wisdom among some pollsters. And I just think it’s fundamentally wrong and I think this is a moment where, as I said, all of us need to stand up. But that’s the answer to your question, I hope.
Bacon: In both your answers you’ve referred to anger in a certain way, and we’re at a conference about persuasion. So talk about this: You’re not just speaking for yourself, obviously, but can anger be part of a persuasive party? I’m angry too, but I worry that doesn’t help appeal to swing voters. Can anger be persuasive?
Senator Van Hollen: Well, I think you can be angry about the assault on our democracy and our freedoms and still be a happy warrior in how you confront that. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when he was going after some of the big-money special interests, said, I welcome their hatred. He wasn’t happy about the state of the country, but he laid out a plan and a program for the nation.
I think Democrats, first, need to recognize the moment of peril we’re in and fight back. But also, especially as we head into 2028, we need to put forward a very positive vision of what we stand for, who we’re fighting for, and what we would do. Too many Americans, as reflected in the last presidential election, lacked confidence that Democrats would stand up and fight for that.
Bacon: We’ll come back to that. So you endorsed Mamdani, and then I guess Hakeem Jeffries—or at least a spokesman for him—sort of mocked you. They said something like nobody’s ever heard of Chris in New York. I don’t know the exact quote, but there was a kind of meme there, and you leaned into it. Why are you so bothered that the party leadership hasn’t endorsed him?
Senator Van Hollen: So first of all, I was glad that Hakeem was actually the person who gave my nominating speech when I ran for ranking Democrat [on the] Budget Committee back in House days. And look, I agree with Hakeem on a whole lot of issues. Obviously we know each other well, but we’ve got a Democratic candidate for mayor, he won the primary. Donald Trump is trying to team up with very powerful special interests in New York to try to defeat the Democratic nominee.
Our Democratic nominee, Mamdani, he ran on the platform of reducing costs for families because so many people who live in New York and work in New York can’t afford to live in New York, which is kind of a big theme around the country when it comes to trying to reduce costs and prices, which we should all be fighting for.
So here you have a Democratic nominee who ran on that platform, who won the Democratic primary, who is being attacked by Trump and where you’ve got a lot of very rich people in New York trying to defeat him because they don’t like some of his policies in New York. You don’t have to subscribe to every one of his policies to endorse him. To me this is a no-brainer.
If you don’t believe in that approach, I would say that there are a lot of young people, not just in New York but around the country, that if you are not going to back the Democratic nominee with the platform that he has—again, not every element—then don’t ask those young people to show up for other Democrats around the country. At least that’s the message that will be sent.
Bacon: Is there much we learned from his campaign? My general view is New York is, no offense, kind of a weird place, but it’s more liberal the rest of the country and is like, is there much for the party to learn from this campaign that he won?
Senator Van Hollen: I think there are some things. I mean, clearly he captured people’s imagination. He didn’t spend all his money on broadcast or cable TV—I don’t even know if he spent any in the primary. He connected directly with people, either in person or through social, and he captured their imagination. You don’t just come out of, if not nowhere, then pretty much nowhere in New York City politics and win a major primary battle for mayor of New York. So the answer is yes, both in terms of some of his messaging on cost, but also the way he connected with people.
Bacon: You mentioned a positive vision. So I think there’s a lot of people who just talk about fighting oligarchy, talk about abundance. There’s a great author, Osita Nwanevu, who wrote a book about democracy, and the party should lean into democracy. Any of these things land to you as, I hope, a lot of candidates run on this?”
Senator Van Hollen: So look, I don’t think there’s some sort of magic wand to be waved. I know there’s this conversation about what went wrong in the last presidential election. Some people say you’ve got to move right, become more moderate. Others say you’ve got to move left and be more progressive. Those labels can be very confusing.
My view is: Tell people where you stand on a particular issue, and they can judge. Too many people saw the Democratic Party as way too cozy with powerful moneyed interests, financial interests. I mean, for God’s sake, we were not even able to get rid of the carried-interest loophole. That’s just one example.
I do believe we need to fight for a tax code that doesn’t reward people who make money off money and punish people who make money off hard work. We need to change that. There are things we can do—and if we had more time, I’d lay out what I consider a very positive agenda for the Democratic Party. But again …
Bacon: Can you say two things. You say two things, two ideas that you think … [since] we don’t have enough [time] on the whole agenda.
Senator Van Hollen: Yeah, I think for example, just in terms of, I’m shortly going to introduce a piece of legislation that imposes a surtax on people who make more than a million dollars and we’re going to use the proceeds to give working people a tax cut so that nobody in America who is simply making enough to pay their basic cost of living expenses is paying taxes in America. That is the idea, and that is an idea that directly says to working people, we’re going to support you and we’re going to make sure that we get this revenue by getting people who can afford to pay in more to our common good to do that.
So I also think that we need to return more power to workers. I think we need to incentivize more companies to look out for the common good. I think the basic principle that we should abide by is what I call the “golden rule is real” rule.
And I think Americans would embrace this. The idea is: Think about every policy, and think about the golden rule. How would you want others to treat you in terms of policy? Now we know the Trump golden rule is to rig the system not just for his billionaire friends but, literally, so his family can rake in bucks. This is the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States. And so we need to flip the script and make it clear that we have a government that’s not serving the very rich in themselves, but one that really is there for the American people.
And I think there are a number of things we can do in addition to dramatically changing the tax code. We do need to incentivize much more return of power to working people. We need to say when it comes to climate change that the polluters pay, period. I mean, there’s no reason all of you should be paying the costs of dealing with the ravages of climate change. That’s what’s happening right now. So we need a polluter-pays approach when it comes to that.
And I also believe that we should incentivize more employee ownership of businesses so that people aren’t just working for their wages but they also do have a stake in the success of a company. And there are lots of things we could be doing along those lines. So I think there’s a lot of room for a positive Democratic agenda that sends a strong message that we’re there for working people and we’re not there just for these very rich folks and billionaires.
Bacon: So again, about four minutes to tell me. I’ve got two questions that I’ve got to ask. One very important question and one question you might roll your eyes at. You can answer them in either order. I appreciate everything you said about Gaza and your involvement there. Talk about why the average American should care about what’s happening in Gaza. And the second is, are you running for president?
Senator Van Hollen: People should care on a number of levels. First of all, I think it’s immoral for us to be using American taxpayer dollars to pay for more bombs for the Netanyahu government to drop in Gaza, while the Netanyahu government is also slaughtering people in Gaza.
I have been very clear from the beginning, Perry, that after the horrors of October 7, the government of Israel was not only within its rights but had a duty to respond and go after Hamas and the terror organization. But what has become very clear, and became clear early on, was that the Netanyahu government was not only focused on going after Hamas, they weren’t just targeting Hamas. They were intent on imposing collective punishment on the people of Gaza. And you can see that through all the restrictions on food and a long period of time with total blockades.
And you can see that in the statements, including [Israeli officials] now saying openly they were destroying people’s homes so they have no place to go back to—which is why Senator Jeff Merkley and I took a trip in late August to the Gaza border. We visited Rafah, Egypt, and from there you could at this time look into Rafah in Gaza. And what had been a very sort of bustling city of over 275,000 people was devastated.
The reality is that America has for a very long time held itself up as a pillar for human rights, for freedom, for democracy, and for self-determination. Those have been core principles of our foreign policy. I grew up in a foreign service family. My father was from Baltimore, my mother from Massachusetts, but they went into public service.
And it’s always been true that people respect not only the power of our military but respect the power of the idea and our example. And if you are just using human rights and other principles as a political cudgel—meaning you’re only applying them against your adversaries and you’re not willing to hold your partners or friends to that same standard—then everyone around the world sees the hypocrisy and the double standard. And that’s exactly what’s happening.
I mean, people in the global south are just looking at the situation saying, you—the United States—you claim you are standing up for human rights, but you’re not standing up for human rights when it comes to what’s happening in Gaza. And so you are saying one thing and doing another. And you can be sure, in fact it’s very clear, that our adversaries are already seizing on that. And that hurts us. That hurts our ability to have influence around the world, because one of our calling cards—we’ve never been perfect, never been perfect—but when you say you stand for these principles as a key pillar of your foreign policy, then when you don’t live up to those principles, you totally undermine your credibility and your ability to influence others.
And of course now we have a Trump administration where Senator Rubio used to talk about human rights on the Senate floor all the time. And now as secretary of state, he’s done a 180. It’s the total [neocon] lobotomy. And their human rights report—you probably read about this—they’re changing their human rights report. What used to be a fairly credible assessment of human rights situations in countries, whether they were friend or foe, has now become more of a propaganda tool.
Bacon: And the second one.
Senator Van Hollen: I just want to be clear, Perry. So here’s the thing, and I wanted to say I was invited to go to Iowa. I did not engineer this invitation. I was glad we got an invitation from Polk County Democrats for the Steak Fry. I called my old friend Bruce Braley, who I served with in the House. I said, should I go? He said, yeah, you should go.
So I went out there, and clearly there are Democrats hungry for folks who are going to stand up to the Trump administration on all dimensions and want different Democrats to be out there in terms of a bold, positive agenda. So my goal, just so you know, Perry—my goal is to be a strong voice in terms of where the Democratic Party needs to go, both in the midterms, right now, but also in 2028. Because in midterms—and as you said, I chaired the DCCC twice, DSCC once—and yes, midterms are different. They are largely a referendum on the party in power, and that is Donald Trump.
And we need to make it clear that Donald Trump has betrayed, completely betrayed, the people who he said he was going to fight for. And when you talk to people in Iowa—the candidates, we have great candidates there for the Democratic Senate nomination—they will tell you they’re hearing a lot from Iowa farmers about that betrayal and the higher costs. So we need to point that out.
But especially as you go beyond that into the next presidential election, we are going to need not just to show what we’re against but what we are for. Sometimes it’s the flip side. I mean, yes, we’re for preserving free speech, we’re for due process. But we also need to say to people what we’re for in other ways that will connect directly to their lives and their family lives.
And so I think that my main goal for now is just to focus on that effort. And we’ll also keep you posted. I see the Patriotic Millionaires representative—we’re going to be at some point rolling out that piece of legislation I talked about, and I hope we can all get it done.
Bacon: Great. Thank you.