ICYMI: At The Atlantic Festival, Kelly Discusses Service, Leadership, and His Fight for Everyday Americans

In case you missed it, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly spoke at The Atlantic Festival in New York about how his experiences as a Navy pilot and NASA astronaut have shaped his approach to leadership and public service. In conversation with author Mark Leibovich, he also discussed the war with Iran, the challenges facing servicemembers and military families, and his work in the Senate to address the real problems facing everyday Americans. Sen. Kelly speaks to Mark Leibovich at the Atlantic Festival. Credit: Marc Patrick BFA Watch the full conversation here . See key excerpts below: On the state of American democracy… “I am incredibly concerned about the direction of this country. I’m concerned about the damage they’re doing. After all the decades I spent in the military, I care so much about our servicemembers and the armed forces. “Our kind of democracy, I think, is the best approach to this…It’s worked for 250 years. I’d like to see another 250 years at least after this, maybe longer, but we’re in a pretty perilous place right now. Don’t forget, it wasn’t that long ago that the President of the United States sent the Director of National intelligence to Fulton County, Georgia, to grab thousands and thousands of ballots. Why did he do that? Well, we don’t know for sure. But it certainly has something to do with trying to interfere in the mechanism of our democracy, our electoral system… “I’m very concerned about where we are and where we’re going. I think we’ll probably get through this, probably. It’s going to take a lot of us. It’s going to take a lot of hard work.” On why he’s fighting for a better future for his granddaughters and all young Americans… “I’ve been a public servant most of my adult life. I care so much about this country. I have two daughters, Now, I have two granddaughters. One is going to be a month-old tomorrow. And I worry about the future for them. I want them to have opportunities like I had. And young people today, they don’t have those same opportunities. This is going to be the first generation that is probably going to be worse off than their parents were. And the thing is, that is fixable. We know what we have to do to fix it. We got to stop giving big, giant tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, and we got to prioritize the needs of most of the country and hard-working people and middle-class Americans. That’s what we have to do. If we could get the money out of politics, we can solve a lot of these problems.”