In this week’s episode of Breaking Battlegrounds, hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone sit down with Congressman Mike Simpson of Idaho’s Second District for a candid discussion about the state of American politics — and how far we’ve drifted from unity.

Simpson began by addressing the recent House resolution honoring Charlie Kirk and condemning political violence — a measure that passed with strong bipartisan support (310-58) but still faced opposition from dozens of Democrats. Simpson called the dissent “a sad state of affairs” and described Kirk’s murder as a “political assassination,” emphasizing the urgent need to bring back civil discourse before our divisions spiral further.

The conversation then turned to the deeper cultural and institutional shifts that have made Congress more divided. Simpson shared that in earlier decades, members of Congress often moved their families to Washington, D.C., fostering genuine relationships across party lines. They attended each other’s kids’ baseball games, barbecues, and spent weekends together — building trust that made compromise possible.

Today, he laments, lawmakers fly in for votes, fly home on weekends, and rarely interact outside the chamber. This lack of human connection, Simpson argues, is making it easier for politicians to vilify one another and harder to find common ground.

Warren and Stone echoed Simpson’s concerns, noting that this cultural change has hurt the American people by eroding opportunities for genuine debate without personal animosity. The discussion is a sobering reminder that fixing polarization may require not just new policies, but rebuilding the relationships that once held the nation’s political fabric together.

Transcript

**Sam Stone: **Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds. With yours, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Our first guest up today, Congressman Mike Simpson, friend of the program and representative for Idaho's Second Congressional District. He serves on the House Appropriations Committee. Follow him on X at Cong Mike Simpson, C-O-N-G Mike Simpson.

**Chuck Warren: **Welcome, Congressman. How are you doing today?

**Congressman Mike Simpson: **Good, its good to be with you.

**Chuck Warren: **Thanks for coming on. So, just briefly, we don't want to discuss this topic much here with our limited time with you, but there was a resolution honoring Charlie Kirk and condemning political violence that passed the House 310 to 58. However, 58 Democrats voted against it and 38 just voted present. What is wrong with these people?

**Congressman Mike Simpson: **I don't know. It is a sad state of affairs that we've gotten into. This is obviously a political assassination. And we've got to, in this country, we've got to learn to be able to talk to each other and talk to people that we disagree with and debate issues and not make it so personal that you think you have to go out and kill somebody. This has obviously gotten way too far.

But why they would vote against a resolution honoring his life and legacy is a mystery to me but it shows us how far we've we've gone in the wrong direction.

**Chuck Warren: **Let me ask you question. This is something that has concerned me. We talk about unity in this country. You've been in Congress long enough and had more than one rodeo. I like to tell people 20 years ago we had some real basic foundational agreements with the Democrats, whether they were liberal Democrats and very basic things we all agreed on. It doesn't seem that way anymore. Am I exaggerating the situation or do you see that that way?

**Congressman Mike Simpson: **No you're absolutely right we are we are getting people get elected and frankly on both sides of the aisle to some degree they get elected and their goal is to get on tv every night they say crazy stuff. I mean listen to Jasmine Crocket some of the stuff she says it's just nuts and thats their whole goal is to become public figures like that instead of doing the job that they were elected to do.

One of the other things that's got part of the problem is that years ago when members got elected to congress is you only got paid to go home travel to go home about three times a year. So people would go home for Fourth of July and Christmas or Thanksgiving or whatever. And they would all move their families out here and so you spent weekends here in Washington and you got to know other members from the other political party and stuff you went there at each other's kids baseball games or the barbecues and stuff.

We don't take the time to get to know each other talk with each other like we should like we should do if you're going to have have meaningful discussions with people and that's too bad. Now it's fly in do your job here fly home for the weekend and come back and we need to have much more interaction between us and we don't do that.

**Sam Stone: **I had no knowledge of that. That's an incredible point. I've always said that unless you're, you know, living in the Acela corridor there on the East Coast, being a member of Congress now is really difficult because you have to fly back and forth every week basically.

**Congressman Mike Simpson: **Yeah.

**Sam Stone: **And you're bringing up a side of that that frankly is a pretty big loss for the American people.

**Congressman Mike Simpson: **Yeah, it's a huge loss for the American people, you know. You and I can disagree vehemently and passionately on an issue and debate it and argue and everything else, but it's really hard for me to call you names if I know your wife and your kids and that kind of stuff, you know. And we've lost that.

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