Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., recently made an appearance on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" where she discussed the struggle to get the military to change their policies involving sexual assault as well as advocating for publicly funded elections, according to the Huffington Post.
The interim host of the "The Daily Show," John Oliver, brought up the topic of sexual assault in the military by mocking the all-male panel that testified before congress for being out of touch with the actual issues. Gillibrand would respond by explaining how change is always painfully slow in the military, according to Politico.
"It's very difficult for them...when they dealt with segregation, integration of the services, when it was having women enter the services, when it was allowing gays to serve openly in the military every single time they have opposed that," Gillibrand said. "They used the same narrative; they keep saying, 'You can't possibly do that, it will somehow undermine good discipline.'"
Gillibrand has been trying to get the Pentagon to overhaul its policies toward sexual assault since a report this spring reported that there were an estimated 26,000 incidents of sexual assault in 2012, many of which went unreported due to fear of reprisals. The Pentagon is expected to announce new policies within the next week but Gillibrand feels that they don't go far enough since they will not make a professional military lawyer involved in each step of each case, according to the Wall Street Journal.
"The Pentagon taking action is a good thing, and these are positive steps forward, but it is not the leap forward required to solve the problem," Gillibrand said. "As we have heard over and over again from the victims, and the top military leadership themselves, there is a lack of trust in the system that has a chilling effect on reporting [of incidents]"
While on the Comedy Central program Oliver also asked Gillibrand to talk about the relationship between banks and politicians since she receives more money from Goldman Sachs than any other congressman, according to the Huffington Post.
"What I deeply want to know is, what do you have to do for that?" Oliver asked. "What is required of you for that money? Because it makes me uncomfortable."
Gillibrand avoided answering the question directly, instead she chose to give an answer about how she does what is right for the people who elected her and saying that the banks need to be regulated. When grilled about it a second time Gillibrand talked about the lack of public trust in politicians and how money from sources like Goldman Sachs may be responsible for that, according to the Huffington Post.
"I believe in publicly funded elections, and I think we should get the money out of politics, period," Gillibrand said. "Because at the end of the day, regardless of who supports your campaigns, whether it happens to be a lawyer or a banker or a stay-at-home mom, it's irrelevant where the money comes from. What matters is the public doesn't trust politicians and they don't trust politics. And they don't trust it because of the level of money in politics."
