TV: Do your parents worry that it jeopardizes your career? Have you ever lost out on a role because of it, or anything like that?

I have no choice but to learn as much as I can about it, and talk about it and try to educate my followers. But when I look at what’s going on in our country right now, I have no choice but to speak out. I think there’s this common notion that because I’m a kid and because I’m in the public eye at times, I should shut up about politics and sit down. is someone referring to me as someone who hasn’t even “felt the tip of life’s dick.” My twitter bio is kind of a revolving door of insults that people have lobbed at me for talking about politics. TV: Have you gotten any pushback from fans or online commenters for being so open about your point of view? If so, how do you respond? No matter where I go, I want to be active in politics. I don’t know where the future takes me, but I do want to study in college and learn everything that I can. I love them both, and I love the career that I’ve built for myself in L.A., and I also love what I’m building for myself right now in D.C. JR: Ah, the burning question that my parents are asking too. TV: So would you rather have a career in politics than in acting at this point? That’s eventually what I want to study in college. JR: Yeah, all issues are important to me, but I am pretty wonky about foreign policy mostly. I assume you also care about the usual, like voting rights, climate change, and all that stuff, but those are the ones you kind of wonk out on.

TV: It’s interesting that the major issues you identified as your pet issues are not the usual answer you’d get from a young person talking about their politics. I think a three-party system would probably do us a lot better more would be even better, but I do think that a lot of countries with a wide-ranging, multiparty system - Israel, the United Kingdom, and Canada come to mind - they’ve got two dominant parties no matter what. With regards to the two-party system, I think it kind of is what it is. Being friends with someone is more important than their political beliefs. I’m definitely not the most progressive person on the planet, but I’ve got friends on literally every single side of the political spectrum, from anarchists to hard-core socialists to conservatives, so it’s not everything for me. JR: Yeah, I identify as a Democrat, probably on the more progressive wing. TV: How do you feel about the two-party system? Would you identify as a Democrat? How would you describe your political beliefs? But I did get the opportunity to speak on behalf of an actual member of the United States Congress, which was really cool and a really unique experience. So I got to write letters to constituents I got to answer a whole lot of constituent phone calls, which I’m sure you can imagine are interesting at times. For one of the members of Congress I did a lot of social media work, and for the other I did a lot of policy-based work. TV: And you got to do some work on that during your internships? JR: So for me, my big issues are foreign policy, defense policy, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. TV: What sort of issues were you working on? Eventually that worked its way into becoming an intern on Capitol Hill, which I just finished up four months in D.C.

Then came just general political activism - working on the campaigns I worked on, the Beto O’Rourke campaign, Ben McAdams, Harley Rouda, Katie Hill, Katie Porter. So that was when the idea for “News in a Rush,” my weekly news show, started. After what we all know happened in 2016 happened, I realized that I needed to actually get involved and make my voice on it heard. So it became a passing interest for quite a while, and then after the 2016 election and in the run-up to the 2016 election I got even more involved. I had never really taken an interest in voting and politics and what not - that’s adult stuff, you know? And in that moment I realized, no, this is something really cool that I really like and am really interested by. It was two in the morning the race had already been called, and it was me, Wolf Blitzer, a pint of ice cream, and my laptop open showing the election results. It was election night of 2012, and I watched the election coverage on CNN. Josh Rush: There’s been a couple, but I remember the first one incredibly vividly.

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