Latest / Coconut Justice / CJP #20 Carlos Alvarez-Aranos Pt 2

Transcript

CJP #20 Carlos Alvarez-Aranos Pt 2 · Coconut Justice

• speaker-0: There's so many layers, man. There's the there's a we have to like everybody's angry about something, right? Like everybody's black or brown people are mad at white people, you know, for for for all the everything that's that's gone on in the past. But we have we of course have to be the the ones that say, okay, we know you fucked up. I'm gonna help you for a minute. I'm gonna help I'm gonna help I'm gonna heal help heal you. And then we and then we do what we do. We we navigate. We help them navigate and then we bring them along and then we we all we all flow together and this is how this is how that culture develops where it's actually a culture. speaker-1: Here, right. Right. And and and my point to you is though, and this is the question, is that what we're doing? And so I look at us too. Meaning us in the movement, for example. There's a lot of people that insult MAGA all day, every day. That's all they do. And I'm one of those people sometimes. I fall prey to it, particularly when it's Marjorie Taylor Green. But if you notice, when you speaker-0: Right. Mm-hmm. speaker-1: You know, Carlos, you watch some of my speeches. I don't talk about I don't call people names. That's not my MO. Because I don't want to be practicing the wrong thing. And now sometimes I get very angry and I call somebody a name and sometimes it works. And I break Marjorie Taylor or whatever. According everybody thinks it was me, because she started behaving more reasonably the day after my mod my diatribe to Don Lemon. yeah. And I that and to be fair, I enjoyed every minute of that. But my point to you guys is we're also culpable. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: Because we are losing track that the solution here has to be rooted in us, understanding that whether we like it or not, they control enough to destroy us all. And I don't know if you guys have watched that movie's TV show Silo, but I was thinking of Silo is on Apple TV, it's a fantastic show. But there's a there's an analogy from the show, which is at the bottom of the silo, there are the mechanical people that fix all the machines and the generator, and they keep the entire they keep the power and the water running. So they're keeping the silo alive. And there's this allegory in the in the show about everybody thinking that they are the reason that the silo works, right? Managers think that it it's them because they're managing it and everybody thinks that their part is the most important part. And part of my message to you guys and to this world is it doesn't really matter. Because whether we're right or not will not matter if they destroy our side. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: There is no additional satisfaction from being right. In fact, it's worse. Because if you're right and you get fucked by fascism, you're truly the worst person positioned for it. Because you're sitting there going, I was right the whole time and I still got fucked. In some ways, you're the in some ways being one of the bad guys is is in some ways a better way to fall because then you're like, We're winning, we're winning. shit, we're all dead. You know what I'm fucked. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: You know what I'm saying? So I promise you, no amount of arrogance or self-confidence or Self-blockage of saying we're not going to listen to them, we're not going to deal with them, we're just going to vote them out, and that's oppression. We're going to restrain them or restrict them. That's oppression. That's what we're fighting against. And the problem with the going to tie this all together, the problem with the perspective that we are right and they're wrong is that. It makes us immature in thinking that we can just call them names, insult them, and then push them to a corner. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: Which actually perpetuates the problem and makes us the bad guys in real life. Cause we're then the ones oppressing them and then we just speaker-0: Yeah. And we haven't fixed it either. speaker-1: And we haven't fixed a fucking thing. So my and but the adult version of this, which is a much harder problem. It's a much more sophisticated problem. Because it's multidimensional and it exists in a continuum where time is also a factor. So it's not just what problems do you fix, is in what order do you fix them. To make so that you can create a solution that is not imposed but is adopted. And that addresses with problem problems as they emerge and creates opportunities as those problems are solved to solve other problems and to do it with intention. So that you're doing, you're fixing what needs to be fixed so that other things become possible, but you're doing it in a sequence that unlocks everything rather than siloing some problems and creating speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: The lack of access issues, right? I watched this. speaker-0: Speech of yours, and you said something that said, You said, stop thinking of things in terms of change, but in terms of innovation. speaker-1: Right. So think of d innovation is a continuum where you're you it's not just what happens, guys, it's in what order it happens, is what does A leading to B create for C. What becomes possible, and we're a democratic society, which means we don't think as a hive mind. We don't think in a unified way. So sometimes we chance upon the right sequence, but for the most part, we're not thinking intentionally about how to solve problems. The challenge for this movement, as I see it, is that I would rather solve these problems forever. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's the innovation. speaker-1: That's the innovation. It has to, because if we don't solve it forever, then we're just gonna have another Trump at some point. Even before the next Trump, we will fall to the Kardashians. Because what I mean by that is we are not taking ourselves seriously enough to continue to exist. And part of part of what you're about to see, which we haven't experienced yet, is the United States was number one in public education up until 1976, and it has fallen, it is no longer in the top thirty. We haven't yet fully felt. Right. But that generation's still working. The ones that new shit are still working. Right. The replaceability problem for that generation is a massive fucking problem. Especially in an age of technology where China is graduating 12 engineers for every one of ours. speaker-0: That's what I've been saying. speaker-1: Right, but but my point is think about the layering of all of our problems. Then think about the even if you had absolute power, you would still have to think very carefully about what do I solve first and second and third so that fourth becomes possible, fifth becomes possible, sixth, and so that I'm covering for everything and thinking for everything and accounting for everything, or at least as much as I can, so that the result. Із uly an uprooted system that is better. And then to do that in the midst of Trump, with Trump as president and controlling the levers of power, to do it in an international situation where Russia is ascendant, where China is ascendant, where Israel's lost its goddamn mind. Like all of these challenges are happening. This is a fucking impossible task. And all I can say is I feel very lucky to be the guy or one of the guys thinking about and girls, I should say, and it's not a sexist thing, but I am a man. but I feel very lucky to think to be in the position to try to help direct us. The reason is not just because I'm a strategist by trade, it's because I I think the thing that I see growing up in my circumstance is how serious this is. Because my original appreciation for America was a Dominican's appreciation for America. The fact that we have power all of the time, it still blows my f The fact that you can drink the water is speaker-0: Crazy. I have a cousin that I got to meet, or not meet, but I got to hang out with over Thanksgiving, where he grew up in Cuba. And though he, when when he was lucky, he got to go to the rich lady's house to take a shower. Right. And they knew that she was the rich lady because she had hot water. And the way she had hot water was a pipe coming out of the wall and an electric wire. Tapping that pipe, heating it up so it would heat up the water. speaker-1: There you go. No, listen, I grew up under very privileged circumstances and we still had to boil we had to heat up a bucket of water. Hot shower to exist. There was no native hot water coming from the pipes. That never that was never my experience in the Dominican Republic. I don't think up until recently I hadn't taken a hot shower in the Dominican Republic. To this day, when I go to my mom's house, a hot shower can only last about three minutes because that's the the amount of hot water that's available. speaker-0: In order for Yeah. speaker-1: But my point is not that, and it's not about my struggle. It's just about the appreciation for America from the outsiders' perspective. Right. Because the seriousness of this, the not just the nuclear dangers and the but the geopolitical problem, like what we represent as an anchor for the rest of the world. We are not allowed to lose our minds in the way the rest of the world is allowed to lose. Because the consequentiality of that is so much more sick serious. speaker-0: All right. speaker-1: The example we set. And either we need to remain mature or buy the world enough time for them to mature up to be able to cover for us. But either way, we have a problem. If America is not what it that anchor, then we have a problem. Because the Russians and the Chinese don't share our moral systems vis-a-vis the government. And it's not to say that their systems couldn't work, but they would look radically different and they would not be tenable to us as a people. And so we would live in that conflict of being the good guys but who look like the bad guys because the bad guys control everything. It would be basically kind of like living under the empire in Star Wars. So The challenge of what I'm trying to do incorporates all of this. And part of the problem is that I can't explain it. Like what I'm trying to do does not register with the current culture. Because they don't know what they don't know. If you're an influencer and you just wanna know politics and talk about politics, you can have two million followers and you are a person I fucking have to deal with. speaker-0: I think. speaker-1: In real life, though, if you don't understand that I'm trying to play a multidimensional fucking game to try to get to an outcome, trying to deliver a strategy that marries a lot of people into it in the context of a culture where like issues like Gaza and others can be used as poison pills rather than affirmative efforts to actually fix problems, it's the most compounded fucking challenge ever. As a strategist, it's the most interesting fucking work I'll ever do. speaker-0: huh. speaker-1: But I can't lose because if I lose, then that means we lose. And if we lose, then that means that fuck, man. You know, that's that's the terrible thought. And it's and the part and the last thing I'll say is how fucking lonely it is because it isolate, you know, leadership is isolate isolate you anyway. No matter what decision you make, you're pissing people off. But in this case, they can't physically see the forest for the trees for the most part. speaker-0: So speaker-1: So even people who agree with us, they still make it hard for us to convince them because they feel that making it hard for us is what makes them important. speaker-0: yeah. speaker-1: Wow. And then to me, I'm like, dude, I have this very clear idea of what I'm trying to do. I need these five organizations aligned on this one issue. I know they all agree, but one of them is going to throw a fucking fit just because they want to be able to say that they didn't let me have it. And I'm like, that would be fine if we were at Goldman Sachs and it was competing against Merrill Lynch or whatever. But it's not fine when the fucking stakes are the future of the United States of speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: America. But fuck how many fucking people are doing this for ego and self-centeredness. And there was now I'm not gonna name names, but there was one person that removed the regime who literally complained ad nauseum to the point where I heard about it, because nobody had mentioned their name from the stage. speaker-0: No. speaker-1: And I'm sitting here going, dude, fuck man. I have enough like enough problems upon enough problems upon enough. I'd have to go through a sequence of about 30 iterations of delayering for me to ever give a shit about who gets named from the stage at a fucking rally. speaker-0: Hey, I didn't get a shout out, man. Come on, man. I I I made a song for you. speaker-1: guys. Yeah. It was a really good song too. And and I I'm comfortable comfortable. Yeah, I'm comfortable that you're comfortable knowing that we all really enjoyed your song. And if nobody ever told you about it, it wasn't because they didn't enjoy it. It was because we were very busy doing many other things, right? Okay. But but I again I I I just think speaker-0: Video saved it. Yeah. speaker-1: Dude, it feels sometimes insane. It feels insane. I need as much help as I can get. And I need it from every corner of society. And I need a massive budget, and I need allies, and I need people to say yes all the time. And I need even with all of that alignment, I'm still gonna need other leaders to come up and and guys like you that are leading, showing up, running efforts that I can trust other leaders. That because I'm not the only leader in this movement and nor should I be. They're gonna fucking arrest me or kill me at some point. They're working on now a list of domestic lists of enemies, blah, blah, blah. We need replaceability. We need other people, but we need people who can see it. And the problem is that because we're in a culture of you can fake it till you make it, just about everything. It it creates a really dangerous condition for us when the stakes are this high and the problems are this complex and the the solutions require real careful alignment and execution, flawless execution. Yeah. And honestly, thankfully, thankfully, thankfully, thankfully, Donald Trump is a fucking moron. And we could not have picked a weaker opponent. And so that's the only fucking reason we're still around. If it had been Obama. speaker-0: Yeah, it would have been a wrap. I've said that a bunch too. I wanted to go back to your three step approach. One was national protest, two was direct action. What was three? speaker-1: Three is a campaign season program to replace as many Democrats as possible, especially the ineffective ones, so that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are never leaders again. And so that we just have better Democrats. I mean, these people. The Democratic Party is my biggest frustration in this entire campaign. I honestly would not if you if well, first when I started this, because I called for the first and the second National Days of Protestant, then the second one became the first No Kings protest. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: So people give me some credit for launching the movement, which is right, because I was there. but that's not really my important contribution. My important contribution is the strategic perspective. It's looking at this as a as a thing. And I assumed that the Democrats would not be, they would be neutral, meaning they would not help me, but they would not hurt me. I was wrong. That assumption turned out to be horribly wrong. Democrats are a bigger problem in my day to day than Republicans are. but it's not it's it's not close. Republicans are entirely predictable. I understand what they want, I understand who they are, I know how to manage for that. Democrats are confusing. speaker-0: Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. speaker-1: Because to some degree they're not doing the things that they would that would serve their best interests. And so I genuinely say that if there was a trial with a truly impartial jury, and one side was arguing that the Democrats are complicit and the other side was arguing that they're incompetent, the complicity argument would win. Because strategically speaking, speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: They are not doing the things that they should be doing based on the inputs that Trump is providing. Right. Right. And I don't, as a strategist, I can only depend on information when it's matches some semblance of sense about what are you trying to achieve and what are you doing to get there? Kind of. You don't have to be perfect or even good at it. But at least I have to think, this is where they're headed and they're. misguided so they're doing it the wrong way, but I see what they're doing. I don't know what the Democrats are doing. And that is a fucking problem. And I met with Akeem Jeffrey staff, and I still don't know what the Democrats are doing because they don't know what the Democrats are doing. That's and that was the scariest fucking meeting of my life. Because I wear to you guys, I walked out of that meeting thinking I was supposed to meet with an adult who was going to lay out for me step by step what the Democrats are doing. speaker-0: Yeah. Because I think all all out of all those all representatives that are out there in Washington, only Al Green is out there on the front line with you guys marching. speaker-1: Like no, it's not I mean Sri Tanandar just did us a solid with the Hegseth impeachment. We have a few, but yeah, no no no speaker-0: You know what I'm saying? Like, you know speaker-1: No, no, no, no, no. Yeah. It's not, but but if that were my problem, that's a again, that I can cover for that. If it's just getting people to come out and campaign, or people faces, or influencers, or actors, or whatever, that's easily solved. You can replace a congressman with somebody more interesting. Because frankly, like 90% of members of Congress. By the way, Congress is just a bunch of people in a really large building desperate for attention. It's like the it's it's a miserable institution. But people go speaker-0: The ugly actors that didn't make it in Hollywood. speaker-1: Yeah, literally. Washington being like Hollywood for ugly people. One hundred percent true. And it's there's like two groups. One got laid in high school, those are the Democrats, the other ones didn't, and they're Republicans and they're like trying to be cool. And it's weird because none of them are cool. but If that were my problem, that would be a relatively simple problem to solve. The problem is that even at the leadership level, they don't know what they're doing. They don't have an actual strategy. So I don't care if it's complicity or incompetence. The net result is Democrats are not doing any of the things that I need them to be doing so that I don't have to think about them. And remember, if they were just neutral, that would already be 90% better than where we are right now. If they weren't either helping or hurting. speaker-0: We're not doing shit. Yeah. speaker-1: At least they would create a constant. And in a strategist world, what we're trying to do is to turn as many variables into constants as possible so that we narrow the field of the choices that we have to make. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: So in a in a conditionality sense, I would just want to put the Democrats in the neutral c column, but I can't because every day they wake up and fail to do some of the most basic shit. And then when they do shit, they do it very poorly to the extent that you think maybe they're maybe they're trying to kick their own asses because they can't possibly be this. speaker-0: been that's been my feeling with watching not not even just the current crop of of lawmakers just like just in general it feels like the republicans are pushing towards an autography a autocracy or a technocracy or whatever it is that they want to they're pushing towards and then the democrats seem like They know that that's where they want to go too, but they're playing hard to get. And they're trying to, you know, they're trying to tryna like put up this smoke screen so we don't speaker-1: No so that it so that it's the same result, but they're in control, maybe. Or something along or that they don't disturb the big speaker-0: They know they know that that's where we're gonna end up anyway. And to to soften the blow or to put a little sugar in the in the in the medicine, they play it hard to get and they're telling us look, look, look. No. Hakeem Jeffries, you you well talking. speaker-1: Right. You're from New York. You should be well burst as shit. Yeah. No, and and to be honest, that's exact that's a really good way to describe it. but whatever the case, what it nets out to be is that they they they are constantly my challenge. Like I don't wanna have to make the Democratic Party better. I just don't even wanna have to fucking think about the Democratic Party. Please can somebody remove them from my board as a thing I have to worry about. And then when when I am with them, I can how can they be so fucking stubborn and not see what I'm saying? Because this shit is not we're not talking strategy four one or graduate school strategy, we're talking one one shit. Like the dude, the dude just came out and attacked Rob Reiner. Have you seen a single Democrat on TV today? speaker-0: And all the shit that Trump said about it put into this messaging. Right. It wasn't quite speaker-1: Rob Right. You quiet. speaker-0: He was a political supporter, he was doing his job. And when Rob when when Charlie when Charlie Kirk died, Rob Reiner gave said flat out there's no room for this in in in any anything. speaker-1: Out there being a vocal Guys, think about it this way forget about Rob Reiner as a partisan figure for a minute. Rob Reiner was a legend of cinema, the son of another legend of cinema. Yep. A guy who gave us some of the best films we've ever had. Yep. I challenge any filmmaker to make a better romantic comedy than when Harry met Sally. I challenge anybody to make a better movie than a few good men, period. The Princess Fucking Bride is a masterpiece. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Yep. Yes. Hey, in Archie Bunker's in Archie Bunker show, he was groundbreaking. He was bringing topics to the TV, invading people's living rooms with this. What was it that that Archie used to call him? Meathead and like the meathead, yeah. Tommy and all the things and speaker-1: Right. Right. And my point is, like, that's an American through and through. Heart worked hard, developed his talent, was as good as as Mel Brooks in comedy, because a lot of people think the Princess Bride must be a Mel Brooks film. And he was as good as Steven Spielberg in drama. Yeah. That is a unique human being. There's no other way to say it. And my question to the world, to our country at this moment is. If the president of the United States can badmouth Rob Reiner. What is sacred anymore? Where are we? What do we care about? What is it that we're celebrating? And it goes back to forget about Trump for a minute. Just the permission structure to be able to say bad shit about good people. Doesn't that connect with us celebrating the Kardashians of the world and the housewives of the world, rather than saying, you know what, let's have some fucking dignity and self-respect. speaker-0: But Right. speaker-1: as a people and celebrate good people. And if we're going to be a country that contains as much genius and as much create creativity and creative vision as we have, let's elevate that. But when Kim Kardashian dies, she's gonna get more press than when Stephen Colbert dies. And I'm just gonna stick to entertainment, not to bring in other because those right. What are we doing? And and I ask that only because again, what the Democrats are doing doesn't make sense, but what the American people are doing doesn't make sense either. Which is like we're acting like this is just a moment. speaker-0: Fuck doing. Right. speaker-1: The presumption that everything is going to be okay is inherently American to a degree that it's almost insane. it'll be fine. It'll get worked out. speaker-0: On the next episode. Yeah. Yeah. They've changed they've changed they've changed America to to an episode of cops. Every day is an episode of cops. speaker-1: We're gonna get to a better place eventually because we always have. We don't have to do much as citizens because it's always been given to us. We are so spoiled that we may have spoiled ourselves into our own destruction. And all it takes to see that is being from not here. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: And as soon as I'm Dominican, I'm like, what the fuck are you people doing? Like every time I hear Americans go, our country is broken, I'm like, motherfucker, you have a mail system where the mail arrives on time. Yeah. When the government sends you a check, a the government has a printing machine that prints checks somehow. Secondly, they put it in the mail system that somehow works. speaker-0: Hey, we're so dope. We're so dope. We have a machine that signs the checks for the president. We have an auto-pad. speaker-1: Yeah. Your check arrives, it arrives on time. It always clears. The power is always on. You can drink water from any faucet. speaker-0: When you drive the lights. speaker-1: there a problem? The roads are not bumpy, and there's no potholes that fit your car in there. And and I'm astounded every day. And it's like it's like it's like we're actors who don't want to do the play, so we can keep complaining about the stage, but we have the nicest opera house ever built in the history of mankind. And all and we just have to do the busy work of putting on the play. speaker-0: Ever ever. speaker-1: But we have to actually do it. Yeah. And so we're just so fucking lazy now and so spoiled that my concern, guys, is that we win this battle, but we lose the war. Because either we alienate MAGA and push them to beyond the brink where they decide to burn it all down just to get the satisfaction of watching us suffer. speaker-0: Hm, yeah. speaker-1: Or it all gets burned down because we solve for Trump, but we don't fix the underlying cultural lack of cultural issues. Yes. So we end up in a grinder of just reapportioning suffering and sending it. No, you take it, no, you take it, and just having that internal fight, which may or may not lead to a war, but either way leads to a collapse. And all because we were arguing over like the positioning of the plugs on the greatest stage ever built, like We were five big decisions away from solving every problem we had. And instead we said, you know what? No, let's elect a dude that paints his face literally orange. That speaker-0: Hides his true face from speaker-1: React on his face. speaker-0: Yeah. Don't forget the the little that little speaker-1: the next pussy? Yeah. You're you're just you just want Cliff Cash to come on your show. You start talking about the next pussy. speaker-0: Yeah. We gotta have them back on. Yeah, we have them back on. He's been on. Yeah. yeah, that's been my my push has been we need to change the culture by investing in education. Right. Because education, you know, you get young and you get them teaching. Like it's to me, I've seen younger kids and I'm talking speaker-1: That's awesome. speaker-0: The tens, twelves, fourteens, right in there, they are knowledgeable and they understand way more than even when I was that age, because they have all this information available. Yeah. speaker-1: I will say, but we keep thinking that and then Gen Z comes out and votes for Trump. So part of the challenge with education is that you also have to have end goals that make sense. So adulthood has to be worth it. I think part of it is that if you come out of college and adulthood is not worth it, then you don't have a mechanism for fixing that. Like one thing we've always wanted to do is to do like a public service so that if you do four years in the military or four years in the Peace Corps, college is free, that kind of thing. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: To create structures where morality and character are also developed in concert, particularly in an age where we have a mass addiction to phones, which I haven't even touched on, but that undergirds the entire problem globally is the fact we are all currently in a mass addiction event, the likes of which we have never dealt with as a humanity, and we genuinely don't know how to we haven't even looked at it as a problem yet. Right? So I don't want to go down that rabbit hole, but that's a whole speaker-0: Right. Yeah. speaker-1: Next episode. But but to think about young people, it's not just education. Part of it, and my solution would be for us Latinos and Black Americans and Native Americans and Asian Americans to start integrating our cultures in as much as we can to start teaching. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: About cultural resilience from our experience and bringing people bringing American white people into our experience to open our doors. Because we already know these lessons. So all we have to do is pass them on. And hopefully that would help us create a unified American culture that draws from all of them. But if nothing else, at least gives particularly poor white Americans an avenue and a mechanism. For socializing and coping with their shared pain. Because that pain is real to them. We will never be able to deny it. And frankly, the fact that we're even trying is kind of insulting, right? Just because they were rich and they are not poor doesn't mean that they don't feel the suffering the same way as if they had never had anything or had been oppressed. And any and and to be fair, yes. Do we need restorative justice for people who have been oppressed? Yes, we do. But we also can't invalidate the pain of real people feeling it every day. You know, they're benefactors of generations of oppression, but they themselves individually don't feel responsible for it. Even though there is blame to be had, we have to find a way to move them from where they are to where we need them to be. And we need to do that constructively. And we have the information as black people or brown people or Latinos or Asian people. We tend to have better mechan better cultural mechanisms. And I think inviting people in and saying, Hey, buddy, I know you want to punch your own face. I saw a a a clip of the ma MAGA people apparently are just starting to punch their own faces. like, dude, you can just have some rum and dance some salsa, it'll make you feel weird. speaker-0: Yeah. For real. Seriously? I don't know. my god. speaker-1: One dude was punching himself in the face and his tooth just casually just flew out of his mouth. And I was like, my question is my speaker-0: He's like my question is, wouldn't it be like someone who thinks that punching yourself in the face is cool or is gonna prove a point or whatever? I think that mentality has a tendency, whether or not you know, it it's just that mentality is going to be attracted to something like a Trump. speaker-1: No, 100%. And and and and look, I'm not trying to solve for the whole problem. I'm just saying if you took if every Latino in the country, for example, given the ice rates and everything else, we're all feeling very attacked, right? But what if, just as a revolutionary thought, rather than fight back with violence or fight back even with protest for a minute, although protest is important, right? But I'm just throwing out a hypothetical. What if we just said, you know what? speaker-0: Mm. speaker-1: What we're gonna do is that every weekend we're gonna reach out to our white neighbors in West Virginia and in Kentucky and in Alabama and in all the places where this behavior is most prominent. And we're gonna invite them to our cookouts. And let's just say in a hypothetical world, we manage to get one one out of every ten poor disillusioned white people into a cookout scenario once a year. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: I think those people would start trying to build something like that. speaker-0: I don't yeah, I don't disagree. And I think that the speaker-1: It's a magnet. It starts to draw. speaker-0: Right. I think it doesn't have to I think the benefit there obviously social media is a double edged sword. The first the first argument is the one that you made that it's kind of outriding our brains and they're eating tide pods and eating punching themselves in the face. Right? Whereas I also use it to expose people to exactly what you're talking about. speaker-1: Draw that many. Yeah. speaker-0: Right? Because look at how everyone overreacted. Bad bunnies coming on to Super Bowl. fuck this. And I'm like, Y'all bitches don't understand. speaker-1: Right. No, and I and I would agree with you to the extent that like I remember when Ricky Martin played the Grammys. Yeah. And when he blew up. And I remember as a Latino, I I was in college and I remember thinking to myself, like, wow, a lot of people are gonna get something that they've never got. Because one of the great benefits of being Latino is like I learned how to fall in love primarily from two people, Luis Miguel and Julio Iglesias. And like once love is Louise Miguel's version of love, there's no woman on earth that will accept anything less than that. You know what I'm saying? Because it's a as Einstein said, once the brain expands to a better idea, it never returns to its original size. And so part of what I'm talking about, whether I I think social media is limiting only because I think acceptance is a human thing that requires physical presence. speaker-0: No. speaker-1: But that does not discount what you're saying. I think all of it, we have to give people access to the things that make our lives so speaker-0: Right. We have to break bread. We have to sow seeds. We have to get these people. speaker-1: If I were doing a political campaign for this country, I would encourage every Latino, every Asian, and every black family to make a meal and take it over to some house was a bigoted poor white person. And bring him a meal of your favorite cooking from your favorite country, from your home country. Bring them that. Bring them the camaraderie. I don't know how we structure it. Don't get me wrong. I'm not here to build a program. I'm just saying I'm pretty fucking certain. That the pursuit of qu peace and quiet would end as soon as you find out how fucking peaceful joy and loudness can be. speaker-0: yeah. speaker-1: Yeah, once you expose people to a proper game of dominoes with proper road with music at a certain volume, a little bit of dancing, and the kids were and the buggy painted drank at the exact temperature before freezing somehow and like Danikeke and all of these joys. speaker-0: Well, yeah, dude and back in. speaker-1: Things, I think you start to fucking give people a better sense of meaning. And so my point to you guys is I'm protesting because that's that was step one. We needed to get the protest done. Direct actions are also going to be negative, meaning negative in the sense that they're confrontational and adversarial. But a huge part of this is building a positive track too and reminding people of what it is that life is worth living for. And what we're doing in Christmas. So we just did the mass blackout. And it's interesting because the mass blackout got a lot of press. Well, today we just sent out the press release for a seven-day program in Christmas organized by the same coalition by the Mass Blackout. But instead of blacking it out, we're having a seven days like an advent calendar called the seven days of given us. And the idea is each day has a theme. We're going to feed people, we're going to house people, and we're going to build up. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: Are mutual aid muscles. And none of it is confrontational and none of it is adversarial. And guess what? None of it is getting as much media play as the blackout got. So it's kind of up to us as a people to say, you know what? This is a seven-day program. If you go to the mass blackout.com, you can read about each day what you can do. Why don't we as a people you talk about social media, Carlos? That's where we go out and we promote the light. speaker-0: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Be the light. speaker-1: And and and we need so much more of that. If I could have anybody build an organization, it would be Latino outreach to go into communities, white communities and teach them who we are. Because the complexity of that will draw them. We are so much more culturally sophisticated than Americans have ever been allowed to be. And it's not their fault. The country was too big and too independent. If you think about it, the world is like a spectrum. And China is very collectivist. They everything gets done for the greater good, right? For the for the mass. In America, we do everything based on self-interest. So we have. And if you go around the world, it kind of tracks perfectly that the further the closer you get to China, the more collectivist the mentality seems to become, right? It's it's like the world is a spectrum. And all we have to do is move from self-interest to slightly less self-interest. And we will already alleviate so much of this pressure that's been built because a lot of that pressure is the stress of being self-reliant. speaker-0: Mm. Yeah. speaker-1: I rode a motorcycle, a Hartley Davidson, with no windshield to the Arctic Ocean. And I can tell I can tell you something about being alone. Because when you're alone in the Arctic and you don't have a backup tire, and if your tire blows, you're fucking dead. You start to appreciate your tires for one thing. But the other thing you start to appreciate is that we're all in this together as human beings. There's no amount of achievement I can have in my life that if it's not recognized by other people, it speaker-0: Okay. speaker-1: It doesn't matter, right? I'm gonna die. I'm a piece of carbon. I'm a blip in the in the universal sense. Nothing matters. The only reason things matter is because we matter to each other, or we at least are supposed to. And all we have to do is start giving slightly more of a shit about each other to correct for the stress. Because have you ever been alone, in danger, and alone? It's the worst feeling in the world, the stress of not knowing what you're gonna do. When you're so broke that you don't have money for food and you have somebody to feed. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: That feeling. Too many fucking Americans have to live in that feeling. Are you gonna tell me that you're gonna have a happy life while you're living in that fucking condition? Of course, you're going to be angry. So all we have to do is move. We don't have to become China. We don't even have to become Europe. We just have to move the needle slightly towards the middle of the Atlantic, maybe. Just get slightly more concerned about each other. Open our doors to each other. Yeah. Hey, here's my culture. If it can help you, and it I'm going to teach you. So that you can we can change it and build it together and be in it together. Because if we don't do that. We may win this battle, but we're gonna lose the war. And losing the war means losing the country, and that's an outcome that then destroys potentially destroys the planet, all because we couldn't figure out how to take the nicest stage ever built and put on a fucking play. And that's a really fucking and because we got so spoiled that we think everything has to be done for us. And frankly, democracy is an ongoing fucking project that we have to work on. And yeah, it's exhausting and it's supposed to be exhausting. And then we're supposed to earn it so that the weekends start to feel like weekends again, you know? You work your ass off during the week, and then you get home and you sit and the menga kicks off and the fucking machata kicks off and the domino start kapikua and suddenly everybody's happy. And I don't know how to externalize that, but I think somebody needs to start worrying about that because honestly. speaker-0: Okay. speaker-1: The only way we get back into this is if we if we we are breaking up and we need to get back together and we need to find you together. speaker-0: Joy. Joy. And let me tell you, again, I got to talk to another one of my cousins who is MAGA. He considers himself MAGA. He's a Cuban kid, born in Chicago, raised in Puerto Rico, but he lives in Florida now and he's MAGA. speaker-1: Yeah. But Maga's identity to co to Cubans. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, exactly. but and I'll I'll say this real quick. For as MAGA as he is, and he is a vocal MAGA supporter, we agreed on the majority of the things that we talked about. I told him, You see, we agree on most everything. Right. Just take the homophobia and the racism out of whatever you're saying, and we could be good. speaker-1: Totally. No, and it but remember for Cubans, there's an additional complication, which is that they were running from something. When you're running from something, you always inadvertently put yourself back into the thing you were running from. speaker-0: Mm. Yeah. Isn't it crazy? speaker-1: What what the Israeli government is doing is what is not the same, but close to what the German position was towards Jews, right? And they created Israel and now they're behaving in a similar fashion towards Gaza as what they were treated like. And that's not to say all Jews, but the government of Israel is. It's kind of mirroring what the government of Germany did. And that's because it creates a cycle of uncertainty. And the only way to answer a cycle of uncertainty is through certainty. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: And the only way to create certainty is through tyranny. So these are cycles, these are natural cycles. All we have to do is interrupt them slightly. We don't even have to reinvent the wheel. We know this game. For Cubans and Miami, when I talk to Cubans one on one, I can usually convince them to back off of Trump. But it's funny because the thing that always gets them is the orange face. As Latinos, if I look at the square in the face and you're going. speaker-0: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. speaker-1: That connects the fact that he's orange seems to make them to cut right across their biases. Right. They go, well, I mean, and I'm like, you're glitching because you're glitching. And you're glitching because you're Latino. And you know that if you paint yourself orange, there's something fucking wrong with you. speaker-0: Right. And how many like and just to add context to what you're about to finish, like when you're a Latino, like people always look at me and they're like, you're gonna color your hair and all that? I'm like, No, this is what it looks like. This is when you take 53 years of ass whippings, this is what it looks like. speaker-1: And I'm perfect I've earned my scars. And we are we are a product of our experience because we are all a product of our experience. The nice thing about being Latino is that we're the laziest people and also the hardest working people. And the reason is because when we're we know shit needs to get done, so we work our asses off to get it done. But then when we disconnect, we literally do not give a fuck about anything that's important. speaker-0: And I feel perfect. Exactly. We work hard so we can chill. speaker-1: We can chill. And what I find is that when I'm talking to Cubans in Miami, I can usually convince them based on shit that is not political. It's like he's orange, bro. And and they go, Well, yeah, no, I don't know. No, no, no. Let's not move on from there. He's orange. Literally spray paints his face orange. It ends up on the collar of his shirt. He's orange. And as long as I stay on orange, they go, yeah. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: And they just keep not because there's no answer. speaker-0: Right. And if you took that orange off, he looks like he's literally dying. He looks like he has put in the grave and one on a banana peel. speaker-1: That's because we're literally Yeah, no, and we just got some private info from potentially some of his doctors. So we're working to validate that. But the the news on the medical side seems to be very bad for him. That said, all I can say is, guys, I think we're looking at this wrong. I think we're looking at this as a battle between two sides, and it's not. We have speaker-0: Yeah. Mm-hmm. speaker-1: People who have been oppressing our people for many generations, going all the way back to the founding of the republic, who now find themselves in that same position. And they are obviously not handling it well, compounding the problem by electing Donald Trump and making it difficult, further more difficult. I think our role, our instinct is to want to fight. But anybody who's ever operated in a civil war setting. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: And I sadly have can tell you that is not an outcome that is tenable. It's not the moment that happens, we've lost, everybody's lost, and we've lost in a way that's irrevoc irrevocable. what we have to recognize is that everything that our instincts is are telling us is would feel good, but would move us further away from a solution. And what we should be doing as the people who are more aware, as the more Caring and empathetic side is to reach out and embrace these people and give them a path out. Lead them out and show them a better way. And we don't have to capture all of them. We capture one out of ten and we've removed the political problem. We capture two out of ten and we've substantially reduced the cultural problem. We somehow figure out how to capture half of them and we're back to not just good, we're back to thriving. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And calling them names and doing that stuff that you're talking about. It's not that's not working. speaker-1: That's no, and it and it feels really good. And it's like one of the main problems I have with some of the people in our movement is that they want to go out and just call people names. And I'm like, dude, you're gonna run out of words, and they're not hearing you anyway. Right. Because the algorithm isn't gonna put you in front of them because that's they block one of you and they block all of you, right? so just stop doing things because it makes you feel good and start doing things because it's the right thing to do within a strategy. to achieve the outcome that you actually want. Let's grow the fuck up. And my job sucks because I have to be a grown up in an environment of children while being Dominican, which is anathema to who I am. All I want to do is call them names, bro. Feels so fucking amazing. But it would lead us it would lead us to perdition. And I speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: The one thing I can't do is lose this country while I still know better. I don't mind I don't mind losing if I lose straight, but I don't but we I have a very clear idea what the problem is and I think I have a very clear idea what the solution is and I need support and I need people to buy in and say, We're gonna fund you, we're gonna help you, we're gonna we're gonna unify. You know, there shouldn't be organizations in this movement that are not talking to us and to each other and to everybody. I don't care if you're communist or MAGA, if you're if you're in it to give remove Trump and to deal with the underlying issues, I want to work with you. And ultimately I think we have to find empathy and find humanity and remember why we're here and and that we're doing this together. speaker-0: No. My message to folks when I talk to them is I understand the handout thing and I understand not not wanting a you know a a a society that always has his handout. I understand all of that. But we need to get to the point where we are building wonderful Americans. speaker-1: Right. speaker-0: And everyone understands that we're Americans. And I don't even care. I don't even care if we're bickering in the house. And by the house I mean in the states. I don't even care about that. But when we're in the streets, it don't matter the colour. Right. It don't matter the color. speaker-1: That's healthy. Yeah and hopefully speaker-0: White folks need to understand that. Like when I put my name on that dotted line, it was colorblind. Right. I was here to I was here to kick ass for you as well. speaker-1: Rank for everybody. No, and it, you know, I think I think we look, I still believe. Not only do I believe, I'm optimistic, we haven't lost a battle yet. We're the most successful broke movement in history. We have not lost a battle yet. We have literally everything that I have wanted to achieve, I have achieved it ahead of schedule. Everything that I am aware of other leaders in the movement wanting to achieve, they have achieved ahead of schedule. The election was unanimous, that's never happened in history. speaker-0: For everybody. speaker-1: The Epstein files are about to come out. That was almost unanimous because of us. Trump is the least popular president in history now. We 29% approval. That's a historic low. And it's funny because I think in two years, peacefully, we're going to do what took the Germans 12 with a war. But I also don't want people to become disheartened because it's going to take time and it's going to take effort. speaker-0: Outrageous. Yeah. speaker-1: And the main thing that pe that pisses me off is when people say, Well, what are you gonna do about it? Meaning me. And I'm like, dude, the only way to disagree with me is to do what you think I should be doing. Like there is no other except either you pay me and hold me accountable through money, or you can't complain about what I do. You can only do what you think I should be doing because I can't be a volunteer. speaker-0: You can't get mad at free. speaker-1: So either fund me or shut the fuck up. But you can't ask me. speaker-0: You can't have both. speaker-1: Yeah. It's so frustrating though. speaker-0: Tell the story about how you started this organization because that was pretty quick. speaker-1: Yeah, so okay, so there's background. In 2020, I oversaw strategic communications efforts for an organization called Protect Democracy. I had been running my transportation company and they assembled essentially the Avengers of Politics, a bipartisan group of lawyers, lobbyists, and communications professionals to protect the 2020 election. I oversaw 49 national campaigns, beginning with the Wall of Moms in Portland. I helped produce the second impeachment trial. I got Emily Murphy to certify the election. I did the Biden bus that was attacked in Texas, that lawsuit for Wendy Davis. all of these efforts that Protect Democracy was leading. and we had organized a coalition of about 400 groups to protect the 2020 election. Time magazine wrote two articles. one of them was the secret called the secret bipartisan campaign that saved the 2020 election. So it was a remarkable effort. The only difference from there to now is that nobody knew my name then and or the name of the other people involved. And I was working for other people. I was just heading up communications efforts, but I answered to others. that said, I've never had a run of success like that. It was 49 national campaigns and they all worked. so it was awesome. But genuinely, once Biden won and and the election went off, more importantly, it wasn't even about Biden. It was more about having an election in the in the context of Trump and and the pandemic, right? And figuring that shit out. but once we had a successful election and Biden won, I thought, I'm done. Two years later, a woman named Nina Jankowitz had been appointed by Joe Biden to run something called the Disinformation Governance Board of the Department of Homeland Security. And the goal of her board was to unify government efforts or to like have best practices against foreign-born disinformation threats like deep fakes and bot farms and all of these problems that we're facing because of AI and all of these challenges. But Jim Jordan and the Republicans accused her of being a minister of truth. She was 35 weeks pregnant and she was getting more death threats than any American has ever received. She was literally the most. attacked human being in American history. Her best friend had kind of served as a deputy to me at Protect Democracy. And she called me and I was functionally retired from politics. I was like, I'm I'm done. We saved America. I'm done. speaker-0: The speaker-1: And so, but she called me and she said, Look, my friend is in trouble. She needs immediate crisis communications help. Can you help? And you know, I'm Dominican. I'm hearing about a damsel in distress. She's 35 weeks pregnant. speaker-0: What we do is what we do. speaker-1: Yeah. So I I helped her and to p to her credit, Nina's an amazing human being and she wouldn't have needed help anyway, but we landed the plate and we did it well. she went on Chris Hayes and had the most effective interview I've ever seen in my life. it was it was a sight to see. Closer to the election, the beginning of election year last year, she called me and said, I want to start some an organization to do the work that we were meant to be doing at the DHS around disinformation threats. Would you launch it with me? And I said, Absolutely. I was, you know, it's it would be a joy to work on an issue that matters, but it's not, at the time I'm thinking it's not as central to the election as what we did at Protect Democracy. So it'll be less stressful. Fuck my life. Kamala Harris became the nominee, and it all became again about gender disinformation and all that. We became the most so protect democracy had been the most cited political nonprofit in 2020. Now we had the most cited political nonprofit in 2024 with one fortieth the budget. Because our issues became the issues. And our research revealed shit that ended up producing indictments and shit. I don't know. You know what I'm saying? Like it was work that mattered, finding bot farms and keeping sending things to, you know, government agencies so that they could look into it, that kind of thing. And then I was up for a job that I can't really talk about. I didn't end up getting it for circumstances fully beyond my control. But I had left the organization because I thought I would need a break if I started doing that job. I didn't end up getting the job ended up not happening. So during the transition, I was just kind of sitting on my on my hands watching the Democrats not do anything. And I assumed that they would brand an opposition campaign. Like the contract with America. But here's how we're gonna oppose Trump, and here's the vision for after Trump. And you know, like a full debt. And it just kept not happening. Right. So on January 25th or 26th or something, I was like, I posted on social media. I'm like, maybe I should just start an organization to do the work that the Democrats are failing to do. And thousands of people were like, Yeah, man, you should definitely do that. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: Mind you, these people didn't know my resume. So serendipitously, the next day I launched American opposition and I called for a national day of protest on February 5th. It turned out that there was a group on Reddit making a similar call. They wanted 50 protests at 50 state capitals in one day. I wanted to state capitol, city halls, and town halls because I live in Colorado and I know that most people can't make it to the state capitol. So I thought they should just be able to go to their local city hall in their town hall. And they wanted to do it at like two PM, but I wanted to do it at noon because I wanted people to use their lunch break to be able to go and protest and come back. Because we were doing it during a weekday and I thought they were gonna need people are gonna need access. So lunch makes sense. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: That group became 5051. We eventually found each other. And before the first protest, we reconciled those things. And they basically took my version that we did city halls and town halls, as you guys saw, and over a million people showed up. And then the national head of that effort basically said to me, I know you want to do something on President's Day, which was like 12 days after on February 17th. And he's they said, Look. speaker-0: Yeah, man. Amazing. And congratulations. speaker-1: Can you call for that and we'll join your call? Because we haven't really figured out how to pick dates yet. Like they just hadn't figured out the internal process. So I was like, hell yeah, no problem. So what it's literally on threads. It's the first post for from February 6th from American opposition saying, now that that went well, let's do it again on President's Day. And we hashtag it, not my president day. Yeah. But 5051 was like. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: We're gonna join your call, but we don't like your hashtag. Because we don't want to make the protest about whether the election were were legitimate. Not that there isn't legitimate question about that, but we just don't want to focus on that. We wanna focus on Trump and fascism and all that. And they said we're gonna hashtag it no kings. And I thought, great, whatever you want to do. That sounds fine by me. You know, it's simple, nice. To be honest, I didn't have much of a thought of it at all. Except that on the posters, everybody started putting no kings, not my president's day. They were weird posters because they were like some of them had both, you know. They had our logos and different messages, and it was just kind of off, slightly off. But over two million people showed up. And so that was technically the first no kings protest. But more importantly, that was the protest where people felt like, maybe coming out is safe. Then on in March. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: On March 14th, Jessica Denson and Cliff Cash had the now veterans march in DC. And Jessica, keep in mind, I had done the communications for Jessica's case where she invalidated all of the Trump campaign non-disclosure agreements. So I met her when I worked at Protect Democracy, and we became friends. So she had seen what I was doing and says, Come out to our march and give a speech. And I said, Great. And To be honest, I gave a speech. It was like, I'm gonna write it and I'm just gonna say exactly what I think. Both against Republicans but also against Democrats. I'm just gonna and I think to be honest, that speech was ahead of its time. Because the people who were there, I've never seen any crowd react to anything the way that people reacted to that speech. To this day, people talk to me about that speech more than they talk to me about anything else I've done. And it was and what I realized, because I don't know, I don't, I know I rarely, if ever, watch my speech back, right? But at some point recently, like a month ago, I rewatched that one only because after a while I was just like, man, what the fuck? Like, why do people like it so much? So I sat and I watched it. And what I realized is I was saying then what I am saying, what we as a society are saying now. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Yeah. speaker-1: I was so connected strategically to my vision for what I needed to do to solve this, that I had kind of weirdly written it into a speech, but in a way that connected the then to the now and that gave people a sense that somebody knows what the fuck is going on and what needs to be done to solve this. speaker-0: Right. speaker-1: And that and then between the first and the second protest I had I had written that literally just wrote the words like buying a Tesla is supporting a Nazi. Boycott Tesla. speaker-0: just scribbling my notebook. speaker-1: Well, I wrote it on threads or some or one of the socials. And They started the Tesla takedown eight days or nine days after I wrote that. And then Elon tweeted about me and called me evil. And between Elon's tweet and that speech, I think some people were like, maybe this guy is fit for leadership in this moment. And and I also have to compound that with what I'm trying to do with American opposition, which is American opposition, somebody described it recently in a way that blew my mind. Because it was the first time that I felt appreciated on the technical merits of the project that I'm engaged in, right? Because I I don't think of it as a technical strategic communications and community engagement project on an on a day-to-day basis, but I am bringing my professional skills to bear, right? And somebody said. It looks like a brand, behaves like I forget the exact quote. It looks like a brand, behaves like a campaign and grows like a popular uprising. speaker-0: Ooh, all right. speaker-1: And I thought, man, they're finally getting it. Because I'm trying to innovate. You talk about innovation, Mike. I'm trying to innovate a solution to this moment in this culture, an influencer culture. How do you create a grassroots movement in this environment? Well, it looks like a brand, it operates like a campaign, and it grows like a popular movement, right? So it's it's elements of a hybrid that has never, frankly, just never been attempted before. And it becomes a hub. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Yeah. speaker-1: Because we don't need to own the whole movement. We're just setting strategy and hopefully people find their way to marrying to our strategy. But it's like all the departments at Google, they can do their work independently. As long as we're all pointed in the same direction and becomes predictable for me, I can keep strategizing and keep developing and keep pushing, right? And as time goes on, you gain trust. When trust is ultimately what builds this, right? Because I remember in the second month, I couldn't. Convince anybody to do anything for me. For the mass blackout, I think I made 60 calls in two hours and nobody said no. Because I think now people realize that when I say it, I mean it. And that they can trust me. And no, this is found. But that's the other thing is like people think leadership is replaceable because we're living in an age where everybody thinks they can do everything. Right. But it took me nine months to earn the fucking trust of the movement so that I can call people and get them to fucking do shit together. And that's not replaceable time. And so a lot of people just don't see the effort that goes into it. speaker-0: Right. speaker-1: The other problem I have is that I tend to make things look easy. So everybody's like, what what do you do? Yeah, it it it creates a challenge. But my point to you guys is like I had this very clear vision. I know what we need to do to defeat Donald Trump. I know it exactly. I I know what we have the skill sets on board, meaning the team is right. Whatever I can get I need, I can get. I'm missing money and I'm missing unification. And if I can get those two things, particularly one or two groups that just seem to be very intractable because they operate like traditional polit political groups, which are more interested in donors and C four C three, C four status, whatever it is. And I'm like, dude, if we lose this one, your C four status is not gonna matter. Right. You know what I'm saying? Like this is the this is the battle to end all battles. But then on the flip side, there's also like new partnerships forming because some groups that have been historically very cautious are now going like the stakes are really high. We want to jump. So I'm seeing all of that. But what I would like to see is unification, at least around the strategy. Total marriage. We say this is our strategy and we're gonna develop it and we're gonna keep pushing it. And then money, and not just money, but so much money that we can fight to fight fairly. Stephen Miller has a hundred million, but Donald Trump's other pack has like 250 million. And you start sitting there going, Dude, I don't even need ten million, but at least give me ten million so that I at least feel like if I need to hire somebody on the last minute and pay them top dollar to get them away from Goldman Sachs, give me the ability to do that. Cause I'm gonna need some data people that are smart that are getting paid a half a million dollars a year. And may I don't even know speaker-0: Right. Starting your own cryptocurrency. It works for the Trump Foundation. speaker-1: It literally was an idea at one point to create a meme coin called the American Opposition Coin. because that's how desperate I've become to try to figure out the fundraising problem. And my and the main challenge with the fundraising to me is like normally I was reading, I worked at Protect Democracy and I don't want to throw them under the bus too much. But they wrote this this document that made me laugh because Protect Democracy has not shown up in this game. They just haven't. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. speaker-1: They've been writing a lot of blog posts and doing a lot of analysis. And they've done, they've been co-counsel on a on a lawsuit or two, but they haven't they haven't targeted Trump directly. They haven't really played in in the main ball field this time around. And by the way, I give them tremendous credit for what we did in 2020. So I'm not trying to not trying to like hurt my former team, but I'm just being real with you. They just haven't shown up. They've become a think tank. And like, there's no thinking that's gonna get us out of this. It's we're gonna now it's time for action. speaker-0: We think we need to do. speaker-1: Yeah, so I went but but I was on LinkedIn and my former boss's thing post came up where they're basically saying, We're winning. speaker-0: Damn. speaker-1: Made me physically laugh. I was like, wow. And I looked at the things that they cited. And you guys can go for yourselves. It's it's if you can keep it is the name of the blog. And there's an article explaining what they've done. And the list is like five or six things, and they're they're very specific and they don't seem to like drive at the main issue, but we're winning. It's an amazing statement of the declaratory judgment that they are winning. And I'm sitting here frustrated because they have a huge budget. And my God, if I had those resources, I definitely would be trying to fucking actually win. You know what I'm saying? So I have a little bit of frustration around that, but I also the main frustration that I came for myself is like then I looked at our we have an internal list of all the shit we've done. And I put it up next to their list. And it made me fucking sad because they have a budget of tens of millions of dollars. speaker-0: Fine. speaker-1: And I've done with $80,000, not to do my own horn, man, but it's not a close call. You know what I'm saying? We we we launched the first no kings protest, which means we launched the no kings movement. We launched the Tesla boycott. We did the Disney thing. We you know, we've fed or helped on the target thing and on the total economic blackout. We did July 4th by ourselves because indivisible and 5051 wouldn't join us. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: So we went around them and got their chapters to do it without them. We did remove the regime. We've done, I mean, you it's if you go on our website and you look at the work page, it's every fucking thing we the largest veterans protest in American history, the D-Day event. That was literally my my guy Tim, who my head of media relations, who came up with it. And like we've done all this shit. Never mind the shit we've supported by others doing. Never mind the mass blackout and all the shit that we do in coalition with others. But we're leaders, we show up, we do stuff. And again, I have an internal list. We don't publish it publicly because I'm not interested in credit or ownership or whatever. But when I compare my list to their list. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: And I'm sitting here going, where the fuck is my 10 million dollars millions? You know what I'm saying? And again, not to begrudge them and not to because I don't want to create the appearance of division within the movement. I love them and I want them to do I want them to do more. And if I'm frustrated with them, it's because I think they can do more and they've chosen a more limited role in that frustration. Because I know what we did in 2020, and I would like them to bring it at that same level now. So it's not petty. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: And I'm not trying to be, but but there is a fucking delta between our resources and theirs, or our resources and indivisibles resources. And I kind of sit here and go, What dude? We all need help. We all need support. and why is it going to the people it's going to? And what like I don't understand it enough to to to fix it. But until I fix it, I feel like I'm speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: being very Dominican and doing the best I can with what I have. But man, if I had more, I could end this fight in a couple of months. Straight up. If I had $20 million at my disposal and a good advertising agency, Donald Trump would not be able to get out of bed in two months. speaker-0: Well we'll make we'll make sure this clip right here gets put out then. Yeah, and that's what I'm that's what I was about to say is is if you remember earlier in our conversation, you know, when you're when you're gathering information and you're putting yourself in these situations where you're able to one glean information, gather experience, and then build that network, that's why we're here. Yeah. You've been you've been not tooting your own horn for a long time now. So I'm gonna not toot mine and say I used to work at Leo Burnett in Chicago. I used to work down in Hollywood. I used to I'd I've also put it in. And I think one of the big things that it sounds to me like you are one of the back speaker-1: Okay. speaker-0: Back of the restaurant, guys. You're the chef. The back of the house and then you're doing all the things, right? Just me in front of the restaurant. That's all. Right. speaker-1: No the way to think about I am a the way to think about me is I am a political consultant working pro bono for the American people to win the campaign against fascism. I don't I'm only giving speeches cause that seems to have resonated. My preference is to work fully behind the scenes. I will get in front of the scenes because I have to. I don't want to be my speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Times on the chef has to come out. You can come flex. speaker-1: Absolutely. No, I have a really hard time with the whole flexing thing because people have at first I've lived the most ludicrous life I'm aware of, and that's a condition that I'm not sure any human that I know has ever had, right? Like I've never read a story of a life and gone, that's crazier than mine. You know what I mean? It's just a but secondly, it's because people read me as arrogant. So when I talk about myself, I'm always very cautious. Of not wanting to come across that way because I I can't help it. Because frankly, it's not how I feel inside, but it's how people read me. And so I tend to back away from talking about my own things. but in this in this situation, as you it handcuffs me a little bit, because I just haven't been able to raise the money. And frankly, again, our entire budget for everything we have contemplated is like five and a half, six million bucks, which in a political sense is a drop in the bucket. And for as much success as we've had nationally, it should not be difficult to raise this money or more. but I failed at this. I have failed at it. And I need I need to either fix it or find somebody to take it and run with it. Because honestly, I have failed at it. And for as long as I fail at it, we're stuck. And I I and I know enough to know I'm not gonna get better at this enough to fix it, right? Like right now, it's gotta be taken over. I can't I can't do it. I'm just not good at it. speaker-0: You're muted, Carlos. The other Carlos. speaker-1: no. yeah, the other colour. You're muted. Can't hear you. Mute. No, he's speaker-0: man. speaker-1: He's putting I think he's talking to somebody in the room. speaker-0: We we we can Sounds like put the mic in, what happened? I don't know. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Okay, I mean. There's there's a lot going on in this room, will you? Somebody smoking a joint across from him. I see what's going on now. He's having fun. There's fucking lights. I know now I want to be in that room, man. speaker-0: Yeah, Look at look at his lights, man. Não. speaker-1: Wanna be in that party? We can't hear you. We can't hear you. speaker-0: But knock it, but you can't. speaker-1: But it's up, is is speaker-0: You love, man. He'll come back on. Yeah. speaker-1: there he is. Hey. Hey Yay, he's back. But now you're in the middle of speaker-0: be figuring everything out. He did it on purpose in the middle. No, what I was what I was trying to say before my old ass Mike decided to take a break was I think what you're doing today is a really important step in getting to that point because I think there was a lot of momentum with No Kings. speaker-1: Your hat is still excellent, so he's speaker-0: There was l a lot of momentum with remove the regime and all that stuff. And yeah, you are out there and you, you know, you're on getting interviewed and and your speeches are being broadcast out to the news. But I don't know if many people are tapped into the news that way. Right. And so to where the people are, which is the social media and stuff like that. So now we start to figure out speaker-1: Right. Frankly I don't talk to me to me. I don't do that mostly because I don't want to talk to complicit media. Right. Like I have I have dude. The problem is that I also make this more complicated for myself because I have very strong values around how I want to approach this problem. And sometimes like I won't trade money for control, for example, because I, you know, one of the things that pollutes is the influence of money. When a donor gives you money and then they want to tell you what to do, that's a problem. when You're talking to media that are then perpetuating the problem, that's a problem. Like the biggest feature, the the feature that Boeing Boeing, which is a huge blog, I love it. But they're a blog, right? And they did this feature on our strategy. And I just wish that that had gotten global, right? So that people could understand there is a fucking reason we're doing everything. and I wish people understood the results better. And I see you and I hear you, but part of it is that I haven't been great about it because I I do have this very clear vision in my head that I just don't want to do it cheaply. Right. Because part of my proposal as a leader is if I do things because I believe in them, then people will join me because I believe in them and they share that belief. And I don't want to fall prey to hypocrisy. Because that's the easy way. And you know, the main lesson I've learned in my life, and you talked, we talked about people. speaker-0: Yeah. Yep. speaker-1: learning their own lessons and failing to learn the lessons of others. Well, I have learned those lessons the hard way. And part of what I bring, I think, is authenticity of the fact that I'm not perfect. I'm never going to be perfect. I was fucking I was my twenties were the most fun, that my thirties were very fun. Charlie. And right. A lot of things. but speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: But everything I've learned is I've learned for real. And everything I've done, I've done for real. And everything I'm doing now, everything I did in 2020, where I already succeeded at this and I can do it again. And I know I can because I've done it before. But I don't want to fall prey to hypocrisy. I don't want to sell out the process because then I feel like I'm kicking my own ass in the long term in terms of my ability to sustain this for as long as it takes. Because the other thing I'm deeming aware of is until he dies, or you know, and because of the stress. speaker-0: Sure. speaker-1: I'm gonna have to keep fighting this fight. I'm that I this is not a thing where we can give up. Even if he lives out the remaining three years, we still have to sustain. And so I have to be I have to be built for a marathon, but I have to be running sprints at the same time. And to me, the only way to do that is to be my authentic self every day, war to know. This is me, America. I'm gonna do my best. I need your trust, I need your belief, I need your support, and you know. Frankly, let me disconnect every once in a while and don't fucking text me about anything that's not hugely important. speaker-0: I gotta let I gotta let you know that you're you're my when I when I put out the song and Carlos did the video for the other Carlos, this Carlos, my my wife sent it to her uncle and she's like man he's like you gotta get to get this to like the coalitions like American opposition. That was his very first one that he mentioned. He's in North Carolina. Yeah it like your your the movement is is felt speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: And you're connecting the people because you are who you are. You're transparent in who you are. And and and and I, you know, when you're in sales and you have you have plenty of accounts, you can be either a greasy car salesman or you could be you. And the biggest way, the best way to sell your product is to sell yourself. And you're doing this in all of his glory, man. You're a humbleness. even in your even in your wild like riding giraffes and and and shit. And you know, all this other stuff. down to people sitting in your cab. You know what I'm saying? The humbleness and the humility and the ability to be vulnerable and taking that and saying, you know what? Here it is. Fix it. Let's fix it. And that's the difference between a manager and a speaker-1: I am who I am. Let's fucking fix it. And and and the powerball. I must win. This is very change. speaker-0: Let hearing. Hey, do you have a dream book? speaker-1: mil pesos la lotería No, I have scrapbooks. I do keep scrapbooks. I don't keep dream books because I have no more dreams to live, man. I've lived all speaker-0: You know those you know the dream books that you say, I dreamt of a unicorn riding a wave and then you go, you go, all right, we gotta play eleven twenty-four. speaker-1: All right, cool. I do have numbers because you can't be Dominican without having numbers. But no, my great grandmother used to read my coffee. she you would drink the coffee and then she would burn the coffee in and read the cup. I come from I come from full Dominican Dominican. Yeah, yeah. But the pastel noja, which is a classic Dominican thing invented by my mom's family. Damn. speaker-0: No. With the speaker-1: I my blood, I did that DNA thing and I had Taino, which is the Dominican native tribe, and then like 24 African bloodlines before any whiteness happened. And I was thinking to myself, like, that is the power of that island. It's like you're a mutt in the best sense. Nobody ever had the we were all in it together forever. And I think one of the one of the main challenges we face as Americans is to turn this into one country again. And I think that that is all about us going against our instincts and reaching out when we should be when we want to fight, we should be reaching out. If your instinct is X, do Y, do the opposite. Because honestly, right now, all of our emotional instincts are to fight and to divide and to conquer. And that's not what's going to get us out of this problem ultimately, because this problem is not Trump. That's how we're going to get Trump out. How we get back in it with each other. We gotta that is that is where the Dominicanness provides such a joyful path forward of saying, you know what, it's been done before. With a lot of music and a lot of drinking, we will figure this out together. speaker-0: Yeah. we'll f I reached out to I reached out to the Taino conference. There's a whole group that's trying to bring recognition to the Taino tribe and all that stuff. They said that I'm hoping I'm hoping to get them on the channel before too long. speaker-1: Yeah, it would be great. for those that don't know, the Taino people were largely exterminated. there are very few Tainos that of any sort of actual Taino nets. they were the the tribes of the Caribbean and they were particularly susceptible to disease and war because they were on islands, so they couldn't go anywhere. so unlike the Aztecs and the Inca, there's not too many, but it's in my blood. speaker-0: Left. speaker-1: It connects me to my island originally, which I love. And I love also having grown up there because again, had I grown up in the States, I think I would see things differently. I I'm so lucky that I had the experience of living in that place at that time before phones, be when when shit was real. because it's been an education that has served me every single day in this day. Something that again, you talk about replaceability. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: That's one of the things that scares me is that that we're living in a society where people just think that you can replace experience with notoriety and you just can't. Wisdom and knowing what to do. It's fucking speaker-0: We don't even have we don't even have you know, you used to have the masters and then you would have the apprentices. We don't even have apprentices. I don't even mean to bring that up. He even ruined that word. Damn it. speaker-1: No, yeah, no, but you know what I'm saying? It's actually a really no I mean that horrible episode episodes aside. no, it's it's it's a huge part of the problem. And it's interesting how clear it is to me because of where I where I grew up. And like it feels like a superpower, but it's like w if you had asked me every day while I was growing up, where do you want to be? Miami. Why? I wanted to live in Miami for two reasons. Why? speaker-0: Okay. speaker-1: Twenty four hour electricity and hot water. That was as big as my dreams could go. And I was part of a privileged family, but that was still my dream. I was like, Miami. Did you have 20 hours? Well, no, I I moved to Tampa for 40 school. Close enough. I lived in Florida. I was it was Tampa. I mean, what are you gonna do? No, I mean I lived in Miami later. speaker-0: Yeah. I lived in Miami. It was worth it. Yeah, it was worth it. speaker-1: You go to mint and you go to mint and you go to mansion and you go to living room and you go to all of the clubs in Miami. Miami is fantastic. You can't survive for more than three days, but you're gonna do great for three days. speaker-0: You better rest up in the beginning and rest. speaker-1: Totally Yeah, no, I went as far one one year, I one summer I lived in Miami and I I rented an apartment on the beach and my family had a house in Coral Gables and I rented the apartment on the beach and my dad said to me, Why are you renting an apartment so close? Right? You could just come back home. You want to go out, you can come and stay with us. And I said, Dad, they do DUI checks on the on the bridge. Yeah. You know, going out on the beach. And I said, I can't deal with that. So yeah, the Miami is Miami. Always. But the other thing is I didn't want to bring those women home, you know, because those yeah, you never knew who you were dealing with, man. speaker-0: They're my cover. Fellas, I gotta I gotta go, man. speaker-1: no, dude, are you kidding me? We've been on for like three hours. Yeah. Carlos. It's been such a joy. speaker-0: I can wrap it up. Carlos, if people want to follow up with you and your organizations and all of your efforts online, where can they find you? speaker-1: AmericanOpposition.org. It's at American Opposition on all the platforms. Just Google American Opposition. I mean, I think we've we've we've achieved that much. I'm pretty sure that yeah. Google American Opposition. And I I would ask people to subscribe to our newsletter. It's how we go, it's how we send out information when it's actually important. and then to donate. That's the main thing is they can go on our website. We also have an Act Blue link, you know, it's around. speaker-0: Okay, bye. But speaker-1: figure out ways to donate. Please donate. If you want to make big donations, we're super PAC. We can take unlimited donations. We can, you know, all of that dark money stuff works in our favor in this case. If you want to do it through a donor directed fund and you want to donate a million dollars and not have anybody know it was you, that is possible. Like sadly, that's where the law is. So that benefits us as much as it benefits the other side at this moment. But my point is we're super PAC, we're American opposition. I'm Carlos. speaker-0: We speaker-1: pretty easy to find on the social media. and yeah, and and email contact at americanopposition.org. Every email gets read. so yeah, we have a pretty good, we have an amazing team. we work uniquely. our team members don't know each other unless it's absolutely necessary because of our security posture. so basically. speaker-0: Sorry. Sure. speaker-1: I am the only person who is aware of all the members of our organization that said in some ways it actually creates really nice flowy states because the bureaucracy is less and in some ways it actually works beautifully and I never want to work any other way. bad thing is for me that I'm at the center of that. So I I interface with everybody about everything all the time. That makes it a little bit difficult. But yeah, we're we're out there, man. We are we want to build an app. speaker-0: It's weird. Yeah. speaker-1: So that we can direct our direct actions in our campaign season actions. And we want to do a national billboard campaign. I'm super excited about. It's called the Trump scorecard. And it's like day one versus now. And where things were, where they are. And I want to put it up in 5,000 digital billboards across the country. Red numbers for the worse ones, green numbers for the for the better ones. And we're just going to be honest with Americans. Here's where things were when he took office. Here's where they are now. speaker-0: It's just speaker-1: If some price is lower, it's gonna be green on his side. I'm not here to to to interpret or to manipulate. But the reality is that once people look at the numbers as they are, every day on their drive to work and every day on their drive home, they're just seeing the red under Trump under now and all the green under then, they will realize that we are not bullshitting them. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: The dude is destroying America. And the fact that some people are not aware enough to understand the destruction doesn't mean it's not happening. And like Osmosis, what I'd like to do is to put those billboards up for as long as he's in office. So that eventually they go, I should check this out and just search for what's happened to prices or what's happened to whatever. You know what I'm saying? Unemployment and massive unemployment numbers and all that stuff. speaker-0: Right. speaker-1: Because honestly, Donald Trump is our biggest asset. He is super incompetent. He doesn't he's actually has no way back. He doesn't know how to fix it. Right. So he doesn't have a way to repair. He can only destroy. Which is a good thing because it makes it super easy to show people that he's flawed if you know how to message it properly. And if you have good a budget and some good ads and all the shit I want to do. But on the flip side, it means that we have to stop him before the destruction gets so bad that we can't repair. But Donald Trump is the most incompetent president in American history. And in some ways, that's helping us because there is no affirmative case for Donald Trump. There is not a single thing today that is better than it was when he took office. Like fact. So yeah, so I'm that's gonna be a three and a half million dollar budget. That's like si 50% of our total budget is just that one campaign. speaker-0: Right. Right. Yeah. speaker-1: But I firmly believe that part of what we haven't done is said the simple things simply. And rob the because he manufactures bullshit through repetition. But if you remove if you remove the undergirding qu thing there, you you also rob him of that ability, which I think is a huge, you know, it's a huge next step. speaker-0: Yeah. Even even like to add to the frustration is he has said, that was a campaign trail. You say whatever you want in the on the campaign trail. speaker-1: Right. speaker-0: Admitting to lying to you. speaker-1: But that's that's that's the final sell. The final bit of the gambit for a narcissist is to let you win on his process so that you buy the fraud completely. That's the final bit. If he can get you to agree despite revealing the full game, then he's got you forever. There's no way to back out of it. And part of what we have to interrupt is that psychology. But it has to be done at at scale and for as speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: For as known as I am for my hat and my glasses and my speeches, we're not going to get anywhere unless we create real unity in this movement and speak with one voice. And that's going to require money. That's going to require campaigns like this. Those billboards, they raise their own money because people see them and think that's effective. That's actually working. It looks different. It's different than what I've seen. Why aren't the Democrats doing it? Let me fund these guys. And at the bottom of the billboard, you say to donate to this billboard, and that feeds your machine. And so these things feed each other, but we need we need a stepping stone or two or three. And honestly, that's the part that's been frustrating is the fact that people just haven't stepped up. Part of it is maybe that we're succeeding so hard that people assume we're doing okay. Yeah. And I've had that problem my whole life where people just look at me and they go, There's no way you need help, bro. Because look at the woman you're dating and speaker-0: You still have a smile on your face. speaker-1: The motorcycle you're riding and all this shit. And I'm like, dude, the motorcycle I borrowed. I'm paying off. I, you know, I've seventy seven payments left. And I know it looks good, but I'm fucked. You know? But my point is, all kidding aside, it's like we need way more support. And I don't know how to get it, but that's my hope. My main hope and my main message to people is we're winning. We're winning. We're winning big. We haven't lost a single campaign. We're ahead of schedule. We're gonna do it. speaker-0: Seven. speaker-1: years with the German's took him twelve years and at the very least we're gonna neuter him and make him completely ineffective by next year. Please help us do that so that I can get the fuck out of this job and finish this campaign and go back to being an unknown human riding my motorcycles and figure out how to pay. speaker-0: You know. speaker-1: The sooner I can get a fucking paycheck, the better the situation's gonna go. For everybody. The country will be better off because we'll be rid of Trump. I will be better off because I will have a fucking paycheck and I really miss those things, man. Anyway, guys speaker-0: Thank you again so much for taking time and hanging out. speaker-1: No, dude. It's my day off, and and honestly, this has been great. It's a form of therapy just to talk to people who who know what we're doing. I appreciate you guys paying attention. I appreciate you guys showing up in all the ways that you do, including the song. But more importantly, just showing up with your hearts and bringing your wisdom and your talent to this. thank you, really, from the bottom of my heart. On behalf of anybody I can speak on behalf of, we really appreciate what you guys are doing. Please keep doing it. Your leadership is needed. Your service. thank you for having done it and for continuing to serve. yeah, you guys inspire me. So please keep doing what you're doing. And obviously, and you know this, you have an ally here forever. You have ways of reaching me. Please do that. and yeah, it's crazy that we've gone on like three and a half hours or something. I never talked for this long. So speaker-0: that's what we do is speaker-1: shit. Something tells me you're lying. No, you know what's funny is people ask me, you know, I live in this tiny home and I and I I I'm I'm I I'm I'm a recluse and I'm and I I'm introverted psychologically. People say, Yeah, you sound like an extrovert. I'm like, I'm the most introverted a Dominican can get. Yeah. But I'm still a Dominican. Yeah. Which will read as a massive extrovert and a talkative type. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: But to be honest with you, my preference is to be very quiet and to sit by myself and to re especially in this moment, because like so much of this energy draining process, you know, you work I work so hard every day. and a lot of the fights are unnecessary. They're like fixing internal problems or or when people are arguing with each other and that kind of thing, it's a drag, you know. so I need a lot of reset time and I just don't have it because I l Honestly, I took like two hours off yesterday and it called it a day off, but it was two hours where I took a nap and my phone didn't beep. And I was like, my God, that was the most amazing two hours of my life. I want to do that again, you know? And I've lost my goddamn mind, or I like I don't remember the last time I went to see a movie or you know. and I'm not complaining. I just I just wish I wish I could feel the support more so that I could do it. speaker-0: Ha ha. Yeah. speaker-1: better and give and carve out time and hire the right staff. Because like we've done this on a shoestring and like we get it done but it sucks. And you're just grinding. Right. And I I would really appreciate if that condition changed. All right. Thanks guys. speaker-0: We're here for you, brother. That everybody. And with that everybody. Cool. Challenge accepted. And with that, we out. speaker-1: Call me, call me. All right. Thanks guys. speaker-2: Peace. speaker-0: Coconut chest.