Latest / The Breakfast Club / INTERVIEW: Abdul El-Sayed Talks Michigan Senate Race, Big Pharma, Capitalism, Mike Rogers, Islamophobia + More

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INTERVIEW: Abdul El-Sayed Talks Michigan Senate Race, Big Pharma, Capitalism, Mike Rogers, Islamophobia + More · The Breakfast Club

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hold up.
• 0:01
  Speaker 2: Every day I wake up. Wake your ass up. The
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Breakfast Club. Y'all finished or y'all done?
• 0:06
  Speaker 3: Yes, it's the world's most dangerous morning show, The Breakfast Club.
• 0:08
  Speaker 3: DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne Tha God. Envy and Jess
• 0:12
  Speaker 3: are not here, but Lauren LaRosa, LL Cool Bay is.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: And Angela Rye is here as well.
• 0:16
  Speaker 3: So if Angela Rye is here, that means that somebody
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: in the political sphere must.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Be in the room. And we have Abdul El-Sayed. Got it.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: I nailed it?
• 0:25
  Speaker 4: Nailed it.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: You're welcome. She helped me pronounce it.
• 0:28
  Speaker 4: It's one of those things. My parents really did me
• 0:30
  Speaker 4: a favor with that name. They're like, you're destined for politics.
• 0:32
  Speaker 4: I'm like, couldn't have been like Pete.
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: He's running for Democratic candidate of U.S. Senate in Michigan.
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: And I like you, Abdul, because you're a disruptor. I
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: like a good disruptor.
• 0:42
  Speaker 4: We need some disruption. 100%. I mean, that's the thing
• 0:45
  Speaker 4: about our politics right now is everybody looks at it
• 0:46
  Speaker 4: and be like, why is this like this? And people
• 0:49
  Speaker 4: give you the same talking points, and then they tell you, oh,
• 0:51
  Speaker 4: you should deliver with a little bit more charisma. Mm-hmm.
• 0:54
  Speaker 4: So you got people out here being like, health care.
• 0:55
  Speaker 4: And you're like, what are you going to do about
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: my health care?
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: They're like, health care.
• 0:59
  Speaker 4: Authenticity is not the style of the way you said
• 1:03
  Speaker 4: the word. Authenticity is about saying the same thing consistently
• 1:05
  Speaker 4: everywhere you go.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:06
  Speaker 4: And being willing to speak to the why of the thing,
• 1:09
  Speaker 4: not just the what of the thing. Because I'm not
• 1:11
  Speaker 4: supposed to run for office. I'm a doctor by training,
• 1:13
  Speaker 4: rebuild health departments. My name is Abdulrahman, the whole thing.
• 1:16
  Speaker 4: Abdulrahman Mohammed Sayyed. What? Come out of parts of people's
• 1:18
  Speaker 4: throats they don't know they have.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:21
  Speaker 4: I mean, that's the whole thing. I'm not gonna ask
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: you to pronounce that.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: I'll spit all over you.
• 1:25
  Speaker 5: Yeah, he got a lisp. He has an elbow.
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: But that's the thing about it, is that at some
• 1:30
  Speaker 4: point you get sick and tired of watching people get
• 1:33
  Speaker 4: into this system that you trained to be a part of,
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: not to get the things they need except for to
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: come out with a huge bill. And you start to ask, okay,
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: why is this like this? And why is no one
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: doing anything about it? And at the end of the day,
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: I think we'll probably get here in the conversation, but
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: when you have a public consensus here, meaning the broader
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: public believes one thing, and a political consensus over here,
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: meaning the politicians all believe one thing, and the difference
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: is usually somebody's money. In healthcare, it's big pharma, it's
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: big insurance, it's big med tech, it's big hospitals. In
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: foreign policy, it's the weapons industrial complex, military industrial complex,
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: it's APAC, right? You can name any particular issue. And
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: so at some point, you're just like, well, you know,
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: I know what my family never had And I have,
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: but for the accident of history, that I get to
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: be born here, unlike my cousins born in Egypt, we
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: have democracy. That's a precious thing. And if it's not working,
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: we talk about democracy not working because they're stifling freedom
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: of speech and taking away the Voting Rights Act, and
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: that's true. But democracy has been slowly eroding because it's
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: not actually delivering on the thing people want. So at
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: some point, you've got to be like, let's move this
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: to see if we can actually get back to that
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: ideal because democracy is a beautiful thing when it actually
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: works for people.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: So you're a physician, so being in.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: healthcare and seeing how unfair healthcare is to most people,
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: that would lead.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: You to politics?
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: So look, I went to med school not too far
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: from here in Columbia. And anybody who's been to New
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: York Presbyterian knows that you got the basement emergency room.
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: That's where they refused to treat Malcolm X when he
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: was shot right across the street at the Audubon. And
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: then you've got the ninth floor, the Milstein Pavilion, where
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: you've got internationals who come in, pay full cash for
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: whatever procedure. That's like American inequality right there. And the
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: difference is your ability to pay. And so I had
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: a patient my fourth year who exemplified this. I was
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: doing a rotation a little bit further north. And this
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: was an indigent woman who'd fallen and hit her head.
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: It was February. It was slick. She was inebriated. And
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: she clearly had a welt. Now, if you were to
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: go to the emergency room right now having hit your
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: head with a welt, they'd give you an emergency CT scan. Why?
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: Cause I got to rule out that there's no bleed
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: in your brain that could kill you. And when I
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: asked the resident, I was like, all right, so what'd
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: the CT show? He's like, oh, we didn't do one.
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: I was like, why not? He's like, oh, she'd be
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: a social admin. Meaning I got to get her back
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: on the street before she starts withdrawing in my emergency room.
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: So I'm just not going to give her the standard
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: of care. Cause you know, at the end of the day,
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: what's the point? Wow. I took care of her for
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: two weeks alongside our, uh, my attending who's super supportive. And,
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: you know, we had this conversation and, Spent a long
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: time because she was the kind of patient I got
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: into medicine to take care of. And then, you know,
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: we had this last conversation. She was supposed to go
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: to the only rehab facility that took patients with HIV.
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: Long story short, we diagnosed her with full-blown AIDS. One
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: of the things that HIV can do is it can
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: infest your adrenal glands. So she had her whole life
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: high blood pressure. Now she has low blood pressure. She
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: had an actively bleeding pelvic mass, diabetic, and her blood
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: sugars were everywhere. Took care of her for two weeks.
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: Found the only rehab facility that would take somebody who
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: was HIV positive. And then found housing for her. So
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: she's entitled to housing because of her HIV status. And
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: we had the whole thing set up. Last day, we
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: were having a conversation about the plan for like the
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: fourth time. She's like, I'm not doing that. I'm going
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: home with my daughter. I was like, ma'am, you didn't
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: tell me you had a daughter. She's like, we didn't ask.
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: I was like, to be fair, I did. You know,
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: you were in a state at the time. And she's like, well,
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: you don't tell me what to do. I said, you're right,
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: I don't. Two weeks later, I'm going downtown from Washington
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: Heights to get a meal I'm never going to forget
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: with my friend. I step into the subway and she's
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: laid out on the seats. And I go and I
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: check on her. She doesn't remember me. I go and
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: have dinner with my friend.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: She's okay.
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: But you know, she's, she's out. I go and have
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: dinner with my friend. I go up and I pull
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: my residency application to train. And at that point I
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: was like, look, if we're not serious about the reasons
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: why people end up here, if we're not serious about
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: working on the system to make sure that it guarantees
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: people healthcare, cause she knew the script. She understood she
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: wasn't supposed to be there. By accident, she gets there
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: because people rush her to the emergency room. She understands
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: what this is going to be. She understands exactly all
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: of this. And at the end of the day, she
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: was a patient. Our system's not built to help. Meanwhile,
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: people paying $ 30, 000 for their heart procedure, flying in from wherever, Qatar, right?
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: And our system's more interested in caring for them. They
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: got a pianist on the top floor. I'm like, we
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: can't take care of the most indigent people who need
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: this healthcare the most. So that's what led me down
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: this path. I built my career in public health, rebuilt
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: Detroit's health department, led Wayne County's Department of Health, Human
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: and Veteran Services. We put glasses on kids, tens of
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: thousands of them. I took on corporate polluters to take
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: on the asthma crisis. We had every school, daycare, and
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: Head Start tested for lead in the water, eliminated medical debt,
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: built programs to provide free health insurance. And ultimately, at
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: some point, you're like, look, the best I can do
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: is deal with the funds I've got to manage a department,
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: to handle challenges. But what does it look like to
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: actually reshuffle the priorities? Because at the end of the day,
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: what's a budget but a priority statement? And our budget, what,
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: they want to raise $ 1. 5 trillion of the $ 7 trillion?
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: that we have and they want to tell us we
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: can't afford healthcare and childcare.
• 6:44
  Speaker 6: You started Naturally Where You Should as a physician and
• 6:47
  Speaker 6: epidemiologist in healthcare. What are the other issues you're hearing
• 6:51
  Speaker 6: about from folks in Michigan that they care most about
• 6:54
  Speaker 6: regardless of party lines, racial lines, generational lines? What are
• 6:59
  Speaker 6: you hearing from them?
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: You know, there's this statement that's become sort of a
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: watchword on our campaign. Because I started this campaign back
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: in April 2025. It's not even my first time running
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: for office. And No matter where I went, I could
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: be out in the most rural parts of the state
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: or at a church in Detroit or in Grand Rapids.
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: People would tell me it shouldn't be this hard. It
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: shouldn't be this hard. And it would always be followed
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: by something else. It shouldn't be this hard to afford
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: a second bag of groceries. Shouldn't be this hard to
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: pay my rent. Shouldn't be this hard to afford a home.
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: Shouldn't be this hard to pay my car note or
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: my car insurance where our car insurance is insane in Michigan.
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: Shouldn't be this hard to see a doctor. One guy
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: told me, listen, my kid is a generational baseball talent.
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: Shouldn't be this hard. to enroll in baseball, right? Back
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: in our day, you could just go and play for
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: the team. Now it's like $ 3, 000 and you got it.
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: It just shouldn't be this hard. And it's always back
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: to this question of, it seems like the system is
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: built to do two things, to figure out how to
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: pull more out of my pocket and to figure out
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: how to pay me less for what I do or
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: automate me or offshore me generally. Shouldn't be this hard.
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: So we're running a campaign to do three things. We
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: want money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: for all. And that money out of politics part goes
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: back to where we started. The difference is always somebody's money.
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: And so long as politicians get bought off by the
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: same corporations, we're going to get the same corporate politics.
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: We're going to keep doing dumb stuff with our money
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: instead of doing the smart things with our money, building schools,
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: providing for affordable healthcare, providing childcare. And we keep seeing
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: it over and over again.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: So you're right.
• 8:30
  Speaker 4: We got to disrupt it.
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: You know, I love that you, as a physician, you
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: diagnosed the Democratic Party brand as bullshit.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Like, What are the symptoms? And what's the actual underlying
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: disease that they're suffering from?
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I probably speak for a lot of
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: us here. That like, look, I'm a Democrat because the
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: other party doesn't believe people like me deserve anything. But
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: I want my party to be better. And if you
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: go back to our history, and Angela, I know I've
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: read your work. You probably back me up on this.
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: In the past, before they destroyed the unions under Reagan,
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: Democrats were funded by unions. Republicans were funded by corporations.
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: They broke the unions by basically stopping them, but right
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: to work in effect, allowing everybody to free ride on
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: the bargaining of a union. Unions lost a lot of
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: their membership, lost a lot of their money. So Democrats
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: were like, well, we got to get money too, the
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: easy way. So we'll go to the corporations too. And
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: at some point they started to take money from the
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: same exact corporation. So you had like Republican and Republican light.
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: And you see that in different eras, right? It's like
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: the era of big government is over, right? We all
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: remember that under President Clinton. And so we assented to
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: this like neoliberal approach where everything was about privatizing things out. Now,
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: here's the problem. The Democratic Party, once they started getting
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: funded by corporations, they were stuck in a bind. They
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: were always the working people's party, but at the same time,
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: they're funded by the corporation. So what do you do?
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: You do corporate light. And now you're going to people
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: and saying, well, I want to do healthcare too. We
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: want healthcare for you. You're like, how? Well, we're going
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: to empower big corporations to provide it for you. And
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: folks are like, wait, what? How is that the solution?
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: For a long time, the Democratic Party was the one
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: trying to guarantee you healthcare. And two things happened. Number one,
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: we lost the thread on working people's issues because too
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: often our policy were built around what was good for
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: a corporation who was paying the check. Mm-hmm. And number two,
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: we lost the ability to speak with any sort of
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: clear enthusiasm. So we talk about a big tent. And
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: you saw this, especially in the early 2020s, when you
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: stop talking about material issues around the redistribution of resources
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: to people, you start talking about culture issues. And so
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: you go to every part of the tent. I'm Muslim, right?
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: Famously so. And, you know, you have very well-meaning politicians
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: who come to your iftar during Ramadan. They're like, well,
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: I fasted in solidarity with you. I was like, you
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: think I can't eat? You think I can't afford my food?
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: You're about to have the best dinner you've had in
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: like three weeks, okay? If you want to eat, go eat.
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: But I don't need your solidarity when it's easy and
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: there's delicious food on the back end of it and
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: you come to me and say assalamu alaikum and make
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: me feel like I'm, you're not me, I'm not you,
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: let's not pretend. I need your solidarity when my community's
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: being trashed and attacked. I need you to speak up then.
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: Or when they're sending our tax dollars to kill literal
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: people's cousins somewhere else, I need your solidarity then. And
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: so what happened is, now you're going to different parts
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: of the little tent trying to pander to everybody, instead
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: of bringing everybody to the center of the tent saying,
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: you deserve healthcare. You deserve that a party's going to
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: stand up to the corporation to pick in your pocket.
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: You deserve to know that every time you buy something,
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: you're not subject to a monopoly that gets to lift
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: prices on you. Or every time you want to form
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: a union to actually advocate for fair benefits and fair
• 11:39
  Speaker 4: wages for your work, that they're not going to crush
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: your union. That's what you deserve. It doesn't matter if
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: you're Arab, black, white, If you're gay, straight, trans, doesn't
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: matter if your family just got here or your family's
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: been here since the Mayflower. Those are the things you need.
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: And when we have that opportunity, because we're not bought
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: off by the corporations, that's when we start to win.
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: And the funny thing about it is, you know, everybody
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: who kind of knows the ropes are like, well, you
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: can't say that. You can't possibly say that. I'm like,
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: watch me say it. And at the end of the day,
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: every single time you point to me for saying the
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: thing that everybody else is thinking, all you're doing, all
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: you're doing is showing them the alternative. So keep going.
• 12:15
  Speaker 5: Oh, go ahead. No, go ahead, man.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, so, but why can't you
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: say that when the, I feel like what is happening
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: on the democratic side is the fact that like, there isn't,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: things aren't just being said the way that they need
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: to be said. Like, why can't you say that? Because
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: they're saying you can't promise it because it's not.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: Going to happen.
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: No, they're saying you can't say that because you're going
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: to violate all the donors who are funding all of
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: the stuff. I mean, that's, that's really what it is.
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: It's just like, listen, man, there's a gravy train and
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: you're about to disrupt the gravy train. So you need
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: to stop. And then the other part of it is
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: that we've built these things where we use these terms
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: like that's radical, right? I'm not a socialist, but you
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: would think that I'm the standard bearer simply because I'm
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: willing to say that people deserve guaranteed healthcare. Like, you know,
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: if you study capitalism, you read Adam Smith, the guy
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: who coined the term, he said, there's no markets without morals.
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: He said that the biggest danger to capitalism is not
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: government regulation, it's monopoly. And guess what we're living in?
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: It's monopoly. We live in monopoly. Everything, I mean, just
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: think about it. Every one of us probably has a
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: phone in our pocket, right? Made by one of two manufacturer,
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: probably Apple or Samsung. It's got one of three carriers, right?
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: Let's say instead of calling grandma, you decide you want
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: to get on an airplane to go see grandma. It's
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: made by one of two airplane manufacturers, Boeing or Airbus.
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: And then you're probably flying here in the city. You
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: got a couple of different hubs, but you're probably flying
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: one of three different airlines. RIP Spirit, man. It was
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: like the one affordable option. So all I'm saying is-
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: Spirit was terrible though. Listen, I'm not saying you would
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: get there comfortably. I'm just saying you won't get there.
• 13:42
  Speaker 5: You might. You might get there.
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: I always wondered on a spirit flight, like, if you
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: ever had that turbulence that they tell you about the
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: oxygen mask, if there was like a quarter thing you
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: had to put in for the oxygen to come out,
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: you're like, dang, I'm out of quarters.
• 13:53
  Speaker 5: No, maybe $ 25. No, it didn't teach.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: You how to hold your breath. That was part of it.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: That was part of it.
• 13:58
  Speaker 6: You know, you brought up when you were kind of
• 14:01
  Speaker 6: responding to this idea about the slimming differences between the
• 14:05
  Speaker 6: Republican and Democratic parties being Muslim.
• 14:09
  Speaker 5: And I think What's interesting about this.
• 14:12
  Speaker 6: Era we're in now, as soon as you won the primary,
• 14:15
  Speaker 6: the attacks on your name, the hyper focus on differences
• 14:19
  Speaker 6: began to rear their heads. And I think what's remarkable
• 14:23
  Speaker 6: about it is with any other religion, without your wife,
• 14:27
  Speaker 6: who is also a doctor, a psychiatrist, wearing a hijab,
• 14:32
  Speaker 6: you guys are the quintessential American, the story of the
• 14:34
  Speaker 6: American dream, right? College educated, you know, child of an
• 14:41
  Speaker 6: immigrant father, like any other place, you would be the
• 14:45
  Speaker 6: quintessential American dream. So talk about how you're experiencing Islamophobia now.
• 14:52
  Speaker 6: And I'm saying this given my own experience of witnessing
• 14:56
  Speaker 6: this happen to Andre Carson, to Keith Ellison when I
• 14:59
  Speaker 6: worked on The Hill, and now my friend Ilhan Omar.
• 15:03
  Speaker 6: It is going to be an issue that you have
• 15:05
  Speaker 6: to combat, not just in this campaign against Rodgers, but
• 15:09
  Speaker 6: also on the hill. How will you work to combat
• 15:11
  Speaker 6: that to make it easier for kids who are Muslim
• 15:14
  Speaker 6: and have to deal with this even at school?
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: You know, I've been a kid with my name my
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: whole life. And, you know, every classroom I walked into,
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: I was probably the only. Maybe there's, by the time
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: I was in high school, there was like one other.
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: And you learn real quick that there is a small
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: minority of people who want to sustain a hierarchy that
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: gives them power at the cost of dividing us. And
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: that high school classroom is a microcosm of America generally.
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: So I learned in the high school class that like,
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: you know, if you let somebody bully you, they're gonna
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: bully you for the rest of your life. So I
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: am not out here to bully anybody, but I bully bullies.
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: So if there's a bully in the room, I am
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: going to move there and be like, I am going
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: to take you on, show you for who you are,
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: because none of us ought to live like this. But
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: the story of America is the story of a struggle
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: between those who want to bully a few to make
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: America smaller than it is and those who want to
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: embrace the idea that America is so much bigger. I'll
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: be honest with you. For as many experiences I had
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: being called names or told I was less than, I've
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: had so many more experiences of people thinking past my
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: name or using my name or my faith as an
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: opportunity to build a relationship. People don't care. What you
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: pray for, most of the time, they don't care how
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: you pray, they care what you pray for. They're not
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: caring as much about your name. They want to say
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: it right. They're a lot more interested, like, did that
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: person care to remember my name? And I think there's
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: an opportunity here to show the bullies for.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: Who they are.
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: They want to make America small. They want to tell
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: you that America is a place for only a certain
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: kind of people who pray a certain way, who have
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: a certain color of skin, who do a certain thing,
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: who look a kind of way, who love a kind
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: of way. Versus America being a kind of place where
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: actually all of us can come together on the things
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: that are bigger. And I think, you know, I want
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: to call Michigan to that idea of being able to say,
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: let's prove again. For Barack Hussein, no bottom twice. Let's
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: prove again how big Michigan can be. You don't like
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: what Donald Trump is doing. You don't like the fact
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: that he's more interested in the drapes or the reflecting
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: pool than he is in the war he started, whether
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: it's a trade war with Canada or the actual war
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: with Iran. Let's remind him how much bigger we are
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: than the small vision of what that is.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: You said something earlier, too, and it made me think.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: Neoliberals have more in common with the fascists than the
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: progressives nowadays, right? And it bugs me how the Dems
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: can find common ground with the authoritarian regime, but not
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: people in their party who are talking about affordability.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: And free health care.
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: I see Democrats fighting against people with your messaging more
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: than they do the regime in place that's hurting us
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: right now.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: Why do they do that?
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: That's a thick gravy train we're disrupting. I mean, I'm
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: just saying that at the end of the day, like
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: it almost always, you know, the answer to most, most
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: questions is usually follow the money, follow the money. And,
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: you know, and at the end of the day, right.
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: You know, you think about who I'm, I'm picking fights
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: with is blue cross blue shield, big pharma, just to
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: put it in perspective. If you look at the lobbying
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: expenditure over the last 20 years, Big Pharma is number
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: one by far. They spent $ 4 billion, $ 4 billion with
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: a B, over 20 years just lobbying. That's not electioneering me.
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: That's not giving money to super PACs and stuff to
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: get people elected. That's just on lobbying. And you think
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: about now how much they're spending in super PACs, et cetera,
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: to get their favorite candidates elected, and that's easy money.
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: And so- It turns out that if you want to
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: run the other way, I mean, you know, I came
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: through a primary where I got outspent 11 to 1,
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: $ 70 million they spent against me. You're not supposed to
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: be able to beat $ 70 million. And everybody's kind of
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: looking at me like, how'd you do that? Especially with
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: your name, right? And the point that I made is like,
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: I just, I went everywhere. I talked to everyone and
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: I said the same thing to everyone. I could be
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: a room full of billionaires. I'm like, I want to
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: tax billionaires. I'll be a room full of people who
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: are working people or retired. I want to tax billionaires.
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: I want you to have healthcare. And I think what
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: happened is people understood that the only way to end
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: around the money is not to sit there and dance
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: and try to make some donors happy while trying to
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: make other people happy or say one thing to voters
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: and another thing to donors. It's just to say the
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: thing you believe, say it clearly, say it consistently, try
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: to make it interesting so people actually want to pay attention,
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: and to say it 10 toes down. Because at the
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: end of the day, every time we think about who
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: we want to vote for, there's two questions we're asking.
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: One we know we're asking, and the other one we
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: don't quite realize we're asking. One is, what do you
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: say you want to fight for? The other one is,
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: how I know you're going to fight for it.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: And that second one is the hard part. In economics,
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: there's a fancy term called moral hazard, which is whenever
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: you interact with somebody, you enter into a relationship, how
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: you know they're going to keep up their end of
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: the bargain. And the problem that people have with Democrats
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: is not that we're saying the wrong things. It's that
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: we don't believe that Democrats are going to hold up
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: their end of the bargain. And that's because they're saying
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: something else to a donor. And so they're pushing against
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: folks like me because there's a resistance. And I know
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: a lot of these folks, and I don't think they're
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: bad people. I think they... get into the system and
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: are taught that that's how the system has to work
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: and just be like, well, listen, I'm better than the Republican.
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: And they're not wrong. They're better than Republican. But the
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: problem is if you're just better than the Republican, we're
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: talking about managed decline at this point. And I got
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: two daughters and I need America to be better for
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: them than it was for me, right? And I need
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: for their kids for it to be better. That's the
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: story of the America that could be. Like the best
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: thing America has been able to do is like unique, man.
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: America can correct. Like we can see problems and be like,
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: we could do better than that. At our best, that's
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: what we do. These people want us to make it worse.
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: But we can correct. So that's the hard part. The
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: reason they oppose people like me is because, well, you're
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: making it harder for everyone else. And my point is, well,
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: we're making it harder for everyone else. Our job isn't
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: to make it easier for a bunch of other politicians.
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: Our job is to make it easier for the 350
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: million people who live here. And if the system's not
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: working for them, then what's the point of the system?
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: And maybe it's just because nobody's been able to explain
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: to me why it's so cool to be a senator.
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: I still don't understand. I'm like, so you have to
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: be away from your family for four days a week
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: Everybody and their mom wants something from you, right? You
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: have to hang out with some of the worst people.
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: I don't know what I'm going to talk to Chuck
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: Grassley about. I think we both like ice cream. That's it, right?
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: I don't understand why this job is so great. The
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: point of the job is not the job. The point
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: of the job is the work.
• 21:19
  Speaker 6: So why are you pursuing, if you don't know why
• 21:23
  Speaker 6: it's so great, why is this the path you chose?
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: My grandmother. So my folks immigrated from Egypt. And my
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: dad's mother was the smartest, wisest person I ever met.
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: Never got to go to school. She was illiterate. Raised,
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: she was the ninth of 14 herself. Had eight babies.
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: Two of them died before their first birthday. My dad
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: was her eldest. So he watched two of his siblings
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: pass before he turned five. And she just had this like,
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: every time you step into a institution, that institution asks
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: of you things and teaches you things. And she had
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: this like uncorrupted sense of right and wrong. This incredibly
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: brilliant human being, right? There's this oral tradition and she
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: could tell the hell out of a story. I remember
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: watching Aladdin and being like, my grandma's version was better.
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: What is this trash Disney put together? My grandma's version
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: was so much better. And I remember I'd go to
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: Egypt in the summer. So I had a front row
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: seat to what my life should have been, but for
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: an accident in history. And I remember being 13 years old. And,
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: you know, when you go back to the old country,
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: I was the only one. My parents, like, sent me
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: by myself with another family. You got to bring gifts.
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: So now I'm like the cool cousin from America and, like,
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: Santa Claus and a cross, right? So, like, I'm giving
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: out gifts. I'm giving out the makeup kit. I'm giving
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: out the candy. I'm giving out. And my grandmother saw
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: that I was getting a little bit high on myself.
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: So she pulls me aside. She points to one of
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: my cousins. That one's smarter than you. Points to the
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: other one. That one's, I don't have to tell you,
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: taller and better looking than you. That one's nicer than you.
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: That one's work hard. All my cousins have something on me.
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: And by the end of this, I'm like a puddle
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: on the floor being like told off by my grandmother.
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: And I'm like, you know, Tata, what do I have
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: going for me? She's like, well, you have the most
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: important thing of all. I was like, what's that? She's like,
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: you get to go back to America at the end
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: of summer. And she was teaching me about opportunity. Now
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: here's the crazy thing. 15 hours it would take me
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: to get to Egypt. I'd cross 10 years difference in
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: life expectancy. I didn't have to go 15 hours. I
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: could go 15 minutes to the city of Detroit, city
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: of Pontiac.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Kids.
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: whose circumstance is more similar to my cousins in Egypt
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: than me. And so the question for me is ultimately
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: is like, I'm playing with house money. Like my life
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: is supposed to be very different than it is. And
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: the question that you ask yourself is like, well, what
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: are you here to do? Like if you accumulate and
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: all you're doing is making your life better for you,
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: like I've had a pretty nice life, honestly. At some
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: point you put it back into the middle of the
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: table and say, okay, what can I do using what
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: I've got to try to make things better for other people?
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: That's the point I'm making. It's not about the job,
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: it's about the work. Like, I'm not going to judge myself. Like,
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: did he get elected to the U.S.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: Senate?
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: You could get elected to the U.S. Senate and pull
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: a John Fetterman. I don't want that.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: I want to say, though, you are you're going to
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: be great at filibustering, but at least you do ultimately
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: answer the question.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I will say that.
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: I take my time. He does.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: He takes his time, but he gets to the he
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: doesn't answer the question.
• 24:12
  Speaker 6: Well, I guess I guess my the reason why I'm
• 24:14
  Speaker 6: bringing this up is because there's something that struck me.
• 24:18
  Speaker 6: when you said that, like, this is, you know, this
• 24:21
  Speaker 6: isn't a great job and you criticize the thing that
• 24:23
  Speaker 6: you're aspiring to. I'm wondering if, if some of the
• 24:28
  Speaker 6: voters right in the primary, you, you did really like
• 24:31
  Speaker 6: that frame works great with young people who are like,
• 24:34
  Speaker 6: none of this stuff is working for me. But black folks,
• 24:37
  Speaker 6: I think in particular in the Midwest and in the South, um,
• 24:41
  Speaker 6: have engaged in a politics of survival, harm reduction politics, um,
• 24:46
  Speaker 6: So for you to go and pursue this thing that
• 24:48
  Speaker 6: is a privilege to work on behalf of these folks,
• 24:52
  Speaker 6: to serve in this way, to hear somebody flippantly say like, oh,
• 24:56
  Speaker 6: this isn't something, this isn't a good job. Maybe that
• 25:00
  Speaker 6: can explain like the underperformance with black voters. If you
• 25:03
  Speaker 6: look at Detroit, for example, I think Haley Stevens obtained
• 25:07
  Speaker 6: at least 60% of the black vote. So at some
• 25:10
  Speaker 6: point we've got to figure out Like, how do you
• 25:13
  Speaker 6: bridge that gap around messaging without being inauthentic, but still
• 25:17
  Speaker 6: figuring out, hey, I got to meet these folks where
• 25:20
  Speaker 6: they are. And there is fear guiding their politics, especially
• 25:23
  Speaker 6: now in a fascist regime.
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Angela, I think you're right, and I think you
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: make a really good point. What I'll tell you is,
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: I think, you know, remember, we took $ 70 million of
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: spending against us. That $ 70 million does something. Going into
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: the attack ads that they started to hit me with
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: on July 4th, we were leading in the black community
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: and we had like up 45% approval and then they
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: did what they did. Right. Um, I think you're right
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: though on the, on the broader point, which is to say,
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: if every single time someone says, I'm going to go
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: climb that mountain, if they slip, the slip hits your
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: community hardest. There is a, an understood fear about being like, maybe,
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: maybe don't climb the whole mountain. Maybe just, let's just
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: make sure we like, you know, We keep things from
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: getting worse as they are. And I understand that there's
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: an added burden that I have in front of me
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: to make the case that we actually can succeed. And
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: the thing I always point back to is to say,
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: I hope that you'll just use my past as prologue.
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: I rebuilt the health department in the city of Detroit
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: when everybody said that was an insane thing to do.
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: Like I remember having mentors. I was a tenure track
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: faculty at Columbia, right? I was on pace to be
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: tenured before I was 30. And we're like, what are
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: you doing? You're going to a health department that doesn't
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: exist and trying to rebuild it. And my point was, yeah,
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: because what's the point of the work? Like getting these
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: accolades don't matter. What's the point of the actual work?
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: Like you're going to read what my 100th paper says
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: kind of the same thing as the last 99 versus
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: being able to actually fix problems. And so what I'll
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: tell folks is, look, I made my bones in public
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: service in Detroit and Wayne County. They're not very easy
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: places to work, right? You're talking about post-bankruptcy Detroit, post-emergency
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: management Detroit, but bringing people together to actually solve problems.
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: And I hope that we can do that in the
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: Senate too.
• 27:12
  Speaker 5: Can I just play this really quick, Leonard? And I'll
• 27:15
  Speaker 5: stop filibustering.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: No, do you think?
• 27:16
  Speaker 6: But I want to play this clip where you got
• 27:20
  Speaker 6: to talk with our friend, my friend, consciously, and you
• 27:24
  Speaker 6: had this conversation about your ties to the black community.
• 27:27
  Speaker 5: So if we could play that.
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: My commitment to our black communities didn't start because I
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: wanted to come and take a photo op. It started
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: when I left my tenure track job at an Ivy
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: League school to come back to rebuild the health department
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: in this city. Yes, sir. In the city of Detroit,
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: which is the largest majority black city in the country.
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: And I came because I remember post 9-11, I had
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: a teacher told me, hey, you need to read your history.
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: And he's like, you got to go read Alex Haley.
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: You got to read W.E.B.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: Du Bois.
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: You got to read James Baldwin. You got to read
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass. You got to read Dr.
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: Martin Luther King. You've got to read the stuff that
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: he actually wrote. Malcolm X. I learned what it meant
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: to be a person of color reading black folk and
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: the civil rights struggle. And I understand that my responsibility
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: is about trying to address racial inequities. All my work
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: is about racial inequities in health, whether it's the maternal
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: infant mortality crisis, it's protecting kids from asthma, taking on polluters,
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: putting glasses on kids' faces, eliminating medical debt. Now, you know,
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: There's been nearly $ 80 million spent against me telling lies
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: about an endorsement that my opponent didn't get or using
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: an op-ed that I wrote about a program that First
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: Lady Michelle Obama sponsored saying it was a good program,
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: but here's some things that could be better, arguing that
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: somehow I'm disrespectful to people. But look, lies have a
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: way of working. But I think the truth is more important.
• 28:48
  Speaker 6: So I wanted to play that one, apply it on
• 28:50
  Speaker 6: message discipline because you've been consistent here today with what
• 28:53
  Speaker 6: you said, especially here and with that clip. But I'm
• 28:57
  Speaker 6: curious about where this solidarity begins and ends. You talked
• 29:02
  Speaker 6: about taking your daughters, the clip continued, you talked about
• 29:04
  Speaker 6: taking your daughters to the Charles Wright Museum, all of
• 29:07
  Speaker 6: these things. How do you ensure that your reverence to
• 29:12
  Speaker 6: our history is applied in policy that is for looking
• 29:15
  Speaker 6: for black communities?
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: I really appreciate that question. Part of it is recognizing
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: that you got historical wrongs and nobody wants to pay
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: attention to anymore. You know, I was asked by Jesse
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: Waters on Fox News about reparations. And look, I think
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: it's important for the United States to address a historical
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: wrong in the way that we intended to address it
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: at the point of a historical wrong. And now everybody
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: wants to pretend we can't have that conversation anymore. It
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: also means identifying opportunities to solve problems that address an
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: issue for everybody, but specifically address the challenge for black communities.
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: So you think about the infant mortality and maternal mortality crisis.
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: The experience of being a pregnant, lower income mom who's
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: black in the city of Detroit is the experience of
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: being on a Medicaid program that reimburses at nearly half
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: the rate. It's the experience of being told that your
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: body is less than because it literally reimburses at a
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: lower rate. It's being told or asked. I go to
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: the first prenatal care visit with my wife and they say, well,
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: clearly dad's in the picture and we assume that you
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: don't drink, right? Versus I've been in the room with...
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: a mom whose demographic is different than my wife's. And
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: they're like, what drugs are you on? As if by definition,
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: she's on a drug. It's the experience of being told
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: you don't belong there and you're being given a favor.
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: So you ask yourself about what Medicare for all would mean.
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: It means that your body is given the same reimbursement
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: as everybody else. It means you don't have to worry
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: about being a second-class healthcare citizen. It means that you're
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: getting the care that you need up until and before
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: you're ever pregnant in the first place. And it means
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: that whether you're talking about somebody like my wife or
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: somebody or somebody like, you know, a lower income black mom,
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: that when she goes to that clinic, the way that
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: she pays doesn't mean it's an added level of burden
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: beyond the racism she's already going to face because of
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: the color of skin in front of that provider. It means,
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: you know, one of the things I want to do
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: is fund medical school. I wrote a paper back when
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: I was in graduate school on the differential debt that
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: people take to go to medical school in the first place.
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: You guessed it, black medical students have more debt And
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: that's a function of long-term structural racism. You have less wealth,
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: so you don't have mommy and daddy's money to be
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: able to put down on med school. So you're thinking about, okay,
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: I'm going to take $ 300, 000 in debt to be a doctor. Well,
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: that answers the question, why is the doctor she's seeing
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: not likely to look like her? So these big structural
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: solutions are in part about targeting the ways that our
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: system has failed people because we have these means-tested programs.
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: And we all know what they do with means-testing. Means-testing
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: is a fancy word of saying You have to apply
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: to be able to get it to prove that you
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: don't have the resources that would otherwise cut you from
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: having the program. So when you have big universal programs,
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: that cuts all the overhead of means testing. But what
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: it also means is that you don't have to go
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: through the humiliation ritual of having to prove that you're
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: poor enough to get. And that no matter who you are,
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: everybody's got skin in the game. Whether you're rich, you're
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: on Medicare for all. Whether you're poor, you're on Medicare
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: for all. So all of us are in this together.
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: The last thing I'm going to say is this. We
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: also have to understand that not all of the consequences
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: of structural racism are simply about money and resource. Although
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: those are the ones that politics is best able to solve.
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: Politics doesn't answer cultural problems. This is the problem that
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: I think we often have. We think politics is the
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: way and the place where we solve our cultural differences.
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: It's the place where we solve the redistribution of resources
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: so that we can create a society where everybody's got
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: the things that they need to thrive. And that's the
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: place where I'm focused on.
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: Somebody hates you because you're a Muslim. I hate you
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: because you're black. I hate you because you're a woman.
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: I hate you because you're gay. There's nothing you can
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: really do about that.
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: Well, you could pass laws to protect people from taking
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: your resources. But it's still about resources. You know what
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: I mean? It's like, oh, well, you can't fire me
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: because you're black or you're Muslim. Okay, but that's a
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: resource question. But in the end, there's cultural healing that
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: has to happen around being like, why do you hate
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: me because I'm black or Muslim? Why do you hate
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: me because? And we've got to let politics be about
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: politics and culture be about culture. And I also think,
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: that part of the game that a lot of these
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: folks play is they pit us against each other and
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: tell us if they got, you can't have. And if
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: everybody's struggling for what they got because nobody has except
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: for the billionaire, then at the end of the day,
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: we're all going to look at each other and hate
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: each other more. And that's the game they've been playing.
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: I mean, since the dawn of America, those people who
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: want America to be small, that's the game they keep
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: playing and they keep pitting us against each other. So
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: I'm just saying, look, Maybe that billionaire who's got a
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: billion dollars, by the way, and y'all know money. If
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: you've got a billion dollars, your billion makes 10%. I
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: tax you at 8%. Guess how much you made just
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: sitting on your billion dollars? $ 20 million. And they're wailing,
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: being like, you're taking our money. We're like, no, I'm
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: so sorry. You made that money on a system that
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: offered all of this infrastructure. You don't want to pay
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: back in the infrastructure. Now I take that money.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: We provide childcare.
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: We provide healthcare. We rebuild schools. We invest in infrastructure.
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: All of a sudden, folks aren't so worried about how
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: they're going to survive. And folks are actually like, you know,
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: Their culture's great. Their music's awesome. Their food's amazing, right?
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: There's so much that I'm learning together, and we're not
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: all sitting here being like, but they got it and
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: I ain't got it. And until we address that, until
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: we make our politics about that, I worry that they're
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: going to keep flushing us down a toilet bowl that
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: gets us to a place where we're broken apart, all
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: of us are struggling, folks don't have the things they need,
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: and you've got a few folks who have the means
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: to guarantee or to control so much more of our
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: politics than they even control right now.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: Let's stay here for a second. You going to get
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: him some water, Brandon?
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: It's in this vein with all that being said right
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: and in these points that you're talking on what do
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: you think is your issue where black voters still are
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: like i don't really know i'll.
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: Tell you disconnect since uh the primary was over right
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: we've had a whole lot of conversations in rooms big
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: and rooms small uh and folks are really excited about
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: the race i think there was this question of being
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: like well We've got this alternative. One feels a little
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: bit more like the politics as usual. One feels like
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: he's really going out there and trying to disrupt the system. And,
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: you know, for the exact point that we made, folks
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: are like, well, maybe don't shake it too much, right?
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: And I think now that we won, first, everybody kind
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: of loves a winner. And folks are like, hey, man,
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: you took it on the chin and you didn't move.
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: And a lot of folks are just like, respect, you know,
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: like you stood on principle and you won. But the
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: second point is also being like, we know what the
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: contrast is with Mike Rogers and what he wanted to do.
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: Before emergency management took over Detroit public schools, Mike Rogers
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: back in 1999 was laying the groundwork for it when
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: he was in the state legislature. This is a guy
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: who's going to rubber stamp everything Donald Trump wants, right?
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: He won't talk about the trade war, won't talk about
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: the actual war, right? Now he's trying to make overtures
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: being like, well, that guy's radical. I'm like, I'm radical
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: because I want you to have healthcare. You won't even
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: talk about healthcare. So- I think there's a healing that
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: has to happen there. I'm also going to say this,
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: and I think we've got to talk about this. Too often,
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: when people in communities like Detroit, and Michigan is one
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: of the most highly segregated states in the country, which
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: is part of the central challenge we face, but when
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: people interact with people who look like me, is behind
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: bulletproof glass in a liquor store or at a gas station,
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: where if you're a woman, you're getting catcalled. If you're
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: a kid, you're being sold a Lucy out the back.
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: If someone wants to use the bathroom, you're being told
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: there's no bathroom there. And that's a problem. It's a
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: big problem. I remember the first year I was in
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: the city as health director. I walk into a Arab-owned
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: gas station liquor store combination, right? And everybody knows me
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: knows I drink Gatorade Zero. That's like my thing, white
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: cherry Gatorade Zero. And so I go buy my Gatorade.
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: And the guy at the front looks at me. He's like,
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: are you Muslim? I was like, you know I'm Muslim.
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: And he's like, well, your beard is so short. I
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: was like, oh, okay, I forgot something. So I go
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: back to the back. I pick up a fifth of
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: vodka and I bring it down. And he looks at me,
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: he's like, you can't buy that. I was like, Habib,
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: you can't sell it. So why are you selling this
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: poison here? Why do you think that the same rules
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: and policies that you live by, you shouldn't live by everywhere?
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: And I think there's a conversation and we've been having
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: the conversation, frankly. What does it look like? I mean,
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: this is the hard part. Arabs and Muslims, you talked
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: about the Islamophobia that they're playing against me, right? Arabs
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: and Muslims face a level of discrimination everywhere. from folks
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: who want to tear us apart, but is nowhere near
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: the discrimination that black folks face and have faced and
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: has been compounded. So you can't scream about racism if
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: you yourself are playing into the same exact tropes against
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: somebody else. And I think there's a conversation that has
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: to bring us together to say, actually, our communities, these
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: communities need to be thinking about what it looks like
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: to invest in the communities in which you are a
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: business owner. And we need to be thinking together about
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: what it looks like to go arm in arm to
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: fight against the folks that want to take away from
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: all of us.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: That's right. I want to go back to the money, right?
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: Because I heard you tell CNN that you believe in capitalism.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: You just believe it should be regulated.
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: So why has the American political conversation, to me, gotten
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: so intellectually lazy that government should do certain things immediately
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: gets labeled as socialism?
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: Go back to the money. You watch any of these channels,
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: who pays for those? What ads are they running? The
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: most common ad on any channel is a pharma ad.
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: And look, you know, I worked for CNN for a
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: couple years as a COVID analyst, political analyst. But there's
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: a way in which there's a competition for two things.
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: Number one, attention. And the second one is money. So
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: if you're in the attention business and your job is
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: to attract enough attention so that somebody wants to give
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: you money for the attention you're able to attract, which
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: is what the business model is of you know, most media,
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: at some point you are going to have to be
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: in the business of defending the people who want to
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: advertise with you. And you can defend that explicitly, but
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: that's too much. Because at some point, if you're supposed
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: to be fair and balanced and you're like overly defending
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: these folks, well, that's one thing. So what happens is
• 39:28
  Speaker 4: you defend or you create the idea of a worldview
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: that needs to be defended at all costs. And I'm
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: not even saying that like you shouldn't be able to
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: have a corporation. Like I said, I'm a capitalist. I'm
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: saying your corporation shouldn't be able to buy a politician.
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: That shouldn't be that crazy. It shouldn't be able to
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: rig the rules So that they have a virtual monopoly
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: on you and they can raise the rate on a
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: medication you fundamentally need. And so I just think that
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: we have to like really step back and ask, okay,
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: like where does money flow and how does it flow?
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: And why is it that we seem so committed, right?
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: To a particular worldview when we know that people are
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: suffering from that. And there's a lot of power in that.
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: And I'll just tell you that like, you know, they're
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: going to spend a ton of money. Like we're going
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: to reignite, God willing, a conversation about Medicare for all.
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: And the industry is going to come together and they're
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: going to run a whole bunch of attack ads on
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: Medicare for all. And just in case somebody thought that
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: they only hated Medicare for all, they're going to run
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: attack ads on the public option, just like they did
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: in 2020. They're going to try to move public opinion
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: and they're going to try to play on people's fears
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: to say, well, it's all about what they're going to
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: take away. And all of us live in a circumstance
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: right now with the median deductible. So like, you know
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: how insurance is paid, right? So chances are, if you're
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: an employee of our heart media, they pay you every
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: two weeks or four weeks, you get a premium that
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: they pay and then that you pay a little bit
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: off your paycheck. And then there's a deductible. And this
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: is a crazy thing. It's the money you have to
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: pay to get the healthcare you thought you already paid for.
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: And it's $ 4, 500 median. So if the median income in
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: Michigan is $ 72, 000, you gotta pay $ 4, 000 for the money,
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: for the healthcare you thought you already paid for, that's
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: why we have $ 225 billion in medical debt. So they
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: want you to fear what could be more than you
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: hate what is. And I'm just saying, I don't want
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: anybody to hate anything. I want to build a system
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: where everybody looks at what is and be like, that's great.
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: You know, I went to Canada just to ask folks as,
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: you know, it's a joke. How do you guys deal
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: with your medical debt? And the look that gave me
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: was like, what? What do you mean? And I had
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: this one really nice, they like weren't in on the joke.
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: Very nice lady. She's like, can I tell you something?
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: Are you from America? I was like, yes. We don't
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: have medical debt because the government, like we pay taxes
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: and the government cares for our healthcare. I was like,
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: what about your lines? And they're like, okay, well, You
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: know what? I'd never have a line. If I had
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: a heart attack right now, I don't have to wait
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: in any line. In America, you get a heart attack.
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: I mean, if you're uninsured, you still pay for that deductible, right?
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: If you're uninsured, you're not getting anything. And they trick
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: us into fearing what the future would be. I wrote
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: this book back in 2020. And the problem with it
• 42:04
  Speaker 4: is it came out. in March of 2020, which was
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: like when there was a real epidemic, COVID. But it
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: was about an epidemic of insecurity. And I made the
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: argument that like, not the insecurity of like, oh, that
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: made me feel like I look bad. Insecurity as in,
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: I'm always so worried about what's gonna happen next, that
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: I am in this, like stuck in this race of
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: trying to hold on to what I got because the
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: experience of living in America is always having less. So
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: if that's your attitude, always gonna get worse. When somebody
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: comes up and says, hey, we can make it better.
• 42:32
  Speaker 4: They're like, nope, it's gonna get worse. And I think
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: we're stuck in that paradigm of insecurity. And what I'm
• 42:37
  Speaker 4: trying to be able to do is say, look, it's
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: gotten so bad already. It just shouldn't be this hard.
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: And what could we do to try to make it easier?
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: And my job, and this is the thing that I
• 42:46
  Speaker 4: think they hate about me, is they think I'm going
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: to stick my little bubble. I'm only going to hang
• 42:49
  Speaker 4: out with folks who already agree with me. And I'm
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: going to say the things. No, I go everywhere. So
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: we go out, you go up north in Michigan. It's
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: always hilarious. You got people from Southeast Michigan where folks
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: are more likely to look like you and me. And
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: they'll be like, I went up north. And guess whose
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: yard signs I saw? They said Abdul. Like, I didn't
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: know they... And the point I'm making is, turns out
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: that when you get people past the differences they try
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: to push on us, the divisions they try to push
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: on us, and you just sit down and be like, hey,
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: wouldn't it be better if some CEO who makes $ 10
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: million made a little bit less so you could have healthcare?
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: Wouldn't it be better? If you had a union so
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: that when they're coming to put a data set in
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: your backyard to build the AI to automate your job,
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: that you all could fight together to protect your job,
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: wouldn't it be better if you could afford your home
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: or your kid, who you raised in this beautiful community,
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: would want to stay here? People are like, yeah, it
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: would be better. So they start thinking past your name
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: and being like, looks like you're actually not bought off.
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: Looks like you're actually telling me the truth. And when
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: I look at your public service, it looks like you
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: got kicked to classes and took on corporate polluters. I'm
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: going to give you a chance.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: I want to flip the question around, right? Because I
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: feel like everybody just talks in extremes, right?
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: So where do you think progressives sometimes get intellectually lazy
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: when they talk about capitalism? Because they talk about it
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: with zero nuance nowadays. It's like, oh, capitalism is just bad. Like,
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: what does capitalism produce that you would actually want to preserve?
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: So what is capitalism? Capitalism is using the power of
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: markets and supply and demand to allocate the flow of
• 44:12
  Speaker 4: capital to put that capital into places that are maximally
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: productive for the exchange of money. That's capitalism. And the
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: two disruptors on capitalism are markets, the big disruptor on
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: capitalism is anything that disrupts the flow of money as
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: a function of supply and demand. And the reason that
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: I argue that we're not actually living in capitalism, we're
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: living in corporatism is because corporations have gotten big enough
• 44:40
  Speaker 4: that they're able to expand their power both horizontally across
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: different pieces. Think about Amazon, right? They're just getting into
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: different businesses. and vertically, meaning the power in their own
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: business across the supply chain. And when that happens, A,
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: they're disrupting any sort of ability to compete with them
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: on their own terms economically, which is why the argument
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: is you actually have to break them up if you
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: want an actual functioning market. The second is their ability
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: then to buy politicians who are going to rewrite the
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: rules to make it favorable for money to flow to them.
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: So what do I think... we get wrong is that
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: at the micro scale, it works pretty well. Small businesses
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: work pretty well. If you make better coffee than Starbucks,
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: people are going to buy your coffee. That's good. We
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: want that, right? And that's where I think centrally we
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: get wrong. Second, I think we get too interested in
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: the meanings of words, right? People are like, well, I'm
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: going to fight for this. I'm like, I'm not interested
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: in defending a word. I'm interested in defending people. And
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: we get caught up in like, ah, well, We're going
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: to campaign by slogan. We're going to say these three words,
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: and it's going to mean this, and we're going to
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: be for one word and against the other. I'm like, no, actually,
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: so maybe what we should do is apply the goal,
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: which is to allow people to live their best, most
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: dignified lives, then ask what is it they need to
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: be able to do this, and then work back from
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: there and say, what about the system's not working, and
• 46:03
  Speaker 4: how do we make it work better? and then be
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: real targeted. Maybe it's just because I'm a scientist and
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: I'm a doctor. It's like, you'd be like, oh, they
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: got a gunshot wound. You go in there with your
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: fingers and pull it out. No, don't do that.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't deal in extreme.
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: No, you actually have to step back and be like,
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: all right, we're going to have to get some imaging
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: to understand where the bullet went. What are the sensitive
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: structures around that bullet? How much time do we have
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: to operate? And then let's go in and make maximally
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: effective healthcare decisions with minimal harm. That's what I'm interested in.
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: People come out and be like, oh, he wants to
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: destroy the system. No. I want to bring my tool set.
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: I want to bring down the part that doesn't work. Right.
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: Like deconstruct it. And I want to take those extra
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: pieces and build the part that should work. That's the goal. Right.
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: Because I want things to work for people. Right. For me,
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: it's not about winning some ideological wars. It's so like
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: grandma and great grandkids are all in a good place.
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: We do that. We're winning.
• 46:54
  Speaker 6: You have mastered language in some spaces, though, on the campaign,
• 46:59
  Speaker 6: talking about Trump's trade wars and the tariffs. This is
• 47:03
  Speaker 6: an area that, again, would hopefully bring people together on
• 47:07
  Speaker 6: a bipartisan or nonpartisan level because Michigan in particular has
• 47:11
  Speaker 6: impacted Canada. Just this week announced counter tariffs as high
• 47:16
  Speaker 6: as 50% on goods like cotton and steel, which is
• 47:21
  Speaker 6: really important to a state like Michigan. Can you talk
• 47:25
  Speaker 6: about why this tariff battle is so detrimental to Michigan
• 47:31
  Speaker 6: and and how you would fight back against it.
• 47:33
  Speaker 5: I'm a little biased.
• 47:34
  Speaker 6: I'm a Washington State girl. So we are pretty close
• 47:37
  Speaker 6: to Canada.
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: So you know, Canadians are literally the nicest people. They're
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: the only people I know who will preemptively apologize for
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: a thing they didn't do. I'm sorry. You're like, for what?
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: Just for anything I may or may not do. It's
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: like it's a contract with you. If I injure you
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: at all, I've preemptively apologized. So if you're picking a
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: trade war with Canada, you're just an asshole. But let's
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: actually step back and ask what tariffs are supposed to do.
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: The only reason you would put a tariff. So what
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: a tariff is, is if I tariff Angela, if she
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: wants to sell something to me, I gotta pay an
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: extra bit of money to get that thing in. That's
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: what a tariff is. So when he puts a tariff
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: on Canada, he's telling us we gotta pay a little
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: bit more for his vanity tariff. Now, what would be
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: the point of tariffing? You would tariff if you had
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: a competing industry that was competing with somebody else. And
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: you would say, listen, if you wanna buy the external one,
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: you're gonna have to pay more because we wanna protect
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: the one here at home. One example of where tariffs
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: make sense, in Michigan, we grow the best cherries, okay?
• 48:35
  Speaker 4: And those cherries, they all harvest in three weeks. And
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: one of the problems is when they harvest, we get
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: this massive influx of frozen imported cherries from Turkey. Why?
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: Because they want to undercut the price of cherries by
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: flooding the market with more cherries. So now cherries are
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: super plentiful. So the price goes down and they're doing
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: that so that they can in effect kill our cherry farms.
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: Here's the weird thing. Big Ag is actually supportive because
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: they know if they undercut cherry farms, those farmers have
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: to sell. You know what they sell to? Big corn growers.
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: The big, big ag folks based out of Delaware. It's crazy.
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: So you got farmers working against farmers.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: I've never heard the term big ag in my life.
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: It's the first time. I know what it means, but
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: I've never heard twice.
• 49:18
  Speaker 4: I mean, but they control a lot of the food
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: we have. So all of that is to say now,
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: if we're serious about tariffing, what we should be saying
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: is instead of just having arbitrary tariffs, because I don't
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: like you and you made me feel small, it would
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: be saying, where could we use tariffs in a thoughtful way?
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: So we want to be building things in America. We
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: want to protect and promote our auto industry. We want
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: to protect and promote our agricultural industry. So we're going
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: to have very targeted tariffs with clear, transparent goals for
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: those tariffs. And we're going to say for this time,
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: or so long as we're helping our industry grow, we're
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: going to tariff your goods. So we protect our own industry.
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: So people buy local. And once this industry grows, we
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: want to be able to sell to you. So we're
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: going to bring those tariffs down and go from there.
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: Ultimately though, right now, this is a vanity project by
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump to do two things. Number one, exert global
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: control on other countries. By saying, we're going to tariff
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: your goods so you basically don't have access to our market.
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: And two, to get curry favor with the corporations, because
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: now all the corporations who don't want to be subject
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: to the tariffs, you know what they do? They come
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: in and say, hey, what can we do for you?
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: So he's trying to grow his own power. Like all
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: things Trump, it's hamfistic, fisted, it's chaotic, it's self-serving, and
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: it doesn't help us. We pay the cost of it.
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: There's a world where tariffs could be valuable. This ain't it.
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: Let's talk Assam Paikov. You know, Hassan, he supported you.
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: He campaigned with you. He helped introduce you to younger voters.
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: And now you're distancing yourself from comments he made about
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: American Jews in Israel. At what point do you have
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: to say, I benefited from this person's platform, so I
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: also have a responsibility to confront him when I think
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: he's wrong?
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: So I'll be honest. This is the odd thing about
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: the way we think about this. It'd be like, you know,
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: I come on your show. Let's say I invited you
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: guys out to Michigan. I hope you'll come. Michigan's great.
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: Come out. And you're like, hey, Abdul, I talked to him.
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: I like him. I think he's good. I think he
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: cares about you. And then you, let's say, say something
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: that I disagree with. And I'm like, I disagree with
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: that thing. Does that mean that I'm condemning you? No,
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: I just disagree with the thing you said. So my
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: point is that the way we do politics is like,
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: everybody thinks they learned the lesson from the 2020s where
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: cancel culture doesn't really work. And now there's this massive
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: effort to cancel Hassan. My point is that I don't
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: do cancel culture. I go everywhere. I talk to everybody.
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: I hang out with you guys. I hang out with Hassan.
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: I hang out with Jesse Waters on Fox. Why are
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: you pointing over here when you're saying Jesse? No, no, no, sorry, sorry.
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: Jesse Waters on Fox.
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: There you go, bye, Jesse.
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: Sorry, bye, Jesse.
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: I was like, damn, Angelo, you be on Fox?
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: No. No.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: I'm so sorry.
• 51:47
  Speaker 5: It was a joke.
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: But the point that I'm making is, I think we
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: got to stop with the cancel culture. It's not about like,
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: where are you on this one individual? It's more, do
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: you agree or disagree with the thing that the person said?
• 51:58
  Speaker 4: And the thing about it is that like, when we
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: play as if the whole person can be reduced down
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: to a single soundbite that you took out of context.
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: You're not dealing with real life. That's not how real
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: life works. I love my wife dearly. Do I agree
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: with her on everything? No. Do I agree with everything
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: I've always said? No. My opinions, positions change. So the
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: point that I'm making is, it's not about distancing from
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: an individual. It's about saying, here's the thing I disagree with.
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: And also, the attempt that they're using right now is
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: to make this entire campaign, Mike Rogers, who I'm running against,
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: has nothing to say about anything. And so his whole
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: thing is, let me tie these two people together and
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: then we'll try to push a cancel war against the
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: one to cancel the other. That's his whole campaign strategy.
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: And here's the thing about it. My campaign has never
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: been about a streamer in California. He doesn't speak for me.
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: I don't speak for him. There are a lot of
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: things he says that I deeply agree with. People deserve healthcare.
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: We shouldn't be fighting dumb wars. The war in Iran
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: is ridiculous. Donald Trump is a fascist. All true. There
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: are things he said I disagree with. There are things
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: he said he now disagrees with.
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: And so I just don't think about it as the like,
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: are you distancing yourself from a person, et cetera, et cetera.
• 53:07
  Speaker 4: The whole discourse is intended to confuse and distract us
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: from the actual issue. He never spoke for me. I
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: don't speak for him. He has his opinions. I have mine.
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: There's a lot of them I agree with. There are
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: some of them that I don't. But the campaign for
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: us is about getting money out of politics, putting money
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: in your pocket, passing Medicare for all. It's about what
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: we can build together in Michigan. And they're attempting to
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: distract us by taking us back to the cancel culture
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: of the 2000s and trying to play that game again.
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: And I'm just gonna say that, remember the whole Rogan discourse?
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: Should've gone on Rogan. Do you know who was invited
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: to campaign with Vice President Harris at the DNC? Assam Piker.
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: Who had said at that point all the things that
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: they're working to try and cancel him on. So I'm
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: against cancel culture. And instead of playing the cancel culture
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: gotcha game, I'm interested in parsing out the things people
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: have said as they've said them, and deciding whether I
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: agree or disagree. But nobody speaks for me but me, right?
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: And my spokespeople.
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: I agree with everything you said.
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: But, you know, politicians practice guilt by association all the time.
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: Democrats will connect Republicans to the extremists on the right.
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: Republicans will now connect, you know, you to controversial voices
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: on the left. What is the intellectually consistent standard?
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: I think if somebody's a political actor and you're associating
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: with that political actor, meaning it's not what they said,
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: it's what they did, then, A, like, you are signing
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: on to that regime. So Mike Rogers... Right. Donald Trump
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: is like imminently cancelable. Why? It's not just what he's saying.
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: What he says is offensive enough. It's what he's doing.
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: And so, yeah, I think I think I think taking
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: Mike Rogers and being like, listen, Donald Trump is all
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: that his think is all over you there. I think
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: when you're talking about somebody whose action is saying parse
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: them out by what they say. Joe Rogan's action is
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: saying your action is saying Hassan Piker's action is saying
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: these are not people who are they have power by
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: the platform, but they're not in a position to have
• 54:54
  Speaker 4: actual political power. They don't control the levers. They don't
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: vote on things. aside from their own individual vote. And
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: I think the intellectually fair standard is to say, you
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: need to parse those people out based on the thing
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: that is said, not the person, right? And I think
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: if you're talking about somebody who's in political power, it's
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: a different story. I also think that you don't have
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: to go and have a conversation with somebody. And you
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: can say that the preponderance of the things that somebody
• 55:15
  Speaker 4: says are off. Take Nick Fuentes, for example. The preponderance
• 55:19
  Speaker 4: of the things that he has said is that he
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: just hates people who don't look like him. You know,
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: you take Hassan and there are things that he said
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: that I think were like not well said. There are
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: things that he said that I just disagree with. But
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: I think if you sat down with Hassan and you
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: were like, hey, does this person hate certain groups of people?
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: It's not what they're trying to turn him in to be.
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: They're trying to equate him and David Duke and him
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: and Nick Fuentes. And the fact that they're working so
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: hard to character assassinate him suggests that there is a
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: disjunct there between what he's actually saying and what people
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: hear him saying who actually pay attention. If anybody starts
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: to pick you apart out of context, it's never done
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: in good faith.
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: The funny thing is people use nuance when it's people
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: that they like.
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: Hunter Biden can sit with Nick Fuentes and say he
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: likes Nick Fuentes.
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: And everybody be like, well, we still love Hunter Biden,
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean? But let you do that.
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: But isn't the difference though, because he's running for a seat,
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: like Hunter Biden is just Biden's son. I mean, that's
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: of course, but also like what can Hunter Biden do
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: to make decisions for people? And if he's put in
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: a seat, he can make decisions for people. So people
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: want to make sure. It's not what he can do.
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: It's the fact that he has audience to influence and
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: people want to make sure that he's your intentions don't
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: align with his because of the things that they don't
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: agree with that he said. And you said that there
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: are some things you don't agree with also, but then
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: there are some things that you feel like people misinterpreted.
• 56:35
  Speaker 5: What do you think people misinterpreted?
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: I think, so you guys speak on microphones for a
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: good part of your day. Whenever anybody tries to cut
• 56:46
  Speaker 4: you out of context, they're never doing it in good faith.
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: No.
• 56:49
  Speaker 5: Ever.
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: And this guy streams for eight hours a day, seven
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: days a week. You think there's not stuff you could
• 56:56
  Speaker 4: pull him out of context? And so most of the time,
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: you know, when you give his, what he's saying, room
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: to breathe, right? And the fact that he has to
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: fill up eight hours of airspace, you're like, all right,
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: so what I'm hearing right now, the clip, whatever the
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: clip is, it's going viral of him, is usually being
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: clipped out of context to say a particular thing. And
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: it's usually being done specifically to smear somebody who's connected
• 57:16
  Speaker 4: to him. And the funny thing about me is that like,
• 57:18
  Speaker 4: you know, I've been married to the same woman for
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: 20 years now. Like, every attack that they give on
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: me is guilt by association. It's almost never been like,
• 57:28
  Speaker 4: Abdul did, Abdul said. I'm like, okay, so you're going
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: to guilt by association me into non-existence? Let's see how
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: that works for you. I just disagree with that kind
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: of politics. But to your point, you said something really important, Lauren,
• 57:38
  Speaker 4: and I want to pick up on that. The reason
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: we go everywhere to talk to everybody is like, you
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: guys are perfectly lovely people and I really enjoy the conversation,
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: but it's also because there are a lot of people
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: listening here. And as a practitioner of politics... My job
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: is to go and speak to those folks to say,
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: here's a pathway into our politics that allows you to
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: express a particular set of opinions through a leader that
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: you might support, right? That's what we're trying to do
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: in representative democracy in the first place. And we're telling
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: people when you try to cancel somebody that the people
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: who listen to them are not worth reaching out to.
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: And I'd reject that on its own terms. And then B,
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: what happens when you don't give people a pathway back
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: into politics. Where do they go?
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: What do they do?
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: If you believe in democracy, then democracy is about going
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: and talking to people and having a free exchange of conversation.
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: I got a lot of shit for going on Fox News.
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: People are like, why would you platform Fox News? I'm like,
• 58:35
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry.
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: They're big. They already got a huge platform.
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: Yes, they platform me.
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: And it was great for you, I think.
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and the point that I'm making is like, look,
• 58:42
  Speaker 4: they're going to disagree with me. They're going to try
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: and pat me. The guy wanted to have a conversation
• 58:45
  Speaker 4: about everything that was not gas, groceries, and healthcare.
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: What do you think about transgenders in the WNBA?
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry, I don't think about it that much. It
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: seems like you think about.
• 58:53
  Speaker 5: It a lot.
• 58:55
  Speaker 6: A core part of what you have to do is
• 58:58
  Speaker 6: get voters. And that means you have to go everywhere
• 59:00
  Speaker 6: to get voters. But I do want to get back
• 59:02
  Speaker 6: to the job you love to hate. Um, I want
• 59:06
  Speaker 6: to know the first bill you'd introduce. I have questions
• 59:08
  Speaker 6: about committee assignments you'd seek. So these, this is just
• 59:11
  Speaker 6: an important couple of questions that I really want to hear.
• 59:14
  Speaker 6: And I'm sure voters would want to hear your answer
• 59:16
  Speaker 6: to this. So what's the first bill you'd introduce as
• 59:17
  Speaker 6: a United States Senator?
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: So, uh, can I, can I give you three?
• 59:22
  Speaker 5: Sure, but do them quickly because I have these other
• 59:24
  Speaker 5: questions that I already got you on.
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: Because you said filibustering earlier, and then you all cut
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: in and be asking about something else.
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: We're not in a rush.
• 59:33
  Speaker 5: You know he'll cut in. You know I'm not lying.
• 59:35
  Speaker 4: Ending Citizens United, right? And I think there's a belt
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: and suspenders way to do that. There's not just Ending
• 59:39
  Speaker 4: Citizens United. The Supreme Court comes out and says, ah, well,
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: we've already interpreted the First Amendment to include money and
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: the 14th Amendment to include corporations. I think there's also
• 59:49
  Speaker 4: ways to say, all right, well, there's going to be
• 59:50
  Speaker 4: public funds that come down every single time a corporation
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: funds a campaign and watch that corporate funding go to zero.
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: Number two.
• 59:57
  Speaker 6: And for our listeners, Citizens United is a Supreme Court
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 6: case that decided that corporations were people.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 5: And that's why big money is in politics.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: It basically says that corporate money is the same as
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: your speech. And if we have the freedom of speech
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: and they have the freedom to spend money in elections,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: which is bullshit, but like that's what they decided.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 6: The second Supreme Court is bullshit, but carry on. Besides
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 6: Ketanji and Sonia.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 4: Well, I think the way the Supreme Court works right
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: now is that it's been decoupled from the political process.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: And they like to think that they're like, you know,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 4: sages in robes. We're all seeing what some of these
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: folks have been up to. The second one is the
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 4: John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Right. They've already come for
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 4: democracy on its own terms. And that's a problem. Third
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 4: is Medicare for all. And then the fourth one would
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: be the PRO Act.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 5: Oh, you have four now?
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: I got a bunch.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: I'm so sorry. Actually, you have 10. I could keep going.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 4: But the point is the PRO Act to enable union organizing.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: I think you've got to hit at the structure by
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: which power is being siphoned off from the everyday people
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: and put into the hands of the corporations. And I
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: think these are a couple of critical things that we
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: could do to address it. And then on committee assignments, health, education, labor,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: and pensions would be an obvious one. Second one is
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 4: foreign relations. And look, a lot of people, when I
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: say foreign relations, people are like, well, that's about something
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: that happened over there. I'm like, no. Every dollar that
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: they send over there to drop a bomb on a
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: child over there is a dollar they are spending here
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: to provide schools for your own kids. I clapped some
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 4: kids in earlier in the week at Detroit Public Schools.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: And this was a school that was beautifully rebuilt. Detroit
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: Public Schools had $ 700 million invested in their school buildings.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: They're still $ 1. 7 billion down. You think about how much
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: money we've been spent to destroy other kids' schools, other kids.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: That money should be spent here. And then a third
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 4: one is the committee on the budget, right? And banking.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 4: I like those areas where you can start to get
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 4: at the goal statement. That is our budget. That to
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: me is really important.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 6: When you consider, we don't really know how these elections
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 6: are going to pan out because the president right now
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 6: is even playing with the rules of how we can
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 6: cast ballots. Of course, with the latest executive order on
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 6: mail-in ballots, exactly how he votes. But I'm curious to
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 6: know how your agenda shifts. If you're in the minority,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 6: elected and you're in the minority, you're elected and you're
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 6: in the majority. Does your agenda shift or will you
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 6: still be fighting for the same things, meeting with Chuck Grassley,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 6: who you all just like ice cream, but you may
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 6: have to find common ground with to get your agenda passed?
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 6: So how does that shift if you're in the majority
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 6: or the minority?
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: So if we're, either way, there's two big responsibilities I have.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 4: Number one, throw as much sand in the gears in
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: the Trump administration as possible. And I can do a
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: lot more of it if we're in the majority because
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 4: you have subpoena power. So I can't wait to grill
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 4: RFK Jr. I'm like, my dude throws around these big
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 4: words thinking he's the only one who knows what they mean.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 4: I'd be the first Democratic doctor elected since 1969, first
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 4: ever public health official. I'm like, all right, baby, you
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: want to have this conversation? Let's do it. You know,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 4: you want to talk big words? I actually know what
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: they mean. So that's- What would you ask him? You know,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: I don't want to give away my game, but like,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 4: there's a lot of different ways to use big words
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: to describe very mundane things. You know what dihydrogen oxide is?
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: I don't know. It's this. Water?
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 5: There's hydrogen, right?
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: H2O, dihydrogen oxide. You can use naming conventions to say
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: a bunch of different things.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: I do H2O though.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you can do H2O, but the point that I'm
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 4: making is, you can imagine sitting with an RFK Jr.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: and being like, hey, so how come you've allowed a
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: chemical that has killed thousands of people every month to
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 4: go into the bodies of our kids? You've done nothing
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: about it. Dihydrogen oxide is a scourge. How come you
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 4: are not regulating as the secretary of HHS? And you
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 4: can imagine him being like, well, we're going to get
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 4: right back to it. We're going to do something about this.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 4: I'm like, yeah. You know, water kills a lot of people.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 4: It's also critical for life. Right? That's the way the
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: world works sometimes. So if you want to sit here
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 4: and point to like, well, you know how many people
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: died because of this particular chemical agent? You're like, okay, yeah.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: People drown on water.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 4: You can water overdose. But also, if you take away
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 4: water from somebody for more than three days, they're done.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: So if you want to have big words to make
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: dumb arguments, you can... But let's also just use that
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: back against you. So that's goal number one. Goal number two, though,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 4: is to go out and build the conversation that allows
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 4: us to elect a president in 2028 who is going
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 4: to be ready to pass those bills in the first
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 4: two years. And that's a conversation we got to have
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 4: as a public. Now, here's the thing about it. Michigan
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 4: is a swing state. Michigan is also going to be
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 4: the first swing state on the primary calendar. So we
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 4: got an opportunity now to get folks to start paying
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: attention to what Michiganders want and need. So if you
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 4: want to run for president, come meet the 10 million
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 4: people in my state. You should hear about why it
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 4: is that they elected somebody who wants Medicare for all,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 4: wants money out of politics, wants money in your pocket,
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 4: wants to keep our money here instead of doing dumb
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: wars and genocide somewhere else. You should come and have
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 4: a conversation with them. See what they think. And by
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 4: the way, I'm going to go out into other places
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 4: and start having conversations about who we are and who
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: we want to be.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: I saw somebody say that they attack you more than
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: they do, like, say, a Mondani. because you could actually
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: run for president one day. Have you heard that?
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: I have no intention to do that. Don't wish that
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 4: on me. They probably will. It's also because it's Michigan. Like,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: they think, you know, they kind of, you know, he's
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: an extremely talented politician. But they're like, it's New York.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 4: You know what I mean? Like, people always have their
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: ideas in New York. But Michigan, Michigan is the heart
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 4: of American politics. When Michiganders choose to push back on
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 4: Trumpism and a bootlegger Mike Rogers, who's a coward and corrupt.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 4: And they choose a guy with politics that says, hey, listen,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 4: we actually got to talk about corporate corruption. We got
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 4: to talk about getting money out of politics. What does
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 4: that mean for the rest of the country? What does
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 4: that signal to everybody running for president? That's what they're
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 4: afraid of. And they attack me because it's Michigan. And
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 4: they also think they can win. They think, I mean,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 4: if you look at Mike Rogers' ads, you look at
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: his appearances, it's all red meat to the base. Here's
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: the funny thing about it. Part of me is like,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 4: all right, so you're going to call me They call
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 4: me a terrorist. They're going to call me a communist.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 4: And then the funny thing about it is they're like,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: did you see his Blue Schools video? He's also not serious.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 4: I'm like, so he's a not serious communist. Is he
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 4: not serious or is he dangerous? What is it? What
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 4: is it you want to say about him? And the
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 4: problem is, is that they're having trouble labeling me because
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 4: at the end of the day, they don't have something
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 4: to say about the issues that people face.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: I'll take not serious over Nazis any day. Fair.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 4: But we want serious about your groceries. We want serious
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 4: about your health care. We want serious about your rent.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 4: We want serious about infrastructure, serious about schools, serious about
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 4: keeping our money here. And they have nothing to say
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 4: about that because Mike Rogers can't. And here's the funny thing.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump's not helping him. Every single time Donald Trump
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 4: reaches for the red meat and says my name, that's
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 4: the day Mike Rogers is losing. Right? Because people hate,
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 4: I mean, people are sick and tired of that guy.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 4: And so he keeps saying my name and I'm like,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 4: all right, man, you want to make this about you?
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 4: You should ask Mike Rogers how he feels about that.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 4: Because Mike Rogers is a beta, a non-playing character. And,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 4: you know, every day Trump is coming after me, he's
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 4: proving that.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 6: There was an Al Jazeera article that came out recently
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 6: about Dearborn, Michigan, bringing this up because that will forever
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 6: be a sore spot and a point of trauma, at
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 6: least for me in 2024. And there is a woman
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 6: who is quoted as saying, I said from the beginning,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 6: I'm willing to live through another four years of Trump
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 6: that we expected him to be bad on our issues,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 6: but it was a pill we were willing to swallow
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 6: in order to hold the Democratic Party accountable. How will
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 6: you bridge the gap with the folks in Dearborn, going forward,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 6: representing them, knowing that, of course, those weren't your politics.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 6: I know they've tried to lie and say that you
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 6: were leading the uncommitted movement. But can you talk about
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 6: how you'll bridge this gap?
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah. That was the most frustrating 107 days of my
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 4: experience in politics. I endorsed uncommitted because of the example
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 4: of the black community in the fight against apartheid in
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 4: South Africa. This was a community said, we're not going
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 4: to allow our public officials to continue to rubber stamp
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 4: a policy by which people are openly, actively, and directly
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 4: discriminated against for the color of their skin. And it
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 4: was effective. And going into the presidential election, we'd watched
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 4: genocide perpetrated by our tax dollars. Imagine your own cousins.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 4: I could tell you a lot of friends of mine
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 4: who lost family in Gaza. being murdered by your tax
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 4: dollars at the hands of a foreign government. And watching
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 4: the party who had spent a lot of time building
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 4: relationships and telling you that your voice mattered and you
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 4: have a seat at this table, completely ignore anything you
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 4: had to say. And the idea of uncommitted was not
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 4: about the general election. It was about taking a shot
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 4: across the bow to warn that there would be consequences
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 4: if folks' democratic perspective, if their voice was ignored. And
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 4: so I endorsed uncommitted. And then when President Biden dropped out,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 4: and you had Vice President Harris, I said, look, we've
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 4: got a new nominee. And whether you see this from
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 4: the eyes of a child in Detroit, who I'm responsible
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 4: for at the time, I was the health director for
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 4: Wayne County, or the eyes of a child in Gaza,
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump is going to be worse. And a vote
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 4: is not about the past, it's about the future. And
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 4: so I spent my time having endorsed the Vice President
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 4: on the phone with the Vice President's campaign and on
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 4: the phone with the Arab and Muslim community being like, oh,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 4: But the vice president was like, okay, where do we
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 4: evolve on this policy? You can't just have this policy.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 4: And on the phone with the Arab and Muslim community
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 4: being like, do you remember what the first thing he
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 4: did was when he was elected in 2020? Do you
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 4: remember the Muslim ban? Do you remember all of this?
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 4: I want you to think about what a second term
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 4: where he's unleashed, what that's going to look like. And
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 4: in the end, I couldn't maneuver. I've since had really
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 4: important healing conversations with the Arab and Muslim community. Like,
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 4: all right. So what did this get us? Where are
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 4: we now? Look at the wars. Look at the war
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 4: in Iran. Look at what's happened to Gaza. Look at
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 4: what they're still doing in the West Bank. Look at
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 4: where our money is still going. And conversations with the
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 4: vice president herself. And I think we learned a really
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 4: important set of lessons. But here's the thing. I took
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: it on the chin both times. When I endorsed on committee,
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 4: you can imagine the Democratic Party being like, what are
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 4: you doing? And then when I endorsed Vice President Harris,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 4: you can imagine the Arab and Muslim leader being like,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 4: what are you doing? And the thing I was trying
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 4: to do was stand for the truth both times. We
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 4: were in a shit situation. What is the least bad
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 4: you can do in all those situations? What is the
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 4: thing that you can do to project a set of
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 4: values and morals into the thing? Now, I think folks
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 4: have looked back on that and said, okay, so where
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 4: do we go from here? And I'll be honest with you,
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 4: it's more of a conversation about the Democratic Party. Because
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: here's the thing, you know who the biggest spender in
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 4: my primary was? You know, it was AIPAC. Trying to
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 4: foist their view That our foreign policy should be dictated
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 4: to us by a foreign government onto the Democratic Party
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 4: in the state of Michigan. And voters don't want that.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 4: It's anti-democratic. We got outspent 11-1 and still won. You're
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 4: not supposed to be able to do that. You're a
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 4: student of politics. You're not supposed to be able to
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 4: do that. So what we are able to do now
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 4: is bring, I think, communities together to say, how do
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 4: we lead on principle? And principle tells us if you're
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 4: the party of human rights, you don't fund genocide abroad.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 4: If you're the party... of equal rights, you don't allow
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 4: your money to be sent when it needs to be
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 4: spent doing things like putting schools back together. I mean,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 4: you got in the city of Detroit, median income of
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 4: $ 14, 000 in some communities. Kids going to schools, they look
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 4: like they did 50 years ago. And in the end,
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: all that money that should be spent there is being
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 4: sent over there. Like that makes no sense. And we
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 4: can be right on this issue and we can lean
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 4: on this issue. We can win on the issue. But
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 4: people want to know that you're like honest about what
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 4: you say. It's like, it's, it's, this has become a
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 4: moral Rorschach test in ways because it's like, so you
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 4: say you're for human rights, but you can't see a genocide.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 4: So you say you're for, why? Well, the difference that
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 4: we started is somebody's money. Everybody's afraid that AIPAC is
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 4: going to come in, drop a $ 32 million war chest
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 4: on them and they can't survive. And the point that
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 4: I'm making is to your question, What's the point of
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 4: survival if you can't do the thing you said you
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 4: were going to do?
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: This is the point.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 4: It's like, it's not that I hate the job. It's
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 4: that the job's not worth lying to yourself and everyone else.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 4: You know what I mean? No job is.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: Kamala, she endorsed you too, right? She did.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 4: And we had an important set of conversations. And, you know,
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 4: it's not that we fully agree on every issue. It's
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 4: that she recognizes that there is a responsibility, A, to
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 4: defeat Trump and Trumpism and Mike Rogers, and B, that
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 4: we've got to evolve on the issue. You know, we've
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 4: got to evolve on the issue. And I think there's
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 4: a space and an opportunity for us to do that.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 4: And what I'm trying to do is, look, we had
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 4: this debate in the, you know, I always say like,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 4: I won, we won the Democratic primary, like unfair and unsquare.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 4: They spent a ton of money. We didn't have that
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 4: kind of money. We still won. So where are people going?
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 4: And if you're a party who wants to voice money
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 4: to silence the majority of your party, it's not going
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 4: to work well for you, right? This is Michigan too. Like,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 4: you know, you're not talking about New York City, so.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: I want to talk about the Temple Israel attack, right?
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: Because when they were attacked in Michigan, you condemned anti-Semitism,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: but you also said hurt people hurt people. And some
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: Jewish people in Michigan heard that and thought you were
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: explaining a way to violence against them. Looking back, do
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 3: you understand why they heard it that way?
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 4: I do. You know, I've had a lot of conversations
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 4: with folks in the community, and we understand that when
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 4: it comes to the question of Israel and our foreign policy,
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 4: we're going to have legitimate spaces of disagreement. I'm never
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 4: going to stop fighting for equal rights to Palestinian self-determination.
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 4: But also, when a community is targeted as a function
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 4: of their identity in what could have been a deeply
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 4: devastating attack, then God, it was not. Sometimes you just
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 4: have to say that is wrong, full stop. We can
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 4: talk about context later, but if the context comes out
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 4: as if you're justifying that attack, it's throwing salt in wounds.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 4: And so that was a mistake. And to folks who
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 4: were offended by that, I actually apologize. I don't ever
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 4: wanna add pain to a painful situation. And I want
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 4: folks to know that when it comes to the wellbeing
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 4: of the Jewish community and their safety, I take the
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 4: safety of Jewish children the same way I take the
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 4: safety of my own kids, really. I want a world.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 4: If you have a political philosophy for me, the simple
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 4: political philosophy is what would we build if all of
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 4: our kids were all of our kids? And to hear
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 4: a political leader seem to justify or try to put
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: an asterisk on an attack against your community is something
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 4: nobody wants to hear. And so I apologize to anybody
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 4: who saw that and felt like I was putting an
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 4: asterisk on their safety. I didn't intend to do that.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 4: And I hope folks see me for where I'm coming from.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 4: And I think What I hope to do is in
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: the consistent conversations that we share, you know, as the
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 4: next U.S. Senator in Michigan, I continue to want to
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 4: listen and learn from my Jewish sisters and brothers. I
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 4: grew up in a heavily Jewish community. I had the
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 4: privilege of going to Seder and shul and bar and
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 4: bat mitzvahs. I've been to Temple Israel multiple times. And,
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 4: you know, you realize that the Jewish community brings so
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 4: much to our country and our state beautiful faith, beautiful people.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 4: And even where there might be disagreements about the government
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 4: of the state of Israel, we have a responsibility to
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 4: uphold one another's safety with no qualifications. And I understand
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 4: why I missed that mark. And I hope folks will
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 4: take my apology in the sincere, heartfelt way that I
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 4: make it and offer me some grace. It's I was
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 4: trying to make a broader argument, but it wasn't the
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 4: time or the place.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 3: As a Muslim man, you know what it feels like
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: to have an entire community judging you through the actions
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 3: of a few extremists, right?
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 3: Do you have a special responsibility to recognize when Jewish
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 3: Americans feel that same collective judgment happening to them?
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 4: I mean, this is the thing is Judaism and the
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 4: Jewish people are not the same as Israel and AIPAC.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 4: They're not the same.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: I wish more people would say that.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And I think it needs to be said.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 4: And, you know, I always use the example of Egypt.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 4: My family immigrated from Egypt. When I'm elected, I'm probably
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 4: going to be the loudest critic of the Egyptian government
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 4: in the whole US Senate. And I would hate if
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 4: somebody were to say, well, you're now accountable for what
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 4: the government of Egypt did because you happen to share
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 4: the same ethnicity of the people who live there. And
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 4: so I think we have to take great care not
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 4: to allow What are righteous criticisms of the Israeli government
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 4: to then cast upon Judaism or the Jewish people anywhere?
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 4: And holding that line is really critical. And you asked
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 4: me earlier about Hassan. That's the point at which, when
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 4: you look at the clip that was circulated, that's the
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 4: point at which you're like, hey, you have the right
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 4: to your advocacy. even if it's something I disagree with.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 4: And nobody should ever feel justified to do harm to you.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 4: And whether it was intended to be said or that's
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 4: how it came out is really important for us, whatever
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 4: platform we have, that we're constantly operating in that first
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 4: do no harm principle that I learned in med school,
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 4: which is you cannot put communities in harm's way as
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 4: they advocate or you advocate. You just advocate for the
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 4: thing that you believe in and why and make the
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 4: argument with the passion you need to make it. but
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 4: recognize that because you disagree in an argument does not
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 4: ever justify anybody doing physical harm to the folks with
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 4: whom you disagree.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: And that's the other side of the question for me.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 3: Like, I believe Jewish leaders have an equal responsibility to
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 3: understand why Muslims and Palestinian Americans feel like their humanity
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: has sometimes been treated as secondary in American politics.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 4: And that's the other side of it, right? I think
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 4: for a lot of Arabs and Muslims, the language around
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 4: discrimination is not well engaged with. And so folks are
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 4: using a lot of the public discourse to cast doubts
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 4: on the commitments of Arabs and Muslims to our country,
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 4: to peace. And that ends up being normal. And I
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 4: think you're right. Like that same standard has to be
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 4: applied everywhere, which is to say, I can value your
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 4: humanity and your right to be who you are and
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 4: deeply disagree with you about something that you advocate for
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 4: and hold those things together in unison, fight for your peace.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 4: and your right to advocate while advocating against what it
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 4: is that you're advocating for.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 6: Would you be here but for the civil rights movement
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 6: in this country?
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 4: No. I mean, I wouldn't literally be here. Immigration Act
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 4: of 1965, that comes part and parcel. We don't talk
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 4: about it with the Civil Rights Act, with the Voting
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 4: Rights Act. And then you go 1965, my dad immigrates
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 4: to this country in 1978 from Egypt. Before then, there
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 4: was a quota. Right. And this is a guy who
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 4: dreamed of designing cars. So came to Michigan. My life
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 4: exists because of the organizing in pews in places like
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 4: the city of Detroit. Similarly, you know, I think about
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 4: the legacy of President Obama. There is no world in
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 4: which I get to run for anything. I'll be honest
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 4: with you. The first time anybody who knew what they
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 4: were talking about told me to run for office. I'm sorry.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: You've been lying the whole time.
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 4: What do you mean?
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: Because you said, I'm going to be honest with you.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 4: Oh, no. I was so confused.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: I was like, what are you saying?
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 4: I was like, what?
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: Is this going to be honest now?
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 4: No, I'll be direct. But you're like, all right, cut
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 4: the whole rest of the thing. But the first time
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 4: anybody told me I should run for office was Bill
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 4: Clinton at my college graduation. I was the valedictorian of
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 4: my class. He was the main speaker. I was the
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 4: student speaker. I give my speech. He, like, praises my
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 4: speech and his speech. My immigrant dad claps me for
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 4: the first time in my whole life. After the speech,
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 4: he comes up to me and says, son, why are
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 4: you going to medical school? Which is not a question
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 4: people ask you when you go to med school. And
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 4: I look at him, I was like, well, I'm brown
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 4: and Muslim, so what do we do? But also I
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 4: love people and I love science, so I want to serve.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 4: He said, that's great, but you got a gift for communicating.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 4: Maybe someday you'll run for office. I literally laughed in
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 4: his face. I was like, did you see my name?
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 4: It's got 11 letters in it. This is the first one.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 4: And that was 2007. 2008, I watched Barack Hussein Obama
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 4: run for and win the presidency. I remember watching his
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 4: 2004 address. I remember I was doing dishes. And I
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 4: just stopped. I was like, I didn't know politics could
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 4: look like that. It was the first time I ever
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 4: saw myself in a politician at all. So I think
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 4: about this and whatever, you know, you think about as you,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 4: he was the president of my youth, right? I went
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 4: off to Oxford. I was on one of these scholarships.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 4: And I remember I went up in 2009 to England
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 4: and he was just inaugurated. I was like, man, I'm
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 4: so proud of my country right now. I get to
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 4: represent the United States of America, living abroad. And like,
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 4: so in so many ways, the things that, I am
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 4: able to do. Even the conversation we can have about anti-Arab,
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 4: anti-Muslim animus, you don't have the language for, but for
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 4: the struggle of black Americans, but for the organizing of
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 4: black Americans, but for the leadership of black Americans, but
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 4: for black American leaders showing that it's possible, that you
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 4: don't have to have a name that sounds like everybody
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 4: else's name, that you can think a little bit outside
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 4: of the box about what's possible and go and be
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 4: who you are. So I... I think about that all
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 4: the time in terms of the debt of gratitude. And
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 4: what I'll tell you is this. I came back to
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 4: the city of Detroit to rebuild that health department. Because
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 4: for me, the way I think about what my responsibility is,
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 4: is around achieving equity, prosperity together. And where better to
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 4: build than a health department that gets shut down by
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 4: the state. Oldest health department in the whole state, 185
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 4: years old in the city of Detroit. Where you can
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 4: actually take all the stuff I've been studying and thinking
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 4: about and turn it into public policy to benefit folks
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 4: who so much of our economy and opportunity has disregarded.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 4: And I'm trying in my work and have tried in
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 4: my work to always be about trying to pay back
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 4: in some small way the bit of the debt of
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 4: gratitude I owe as a function of being who I
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 4: am in America and the opportunities I've gotten in America.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 3: I just got a couple more questions because you've been
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 3: very generous with your time, right? But, you know, you're
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 3: running for office. So, of course, they're throwing everything at you.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 3: And a bunch of your old positions are coming back, like,
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 3: you know, comments about defunding the police, comments about the
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 3: Second Amendment, even criticizing the way America celebrates the Fourth
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 3: of July.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: You've essentially said you've changed, right? I guess, sort of?
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 4: I mean, look, it's funny because they're coming at me
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 4: on football. I was the captain of a high school
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 4: football team. I literally told, I was like, okay, you
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 4: want football? You know Oklahoma drillers? How about me and
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 4: Mike Rogers doing Oklahoma Drilled right now? I'll show you
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 4: how much I love football. They're coming at me on fireworks.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 4: I'm like, all right, first, if your whole conception of
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 4: America is that it's fireworks, I'm so sorry. You don't
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 4: have a complete conception of America. But even then, right? Like,
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 4: what is it I said? Well, every time we do
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 4: a firework show, it destroys the air quality and people
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 4: have asthma exacerbations and heart attacks the next day. That's
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 4: all I was saying. You know what I mean? I'm
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 4: not saying we shouldn't have fireworks. I'm just saying maybe
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 4: like there are other ways to show your love. On
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 4: the conversation about policing, look, I was 16 years old. Um,
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 4: the first time I had a painful interaction with police,
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 4: we were out past, uh, midnight. I'm walking. We're had
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 4: a 16 year olds do had a dumb idea to
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 4: go play basketball. We were like, all right, we're going
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 4: to play basketball. They have, they have lights. And, um,
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 4: and you know, I get tackled by a couple of cops.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 4: We had broken a, a, a rule about curfew. I
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 4: didn't even know existed. And the first thing they asked
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 4: me is like, what are you doing outside of Mexican town?
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 4: It's like, I was like, I'm Egyptian. And he's like, don't,
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 4: don't get smart with me. I was like, I'm telling you,
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 4: I'm actually ethnically Egyptian. I don't know what to tell you.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 4: I live like two miles away. And over time, life
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 4: gives you some fabric, some nuance, some texture. And we
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 4: all want the same things when it comes to living
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 4: in communities. We want to get home safe.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 4: That's what we all want.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: And some extra money in our pocket. That part.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 4: But too often we're told that the answer to every
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 4: problem is someone with a gun. When somebody is having
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 4: a mental health crisis, when somebody is in a domestic dispute,
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 4: sometimes the answer is a person with a gun, but
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 4: sometimes the answer is a behavioral health crisis responder. Sometimes
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 4: it's to nip a beef in the butt before it
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 4: actually becomes violent. And the very same people who want
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 4: to tell you that they're for public safety want to
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 4: defund all of these things. And then they want to
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 4: point to a dumb word that we used when we
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 4: really wanted to have a nuanced conversation about what we
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 4: actually want. So whether you're law enforcement or you're in
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 4: the neighborhood, you want to get home safe. So what
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 4: is it that we should build to be able to
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 4: enable that to happen? To me, it means we need
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 4: to be funding things like behavioral health response. It means
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 4: we need to be funding community violence intervention. It also
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 4: means that we need to be funding recruitment, retention, and
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 4: retirement for law enforcement. Why? Because you want law enforcement
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 4: that looks like a local community. And the problem is
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 4: a lot of folks growing up in the local community
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 4: don't see a pathway forward as law enforcement. They're like,
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 4: there's no job here. And so they don't sign up.
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 4: And when they don't sign up, you get a bunch
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 4: of folks from other communities who see themselves as policing
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 4: against the community rather than policing in the community, keeping
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 4: people safe. So what's the answer there? You need to
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 4: be able to recruit in the community. People need to
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 4: be able to make a good life in their own community.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 4: And they need to know that they're gonna have a
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 4: comfortable retirement. That's funding. I also, when I was in
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 4: Wayne County, I got to work alongside law enforcement. I
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 4: ran health in the jail. I had to rebuild a
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 4: juvenile detention facility that had been deeply, deeply neglected by
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 4: the state who had shut down all of their long-term
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 4: stay facilities. And I got to work with folks and
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 4: there was an understanding that like, you know, when we
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 4: use imprecise terms, we're not actually getting the problem we want.
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 4: We're not actually addressing the problem we want. Here's what
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 4: happened in Wayne County in the juvenile detention facility as
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 4: a perfect example. The state, because of this push, against
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 4: policing shut down a lot of the long-term states. Now,
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 4: if you're in the juvenile system, you're not sentenced to time,
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 4: you're adjudicated to treatment. So now you're not getting treatment
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 4: because you can't go get your treatment. So you're stuck
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 4: warehoused in the county juvenile detention facility. So we, during COVID,
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 4: went from having a holding capacity of 60 kids to
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 4: 180 kids. And then it was COVID, so everybody was
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 4: quitting everything. And so folks were like, F this, I'm out.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 4: So what did we have to do? I had to
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 4: go in first things first, raise wages 35%. Why? Because
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 4: I had to keep people there to keep the kids safe.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 4: We had to expand the facility all because somebody took
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 4: a three word statement being like, well, we can shut
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 4: down these facilities. And what happens is now these kids
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 4: are stuck in a place where they can't be safe.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 4: So we've got to get nuanced about things. We've actually
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 4: got to understand the policy goal we have. And if
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 4: you start with this question of what would you build
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 4: if you wanted everybody to be able to get home safe?
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 4: I think it would look very different than what we
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 4: have right now, but it would require funding. And so
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 4: I just, it's life experience that sometimes give you some
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 4: nuance about being like, oh, well, we said this thing,
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 4: people did this thing and that didn't work. So where
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 4: do we go from here? And the thing I want
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 4: folks to know is I'm committed to your safety, whether
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 4: it's from being attacked by somebody in your neighborhood or
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 4: being mistreated at the hands of law enforcement or being
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 4: law enforcement without the tools and the ability to do
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 4: the job we ask you to do.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I don't know why politicians are so
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 3: afraid to do exactly what you're doing. you just did
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 3: like you're supposed to learn grow get new information and
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 3: if your stance changes on something you should be able
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 3: to explain that and and you owe it to your
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 3: constituents to be able to explain.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 4: It i think you know the reason why is there's
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 4: probably like three different attack ads that the RNC is like,
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 4: he said this thing. He said, watch, we're going to
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 4: get off here. And the RNC is going to have
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 4: clipped out four parts of our conversation and be like,
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 4: this is what Abdul said. And again, it goes back
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 4: to that part of the conversation. Whenever they're clipping you
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 4: out of context, it's never done in good faith. But like,
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 4: then what happens is, and just so you guys see
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 4: the political, you know this, like the political industrial complex.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 4: Then they clip it out. They put it on a
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 4: 30 second ad. Some super PAC funded by a corporation
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 4: puts it on TV to say, Abdul is radical and scary.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 4: You can't support him. Like that part right there is
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 4: about to get, it's about to get clipped too.
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 2: So, This is my last question.
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 3: With that said, did your politics truly change or did
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 3: running statewide teach you that some of your politics aren't
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 3: politically viable?
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 4: I think part of it is you're always being asked
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 4: about a clip about yourself. And what I want to do,
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 4: you know, they say in politics when you're explaining you're losing,
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 4: that's because most politicians are bad at explaining. You know
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 4: what Bill Clinton used to say? Whatever you think about
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 4: his politics, and I got issues with some of his
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 4: political positions, He was a very talented explainer. You know
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 4: what he used to say? Explanation is eloquent. So if
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 4: you can explain something, right, then you can empower somebody
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 4: with an understanding of how the system works. That's knowledge
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 4: is power. And so what I'm trying to do is
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 4: get to some nuance about these conversations. What are we
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 4: actually after here? What does Medicare for all mean? It's
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 4: a public guarantee of healthcare. When we talk about money
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 4: out of politics, what does that actually mean? I want
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 4: you to be asking that question. I want to be
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 4: having that conversation with you. Because at the end of
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 4: the day, it's not working. Most of us know it's
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 4: not working. We just are too busy because we're working
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 4: a second or third job to spend some time understanding why.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 4: And the politicians will tell you it's because of them.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 4: It's because of them. It's because of that. What I
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 4: want to be like, well, it's actually because of a
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 4: system that has been built to go in a particular
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 4: direction to benefit those people, not you. And so long
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 4: as I'm having that conversation, that's where I want to be. Now,
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 4: a lot of people say, well, you can't win doing that.
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 4: It's too nuanced. People don't want to pay attention. You
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 4: don't understand how politics works these days. I'm like, maybe not.
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 4: But what I'll tell you is this. I don't want
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 4: our politics to continue to be a bunch of warring
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 4: 32nd ads lying on one side or other, paid for
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 4: by corporations who then turn around and tell you what
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 4: they need you to do once you've been elected to office.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 4: I don't want that. And so I'm willing to take
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 4: a bet on this kind of politics because I think
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 4: this is what actually heals the problem. Because at the
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 4: end of the day, it's not enough to win a job.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 4: It's how you do the job. I'm more interested in
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 4: what people say six years into my leadership than I
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 4: am as like, oh, he won a race. All right,
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 4: you won a race, and then what? That's not the point.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 4: The point is to win a race and then to
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 4: govern well. And I think this is about a broader
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 4: conversation we can all have together about who we are,
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 4: who we want to be, which is what democracy is
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 4: supposed to be about.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 3: Tell people how they can support your campaign, man.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 4: Go to abdulforsenate.com, sign up to volunteer, sign up to
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 4: chip us off five bucks or 10 bucks. I don't
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 4: take corporate money. So those five bucks, 10 bucks go
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 4: a really long way. Share these clips. I'm sure a
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 4: bunch of clips are going to go out. Share them, right?
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 4: I always say it's like dollars, doors, and digital impressions, right?
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 4: And so those things really matter. And then look, I
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 4: think the conversations that we have, everybody's on like group chats.
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 4: And those conversations really matter. They shape a lot of
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 4: the infrastructure of what we're talking about. If you've heard
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 4: something today that's valuable, I hope that you'll share it in.
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 4: Because at the end of the day, it's the conversation
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 4: we have that is what makes our politics and empowers
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 4: our leaders to do the things we want them to do.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 4: So I hope that people will have the conversation. Politics
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 4: doesn't have to be boring. It doesn't have to be scary.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 4: It doesn't have to be pernicious. It doesn't have to
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 4: be people preying on you to make money. I'm trying
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 4: to get to that kind of politics. There are amazing
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 4: leaders who are doing that all over the country. And
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 4: if we decide that that's what we want our politics
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 4: to be, that's what they can be.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 5: Good luck.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, good luck.
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 4: I appreciate you having me.
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: Abdul El Saeed.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 5: Doctor. Double doctor.
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 4: Doctor.
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 2: Double doctor. Yes, doctor. Thank you for joining us, brother.
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 4: Hey, thank you so much for having me. It was
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 4: a lovely conversation. I really enjoyed it. I hope I
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 4: get to come back sometime.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. The Breakfast Club.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 4: Hold up.
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 2: Every day I wake up. Wake your ass up. The
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 2: Breakfast Club. Y'all finished or y'all done?