Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 2/26/26: Trump Humiliates MAHA RFK Jr, Hakeem Caught Funneling AIPAC Money, AI Midterm Wars Breakout

Transcript

2/26/26: Trump Humiliates MAHA RFK Jr, Hakeem Caught Funneling AIPAC Money, AI Midterm Wars Breakout · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
0:01
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0:33
Speaker 2: So we had a Maha Surgeon General pick who was
0:37
Speaker 2: taking a grilling yesterday in the Senate. So this is
0:40
Speaker 2: Casey Means, who is a physician, but she is not
0:43
Speaker 2: currently licensed and she also did not finish her surgical residency.
0:48
Speaker 2: So those are things that came up in the hearings,
0:50
Speaker 2: but also her views on a variety of subjects and
0:52
Speaker 2: her apparent conflicts of interest. We're also very significant here.
0:56
Speaker 2: She's sort of like a wellness influencer. She's also an entrepreneur.
1:01
Speaker 2: She has this medical device that runs the company for
1:04
Speaker 2: in any case. The first clip I want to show
1:06
Speaker 2: you here is a Republican Senator Cassidy who is questioning
1:11
Speaker 2: her intently, and he's a physician as well, who is
1:13
Speaker 2: questioning her intently on her views regarding vaccines and whether
1:18
Speaker 2: there is any vaccine link to autism. Let's take a
1:21
Speaker 2: listen to that.
1:23
Speaker 3: We've had an outbreak of whooping cough in Louisiana, vaccine
1:26
Speaker 3: preventable disease. Children have actually died from it. Think about
1:29
Speaker 3: it and a child, about the age of your child dying
1:33
Speaker 3: from a vaccine preventable disease. And some have been scared
1:36
Speaker 3: to vaccinate their children because they've been told incorrectly that
1:40
Speaker 3: vaccines cause autism. Do you believe that vaccines, whether individually
1:46
Speaker 3: are collectively, contribute to autism?
1:50
Speaker 4: Centericassidy, your physician. I'm a physician. The reality is that
1:55
Speaker 4: we have an autism crisis that is increasing, and this
1:59
Speaker 4: is devastating to many families, and we do not know
2:04
Speaker 4: as a medical community what causes autism. The administration has
2:08
Speaker 4: just committed a huge amount of funning to look at
2:10
Speaker 4: the exposome of all environmental factors that could be contributing
2:14
Speaker 4: to autism, and until we have a clear understanding of
2:17
Speaker 4: why kids are developing this at higher rates, I think
2:21
Speaker 4: we should not leave any stones unturned.
2:23
Speaker 3: There's been a lot of evidence showing that they're not implicated.
2:26
Speaker 3: Do you not accept that evidence?
2:28
Speaker 4: I do accept that evidence. I also think that science
2:31
Speaker 4: has never settled, and I think there is I think
2:32
Speaker 4: that the effort to look at comprehensive, cumulative exposures of
2:39
Speaker 4: our exposome into what is causing autism is important and
2:43
Speaker 4: I look forward to seeing those results and sharing the
2:45
Speaker 4: best public health information with the American people.
2:48
Speaker 2: So she obviously refuses there to rule out a link
2:51
Speaker 2: between autism and vaccines. This theory is widely discredited, and
2:55
Speaker 2: you know, oh my mind is open. You know, we've
2:57
Speaker 2: got to continue to explore which it just you know,
3:00
Speaker 2: it shows you kind of what corner of the health
3:03
Speaker 2: and wellness universe she comes from. And he asked Ryan
3:05
Speaker 2: a bunch of questions about various vaccines. You know, would
3:08
Speaker 2: you recommend to a mother that her child get the
3:11
Speaker 2: measles vaccine? And she couldn't just come out and say,
3:15
Speaker 2: you know, she had to sort of spin and couldn't
3:17
Speaker 2: give just like straightforward answers on any of this stuff.
3:20
Speaker 5: Yeah, the measles one is killing me, Like we really do, Like,
3:23
Speaker 5: come on, have we really forgotten that measles can be
3:29
Speaker 5: you know, damaging and deadly? Like, yeah, what are we
3:32
Speaker 5: doing here? So Chris Murphy went after her about those
3:35
Speaker 5: conflicts of interest that you mentioned. Let's roll D one.
3:38
Speaker 6: The document from the FDC says this, if you endorse
3:41
Speaker 6: a product through social media, your endorsement message should make
3:45
Speaker 6: it obvious when you have a relationship with the brand.
3:49
Speaker 6: Are you familiar with that? So, as you know, there
3:54
Speaker 6: is a pending complaint regarding your failure to adhere to
3:58
Speaker 6: those guidelines. I'll give you an example. So there's a
4:02
Speaker 6: prenatal vitamin called we Nadle. Your filings before this committee
4:08
Speaker 6: show that you started receiving compensation in the spring of
4:15
Speaker 6: twenty and twenty four, and yet in September of twenty
4:20
Speaker 6: twenty four you posted a video saying that you had
4:23
Speaker 6: no financial relationship to the company, just a big fan,
4:27
Speaker 6: and then in October you said not sponsored, just love
4:32
Speaker 6: these But in fact, you have documentation before this committee
4:37
Speaker 6: that showed when you said those things, you had a
4:40
Speaker 6: financial relationship. You had already started receiving money from that company,
4:45
Speaker 6: So you weren't telling the truth when you said you
4:50
Speaker 6: were just a fan, you were actually receiving money.
4:52
Speaker 4: Correct If the in any post rights that I am
4:55
Speaker 4: not receiving money, I had not been receiving money at
4:58
Speaker 4: that time.
4:58
Speaker 6: But you had received partnership fees for this particular prenatal vitamin.
5:05
Speaker 6: In fact, prior to September and October, you had posted
5:10
Speaker 6: partnership links in which you get compensated based upon clickthroughs.
5:14
Speaker 5: Correct.
5:15
Speaker 4: I'm happy to look at whatever documentation you're talking about,
5:18
Speaker 4: but I do not this is it's incorrect and it's
5:21
Speaker 4: a false representation.
5:23
Speaker 7: Crystal.
5:24
Speaker 5: What is Like? I don't understand how this is a
5:26
Speaker 5: conversation Like if if she's revealed that she was taking
5:30
Speaker 5: the money in the spring, by the fall said she
5:33
Speaker 5: wasn't Like it sounds like you're caught. Yeah, I'm busted.
5:39
Speaker 8: Like, how do you've got her dad to rights?
5:40
Speaker 7: Here?
5:40
Speaker 5: Are she sticking by her story?
5:42
Speaker 2: He's got her dad to rights here and not just here?
5:45
Speaker 2: There was an investigation and he presses her on war
5:47
Speaker 2: of this stuff. Out of one hundred and forty times
5:50
Speaker 2: where she promoted products on social media, she only disclosed.
5:54
Speaker 2: She failed to disclose her financial relationship in seventy nine
5:57
Speaker 2: of those times. And this is where I just this
6:00
Speaker 2: whole crew utterly discuss me, because here's the thing. There
6:04
Speaker 2: are big problems with our with our food system. There
6:07
Speaker 2: are big problems with our pharmaceutical you know, testing regimes,
6:11
Speaker 2: and like the corruption, and that's one of the things
6:13
Speaker 2: they talk about, the like revolving door between the FDA. True,
6:18
Speaker 2: but then you bring in these literal snake oil salesmen
6:22
Speaker 2: who are worse and more dishonest than the existing system,
6:26
Speaker 2: and so you're taking advantage of things that are real
6:29
Speaker 2: problems that people are genuinely concerned about, and you look
6:31
Speaker 2: around the country like the country is deeply unhealthy. And
6:34
Speaker 2: then you put in a bunch of cranks who want
6:37
Speaker 2: to undercut the things that actually do work, like you know,
6:39
Speaker 2: measles vaccines, and then sell you a bunch of crap
6:42
Speaker 2: that isn't actually tested under anything remotely approaching the standards
6:47
Speaker 2: of the you know, the pharmaceuticals, Like these supplements and
6:50
Speaker 2: crap they don't get They hardly are tested or have
6:53
Speaker 2: to meet any sort of regulatory standard. They push this
6:56
Speaker 2: stuff and act like they're a better alternative to what
7:00
Speaker 2: we already have. You know, for me, the tell is
7:02
Speaker 2: the fact that none of these people are interested in
7:04
Speaker 2: universal healthcare, which would be the first place you would
7:06
Speaker 2: start if you actually wanted to improve the quality of
7:09
Speaker 2: care in this country. But none of them, you know,
7:11
Speaker 2: they all have this very libertarian like, up by your bootstraps,
7:14
Speaker 2: up by your you know, tallow oil or whatever beef
7:18
Speaker 2: tallow approach to health, and then they're deeply dishonest about
7:25
Speaker 2: their own financial times ties. I'll give you another one
7:27
Speaker 2: with her. So her health tech company, it's called Levels.
7:31
Speaker 2: It's a like glucose monitoring device and has probably already
7:36
Speaker 2: benefited from the fact that RFK Junior has been pushing
7:39
Speaker 2: this wearable tech. Now she claims if she's if she
7:44
Speaker 2: attains this position of surgeon General, which I think is
7:46
Speaker 2: a little bit of a question mark here, but anyway,
7:48
Speaker 2: if she attains a position, she's going to like, you know,
7:50
Speaker 2: not be involved in Levels, and she's going to divest
7:53
Speaker 2: and blah blah blah. But we can already see the
7:55
Speaker 2: track record of the way she's abused the trust of
7:58
Speaker 2: you know, people who follow her who genuinely believes she
8:01
Speaker 2: has this sort of new age approach and that she's
8:04
Speaker 2: writing the wrongs of the traditional medical system, and so
8:07
Speaker 2: that to me, that abuse of trust is just so gross.
8:10
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so Angela also broke. Senator from Maryland also
8:15
Speaker 5: pressed her on some of this. Let's roll D two.
8:17
Speaker 9: In your newsletter number thirty three, you acknowledge that PEAK
8:20
Speaker 9: has sponsored you. Now we're you're aware that this company
8:23
Speaker 9: I was served notice under California's Proposition sixty five for
8:26
Speaker 9: containing and failing to disclose it lead above the allowable
8:30
Speaker 9: amounts of carcinogen in reproductive talksin was present. I just
8:35
Speaker 9: want to repeat, I've worked with the Officer Government Ethics.
8:38
Speaker 9: I'm not going to be taking anything but invation ones
8:40
Speaker 9: you've already so this is what.
8:42
Speaker 4: I think about conflicts, and I have been cleared by
8:45
Speaker 4: the Officer Government Ethics through an exhaustive process. I have
8:48
Speaker 4: signed a letter that I will be a fully compliant
8:51
Speaker 4: and this is before, during, and after the term. I
8:54
Speaker 4: take it very seriously and I'll work closer with them
8:55
Speaker 4: to make sure there are no conflicts.
8:57
Speaker 9: The point here is that you've received compensation from these companies,
9:01
Speaker 9: including Daily Harvest, where this company was subject to an
9:05
Speaker 9: investigation by the Food and Drug Administration, up to hundreds
9:09
Speaker 9: became seriously ill after consuming the product. And these are
9:12
Speaker 9: these are companies that you have received money from, they've
9:16
Speaker 9: been investigated, and you are railing out against pharmaceutical companies
9:20
Speaker 9: that you say are are advertising these products that mislead
9:25
Speaker 9: the public. And yet you know you've received compensation from
9:28
Speaker 9: companies and you've promoted them in your newsletter, and you're
9:33
Speaker 9: doing the same thing the pharmaceutical companies are doing by
9:36
Speaker 9: advertising and influencing people for these products that have been
9:41
Speaker 9: deemed to be unsafe for the public.
9:44
Speaker 5: And Christal I think this is actually the kind of
9:46
Speaker 5: stuff that a lot of MAHA people might be even
9:49
Speaker 5: willing to look past if they thought they were getting results.
9:52
Speaker 5: They say, oh, this is the this is the mainstream media,
9:55
Speaker 5: the corrupt media, you know, coming at people who are
9:58
Speaker 5: trying to overturn the system. They didn't have a problem
10:01
Speaker 5: when big pharma was doing this. They didn't have a
10:03
Speaker 5: problem when the pesticide companies or the chemical companies were
10:08
Speaker 5: engaged in the revolving door. All of a sudden, you know,
10:10
Speaker 5: when our movement, you know, comes along. Now, now all
10:14
Speaker 5: of a sudden, they get concerned about conflicts of interest
10:16
Speaker 5: and corruption. I think they might be willing to even
10:19
Speaker 5: indulge some of those arguments from people that they trust,
10:22
Speaker 5: like Casey or r. F K Jr. But they're not
10:25
Speaker 5: getting what they want either, and I think that is huge.
10:29
Speaker 5: This was like a just a lightning bolt to the
10:31
Speaker 5: Maha movement to put up D three here. The one
10:35
Speaker 5: of the chief objections that the mahakrawd has is is
10:40
Speaker 5: to round up, is to this carcinogenic pesticide or beside
10:46
Speaker 5: that is that is used extraordinarily liberally on American cops,
10:52
Speaker 5: I mean American crops and and that and that you
10:55
Speaker 5: know a lot of you know, research suggests is carcinogenic.
10:58
Speaker 5: It's at certain levels. It's one thing for that, you know.
11:04
Speaker 5: And in fact RFK Junior, you know, successfully won a
11:07
Speaker 5: multi hundred million dollar lawsuit against Monsanto, which is now
11:11
Speaker 5: owned by Bear for you know, the way that it
11:14
Speaker 5: was using and disclosing the risks around around.
11:17
Speaker 7: Roundup and this gliph of sate.
11:21
Speaker 5: Along comes the Trump administration and says, not only are
11:26
Speaker 5: we not going to kind of go to war against
11:29
Speaker 5: Roundup and glyph of state, but we are going to
11:31
Speaker 5: use the Defense Production Act, which is a kind of
11:37
Speaker 5: nineteen fifties era law that allows the Pentagon to legally
11:43
Speaker 5: mandate that a business produced something. Hegseeth is threatening to
11:47
Speaker 5: use the Defense Production Act on Anthropic to legally mandate
11:52
Speaker 5: them to allow the Pentagon to use Claude for its
11:57
Speaker 5: autonomous armed drones and for surveillance, like they're they're trying
12:01
Speaker 5: to use this DPA on Claude. So, but they did
12:05
Speaker 5: use the DPA on Bear and told Bear you must
12:09
Speaker 5: produce uh, this product that the Mahamams you know think
12:15
Speaker 5: is is killing people. And because they are mandating that
12:20
Speaker 5: you produce it, then you're going to have some level
12:23
Speaker 5: of legal immunity that's right for the production of this.
12:28
Speaker 5: So not only are you not kind of going to
12:30
Speaker 5: war against it, you are actively siding with them. This
12:36
Speaker 5: came after you know, the EPA named chemical lobbyist to
12:39
Speaker 5: one of its top positions, and and and and and
12:43
Speaker 5: there were none a number of other glaring sirens that
12:47
Speaker 5: the old industry was actually still in place here, but
12:51
Speaker 5: this one has like this one has people absolutely freaking
12:55
Speaker 5: out times. Quote it's a turning point USA, a MAHA
12:59
Speaker 5: podcaster say saying like I'm done, Like, I can't. I
13:02
Speaker 5: can't persuade these women to vote for Republicans in the
13:04
Speaker 5: midterms when you're doing stuff like this. So that's my take,
13:08
Speaker 5: Like that, I think they'd be willing to look past
13:10
Speaker 5: all of the garbage and the corruption and the oh
13:12
Speaker 5: there's lead in this vitamin that she was pushing.
13:15
Speaker 7: It's like, yeah, it happens.
13:17
Speaker 5: But to do this on top of all that, Like,
13:21
Speaker 5: I'm sure it's check please for a lot of these women.
13:24
Speaker 5: What do you think?
13:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I will say,
13:29
Speaker 2: I think you're correct that they would be willing to
13:31
Speaker 2: overlook or just not dig into and just feel like, oh,
13:33
Speaker 2: this is just a smear campaign against her because she's
13:35
Speaker 2: trying to overturn the system. I will say, as someone
13:37
Speaker 2: who you know is in the overturned the system camp,
13:40
Speaker 2: that one thing I have learned is that you actually
13:43
Speaker 2: have to hold your people to a higher standard because
13:45
Speaker 2: you can't expect that the media is going to be
13:47
Speaker 2: even handed when it comes to insiders versus outsiders. So
13:51
Speaker 2: you know, there may be a legitimate critique there that
13:53
Speaker 2: you know, previous people who had various compromise interests with
13:55
Speaker 2: the pharmaceutical industry or whatever. They didn't get the same
13:58
Speaker 2: level of scrutiny. I'm not saying that's the case or not,
14:00
Speaker 2: but I would certainly be open to that argument. But
14:03
Speaker 2: I think if you are going to understand what is
14:05
Speaker 2: required to actually make change to entrenched interests, whether it's
14:09
Speaker 2: you know, big food or big chemicals or big pharma,
14:13
Speaker 2: you are going to have to be Yes, You're going
14:16
Speaker 2: to have to hold yourself to a higher standard. You
14:18
Speaker 2: are going to have to meet a higher bar. You
14:20
Speaker 2: are going to have to be perfect, just as Noora
14:22
Speaker 2: and Momdani in the way that they're like, you know,
14:24
Speaker 2: trying to turn a snowball fight into a scandal in
14:27
Speaker 2: New York City, how aggressively they will come at you.
14:30
Speaker 2: But putting that aside, you know, on this specific issue
14:33
Speaker 2: of glyphasate, it kind of reminds me of like the
14:35
Speaker 2: it's like the Epstein Files moment for the podcast pros.
14:39
Speaker 2: It's sort of like that for the Moha Moms, where
14:41
Speaker 2: it's just like, I can't come up with a colorable
14:44
Speaker 2: rationale that's not just the same old standard issue industry corruption.
14:49
Speaker 2: And then all of your heroes who five seconds ago
14:52
Speaker 2: before they were actually RFKA Junior. I think there was
14:55
Speaker 2: a report that even came out during this administration sounding
14:58
Speaker 2: the alarm about glyphasate. But then the moment that Trump
15:01
Speaker 2: says now we're doing this, they're like, okay, well we
15:03
Speaker 2: understand and we get it, and we support it and
15:05
Speaker 2: we stand by it. She got asked, Casey Means got
15:08
Speaker 2: asked in this hearing, I think by Tim Kaine specifically
15:11
Speaker 2: about this issue, and her answer was effectively like, well,
15:15
Speaker 2: it's complicated, and you know, I don't think that's going
15:18
Speaker 2: to satisfy anyone. It's very clear what's going on here.
15:21
Speaker 2: You want the job, you want the access, you want
15:23
Speaker 2: the power, you want whatever else that entails. And so
15:27
Speaker 2: whatever principles you had previously, like many before you, like
15:30
Speaker 2: Tolci Gabbard before you, you're willing to say, well, you know,
15:33
Speaker 2: I see it differently now now it's before it was clear,
15:36
Speaker 2: Now it's cloudy. Now it's complicated.
15:39
Speaker 5: To make Casey Means an RFK junior defend roundup is
15:44
Speaker 5: tantamount to when he made RFK Junior like eat McDonald's
15:48
Speaker 5: on the airplants like gang initiation. The only thing that
15:52
Speaker 5: you could be worse, like literally spraying round up on
15:54
Speaker 5: the McDonald's.
15:58
Speaker 8: Wasn't he very involved in like Hudson River?
16:00
Speaker 2: Clean up ray the roundup on the McDonald's and throw
16:06
Speaker 2: it in the Hudson River. And you can bet RFK
16:09
Speaker 2: Junior and be there to be like I understand why, Yeah,
16:12
Speaker 2: so I support this.
16:12
Speaker 8: Now, this is fine. It's just no principle.
16:16
Speaker 2: And this is the way that a lot of people
16:18
Speaker 2: in DC think because they view it like, Okay, but
16:22
Speaker 2: if I don't play the game and like do this thing,
16:25
Speaker 2: then whatever other plans Casey means has or RFK Junior
16:28
Speaker 2: has or whatever, I'm not gonna have a chance to
16:30
Speaker 2: do those. And ultimately it's just a road, especially under Trump,
16:33
Speaker 2: who seems to delight in finding highly specific ways to
16:37
Speaker 2: humiliate his underlings and force them to abandon any core
16:42
Speaker 2: principles that they ever claim to hold that would give
16:44
Speaker 2: them some sort of independence from him. Like that is
16:47
Speaker 2: I think something that he very strategically, you know, attempts
16:52
Speaker 2: to do Like he will he will identify, Okay, what
16:55
Speaker 2: is this person's like if they have some sort of
16:57
Speaker 2: principle they're trying to hold on to, how do I
16:58
Speaker 2: destroy that? So that then are just nothing but a
17:00
Speaker 2: loyalist to me because that's all he wants.
17:02
Speaker 5: And also it's useless and illegal to use the Defense
17:06
Speaker 5: Production Act for this purpose. He claimed that it's an emergency,
17:10
Speaker 5: like a national security emergency, because we don't have enough
17:12
Speaker 5: food in the United States. That that and that this
17:15
Speaker 5: is to protect the food. That are you serious we're
17:20
Speaker 5: starving here we're.
17:22
Speaker 2: Doing We're okay, Like, yeah, you act many problems to
17:26
Speaker 2: do this, that's not one of them.
17:27
Speaker 8: Yeah.
17:28
Speaker 2: Now, the quality of the food, we could talk about
17:30
Speaker 2: the price of the food, we could certainly talk about,
17:32
Speaker 2: but the just the quantity of it that it is
17:34
Speaker 2: not an issue.
17:34
Speaker 5: You got enough food. They andres Republican Congress is trying
17:38
Speaker 5: to push through legislation that would give fair immunity around
17:41
Speaker 5: these RFK Junior kind of led challenges that got pushed
17:46
Speaker 5: back by environmental groups. They're now trying to put it
17:48
Speaker 5: into the farm bill. Like this is like, this is crazy,
17:53
Speaker 5: this is crazy, like and so the environmental groups to
17:55
Speaker 5: the Mohammad was like what did you expect? Like this
17:59
Speaker 5: is like this who they are, But you know RFK Junior.
18:03
Speaker 5: He literally sued them, I don't blame them for believing
18:07
Speaker 5: that this guy who sued them over this and one
18:12
Speaker 5: actually would fight for it.
18:15
Speaker 1: Yeah.
18:15
Speaker 2: I mean, I think a lot of this really coalesced
18:17
Speaker 2: around the COVID and vaccines, and you know that's where
18:23
Speaker 2: the that energy really coalesced this movement and moved it
18:27
Speaker 2: very quickly from you know, it used to be that
18:29
Speaker 2: anti vac sentiment was more located on the left, and
18:33
Speaker 2: you know that was some particular like left wing crank
18:35
Speaker 2: grie around like like hippies and you know, wealthy liberals
18:40
Speaker 2: in LA and stuff like that. And yeah, and now
18:44
Speaker 2: they because of COVID, that all realigned like that crank
18:50
Speaker 2: part of the liberal movement realigned into the right. And
18:54
Speaker 2: so now it's say they're kind of like, I guess
18:57
Speaker 2: they're up for grabs. You know, probably just kind of
19:00
Speaker 2: nihilistic at this point, to be honest with you, But
19:02
Speaker 2: I think there's an opening if you had a candidate
19:04
Speaker 2: on the Democratic side who was embracing you know, medicare
19:08
Speaker 2: for all and truly embracing changes to our food system
19:12
Speaker 2: and made that a priority in health and fitness. Because
19:16
Speaker 2: it's not that there's no point there, even with regard
19:19
Speaker 2: to like medical autonomy. It's not that there's no point
19:21
Speaker 2: there whatsoever. You know, I think obviously there's a bunch
19:23
Speaker 2: of junk science around vaccines that's just utter and complete nonsense.
19:27
Speaker 2: It's like you said, on like measles and stuff, and
19:29
Speaker 2: it's just utterly destructive. And we're beginning to see the
19:33
Speaker 2: devastating impact of more and more people opting out of
19:36
Speaker 2: taking any of these vaccines. But so I guess there's
19:39
Speaker 2: you know, there's an opening there. We'll see, we'll see
19:42
Speaker 2: if anyone's able to with a more legitimate program capture
19:46
Speaker 2: their imagination in the future.
19:49
Speaker 7: And also, so we went a little bit long.
19:51
Speaker 5: We're going to save the Save Act, the make American
19:53
Speaker 5: Elections Great Again explainer. Maybe we'll hopefully get to that tomorrow.
19:58
Speaker 5: But up next, I've got Dave Dayan and David Hogg
20:02
Speaker 5: to talk about this incredible story of a candidate, a
20:05
Speaker 5: Democratic candidate in North Carolina who swore off a PAC
20:09
Speaker 5: money and yet is getting a PAC money anyway. We'll
20:13
Speaker 5: explain the various loops and loopholes that we're able to
20:19
Speaker 5: track this money through and getting into the race, which
20:21
Speaker 5: now is ni alam versus value. If we share that,
20:24
Speaker 5: I'll be to The election is on Tuesday, in North Carolina,
20:28
Speaker 5: so I'll stick around for that. A Pack and AI
20:34
Speaker 5: are both swamping House elections as we head into next
20:38
Speaker 5: week will be the first. Next Tuesday will be the
20:40
Speaker 5: first kind of primary of the twenty twenty sixth season.
20:43
Speaker 5: To talk about that, we're going to be joined by
20:45
Speaker 5: two David's, David Dan and David Hogg. David Daan is
20:48
Speaker 5: the executive editor of The American Prospect. David Hogg is
20:53
Speaker 5: the head of Leaders We Deserve, which is participating in
20:57
Speaker 5: a lot of these primaries around the country. Day and
21:01
Speaker 5: let's let's put a a two up there, just because
21:05
Speaker 5: David Dan and I have been doing a bunch of
21:08
Speaker 5: reporting on the kind of secret APAK primary effort going
21:13
Speaker 5: on in Illinois, and we'll talk about that kind of
21:15
Speaker 5: on the On the back half of this program, we're
21:17
Speaker 5: also going to be joined by Nita Alam, who I
21:20
Speaker 5: interviewed I did. I pre taped an interview yesterday with her.
21:23
Speaker 5: We'll attach that to the end of this project. So
21:26
Speaker 5: I want to start with actually Nita because it's it's
21:28
Speaker 5: an incredible case here. Let's start with you, David Hogg,
21:31
Speaker 5: because you guys have endorsed Nit Alam, so she ran
21:34
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty two against Valerie Fushi. How do you
21:38
Speaker 5: do you say it? Fushi or fushie Fushi? Fushi? Okay,
21:42
Speaker 5: I've been doing Fushi. It's it's tough. So she ran
21:46
Speaker 5: against Sushi in twenty twenty two. More than two million
21:50
Speaker 5: dollars of a pac money comes into that race, and
21:53
Speaker 5: a bunch of crypto money as well, I think from
21:55
Speaker 5: Sam Bankman Freed, and she wins the race kind of close,
22:00
Speaker 5: but I think nine points is a nine point yeah
22:02
Speaker 5: march with a crowded field. Crowded field. Since then, there's
22:07
Speaker 5: been a little redistricting, so it's actually a little bit
22:09
Speaker 5: more progressive. And my understanding is that if that twenty
22:15
Speaker 5: twenty two race were running this new district, she actually
22:17
Speaker 5: wins so like and also, Fuhi has.
22:20
Speaker 7: Done very little fund raising. I was checking last night.
22:23
Speaker 5: I think she raised less than five hundred and fifty
22:25
Speaker 5: thousand dollars for this cycle, which is for an incumbent.
22:28
Speaker 5: She was out raised by nid Alam, who just launched
22:30
Speaker 5: her race in December.
22:31
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean, Fushi is freaking out so much. I
22:33
Speaker 10: got to text a screenshotted text from Fushi to another
22:37
Speaker 10: member of Congress who's a friend of mine, where she's
22:39
Speaker 10: saying this group leaders we Deserve is coming after me, please,
22:42
Speaker 10: you know, help me out, send me money, And of
22:44
Speaker 10: course that member wasn't going to but that was literally
22:46
Speaker 10: less than a week ago that she is currently texting
22:48
Speaker 10: members of Congress freaking out, And I think it shows
22:51
Speaker 10: the weakness that some of these incumbents are in. When
22:53
Speaker 10: you're propped up by Apak, you don't actually have to
22:56
Speaker 10: be that strong of a campaigner to win a lot
22:58
Speaker 10: of the time, especially if it's a crowded primary, and
22:59
Speaker 10: you don't need to win by that much. In this case,
23:02
Speaker 10: we're dealing with a different district but also has had
23:04
Speaker 10: some of the most doge cuts of any congressional district
23:07
Speaker 10: in the country, with a much.
23:08
Speaker 5: More doorm area like yeah, probably.
23:11
Speaker 10: Your ownlike area. And on top of that, the district
23:15
Speaker 10: because of the redistricting, as you mentioned, is significantly more
23:17
Speaker 10: South Asian than it was previously as well, and we're
23:21
Speaker 10: dealing with an electric that is incredibly fed up with
23:23
Speaker 10: the state of the party right now.
23:25
Speaker 5: That's interesting that she is going from members of Congress
23:29
Speaker 5: because that's like low hanging through.
23:31
Speaker 10: Less than two weeks before her and two weeks well.
23:33
Speaker 11: It wasn't as members, it was publicly. So you know, Fushi,
23:36
Speaker 11: like many candidates, particularly ones who are desirous of super
23:41
Speaker 11: pac money, has a red box. And you know what
23:43
Speaker 11: a red box is. That's a section of their website
23:47
Speaker 11: where they sort of the literal red box around where
23:50
Speaker 11: they sort of soft coordinate with super PACs and say,
23:53
Speaker 11: here's what voters need to know in this district. And
23:56
Speaker 11: she changed the language on her red box right before
24:01
Speaker 11: all this money came in, and previously it just had
24:06
Speaker 11: sort of a generic message. And then you could almost
24:09
Speaker 11: see the four alarm fire in the red box. It
24:12
Speaker 11: was voters need to immediately here. Uh that they stopped waiting,
24:17
Speaker 11: that Nita Alam is getting a million dollars from dark money,
24:21
Speaker 11: and and and Valerie fus she won't be bought. Uh
24:24
Speaker 11: it was, yeah, it was. It was like such an
24:28
Speaker 11: urgent message. And now what we've seen in the week
24:32
Speaker 11: since is that those super packs have delivered.
24:35
Speaker 5: Valerie Foush, she won't be bought. Please dump millions of
24:38
Speaker 5: dollars into this.
24:38
Speaker 11: Please spend this money to tell people that I won't
24:41
Speaker 11: be bought.
24:41
Speaker 5: So we put up we can put up e one here.
24:44
Speaker 5: This is a tweet from Dave Dave Dan where you
24:48
Speaker 5: where you? You kind of spell out the how uh
24:52
Speaker 5: how badly she was actually getting outspent, which is extremely
24:56
Speaker 5: unusual for an incumbent until this AI quote AI Safety
24:59
Speaker 5: super Pa, which is funded by anthropic came in. They've
25:03
Speaker 5: now dropped one point three million dollars into the room
25:07
Speaker 5: point six up to one point six every know, it
25:10
Speaker 5: just keeps going one point six million dollars. And there's
25:13
Speaker 5: another pack that is called the Article one pack that
25:18
Speaker 5: has come in and looks like so far they're they've
25:21
Speaker 5: publicly said that they're going to do six hundred thousand,
25:24
Speaker 5: might might be more if they can, if they can
25:27
Speaker 5: make it work. And so I wanted to talk about
25:31
Speaker 5: this pack because this isn't this is an incredible one.
25:33
Speaker 5: So Fushi in, you know, so she got the two
25:37
Speaker 5: million dollars in a pac money. She then takes a
25:40
Speaker 5: bit of a turn after the genocide starts in Gaza
25:45
Speaker 5: and says that she's she she endorses the Block the
25:50
Speaker 5: Bombs Act, which is kind of the Progressive Caucus is
25:52
Speaker 5: kind of more mild version of conditioning.
25:54
Speaker 7: Aid to Israel.
25:55
Speaker 5: And then Lis Summer said she's not going to take
25:57
Speaker 5: a pack money.
25:58
Speaker 11: Yeah, I would not necessarily call it taking a turn,
26:02
Speaker 11: as I would being turned. So there was a lot
26:06
Speaker 11: of grassroots pressure in the district and the impetus for
26:10
Speaker 11: her saying I reject this money was a town hall
26:13
Speaker 11: in the district where she was confronted over meeting with
26:16
Speaker 11: Nanyou on a congressional delegation and also the previous support
26:21
Speaker 11: for APAC money in twenty twenty two, and she said, well, look,
26:26
Speaker 11: I'm not doing that anymore. And I even heard behind
26:28
Speaker 11: the scenes that she was discouraging APEX from doing unbranded
26:32
Speaker 11: fundraisers for her, like she actually was, at least for
26:36
Speaker 11: a time, probably when she thought she wasn't going to
26:39
Speaker 11: have a primary candidate for a time, was really seem
26:44
Speaker 11: sort of committed to this. And now we want you
26:50
Speaker 11: to take us sto where we are to.
26:50
Speaker 5: Well, before we do the reveal of how the APAC
26:53
Speaker 5: money is getting into the district, now, why did you
26:55
Speaker 5: guys get in? Like what made you get into this
26:58
Speaker 5: particular race? Because as you're mapping out the limited resources
27:02
Speaker 5: that you have, you no, it's sizable, but yeah, it's
27:04
Speaker 5: not infinite.
27:06
Speaker 7: What made you pick this one?
27:08
Speaker 5: Because I've heard the argument from some people that like, hey, Fushi,
27:11
Speaker 5: because she was able to be pressured at the grassroots
27:15
Speaker 5: level and she got better, like we should reward that
27:18
Speaker 5: by re electing her, and so that it tells other
27:21
Speaker 5: candidates come our way and there will welcome you, rather
27:26
Speaker 5: than you know what, we're going to take you out anyway.
27:29
Speaker 10: Ultimately, Nida's going to be here for the long haul,
27:32
Speaker 10: a lot longer than Fushi. Nida also in this district,
27:35
Speaker 10: what we saw was that for us, it's not just
27:37
Speaker 10: a matter of whether or not somebody's taking money from APAC.
27:40
Speaker 10: Of course, we're going to support candidates who are against that,
27:42
Speaker 10: like Nida, but it's also the fact that Fushi was
27:44
Speaker 10: taking ridiculous amounts of corporate.
27:46
Speaker 5: Money as a crypto style.
27:47
Speaker 10: And what happened here was when Fushi was pressured on
27:51
Speaker 10: taking that corporate money. You know what her defense of
27:53
Speaker 10: it was was, well, these are corporations that are in
27:56
Speaker 10: my district, so I'm happy to take it, which is
27:58
Speaker 10: an absurd you know, logic to use here, Like, let's
28:02
Speaker 10: press this further. Let's say that there is an ice
28:04
Speaker 10: detention center that Corusivic or Geogroup, you know, runs in
28:08
Speaker 10: fu She's district. Is she going to start taking money
28:10
Speaker 10: from private prisons? Yeah, Let's say that there is that
28:13
Speaker 10: Smith and Wesson. Let's say that Smith and Western is
28:15
Speaker 10: the same. Let's say that Smith and Wesson, the same
28:18
Speaker 10: company that manufactured the AR fifteen used in Parkland, moves
28:21
Speaker 10: to her district, the same AAR fifteens that are used
28:24
Speaker 10: around the country by mass shooters. If they're in her district,
28:27
Speaker 10: does that mean she's going to start taking money from
28:29
Speaker 10: Smith and Wesson? Like, where where do you draw the
28:31
Speaker 10: line here? Because if it's all of a sudden saying well,
28:33
Speaker 10: you know, I'm not going to take money from APAC,
28:35
Speaker 10: but I'm fine taking it from lockeed Martin, for example,
28:38
Speaker 10: the people that are helping to make the arms that
28:39
Speaker 10: are being used against children in Gaza. Is it really
28:42
Speaker 10: that much different in the first place?
28:44
Speaker 11: Can I say quick thing about the AI aspect of
28:47
Speaker 11: this before we go into the Apec park. So Nita
28:51
Speaker 11: Alam gets into the race in December righter ninth.
28:55
Speaker 7: Very late.
28:56
Speaker 11: We started working with her July about a March primary, right,
29:00
Speaker 11: but almost at the exact same time, there is this
29:04
Speaker 11: commission that Hakeem Jeffries puts together on AI and the
29:09
Speaker 11: Innovation Economy December eleventh. Yeah, almost the exact same time
29:14
Speaker 11: that December eleventh, she launched.
29:15
Speaker 5: December ninth, he puts her on the commission.
29:17
Speaker 11: But it was already, It's already people knew that she
29:20
Speaker 11: was going to that she was going.
29:20
Speaker 5: To get it.
29:21
Speaker 11: And Jeffries appoints Fushi as one of the co chairs
29:26
Speaker 11: just three.
29:26
Speaker 10: Do you think it's because of her expertise in technology?
29:29
Speaker 11: Well, she she represents the research trying. It's clearly a
29:32
Speaker 11: high tech area, innovation heavy era.
29:35
Speaker 7: But wait, so.
29:38
Speaker 11: Then she's bumping along and she you know, there are
29:40
Speaker 11: these packs that come out, you know, people, grassroots packs
29:44
Speaker 11: like leaders we Deserve, but also this pack called American Priorities,
29:48
Speaker 11: which we revealed is specifically designed to counter APAC influence
29:52
Speaker 11: in a bunch of races. They put in almost eight
29:55
Speaker 11: hundred thousand.
29:56
Speaker 5: Dollars under this race backing Alum.
30:01
Speaker 11: But last week, when Fushi is being outspent ten to one,
30:07
Speaker 11: there's a poll that goes into the district. Public Policy Polling,
30:10
Speaker 11: which is based in North Carolina, puts this poll out.
30:12
Speaker 7: I've seen the screenshots of it.
30:14
Speaker 11: It does head to head Alam versus Fushi, and those
30:19
Speaker 11: functionally are the only two candidates in this primary. But
30:22
Speaker 11: it also asks attitudes towards AI the among members of
30:27
Speaker 11: the district, and we don't know who's spent, and it
30:32
Speaker 11: has not been released, and I've asked Public Policy Polling
30:35
Speaker 11: many times if they're going to release this poll.
30:37
Speaker 7: But clearly the amount.
30:39
Speaker 11: Of money being poured in, which has nothing to do
30:42
Speaker 11: with AI, these ads, of course shows two things. Number one,
30:47
Speaker 11: that poll probably showed some bad news for Valerie Fushi,
30:50
Speaker 11: and number two, it probably showed some bad news on
30:53
Speaker 11: attitudes towards AI, or otherwise they would have elevated that
30:57
Speaker 11: she's the head of the II Commission, right.
30:59
Speaker 5: And this is a good how Washington works story for
31:02
Speaker 5: people like the House Financial Services Committee is referred to
31:06
Speaker 5: internally as a as a money committee, for instance, because
31:10
Speaker 5: you put people on there who are in vulnerable races
31:13
Speaker 5: and need to raise a lot of money. And because
31:16
Speaker 5: you're now regulating the banks and the private equity and
31:19
Speaker 5: hedge funds, you can then go to the banks and
31:22
Speaker 5: shake them down for money. And so what Keem Jefferies
31:26
Speaker 5: did here is he created a task force that's going
31:28
Speaker 5: to write democratic policy on AI puts her on it,
31:32
Speaker 5: also put Josh Gotttheimer on it, who's a voracious like
31:35
Speaker 5: his story, also.
31:36
Speaker 7: Gotten money from the same AI base and.
31:38
Speaker 5: As a Microsoft executive, so has those links. So's it's
31:43
Speaker 5: a fun It's a signal like if you like give
31:45
Speaker 5: money to this person. And I think you guys have
31:47
Speaker 5: been vindicated in your analysis here by the two plus
31:51
Speaker 5: million dollars that she's already taken. Because people were like, no,
31:54
Speaker 5: she's doing better now, like leave her alone.
31:58
Speaker 10: The real test is somebody's values is well, they're under pressure.
32:00
Speaker 10: And we knew that if she was willing to accept
32:03
Speaker 10: this money when she was running in her first race,
32:05
Speaker 10: when she came under pressure, that there would be more
32:06
Speaker 10: super PACs, specifically these super PACs like the AI one
32:10
Speaker 10: you know, this article one, stuff, everything like that that
32:13
Speaker 10: came in and supported her that if she really was
32:16
Speaker 10: committed to that, she wouldn't be taking that money, and
32:17
Speaker 10: she wouldn't be facing such ferocious attacks that wouldn't be
32:20
Speaker 10: landing as much because it wouldn't be true.
32:23
Speaker 11: So one of the thing on that is that there's
32:26
Speaker 11: there's actually a live fight in the district around AI
32:30
Speaker 11: and specifically around the AI data center in a city,
32:34
Speaker 11: small town called Apex that would use as much electricity
32:39
Speaker 11: as the entire town, and there's been a pretty vociferous
32:44
Speaker 11: pushback on that, and in other parts of the district
32:47
Speaker 11: where there's actually a moratorium in a place called Chatham County.
32:50
Speaker 11: But in Apex, hundreds of constituents sent an open letter
32:54
Speaker 11: to both candidates saying, will you oppose this data center?
32:58
Speaker 11: Number one and number two? Will you not take any
33:01
Speaker 11: money from AI? And Nida Alam signed that and Valory
33:07
Speaker 11: Fushi did not right, and so I think there is
33:11
Speaker 11: a potential for backlash here, at least among people in
33:15
Speaker 11: Apex who are very agitated about the placement of this.
33:19
Speaker 5: Do you have a sense of how much this data
33:21
Speaker 5: center controversy in the district is playing in the race
33:24
Speaker 5: so far?
33:24
Speaker 10: I'm sure it play is a significant role. Obviously, when
33:27
Speaker 10: we did our own polling in the race, we didn't
33:29
Speaker 10: specifically ask about AI. We are trying to see, like,
33:31
Speaker 10: what is the pathway to victory because for leaders we deserve,
33:34
Speaker 10: we don't have an infinite amount of resources. We rely
33:37
Speaker 10: on two hundred and forty thousand individual donors so that
33:40
Speaker 10: our candidates don't have to take corporate money so that
33:42
Speaker 10: we can truly back them and not have them unilaterally disarmed.
33:45
Speaker 10: We saw a pathway for NIDA. We didn't ask about AI.
33:47
Speaker 10: But what I will tell you I think is probably
33:49
Speaker 10: having just as much, if not a bigger impact, is
33:51
Speaker 10: the fact that you simultaneously are dealing with the district
33:54
Speaker 10: where it has had some of the most doage cuts
33:57
Speaker 10: of any district in the country, and it has a
34:00
Speaker 10: very high number. It's one of the youngest congressional districts
34:02
Speaker 10: in the country. It has a very high number of
34:04
Speaker 10: recent college grads that we know right now have an
34:06
Speaker 10: unemployment rate of around forty five percent. That feel like
34:10
Speaker 10: and I'm sure that an AI data center is not
34:12
Speaker 10: going to drive well with them or the people who
34:15
Speaker 10: have their kids living at home right now after they
34:17
Speaker 10: graduate from UNC or whatever other schools are in the
34:19
Speaker 10: district because of automation and AI.
34:23
Speaker 11: Interesting data point on that. In twenty twenty two they
34:26
Speaker 11: moved the primary to May. It was after colleges had
34:29
Speaker 11: let out for the summer. This time it's in March.
34:32
Speaker 11: The college students will be there and likely be voting.
34:35
Speaker 10: And that was one of our first questions when we
34:37
Speaker 10: were looking at NITA back in June and July of
34:39
Speaker 10: twenty twenty five was how do we time this so
34:41
Speaker 10: that nobody else gets in the race, so that we
34:44
Speaker 10: don't have another situation where the field is fractured and
34:47
Speaker 10: then it's way harder to have a pathway to victory.
34:49
Speaker 10: So it's just and on top of that, are the
34:52
Speaker 10: college students actually going to be there, because we've seen
34:55
Speaker 10: districts where you know, in the past, I've seen polling
34:58
Speaker 10: where a candidate looks like they're going to win because
35:00
Speaker 10: we account for a lot of college students turning out
35:02
Speaker 10: and then it turns out, oh they're on spring bread
35:04
Speaker 10: or oh, you know, it's summer break, and then they
35:06
Speaker 10: don't turn out and then the candidate loses. In this case,
35:09
Speaker 10: we looked at the polling, we looked at the redistricting,
35:11
Speaker 10: and we saw a huge opportunity to show and send
35:13
Speaker 10: a shockwaves through the electoral system that if Nido wins here,
35:18
Speaker 10: I think will really send a chill down the spine
35:20
Speaker 10: of a lot of people in the establishment who historically
35:22
Speaker 10: have relied on corporations, relied on a pack and thought
35:25
Speaker 10: that they were safe because of that, and ironically, the
35:28
Speaker 10: thing that used to keep them the most safe is
35:29
Speaker 10: now the thing that makes them most vulnerable. We as leaders,
35:32
Speaker 10: we deserve our friends over at Justice, Democrats, at Sunrise
35:34
Speaker 10: Movement and other groups and obviously you will too, are
35:37
Speaker 10: working to make the biggest asset these groups have, which
35:40
Speaker 10: is their money, their biggest liability. That gets harder with
35:43
Speaker 10: the shell packs, obviously. But what I don't think people
35:47
Speaker 10: like Hakeem Jeffries or Chuck Schumer realize is that Gen
35:51
Speaker 10: Z and Millennials are increasingly We're almost a majority of
35:54
Speaker 10: the electorate at this point. I don't think they understand
35:58
Speaker 10: how much we vehemently hate politicians is that take corporate
36:00
Speaker 10: money and appear to engage in insider trading. As a generation,
36:04
Speaker 10: we feel like the entire system has been bought and
36:06
Speaker 10: sold out from underneath us. And when these politicians take
36:10
Speaker 10: corporate money, I think for a lot of them, like
36:11
Speaker 10: Valerie Fushi, they're like, what thing in my district, It's
36:13
Speaker 10: totally fine. They don't understand what that tells voters, which
36:15
Speaker 10: is that you are effectively being bribed by these corporations.
36:19
Speaker 7: You should talk about the article one thing.
36:20
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I mentioned that she raised five hundred and
36:23
Speaker 5: fifty thousand dollars more than two hundred fifty thousand. That
36:27
Speaker 5: was packs corp. Mostly corporate packs, but some you know,
36:29
Speaker 5: labor fishes as well.
36:30
Speaker 7: Fushi.
36:31
Speaker 5: Yeah, so yes, to your point, like even the tiny
36:34
Speaker 5: amount of money she raised, most of it was from
36:36
Speaker 5: corporate packs. But yeah, So let's get to the reveal
36:39
Speaker 5: on this article. One thing, because this is this is incredible.
36:42
Speaker 5: We reported in the past twenty twenty four a PAC
36:46
Speaker 5: was using a PAC used a science a pro science
36:48
Speaker 5: pack three fourteen action to like in Illinois. As as
36:53
Speaker 5: Dan and I reported, they created these two fake packs,
36:57
Speaker 5: brand new packs and election kago women big concern for
37:01
Speaker 5: a pack girl boy, yes, and affordable affordable Chicago. Now
37:08
Speaker 5: like a PAC literally biting off of mom Donnie's affordability.
37:12
Speaker 10: That's unapologetic. They are where their money's come.
37:15
Speaker 11: Yeah, and then there's and then they were coordinating donors
37:18
Speaker 11: through these unbranded fundraisers. And if you looked at the
37:23
Speaker 11: candidates they were supporting in these Illinois races, Laura Fine
37:27
Speaker 11: in Illinois nine, Donna Miller in Illinois two, and Melissa
37:30
Speaker 11: Being in Illinois eight. Uh, they were sharing one hundred doors.
37:35
Speaker 11: Hundreds of donors also donated in the past.
37:38
Speaker 5: To APAC just a coincidence that So that's how you
37:41
Speaker 5: can figure out in Chicago and the Illinois area, you
37:44
Speaker 5: know that A pack is actually the one that's behind us. Right,
37:46
Speaker 5: they say they're unapologetic about their participation, which is completely
37:50
Speaker 5: hiding it, which it's you know, it's totally legal to.
37:53
Speaker 7: Participate in the political process.
37:54
Speaker 5: All we're asking is just you know, do it your
37:56
Speaker 5: chest out, like, stand behind what you believe in. So
37:59
Speaker 5: that gets us to this article one Pack. So its
38:02
Speaker 5: first spending was in New Jersey eleven, which is the
38:06
Speaker 5: one that people probably remember. This is Ana Lilia Mahea
38:10
Speaker 5: and Tom Malinowski and the Lieutenant governor of New Jersey,
38:14
Speaker 5: ta Heesha Way. A Pack was behind Way, and so
38:18
Speaker 5: APAC spent millions tearing down Malinowski, and as you know
38:25
Speaker 5: from watching the show, they accidentally elected Mehia. Right, Article
38:29
Speaker 5: one came in boosting Way and people are like, what
38:33
Speaker 5: is this Article one Pack?
38:34
Speaker 7: This is this is odd.
38:36
Speaker 5: So the second time it has ever spent any money
38:39
Speaker 5: is this six hundred thousand dollars on behalf of fushi.
38:44
Speaker 5: Now I've been told by sources, some with direct knowledge
38:47
Speaker 5: of this, that this is a hikem Jeffries pack that
38:51
Speaker 5: Hakeem is guiding this.
38:53
Speaker 11: And there were some signals of that during the New
38:56
Speaker 11: Jersey race. If you look back at what how this
39:00
Speaker 11: Article one pack was formed and who it's associated with.
39:03
Speaker 11: A thing called Article one Victory that has ties to
39:06
Speaker 11: the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is a leadership organization essentially,
39:12
Speaker 11: and ties to a bunch of swing district members of
39:15
Speaker 11: Congress who are the type of people who the D
39:18
Speaker 11: Triple C supports.
39:22
Speaker 5: Now, I've also been told by a source with knowledge
39:24
Speaker 5: of this that it is funneling a PAC money. So
39:27
Speaker 5: instead of using these elect Chicago women packs, Hakim Jeffries
39:31
Speaker 5: is setting up a vehicle that is allowing a PAC
39:34
Speaker 5: money to come through. And we know how they're doing
39:37
Speaker 5: it thanks to Matthew EDI's reporting out of Chicago. So
39:41
Speaker 5: we can put up E three here and so let's
39:43
Speaker 5: follow along because this is fun to unpack. So Edy
39:48
Speaker 5: obtained two emails that were privately sent by a pack
39:53
Speaker 5: on August twenty first and then again on September fifteenth,
39:56
Speaker 5: and what they were doing is they were raising money
40:00
Speaker 5: for Laura Fine, who's running in this Illinois nine. This
40:04
Speaker 5: is Chicago area district. And so the emails said, please
40:09
Speaker 5: support Laura Fine. So now we know it's APAC because
40:12
Speaker 5: APAK is saying please support Laura Fine, and do it
40:16
Speaker 5: through this hidden web page. That's that's called the Quote
40:19
Speaker 5: Pro Israel Network. So it's a link that you can't
40:23
Speaker 5: really find unless APAC sends you directly there. So then
40:27
Speaker 5: we put up put up this next, next, put up
40:31
Speaker 5: E four here, So basically here here are the emails
40:37
Speaker 5: they run through. He so this is him obtaining the
40:42
Speaker 5: actual emails if you didn't believe him the first time.
40:45
Speaker 5: And so put up E five here. And so then
40:49
Speaker 5: you go through the FEC filings and he found that
40:53
Speaker 5: more than one hundred and fifty of fines donations, which
40:56
Speaker 5: are three hundred thousand dollars came.
40:58
Speaker 7: It worked.
40:59
Speaker 5: They they funnel the money to APEC.
41:02
Speaker 11: Often it's on the same day, right, all this money
41:05
Speaker 11: comes in because it's a virtual fundraiser. And often you know,
41:10
Speaker 11: Fine and other candidates are bundled in these emails and
41:13
Speaker 11: you see the same amount of money going to the
41:15
Speaker 11: same candidates on the same day.
41:18
Speaker 5: And so they're using and so you can put up
41:20
Speaker 5: the next, put up the next element. So using this
41:22
Speaker 5: thing called Democracy Engine LLC, which sometimes shows up in
41:27
Speaker 5: the FEC to funnel to funnel the money through, right
41:33
Speaker 5: and so.
41:35
Speaker 11: And I've seen these too, by the way, and there
41:36
Speaker 11: are dozens of these virtual fundraisers and this what they were.
41:40
Speaker 11: So what this is generally being done for individual donations
41:43
Speaker 11: to the candidate itself. What you're saying is that this
41:46
Speaker 11: is a similar mechanism that is being used.
41:49
Speaker 5: And we'll add this one in post because I didn't
41:50
Speaker 5: put it into the rundown. And so what they're doing
41:55
Speaker 5: is there they also a pac also sent directly to
41:59
Speaker 5: Aki Jeffries through the same process and using this democracy engine,
42:03
Speaker 5: so they funneled so that we have and we'll put
42:08
Speaker 5: it up. We'll put it up here, the Jeffers Victory Fund.
42:14
Speaker 5: A pack sends directly through this process to the Jeffreys
42:18
Speaker 5: Victory Fund.
42:19
Speaker 11: So then it raises and then Jeffries gives to Article
42:22
Speaker 11: one pack and an Article one pack gives you know,
42:25
Speaker 11: it donates it or there could there could be even
42:28
Speaker 11: another intermediary before it gets well there is because I mean,
42:32
Speaker 11: what we know is the three hundred and fifty thousand
42:36
Speaker 11: that went to Tahisha Raise Raise was raised from something
42:39
Speaker 11: called the Guzman Foundation, which no one's ever heard of
42:42
Speaker 11: and no one knows anything about. So it could be
42:46
Speaker 11: that could be the fourth link in that chain. Right,
42:48
Speaker 11: So it's a fundraiser that goes to Jeffries. Jeffries then
42:52
Speaker 11: gives the Guzman Foundation or something some other shell that
42:57
Speaker 11: gives to Article one pack, and then that Article one
42:59
Speaker 11: pack raises the money for the ads or does the ads.
43:02
Speaker 10: It's a really dumb way of going about it, like
43:04
Speaker 10: so over complicated and convoluted right in general.
43:07
Speaker 11: And I thought it makes it hard to track and
43:09
Speaker 11: hard for people like us to understand where the money
43:13
Speaker 11: is actually coming from.
43:13
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
43:14
Speaker 10: I mean that's the whole point. One thing to note
43:15
Speaker 10: too that I think people need to should understand about
43:18
Speaker 10: why apacs can have such an effect as well when
43:21
Speaker 10: they give, when they bundle money for candidates as they're
43:24
Speaker 10: doing across Illinois, you know. And I got to say,
43:27
Speaker 10: Illinois nine is getting a lot of attention. Obviously, Cat's amazing,
43:30
Speaker 10: but there's also Robert Peters who's getting massively attacked on
43:34
Speaker 10: all sides by all special interests. He's got the trifecta
43:37
Speaker 10: of hell coming up. That's basically in Illinois too, and
43:41
Speaker 10: in that district, what we see is that the polling
43:44
Speaker 10: there that it's really interesting because you have Illinois nine
43:48
Speaker 10: with an electorate with way more you know, people with
43:51
Speaker 10: masters and pH like Evanstone, and then you have the
43:54
Speaker 10: second district that is a lot lower income, you know,
43:58
Speaker 10: less higher rates of education. In the polling moves much
44:00
Speaker 10: faster after APAC comes in and spends than it does
44:04
Speaker 10: in Illinois ninth Congressional district. But the point that I
44:06
Speaker 10: wanted to get at is that this bundling of money
44:09
Speaker 10: that they do, the reason it can have so much
44:11
Speaker 10: of an impact is because candidates, when they're spending on TV,
44:16
Speaker 10: get candidate rate that is legally required to be the
44:20
Speaker 10: lowest rate. And correct me if I'm wrong with I understanding.
44:23
Speaker 11: It has to be the lowest rate, even less sometimes
44:26
Speaker 11: ten times is my butt for superpack.
44:29
Speaker 10: But if it's a superpack where somebody says, Okay, I'm
44:31
Speaker 10: going to give you one hundred thousand dollars to United
44:33
Speaker 10: for Democracy Project whatever that money, those ads cost twice
44:38
Speaker 10: as much if it's an independent expenditure on broadcast or
44:41
Speaker 10: on TV a lot of the time, So that's why
44:42
Speaker 10: it has so much of an impact with that bundling
44:44
Speaker 10: of money, and it gives the candidates the plausible deniability
44:47
Speaker 10: to be like, oh, I didn't know that this was
44:49
Speaker 10: a pack, which is obviously bullshit, but it gives them
44:52
Speaker 10: that ability because it's not apac directly giving them that money,
44:55
Speaker 10: and it goes from further.
44:56
Speaker 5: It also puts a dollar value on the secrecy that
44:59
Speaker 5: a pack cherishes, because they what they could have done
45:04
Speaker 5: is us democracy engine to send money directly to Valerie Fushi,
45:09
Speaker 5: for instance, and then she needed the money, and then
45:12
Speaker 5: she could have gotten the preferential ad rates and done
45:16
Speaker 5: exactly how she wanted to do.
45:17
Speaker 7: But she had pledged not to take ady back money.
45:19
Speaker 7: And these are the things.
45:20
Speaker 11: These are, these kinds of unbranded fund raisers are the
45:24
Speaker 11: exact things that she apparently rejects.
45:26
Speaker 5: She said, don't do that, That's what I was told.
45:28
Speaker 5: So instead, because she was mindful of the backlash, right,
45:30
Speaker 5: so that they found the Jeffries that's right, who then
45:33
Speaker 5: loops it back around to article.
45:34
Speaker 11: And so it's less impactful because it's it's more expensive
45:38
Speaker 11: to run those ads, but it allows to keep this
45:41
Speaker 11: wall of deniability up.
45:44
Speaker 10: It's an important to note too, to think about what
45:46
Speaker 10: this means from Jeffrey's position as well, this is, you know,
45:49
Speaker 10: I think, of course there's the apac role here, as
45:51
Speaker 10: there is in so many of these races around the country,
45:53
Speaker 10: but you also got to put yourself in Jeffrey's shoes.
45:55
Speaker 10: His job is to try to protect his members so
45:58
Speaker 10: that he can keep his majority that he needs to
46:00
Speaker 10: be able to get to continue to be Speaker of
46:03
Speaker 10: the House. And I think, in combination with the attacks
46:06
Speaker 10: on all of these incumbents, what he's trying to do
46:08
Speaker 10: in this race. What's fascinating to me about it is
46:10
Speaker 10: how late the spending is right now. It came in
46:13
Speaker 10: so late. It didn't come in a month ago when
46:15
Speaker 10: it could have actually had I think, way more of
46:17
Speaker 10: an impact. It started coming in way later when it
46:20
Speaker 10: presumably they saw Paulton that showed that Fushi was toast.
46:22
Speaker 11: We're talking about two point two million dollars in the
46:25
Speaker 11: final eleven days of the race. That's two hundred thousand dollars.
46:29
Speaker 5: Nothing and nothing but these ads on TV.
46:32
Speaker 10: I think what we're seeing here is Jeffrey is trying
46:34
Speaker 10: to show his other members, look, I'm going to back
46:36
Speaker 10: you so that even if Fushi does lose, they feel like, well,
46:39
Speaker 10: I still want to vote for him because he's going
46:40
Speaker 10: to help protect me, because once you're in theoretically he
46:43
Speaker 10: wants to protect you if you're going to vote for him.
46:45
Speaker 10: What's interesting about this whole dynamic, though, is if there
46:48
Speaker 10: are so many people that end up getting defeated by
46:50
Speaker 10: these incumbent challengers. Every one of our incoment challengers that
46:53
Speaker 10: leaders we deserve a supporting outraise their opponent last quarter,
46:56
Speaker 10: and Justin Pearson outraised his opponent. I think it was
46:58
Speaker 10: nine to one against Steve Cohen. So that is obviously
47:02
Speaker 10: getting their attention. But what will be interesting to see
47:05
Speaker 10: how is two things. One of these incumbents who win,
47:08
Speaker 10: how does Jeffries try to reconcile with them, right because
47:12
Speaker 10: he obviously wants to continue being speaker, And how can
47:14
Speaker 10: they use that potentially to try to fend off future
47:16
Speaker 10: primary challenges from groups like APAC. Obviously there's a trade
47:20
Speaker 10: to be made there, But on top of that, it's
47:21
Speaker 10: also a question of with the VRA coming up with
47:25
Speaker 10: that whole you know, Supreme Court case, how does that
47:28
Speaker 10: end up changing Jeffrey's coalition. If a lot of these
47:30
Speaker 10: districts that were created by the Voting Rights Act no
47:33
Speaker 10: longer existing.
47:34
Speaker 11: I just think the this is what makes the Alum
47:37
Speaker 11: race so important because there's now a coalition. I mean,
47:42
Speaker 11: ALAM in twenty twenty two got zero dollars in outside
47:46
Speaker 11: spending from independent groups. This time she's got one point
47:50
Speaker 11: five million. And it's sort of cobbled together with a
47:52
Speaker 11: bunch of different organized.
47:53
Speaker 5: Areas in there's coming together.
47:55
Speaker 11: Yeah, Working Families, Party Justice, Democrats, this American Priorities Group leaders.
47:59
Speaker 7: We deserve how much you drop in a couple of So.
48:02
Speaker 10: I'm on the hard side. But last I checked in,
48:04
Speaker 10: there is about two hundred and fifty thousand.
48:06
Speaker 11: Right, so you know, uh, there's parody here. There's some
48:09
Speaker 11: competitiveness here that we did not see in the last
48:13
Speaker 11: two cycles. They're really it was just sort of you know,
48:16
Speaker 11: lambs to the slaughter if you're talking about these these organizations,
48:20
Speaker 11: and there was an attempt to do political education around
48:23
Speaker 11: this money is coming from APEC and this is what
48:25
Speaker 11: it means, or this money is coming from.
48:26
Speaker 7: Crypto, but now it's there's still that.
48:30
Speaker 11: But there's also and we we've got your back with
48:33
Speaker 11: some actual firepower here. So that's why I think this
48:36
Speaker 11: race is so important, and if Alum still prevails despite
48:40
Speaker 11: this last minute rush, it really does change the understanding
48:45
Speaker 11: and the conception of you know what these races are
48:48
Speaker 11: going to look like, going for massively.
48:50
Speaker 10: I mean it's I think that the entire the sense
48:53
Speaker 10: of these incumbents have such a sense of entitlement. I
48:56
Speaker 10: think it's actually a huge asset for the progressive movement. Ironically,
48:59
Speaker 10: of these child because they are so self absorbed and
49:02
Speaker 10: obsessed with themselves that they tell themselves, I'm so great
49:05
Speaker 10: at being a member of Congress. I can't be defeated.
49:07
Speaker 10: That's what then results in them getting cocky and not fundraising.
49:10
Speaker 10: That's the results. That's what results in them going out
49:13
Speaker 10: there and being like, oh, it's fine, like these challengers,
49:15
Speaker 10: I don't really need to worry about them, and then
49:17
Speaker 10: all of a sudden, people like Valerie if you have
49:19
Speaker 10: a oh shit moment, you know, two weeks before the election,
49:21
Speaker 10: are texting.
49:24
Speaker 7: Exactly.
49:25
Speaker 10: And what we're seeing too is because they're they're so
49:30
Speaker 10: focused on themselves. We've seen people like Steve Cohen compared
49:34
Speaker 10: Justin Pearson's challenge of him to Pearl Harbor, for example.
49:38
Speaker 10: Right then we go out there and we see somebody
49:40
Speaker 10: like Stephen Lynch go out there at a Doge protest
49:42
Speaker 10: talking about all the Doge cuts against VA theoretically a
49:45
Speaker 10: good thing.
49:45
Speaker 7: Right.
49:46
Speaker 10: When somebody helckles him and says says that you need
49:48
Speaker 10: to do more to fight back against Donald Trump, he says,
49:51
Speaker 10: I'm the member of Congress, not you me. If you
49:54
Speaker 10: want to make that decision, you run for Congress. Leaders
49:56
Speaker 10: who deserve is happy to answer that call and light
49:59
Speaker 10: of fire under the assets of the Democratic establishment to
50:01
Speaker 10: force our party to be better. And the great thing
50:03
Speaker 10: about this moment is, unlike in twenty eighteen, when the
50:07
Speaker 10: progressive movement was much more spread out, it was much
50:10
Speaker 10: less coordinated. In many of these races, we are in
50:13
Speaker 10: lock step and we have managed to grow enough small
50:16
Speaker 10: dollars support from the movement. And when we do come together,
50:18
Speaker 10: when Justice Dems comes in, when leaders comes in with
50:21
Speaker 10: American when American Priorities comes in, when all these other
50:24
Speaker 10: groups come together, and we carefully select these races, we're
50:28
Speaker 10: not setting the precedent like, oh, progressives can't win. We're
50:30
Speaker 10: setting the president that when we come together, we win,
50:33
Speaker 10: and we are a real serious threat. So you better
50:35
Speaker 10: not take corporate money. You better not take support for
50:38
Speaker 10: APAK or you're going to have a hell of a
50:39
Speaker 10: primary season ahead of you.
50:41
Speaker 5: It's going to be an interesting race on Tuesday, that's
50:42
Speaker 5: for sure. Last thing I want to ask you, guys about,
50:45
Speaker 5: is this news that apparently the reason that the Democratic
50:50
Speaker 5: National Committee doesn't want to release this autopsy that they
50:53
Speaker 5: did of the twenty twenty four election is that it
50:56
Speaker 5: found that the Democratic support for the jam siding guys,
51:00
Speaker 5: I had a net negative effect. We don't know though,
51:04
Speaker 5: whether or not that was considered to be decisive by
51:08
Speaker 5: this autopsy or not, because they're not revealing it, so
51:11
Speaker 5: we actually breaking points and drops. I would put it together.
51:13
Speaker 5: Petition will put it down at the bottom of the
51:17
Speaker 5: show notes here, just calling on the DNC just release
51:20
Speaker 5: this thing, like let us let us see it. Like
51:22
Speaker 5: I'm not telling you what to think about it, but
51:24
Speaker 5: let us let us see the autopsy. Preferably leak it
51:26
Speaker 5: to us first, but just make it.
51:28
Speaker 7: Make it public.
51:29
Speaker 5: Have you had any meetings with the DNC about this
51:32
Speaker 5: issue or this autopsy? What can you tell us about
51:34
Speaker 5: what you understand about this analysis and why they're keeping
51:38
Speaker 5: it private.
51:39
Speaker 10: Well, what I can tell you. Is two things. One,
51:41
Speaker 10: Ken Martin campaigned on releasing this, yeah, and you were
51:45
Speaker 10: his and I was share to him, like I know
51:47
Speaker 10: that because I heard him say it a million times
51:49
Speaker 10: that all of the million forms that we had to
51:51
Speaker 10: do when we were running his vice chairs and chairs
51:52
Speaker 10: and everything like that. So this is not something where
51:55
Speaker 10: it's like Ken said, I'm going to do. By the way,
51:57
Speaker 10: they always refuse to call it an autopsy report because
52:00
Speaker 10: not dead yet is what they would say. They called
52:02
Speaker 10: an after action report.
52:03
Speaker 5: Fine, after action right.
52:04
Speaker 10: So that's one thing. It's not like Cherry Martin went
52:08
Speaker 10: out there and said, I'm going to do this thing,
52:10
Speaker 10: but it's going to be kept private. He actually said
52:11
Speaker 10: I'm going to release this and we're going to know
52:13
Speaker 10: why we lost, So release it. Don't go out there
52:16
Speaker 10: and claim we're going to do one thing and then
52:17
Speaker 10: not do it. The second thing is I will tell
52:20
Speaker 10: you at our first meeting in the building of the
52:22
Speaker 10: DNC with all of the officers who were elected and everything,
52:26
Speaker 10: we're going through like basically some of the most preliminary
52:29
Speaker 10: findings of like why we lost the election, common sense
52:31
Speaker 10: things as you can imagine that we're in there and
52:33
Speaker 10: one thing that I brought up, and there was like
52:35
Speaker 10: I said, look, I know that you guys don't want
52:37
Speaker 10: to talk about this, almost certainly, but we have to
52:40
Speaker 10: acknowledge what happened with Gaza and the fact that tens
52:43
Speaker 10: of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, especially young people
52:46
Speaker 10: on college campuses, were losing their minds incredibly. It's set
52:50
Speaker 10: understandably over what was happening, and I know you don't
52:53
Speaker 10: want to talk about it, but we have to. And
52:56
Speaker 10: I have to believe that if they're actually writing an
52:58
Speaker 10: autopsy report, right, they have to talk about that. There
53:01
Speaker 10: has to be some part of it and they should
53:03
Speaker 10: release it to have transparency. I mean, we're rock bottom
53:05
Speaker 10: right now. We just lost to Donald Trump for the
53:08
Speaker 10: second time. What else do we have to lose? We
53:10
Speaker 10: might as well give the transparency of our vote to
53:12
Speaker 10: our voters of what actually happened here. But here's the problem.
53:17
Speaker 10: Our party is addicted to losing our party. And what
53:21
Speaker 10: I mean by that in particular is that people like
53:24
Speaker 10: Hakeem Jefferies, people like Chuck Schumer, people I would argue
53:27
Speaker 10: like Ken Martin as well, would much rather keep basically
53:31
Speaker 10: everything as similar as possible, to keep themselves in their
53:34
Speaker 10: own positions of power, whether it's in the Senate or
53:35
Speaker 10: in the House, or the DNC or whatever else it is,
53:38
Speaker 10: instead of actually addressing who we are as a party
53:41
Speaker 10: to get us into a governing majority. Because if we
53:44
Speaker 10: want to win back the White House, if we want
53:45
Speaker 10: to win back the House, if we want to big
53:47
Speaker 10: that win back the Senate, there is no pathway to
53:49
Speaker 10: doing that without winning back young Americans that historically have
53:52
Speaker 10: voted for Democrats. And if we don't offer them something
53:54
Speaker 10: new and don't just change our messaging, but change who
53:56
Speaker 10: we are and address our courage problem as a party
53:59
Speaker 10: where we're just constantly afraid of our own shadow, we're
54:02
Speaker 10: not going to change that.
54:02
Speaker 11: I mean, you're talking about the iron law of institutions,
54:05
Speaker 11: where you know, your status within the institution is more
54:08
Speaker 11: important than the status of the institution within the broader ecosystem.
54:14
Speaker 7: You know.
54:14
Speaker 11: I think that the Democratic Party weirdly discounts authenticity and
54:22
Speaker 11: honesty as say, virtue and a value that voters might
54:25
Speaker 11: respond to. And this is a perfect example of just
54:29
Speaker 11: we don't want to be honest with ourselves, let alone
54:32
Speaker 11: honest with the rest of the electorate about our own failings,
54:35
Speaker 11: and it just breeds this notion that you have something
54:43
Speaker 11: to hide, and it becomes a bigger problem than if
54:47
Speaker 11: you just rip the band aid off and say, yes,
54:49
Speaker 11: this is why we had a problem and we need
54:52
Speaker 11: to be honest about this.
54:53
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean, just release the damn report. Who knows
54:55
Speaker 10: how much of an impact it really will even have
54:57
Speaker 10: to But if you're going to say you're going to
54:59
Speaker 10: release it, and you know we have a trust problem
55:00
Speaker 10: in the party, just release it. We're already at rock bottom.
55:03
Speaker 10: Just show us what much like, how much worse can
55:06
Speaker 10: it get? The only way upward from here?
55:08
Speaker 11: Well, but but the obvious problem is that you know
55:11
Speaker 11: we have the uh presume if if Democrats win in November,
55:16
Speaker 11: Speaker of the House laundering money through a bunch of
55:19
Speaker 11: donors who don't want to report release Also that's what's going.
55:22
Speaker 5: On public and billionaire donors to right, that's incredible exactly, Yeah,
55:26
Speaker 5: that's the impact you're talking about it a lot of
55:28
Speaker 5: the there's a fascinating moment in the Laura Fine race
55:32
Speaker 5: where she was at a campaign forum and they asked
55:36
Speaker 5: the question, did you have you taken money from Trump donors?
55:40
Speaker 5: And of course everybody in the race is a very
55:42
Speaker 5: busy field, said no, and Laura fine, very cheap. Yeah,
55:48
Speaker 5: good for her, Yeah, honestly, all right, David's great to
55:50
Speaker 5: have you guys. Buy David dan executive out of an
55:53
Speaker 5: American Prospect, David Hogwood leaders we deserve in former oust
55:57
Speaker 5: A vice chair DNC.
55:58
Speaker 10: Coming back with a vengeance.
56:00
Speaker 5: Sure, sure are excellent. Well, great to have you guys
56:02
Speaker 5: both here. All right, thanks.
56:06
Speaker 2: So, Ryan a sort of perfect setup for your interview
56:10
Speaker 2: with the candidate herself.
56:11
Speaker 5: Yes, So if you're just coming to this fresh, there's
56:14
Speaker 5: a good conversation that we just had with David Dayan
56:17
Speaker 5: and David Hogg about this race and the dynamics around
56:22
Speaker 5: it and others throughout the country. You can also just
56:26
Speaker 5: listen to this interview. We taped it yesterday. Since we
56:29
Speaker 5: recorded this interview, I actually did a lot of more
56:31
Speaker 5: reporting about the money that we talk about in this conversation.
56:35
Speaker 5: But the gist of it is here. This is Nita
56:38
Speaker 5: alam running in North Carolina's fourth district. The election is
56:41
Speaker 5: this coming Tuesday. Joining us to discuss more of this
56:45
Speaker 5: is Nida Alama, Durham County Commissioner, who is up for
56:49
Speaker 5: election in North Carolina's fourth district this coming Tuesday. If
56:53
Speaker 5: I'm not mistaken, Nina, welcome to Breaking Points. Thanks for
56:57
Speaker 5: joining us.
56:58
Speaker 12: Yeah, thank you so much for having me back.
56:59
Speaker 7: Brian.
57:00
Speaker 5: Yeah. So, for folks who missed our conversation last time
57:04
Speaker 5: we spoke about, you've jumped into a second race against
57:09
Speaker 5: Valerie Fushi, who's now the incumbent. You and her squared
57:13
Speaker 5: off in twenty twenty two. In that election, A pack
57:18
Speaker 5: through I don't remember if they did. I think they
57:20
Speaker 5: did it through their main super PAC United Democracy Project
57:24
Speaker 5: put more than two million dollars into the race, and
57:27
Speaker 5: they ended they ended up pushing Valerie Fushi passed you
57:32
Speaker 5: by about four points or something like, so very very
57:34
Speaker 5: close race, how much nine oh nine points? I remember
57:38
Speaker 5: it being a little bit closer. Nine points is still
57:39
Speaker 5: pretty close for getting more than two million dollars dropped
57:42
Speaker 5: on your head down the stretch of the election. Now,
57:46
Speaker 5: so recently, Fushi has been named to this three person
57:51
Speaker 5: Democratic task Force that is charged with crafting what House
57:57
Speaker 5: democratic policy is supposed to look like. It comes to
58:01
Speaker 5: artificial intelligence, and the way that these kinds of things
58:04
Speaker 5: work is that when a new issue arises, you kind
58:08
Speaker 5: of go outside of the committee system. I don't know
58:10
Speaker 5: why they even still have committees. Maybe you can tell
58:13
Speaker 5: me if you get back to congres, if you get
58:15
Speaker 5: to Congress, you can tell me what committees even do.
58:17
Speaker 5: Because whenever anything comes up, they create a new committee,
58:21
Speaker 5: even though they've got ones that have been operating, you know,
58:24
Speaker 5: semi continuously for hundreds of years at this point. And
58:27
Speaker 5: so the three members on that committee are are Fushi
58:30
Speaker 5: and they're appointed by Hakeem draft Fees just UNI latterly,
58:32
Speaker 5: so it would be Fushi, Ted lu who's a progressive
58:37
Speaker 5: in California. Almost every California Democrat is pretty friendly to
58:42
Speaker 5: the AI industry. And Josh Gottheimer, who is a New
58:46
Speaker 5: Jersey Democrat who is kind of notorious for being friendly
58:51
Speaker 5: to you know, whatever industry it is that he's that
58:54
Speaker 5: he's regulating, whether he's you know, he's on the Financial
58:57
Speaker 5: Service Committee. He's taken more money from banks, hedge funds
59:00
Speaker 5: of private equi than anybody else. He's known as like
59:03
Speaker 5: almost comically voracious fundraiser. So two industry folks plus then
59:09
Speaker 5: a kind of what you would call it as a
59:10
Speaker 5: normal Democrat, Valerie Fushie. So all of a sudden Fushi
59:16
Speaker 5: started getting upwards of seven hundred thousand dollars in support
59:19
Speaker 5: from this superpack that is backed by Anthropic, which presents
59:23
Speaker 5: itself as the AI safety superpack, which kind of goes
59:27
Speaker 5: against I guess the AI Danger company is the ones
59:32
Speaker 5: who are a little bit more reckless Anthropic. Whenever you
59:34
Speaker 5: hear anything the AI world about some of the dangers,
59:37
Speaker 5: it's usually because Anthropic said, hey, look, be careful, like
59:41
Speaker 5: our AI just did this terrible thing, whereas the other
59:43
Speaker 5: Ais do the terrible thing and don't tell you about it.
59:46
Speaker 5: Gotdheimer himself used to work for used to be a
59:48
Speaker 5: Microsoft executive. But there's also a data center fight going
59:53
Speaker 5: on in North Carolina. So can you tell us first
59:55
Speaker 5: about about that. Who was trying to put this data
1:00:00
Speaker 5: center in the district? What is the status of it,
1:00:02
Speaker 5: and how relevant and how kind of resonant of an
1:00:07
Speaker 5: issue is this right now in the district for for
1:00:10
Speaker 5: your voters, both the county commission level but also in
1:00:13
Speaker 5: this in this race.
1:00:14
Speaker 12: Yeah, absolutely, And before I answered that, and also just
1:00:17
Speaker 12: want to note that like Anthropic is also known for
1:00:22
Speaker 12: its collaboration with Pallenteer and government contracts with Ice CVP
1:00:27
Speaker 12: and even in the United States legal evasion invasion into Venezuela,
1:00:32
Speaker 12: it was ptychology that was used.
1:00:35
Speaker 5: Right, And they they recently asked a question to the
1:00:40
Speaker 5: Pentagon about whether or not there UH technology was used
1:00:44
Speaker 5: in appeers as peer as it was in the in
1:00:45
Speaker 5: the kidnapping of Maduro, and they hinted that they they
1:00:50
Speaker 5: don't like that. And now the Pentagon is saying that
1:00:52
Speaker 5: they might call Anthropic a supply chain risk and not
1:00:56
Speaker 5: allow it to be used because Anthropic is saying, we
1:00:59
Speaker 5: don't want our technology be used for autonomous weaponized drones.
1:01:04
Speaker 5: But but they had they're already partners with Palenteer, which
1:01:08
Speaker 5: is one of the most m it's the whatever word
1:01:12
Speaker 5: you want to use for what Palenteer does. So it's
1:01:15
Speaker 5: kind of late to be drawing lines perhaps, but maybe
1:01:18
Speaker 5: they're saying it's not anyway exactly so they're the closest Palenteer.
1:01:22
Speaker 5: But go ahead. There's so much background here that we
1:01:24
Speaker 5: have to unpacked.
1:01:25
Speaker 12: And also the fact that two members of this AI
1:01:28
Speaker 12: task force that was just created in December and it
1:01:32
Speaker 12: was in Fushi was appointed like literally right at the
1:01:34
Speaker 12: same time that we launched our campaign.
1:01:37
Speaker 5: And now that is very interesting. Was it before or after?
1:01:41
Speaker 12: I think it was like a day or two before, right, but.
1:01:44
Speaker 5: People knew you were running, yeah at that point. So
1:01:47
Speaker 5: that's and we just to tell people why that's it.
1:01:50
Speaker 5: Just to tell people why that's interesting. The reason people
1:01:53
Speaker 5: often get put on these committees is because they're in
1:01:56
Speaker 5: need of fundraising help. And if you put them, say
1:01:59
Speaker 5: on the Financial Services Committee, then banks and hedge funds
1:02:02
Speaker 5: and privately they're going to shower them with money. So
1:02:04
Speaker 5: they always put the vulnerable freshmen and sophomores kind of
1:02:08
Speaker 5: on that committee. You put somebody on the task force
1:02:11
Speaker 5: that they become a magnet then for AI money. So
1:02:14
Speaker 5: if they're Fushi raised very little of her own money,
1:02:17
Speaker 5: so if she needed help in a reelection, putting her
1:02:20
Speaker 5: on this committee would be an excellent way to signal
1:02:22
Speaker 5: to the AI world you need to come in with
1:02:24
Speaker 5: hundreds of thousands of dollars and shower her down the stretch.
1:02:29
Speaker 5: Go ahead. That's interesting time.
1:02:31
Speaker 12: And like this lobby and this super pack, jobs and
1:02:34
Speaker 12: democracy were truly about regulation and protecting the individual consumer,
1:02:40
Speaker 12: an individual person from the dangers of AI, then why
1:02:44
Speaker 12: would they not be supporting the candidate in this race myself,
1:02:47
Speaker 12: who has actually been clear about my stance on national
1:02:52
Speaker 12: moratorium on AI data centers until we have proper regulations
1:02:55
Speaker 12: in place so that we don't have this uncontrolled growth
1:02:59
Speaker 12: that's only benefit tech billionaire's bottom line at the expense
1:03:04
Speaker 12: of our residents. And like you mentioned, there's one in
1:03:06
Speaker 12: this district itself in Apex that is being considered and
1:03:09
Speaker 12: brought forward to the Apex Town Council, and we don't
1:03:13
Speaker 12: even know which company, which tech company it is, that
1:03:16
Speaker 12: is going to be running this. The way that they
1:03:19
Speaker 12: come in is that they have this other company name
1:03:22
Speaker 12: as the Dipper, and then they try to get their permits,
1:03:26
Speaker 12: start to get the approvals everything, and then after it's built,
1:03:30
Speaker 12: the tech company, the tech giant comes in because they
1:03:32
Speaker 12: know it's going to be a lot harder for you know,
1:03:35
Speaker 12: Meta Google to be coming in and saying like, hey,
1:03:38
Speaker 12: we're going to have this massive data center that's gonna
1:03:41
Speaker 12: be the size of like multiple super walmarts coming into
1:03:44
Speaker 12: your backyard. And residents are terrified. They're coming out and
1:03:50
Speaker 12: they're speaking up against it. They're saying they don't want
1:03:53
Speaker 12: this in their backyard. And for our current representative to
1:03:56
Speaker 12: ignore those voices and in a response, take hundreds of
1:04:00
Speaker 12: thousands of dollars from the very same industry that her
1:04:04
Speaker 12: constituents and residents are rallying against. Is extremely disappointing to them.
1:04:10
Speaker 12: And we see residents across the district concerned about multiple
1:04:14
Speaker 12: factors of this data center. We're being told by Meta
1:04:17
Speaker 12: that's spending millions of dollars to convince us that these
1:04:20
Speaker 12: AI data centers are going to create jobs. We know
1:04:22
Speaker 12: that's false. AI is killing thousands of jobs across the country.
1:04:26
Speaker 12: We're seeing the amount of water usage. They're spending millions
1:04:29
Speaker 12: of gallons of water every single year, every single day,
1:04:32
Speaker 12: not every single day, to cool these systems. And then
1:04:37
Speaker 12: Duke Energy is already renegotiating and hiking up our electricity
1:04:42
Speaker 12: prices as consumers, as residents to accommodate the infrastructure needs
1:04:47
Speaker 12: and capacity for these data centers. Why are those costs?
1:04:51
Speaker 12: Why are residents having to pay an AI tax?
1:04:53
Speaker 5: You're a week away from the election, basically, and at
1:04:57
Speaker 5: least seven hundred thousand is coming from the AI company
1:05:00
Speaker 5: some other super PACs we can talk about in a moment.
1:05:02
Speaker 5: Throwing down again, it's like a repeat of twenty twenty Two,
1:05:06
Speaker 5: how do you get the messages that I've seen so
1:05:09
Speaker 5: far from this AI super pac are not in the
1:05:12
Speaker 5: democratic line of like, hey, here's why it would be
1:05:16
Speaker 5: good if we have a data center here, and here's
1:05:18
Speaker 5: why we need good regulations and federal regulations on a
1:05:23
Speaker 5: AI and this is why Valerie Fushi is good for
1:05:26
Speaker 5: us and good for you. Like that would be one
1:05:28
Speaker 5: thing if they were making the case on behalf of
1:05:30
Speaker 5: their own industry. They're actually the ads just seem to
1:05:33
Speaker 5: be saying nice things about Valerie Fushi so far. They
1:05:37
Speaker 5: doesn't seem like they've gone negative on you, but they're saying,
1:05:39
Speaker 5: vote for Valerie Fushi because she's a good you know,
1:05:41
Speaker 5: she'll be a good member of Congress, just kind of
1:05:43
Speaker 5: raising her popularity and her name identification and not but
1:05:46
Speaker 5: not telling you that it's an AI company, an AI
1:05:50
Speaker 5: coalition that is behind her. So, how how are you
1:05:53
Speaker 5: doing in getting the message out to people that says
1:05:57
Speaker 5: and how do you do this as a candidate in
1:05:59
Speaker 5: this era that says, okay, this is AI money, like
1:06:02
Speaker 5: this is like whatever they're saying is that's nice and interesting,
1:06:05
Speaker 5: but they have their own agenda and interests. Here are
1:06:08
Speaker 5: you able to get that message out. Are people following
1:06:12
Speaker 5: the race close enough that they're picking up what the
1:06:15
Speaker 5: AI Coalition is kind of putting down here.
1:06:18
Speaker 12: Absolutely, and we see this happening in with super pac
1:06:20
Speaker 12: spending all across the country, is that they never actually
1:06:23
Speaker 12: run their ads on the issue that they're lobbying for
1:06:26
Speaker 12: because they know that their issue is unpopular with the
1:06:30
Speaker 12: average person. We saw this in twenty twenty two with
1:06:33
Speaker 12: APAC and DMFI. They didn't run any ads about Israel
1:06:37
Speaker 12: or Palestine because they know that this is not kitchen
1:06:41
Speaker 12: table issues that folks are like, yeah, we want more
1:06:44
Speaker 12: taxpayer dollars to be going to fund war, just like
1:06:47
Speaker 12: residents now are not going to say, yes, we want
1:06:51
Speaker 12: to pay an AI tax to support these data centers.
1:06:55
Speaker 12: So they have to put messaging out there to just
1:06:58
Speaker 12: promote candidates that they know are going to be softer
1:07:01
Speaker 12: and easier on them or be supportive of their causes,
1:07:04
Speaker 12: even though it's against what their residents want. And the
1:07:07
Speaker 12: way that we're counteracting this is by we had a
1:07:09
Speaker 12: press conference on Saturday to call it out, and we
1:07:13
Speaker 12: actually had one of the leaders of the community members
1:07:15
Speaker 12: at APEX who came out and spoke at the press conference,
1:07:19
Speaker 12: and because there were over three hundred residents of Way
1:07:23
Speaker 12: County that's signed onto a letter calling on all us
1:07:26
Speaker 12: candidates in this district, Republican, Democrat, libertarian, everyone to take
1:07:32
Speaker 12: a pledge to not accept money from the AI lobby.
1:07:35
Speaker 12: And I'm the only candidate in this race that has
1:07:36
Speaker 12: taken that pledge. And in response to over three hundred
1:07:40
Speaker 12: residents or Representative Fushi's response has been, Hey, I'm going
1:07:45
Speaker 12: to take hundreds of thousands of dollars for them. And
1:07:48
Speaker 12: they said very clearly at the press conference. She said,
1:07:53
Speaker 12: if you take this money, we are not going to
1:07:54
Speaker 12: forget and residents even if you know hopefully she doesn't,
1:07:59
Speaker 12: but isn't it who she is victorious in this election
1:08:03
Speaker 12: her residence. She is not listening to them. She is
1:08:07
Speaker 12: going completely against what they are asking for right now.
1:08:09
Speaker 12: And so we are messaging making sure that residents know
1:08:13
Speaker 12: how this AI data center is going to impact them,
1:08:15
Speaker 12: what the AI tax means, how moratorium is going to
1:08:18
Speaker 12: help make sure that there's proper regulations put in place
1:08:21
Speaker 12: on big tech.
1:08:23
Speaker 7: And so.
1:08:25
Speaker 5: You have a fairly engaged district if you know right,
1:08:28
Speaker 5: I mean, you got a lot of people who are
1:08:29
Speaker 5: paying close attention, so maybe maybe it will get out,
1:08:32
Speaker 5: like maybe people are engaged enough. Last night, President Trump
1:08:37
Speaker 5: raised the salience of the issue again. He talked about
1:08:39
Speaker 5: this in the in the State of the Union. He
1:08:42
Speaker 5: seems to recognize the political peril that he's in with
1:08:45
Speaker 5: the amount of money that he's shoveled at AI and
1:08:48
Speaker 5: the backlash to the data centers, and he said, I
1:08:50
Speaker 5: promise you from now on, you know, these data centers
1:08:53
Speaker 5: are going to produce their own power. But to me,
1:08:56
Speaker 5: if you're in a rural area and somebody tells you, hey,
1:08:59
Speaker 5: there's gonna put this gigantic data center in your backyard,
1:09:02
Speaker 5: be like, I don't know about that. And you say, oh,
1:09:05
Speaker 5: well wait, we're gonna make it even better. We're gonna
1:09:07
Speaker 5: put a power plant right next to it. Like oh,
1:09:12
Speaker 5: I mean, okay, I'm glad that I'm that doesn't sound better.
1:09:15
Speaker 5: I don't want a power plant also, uh so, And they're.
1:09:19
Speaker 12: Using like these centers are using these backup diesel generators
1:09:23
Speaker 12: that are emitting toxic fumes that are polluting our water
1:09:26
Speaker 12: and airways. And they're happening not just in rural communities.
1:09:30
Speaker 12: The one in Apex is like literally in the backyard
1:09:33
Speaker 12: of our residents. So they are family members that they're
1:09:37
Speaker 12: scared of, how it's going to impact the air quality
1:09:39
Speaker 12: for their children, how it can to impact the water
1:09:42
Speaker 12: quality that is coming into their taps.
1:09:45
Speaker 5: And so so what about APAC so valary foods she's
1:09:50
Speaker 5: she after getting that two plus million dollars had been
1:09:54
Speaker 5: has been critical of Israel. She she endorsed the back
1:09:58
Speaker 5: of the bombs to which is the Progressive Caucus has
1:10:01
Speaker 5: built that still allows significant amount of weapons to go
1:10:05
Speaker 5: to Israel, but does block did I say back the bounds,
1:10:08
Speaker 5: block the bombs until it does block you know, some
1:10:10
Speaker 5: weapons and is something of a red line for APAC
1:10:13
Speaker 5: like your a pack is not somebody who comes in
1:10:16
Speaker 5: and is okay with some nuance on the question. Like
1:10:19
Speaker 5: they say they want unconditional aid and they mean it,
1:10:22
Speaker 5: and if you don't support unconditional aid, they'll come after you.
1:10:25
Speaker 5: Tom Malinowski for a member of Congress who said there
1:10:28
Speaker 5: should be some modest conditions on some aid, some military
1:10:31
Speaker 5: aid Israel. They spent millions of dollars in New Jersey
1:10:35
Speaker 5: against him and accidentally or perhaps elected a progressive Lilia
1:10:41
Speaker 5: Mahea instead. It seems like that same super pac is
1:10:44
Speaker 5: interested in your race. Now, what is there enough time
1:10:48
Speaker 5: for them to you know, impact the race? And what
1:10:51
Speaker 5: are you seeing from this shadowy superpack.
1:10:55
Speaker 12: Now we're seeing that, you know, money is starting to
1:10:57
Speaker 12: drop in at the last minute, and it's showing what
1:11:00
Speaker 12: we've known is that this race is going to be
1:11:02
Speaker 12: very close, and quite frankly, the establishment in the status
1:11:06
Speaker 12: quo is scared because they see that the electorate is
1:11:09
Speaker 12: sick and tired of being told to wait for change,
1:11:13
Speaker 12: to wait for relief. They're sick and tired of their
1:11:16
Speaker 12: tax payer dollars being used to fundel endless wars, to
1:11:19
Speaker 12: have to pay an AI tax. This district is working families,
1:11:23
Speaker 12: just like a majority, fast vast majority of this country is.
1:11:27
Speaker 12: And so these super PACs are dumping in the last
1:11:29
Speaker 12: minute money because it's a desperate hail Mary to try
1:11:33
Speaker 12: to save this seat for the establishment. And we're countering
1:11:38
Speaker 12: that by making sure that you know, people know who
1:11:41
Speaker 12: is behind this money that is coming in, making sure
1:11:44
Speaker 12: that folks know that the only reason this money is
1:11:46
Speaker 12: coming in is because they're scared of us, as working families,
1:11:51
Speaker 12: as individuals, stepping up and having our voices be heard
1:11:55
Speaker 12: and taking on these corporate interests and taking on the
1:11:59
Speaker 12: big tech, the war machine. And unfortunately we're seeing the
1:12:04
Speaker 12: same entities and the shady tactics that were used in
1:12:08
Speaker 12: New Jersey. They were they're being used in Illinois coming
1:12:12
Speaker 12: into this district, the safest blue seat in North Carolina.
1:12:16
Speaker 5: And are they going negative on you or are they
1:12:19
Speaker 5: boosting Valerie? At this point that the New Jersey apac
1:12:23
Speaker 5: looking superpack.
1:12:25
Speaker 12: So none of the packs have gone negative on me. Unfortunately.
1:12:28
Speaker 12: Representative Fushie herself, her campaign ran a negative attack ad
1:12:32
Speaker 12: yesterday that we had to actually issue our own cease
1:12:35
Speaker 12: and desist, and they took.
1:12:36
Speaker 5: It down, which is extremely unusual.
1:12:38
Speaker 12: Yes, CBS seventeen took it down. I don't believe the other.
1:12:42
Speaker 12: I'm not sure if the other stations have taken it
1:12:43
Speaker 12: down yet. The Representative Fushie still has her messaging false
1:12:48
Speaker 12: messaging attacking me on her website as last time I
1:12:52
Speaker 12: checked it, and they.
1:12:54
Speaker 5: Are the weird false message, the false message which was
1:12:56
Speaker 5: claiming you didn't file a financial disclosure when you did so.
1:12:59
Speaker 5: It's like it's a strange.
1:13:02
Speaker 12: It's also it goes to know that there's not much
1:13:05
Speaker 12: that they can or anything they can use against me.
1:13:08
Speaker 5: And she can do her paperwork properly. Oh oh wait,
1:13:10
Speaker 5: actually she did.
1:13:11
Speaker 12: Yeah, And if you look at my paperwork. What's terrifying
1:13:14
Speaker 12: about it is something that's terrifying to all residents. It's
1:13:17
Speaker 12: full of student debt. And that's what most people in
1:13:21
Speaker 12: this country are dealing with. And if you are looking
1:13:23
Speaker 12: at my generation in the next we are more likely
1:13:26
Speaker 12: to be living with student debt for the rest of
1:13:28
Speaker 12: our lives than we are to be able to have
1:13:30
Speaker 12: a mortgage, to be able to achieve the American dream
1:13:34
Speaker 12: that we were raised was possible.
1:13:35
Speaker 5: For us, especially Durham, I would suspect now on the
1:13:40
Speaker 5: flip side, what makes this race unusual is that you
1:13:43
Speaker 5: have a shadowy superpack that launched on your side. It
1:13:49
Speaker 5: appears from the reporting I've been able to do that
1:13:52
Speaker 5: this is a kind of Bernie Sanders adjacent not from
1:13:56
Speaker 5: Bernie Sanders himself, but people in the Bernie Sanders kind
1:13:59
Speaker 5: of aoc of the party have raised, you know, millions
1:14:02
Speaker 5: of dollars to do their own super packs to come
1:14:04
Speaker 5: in and try to defend people who are getting hit
1:14:06
Speaker 5: by super PACs from the other direction. The last I
1:14:09
Speaker 5: saw that they had spent half a million or were
1:14:13
Speaker 5: planning to spend half a million in the race. I
1:14:15
Speaker 5: don't know if they've they've come in with any more
1:14:17
Speaker 5: since then, But is that is that help?
1:14:20
Speaker 6: Have you?
1:14:21
Speaker 5: Have you gotten much of a word on who is
1:14:22
Speaker 5: that who? That is what they want? And is it
1:14:26
Speaker 5: having an effect on the ground. Are you noticing that
1:14:29
Speaker 5: having that cavalry come in and defend you on the
1:14:32
Speaker 5: other side is changing people's understanding of the race?
1:14:36
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean, I don't know who the individual numbers
1:14:40
Speaker 12: are since we don't collaborate with these i e. Groups,
1:14:44
Speaker 12: But I've seen the same reporting that you have that
1:14:46
Speaker 12: they release. I believe it was like last Thursday that
1:14:48
Speaker 12: said that these were individuals who were coming up and
1:14:51
Speaker 12: supporting candidates who are against endless funding of wars, who
1:14:56
Speaker 12: stand up and want to take a stance because they're
1:14:58
Speaker 12: sick and tired of seeing corporation and writing, specially enterst
1:15:03
Speaker 12: groups like APAC buying seats and electing people who are
1:15:08
Speaker 12: just going to be yes men for war and corporate
1:15:11
Speaker 12: tax breaks and cuts instead of for the average working people.
1:15:16
Speaker 12: So and these are groups and donors who, from what
1:15:19
Speaker 12: I've seen from the reporting, have supported progressive candidates all
1:15:23
Speaker 12: across the country. And you know, I'm grateful for the
1:15:27
Speaker 12: organizations like Justice Democrats, Working Families, Party leaders, we deserve
1:15:30
Speaker 12: Sunrise Movement who have been leading the charge and lifting
1:15:34
Speaker 12: up progressive voices. And it's sad that we unfortunately live
1:15:38
Speaker 12: in this political system that endless amounts of money have
1:15:41
Speaker 12: to be spent. And it's sad that in the safest
1:15:44
Speaker 12: blue seat, our representative is taking money from the same
1:15:48
Speaker 12: folks who fund Trump. You know where she's running this
1:15:52
Speaker 12: campaign saying that she's going to take on Trump and
1:15:54
Speaker 12: his authoritarianism. How are you going to do that when
1:15:56
Speaker 12: you're accepting and cashing checks from the very same people
1:15:59
Speaker 12: who put them into office. If we truly want to
1:16:01
Speaker 12: hold Trump accountable, then we need to hold the corporations
1:16:05
Speaker 12: and these right wing billionaires and these I mean special
1:16:07
Speaker 12: interest groups that put them into office accountable and get
1:16:10
Speaker 12: them out of our political systems, because as long as
1:16:12
Speaker 12: they have us and our US government in a chokehold,
1:16:17
Speaker 12: Trump is not going to be the end of our nightmare.
1:16:20
Speaker 12: That's just the first step for them, all right.
1:16:23
Speaker 5: Well, Nitta Lam County Commissioner running in North Carolina's fourth
1:16:25
Speaker 5: district of mail and voting has already started. The election
1:16:29
Speaker 5: will be next tuesdays at March first, at March fourth third.
1:16:33
Speaker 12: So early voting and Saturday on the twenty eighth, and
1:16:37
Speaker 12: then election day is on March third.
1:16:40
Speaker 5: All right, well we'll be following this and we'll be
1:16:43
Speaker 5: back in touch on election the other day after. But
1:16:47
Speaker 5: thank you so much for joining us.
1:16:49
Speaker 12: I appreciate it.
1:16:50
Speaker 8: Right, all right, that does it for us.
1:16:52
Speaker 2: We will be back tomorrow for I think it's going
1:16:55
Speaker 2: to be yet another comedy takeover tomorrow because Emily is
1:16:57
Speaker 2: unavailable with Sager is unavailable.
1:16:59
Speaker 8: So prepare yourselves, comrades.
1:17:02
Speaker 5: People, people come here for both sides. You're going to
1:17:05
Speaker 5: get the Bolshevik side and the Menshevik side, and we're
1:17:08
Speaker 5: gonna be You're gonna be totally fair.
1:17:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, guys, have a great day.
1:17:13
Speaker 8: We'll see you then, kay,