Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and Congressman Rocanna says that the Democratic
Speaker 1: leadership is out of touch. We have such a great
Speaker 1: show for you today, the Joyread Shows. Joy Read drops
Speaker 1: by to talk to us about what Democrats need to
Speaker 1: do next, how they can recapture enthusiasm, and how we
Speaker 1: can keep from being really disappointed with them. Then we'll
Speaker 1: talk to Detroit mayor and goubernatorial candidate Mike Duggan about
Speaker 1: his run in the Great State of Michigan. But first
Speaker 1: the news. II.
Speaker 2: I haven't read the internet and seen more of a
Speaker 2: time where the Democrats have been more mad inside their
Speaker 2: base at a leadership, and it is unbelievable how much
Speaker 2: people are calling for this to be the end of
Speaker 2: Chuck Schumer's reign as the leader of the Senate Deems.
Speaker 1: All right, so we're going to not even do news.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about what I saw on the
Speaker 1: ground in my experience over the last three days. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is like literally the people I talk to. This
Speaker 1: is basically reporting, but it's my reporting of what happened
Speaker 1: to me. I heard from somebody very smart who I
Speaker 1: talk to a lot, that Democrats were about to cave.
Speaker 1: I was told by Leadership's office that Schumer was going
Speaker 1: to vote.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. If you vote now, it means either
Speaker 1: you do not control your caucus or what's the other choice.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about this for a minute because
Speaker 1: this is so important. If you look at who voted
Speaker 1: to reopen the government in this Senate group, everyone who
Speaker 1: voted to reopen the government are people who are either
Speaker 1: not up for election until a bunch of cycles from.
Speaker 2: Now many which is twenty thirty right.
Speaker 1: Or are retiring. What does that say? Do you really
Speaker 1: believe that every person who wanted to reopen the government
Speaker 1: had these very neat re election schedules. Do you believe that.
Speaker 1: If you believe that, then you are stupid. What happened
Speaker 1: here is that the Senate caved. And I don't know
Speaker 1: what Chuck Schumer knew when he knew it, but this
Speaker 1: does not happen without leadership spuying. So here's the question,
Speaker 1: why would you do this? Why would you go for
Speaker 1: a shutdown then decide to reopen the government right after
Speaker 1: Democrats had a huge win. Why why why why? And
Speaker 1: I think the answer is I think that leadership got scared.
Speaker 1: I think they were worried that Republicans would never reopen
Speaker 1: the government. But fear is not a place to operate from.
Speaker 1: And Democrats need to have a leader who is more
Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell and less Chuck Schumer. So if you're going
Speaker 1: to shut down the government, you have to expect that
Speaker 1: Democrats are going to have to take a lot of pain. Right.
Speaker 1: A government shutdown is a pain tolerance threshold exercise, and
Speaker 1: if you don't have the pain tolerance, then you shouldn't
Speaker 1: be shutting down the government. I personally have always thought
Speaker 1: that they should have had very clear deliverables on the shutdown,
Speaker 1: and that it shouldn't have been something like Obamacare subsidies,
Speaker 1: because here's the thing. Even though it's good that they
Speaker 1: got the conversation going about healthcare, the reality is Republicans
Speaker 1: were never going to fund these Obamacare subsidies, right, they
Speaker 1: never were. They wanted a skinny Obamacare repeal, that's what
Speaker 1: they wanted. And by the way, this is going to
Speaker 1: be really bad for Trump. You know, Trump is losing
Speaker 1: on affordability while everybody's healthcare is about to get way
Speaker 1: more expensive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's looking very bad for my own family. And
Speaker 2: as we're going to be some of the recipients of this,
Speaker 2: and I have to say that this is a no brainer.
Speaker 2: But also at the end of the day, like you know,
Speaker 2: we talked to a smart audience of people on politics,
Speaker 2: the optics of an old guy with a flip phone
Speaker 2: after we had an old president, when we can have
Speaker 2: a fighter like Chris Murphy or somebody like that. There
Speaker 2: when they pulled democratic issues and democratic issues are popular,
Speaker 2: Democrats are not popular in brand, and the leadership is
Speaker 2: not popular.
Speaker 1: And then here's the thing. There is no more time. Okay,
Speaker 1: Like there were four years of Americans being like, well,
Speaker 1: Biden's a good man, he might be. We're done. There's
Speaker 1: no more time for making excuses. It's over. Okay, it
Speaker 1: is over. There's no more time for making excuses. Chuck
Speaker 1: Schumer is a lovely guy, you know whatever, But this
Speaker 1: is not this is not it now. If American democracy
Speaker 1: is on the brink, which we believe, we're not saying
Speaker 1: stuff we don't believe here on this podcast, we absolutely
Speaker 1: believe that American democracy and is on the brink. If
Speaker 1: it is, then it has to be Democrats need to
Speaker 1: have real leadership, and that's Chris Murphy and not Chuck Schumer.
Speaker 1: Senator Schumer has failed to meet the moment. He is
Speaker 1: out of touch with the American people, says Rashieta to Leib.
Speaker 1: All Right, okay, pretty lefty, Seth Moulton, not lefty even
Speaker 1: a little. If Schumer were an effective leader, he would
Speaker 1: have united his caucus to vote no. All right, we
Speaker 1: got Mike Levine, we got Rogue Kanna. These are people.
Speaker 1: Here's what they have in common. They're savvy. We talk
Speaker 1: a lot. Remember we've been talking about this Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 1: Green news cycle where she's gone on to say she
Speaker 1: now believes that she doesn't believe in Q and on anymore.
Speaker 1: You know, there's been like is she a good person? No,
Speaker 1: none of these people are good people. They are opportunists.
Speaker 1: But they see an opportunity, right, Like that's the thing,
Speaker 1: your political opportunist and you see an offer unity.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think with seeing move on dot org calling
Speaker 2: for his resignation and that the pulling of Dems is
Speaker 2: just overwhelming, like this, really it's time you served us. Okay, enough, sure, whatever,
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna say a lot of nice things that
Speaker 2: some people might say it's time for this to end.
Speaker 2: We have other fish to fry, though, probably a lobster,
Speaker 2: because we're going to talk about Maine because the Senator
Speaker 2: Angus King did some of the worst messaging I've ever
Speaker 2: seen in my life.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Maine. The other main senator is a Republican. Okay,
Speaker 1: so nobody is saying like Angus King has to go,
Speaker 1: because we understand Angus King is very much a product
Speaker 1: of where he lives. Okay, period paragraph, Angus King just
Speaker 1: needs to shut up. Okay, like he doesn't have to go.
Speaker 1: He says, to stop talking me. He's an independent who
Speaker 1: caucuses with the Democrats. He's a manor. And he said
Speaker 1: the single worst thing you can say, especially when you're
Speaker 1: fighting authoritarianism, which is really what's happening here. He said,
Speaker 1: we tried to stand up to Trump and it didn't work.
Speaker 1: First of all, that's not true. It actually did work.
Speaker 1: Democrats decided to cave because of Schumer's bad judgment, but
Speaker 1: that does not mean that it didn't work. And then
Speaker 1: the other thing is that you know they don't have
Speaker 1: to they were wrong, this is a mistake, but they
Speaker 1: need to shut up, like going around to different places
Speaker 1: and trying to make this case doesn't it's not winning
Speaker 1: any it's not winning any hearts and minds. It's just
Speaker 1: annoying the fuck out of all of us. And it's
Speaker 1: also helping the Republicans. It's helping this anti democracy coalition
Speaker 1: that Republicans have. So I would say, uh, just new
Speaker 1: step it.
Speaker 2: But Malli, there is some good news for Democrats since
Speaker 2: last week's election. I'm going to turn to Utah, where
Speaker 2: a decision has really really helped out. Demon's when it
Speaker 2: comes to Jerry Rare sentence.
Speaker 1: Donald J. Trump, you may know him as many things.
Speaker 2: Let's stick the fifth on what we're gonna call him.
Speaker 1: Right, he went to Texas. You went to the MAGA
Speaker 1: Republicans in Texas, he said, get me five seats. The
Speaker 1: MAGA Republicans, Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton, people who have their
Speaker 1: own problems with corruption, they said, no problem, five seats,
Speaker 1: no problem. Okay, anti democratic. We're screaming our heads off.
Speaker 1: It's so bad. It's jerry mandering, it's anti democracy. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to read you what Dave Wasserman. Dave Wasserman
Speaker 1: is a just a numbers guy talks about election coverage,
Speaker 1: not a partisan and we're going to talk about this
Speaker 1: remaster because okay, so Democrats will get this seat in Utah,
Speaker 1: that's what the court's saying. Let's go into what Dave
Speaker 1: Wasserman says. So in California, because of Governor Knewssom's amazing
Speaker 1: special election where he put together an election out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: In two months, Democrats have gotten four and a half seats.
Speaker 1: It's probably gonna be five, Okay. So then we have Missouri,
Speaker 1: GOP has gotten one seat, North Carolina half a seat,
Speaker 1: Ohio half a seat, Texas four that's what started this
Speaker 1: fucking disaster, and Utah one. So at this point, ultimately,
Speaker 1: and again we don't know what's going to happen. This
Speaker 1: Supreme Court would very much like to do a lot
Speaker 1: of crazy shit that could fuck everything up. So we're
Speaker 1: not gonna say anything yet, but at this moment, it
Speaker 1: certainly feels as if this could be a net neutral
Speaker 1: that after all of this work, after this insane mid
Speaker 1: season redistricting, which is not okay, which is a crack
Speaker 1: on norms and institutions in every which way. In the end,
Speaker 1: in typical Donald Trump fashion, he may not have done
Speaker 1: anything for himself.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think this is the thing that we always
Speaker 2: come back to for solace, which is that while these
Speaker 2: people clearly do have a plan, they're also not the
Speaker 2: most creative and bright at executing it.
Speaker 1: Yes, the bad news is they're evil. The good news
Speaker 1: is they're stupid. Yeah, Unfortunately our side is due.
Speaker 2: Fortunately, fortunately our ideas the wrong people at the top
Speaker 2: of it running the till. Anyway, speaking of the stupid,
Speaker 2: Trump claims that tariff's unwinding, if the Supreme Court decides
Speaker 2: to strike them down, would cost three trillion dollars.
Speaker 1: So Trump is starting to really worry about these tariffs.
Speaker 1: Tariffs are really fun for him. He loves them. He
Speaker 1: gets to do them, he gets to put them in
Speaker 1: willy nilly, he gets to punish his enemies in reward
Speaker 1: his friends. My man loves a tariff. But now you know,
Speaker 1: if you listen to those oral arguments the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: you know, Supreme Court A saw that election where Trump
Speaker 1: got she'll ACKed, and b they know that this isn't popular,
Speaker 1: that this is pretty wacky, and that this may ultimately
Speaker 1: actually knock at them where they want to go. And
Speaker 1: so Donald Trump will now do anything to keep the
Speaker 1: tariffs going. And so Donald Trump loves a big fake number.
Speaker 1: His new big fake number is three trillion, three trillion dollars.
Speaker 1: By the way, unrolling the tariffs as soon as possible
Speaker 1: is probably the best hope we have to avoiding what
Speaker 1: likely will be a big financial catastrophe. It's probably going
Speaker 1: to cost US three trillion to not unwind them, or
Speaker 1: maybe zillion, or maybe gajillion, since we're dealing with fake numbers.
Speaker 2: I like the gajillion.
Speaker 1: Joy Reid is the host of the Joy Reid Show.
Speaker 1: I can't believe I get to host you. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics, Joy Read. It is so good to be
Speaker 1: with you.
Speaker 4: Mollie. I miss you, girl. We gotta do this, Kurton,
Speaker 4: what's happening?
Speaker 1: I know we need it DC, what we needed DC,
Speaker 1: you know. But we were just talking before and the
Speaker 1: question was like Trump two point zero is proof that
Speaker 1: you should never say it can't get worse.
Speaker 4: That's correct, Yes, never say that, because then it will
Speaker 4: literally get worse.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is and I knew it would be bad.
Speaker 4: Like we were, like we were on airtime, we were
Speaker 4: doing Hey Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: Guys, it's gonna be bad. It's gonna be bad.
Speaker 4: But you know what I underestimated was the aggressiveness of
Speaker 4: the grift and of the theft and of the destruction.
Speaker 4: I mean, even I and I've been a long time
Speaker 4: og anti trumper for a long time from visit my
Speaker 4: whole life, adult life, never did I get, in my
Speaker 4: wildest nightmares, literally taking a down a part of the
Speaker 4: White House, like literally just taking the White House apart,
Speaker 4: like you know, he might as well put like a
Speaker 4: little bomb in it.
Speaker 1: Just blew up the East Wing like well he basically did.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no more East Wing. It's gone.
Speaker 4: It's gone, I mean, evaporating the East Wing was. It
Speaker 4: was not on my worst bucket list, but.
Speaker 1: It's I have to say, like I wonder about the
Speaker 1: East Wing. Like we've seen times where like because Trump
Speaker 1: is has been so radical, you know, it's the every
Speaker 1: time there's like a wave of white supremacists or of
Speaker 1: like of pushing back of rights right road Leigh you know,
Speaker 1: both but in many different aspects of our lives, to
Speaker 1: many different groups, every time there's been a wave of that,
Speaker 1: there's been a certain kind of gaslighting that's gone along
Speaker 1: with that. Yes, and so something like the East Wing.
Speaker 1: You're just like, he just tore down part of the
Speaker 1: White House, right, and he'll do more.
Speaker 4: And I think what we have to do And I
Speaker 4: used to always say with Trump, you have to use
Speaker 4: your lurid imagination, right, you have to think of things
Speaker 4: you could not imagine in your worst nightmares.
Speaker 1: He will do them all.
Speaker 4: Because I think what we have to fundamentally understand is
Speaker 4: Donald Trump is not an American president, right. I mean,
Speaker 4: there's a there is a certain kind of range of behaviors.
Speaker 4: Even of the worst American presidents, Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon,
Speaker 4: you know, you know, I would argue Woodrow Wilson was
Speaker 4: a horrible, racist, shitty human being, but they all fell
Speaker 4: within a certain range of behaviors. Right When you said
Speaker 4: to Richard Nixon, you are violating the law and you
Speaker 4: are going to be impeached, he said, you know what,
Speaker 4: let me resign. Right, Like, there was a range of behaviors.
Speaker 4: Trump is far outside of those. There is no no
Speaker 4: that you cannot compare him to any previous president because
Speaker 4: they were American presidents. Whatever their other issues and problems
Speaker 4: and faults, they actually fundamentally believed in the United States Constitution.
Speaker 1: Trump does not no Eland. Trump doesn't believe in any
Speaker 1: of this.
Speaker 4: He looks at the Russian system and says, that's better.
Speaker 4: He looks at the Chinese communist system and says that's
Speaker 4: better because she is absolutely treated as a god king.
Speaker 4: He looks at like a mabutu. He's like, I want that, Like,
Speaker 4: he's not an American president. So I just think we
Speaker 4: have to stop trying to frame and I think the
Speaker 4: media makes the mistake of trying to treat him like
Speaker 4: an American president. You just start treating him like guten right,
Speaker 4: like no, that's what he wants to.
Speaker 1: Be, right, And I think that's a really good point.
Speaker 1: And it gets me to like one of my favorite
Speaker 1: hobby horses, which is norms versus laws, right right. So
Speaker 1: much of American life, American politics especially, is this idea
Speaker 1: that norms will that you don't need laws for certain things,
Speaker 1: like you don't need a law. You can't rip down
Speaker 1: half the White House because it won't happen because norms.
Speaker 4: Well, here's the thing that's so interesting, and you know,
Speaker 4: I have this working theory that one of the reasons
Speaker 4: that we are here is the founders that it is
Speaker 4: in the end, it is their fault because they were
Speaker 4: such patrician elites and so out of touch with the
Speaker 4: common man that they built a system designed to never
Speaker 4: be run by the common man. They just presumed that
Speaker 4: all presidents and senators would be patrician men like themselves,
Speaker 4: who were of the great families of Europe. You know,
Speaker 4: George Washington is literally like, I believe related to you know,
Speaker 4: Mad King George, like their family members. So in their minds,
Speaker 4: this this system was built to perpetuate that white male
Speaker 4: elite and that no one of the common class would
Speaker 4: ever become a leader in this country. Wouldn't be a senator,
Speaker 4: wouldn't be a congressman, wouldn't be a president. And so
Speaker 4: they built a system saying, well, we don't need to
Speaker 4: make these things laws. He gads, these can simply be
Speaker 4: the north George Washington can simply fail to run for
Speaker 4: a third term, and all of the you know, the
Speaker 4: people who follow will do the same, And they all
Speaker 4: did until FDR said, yeah, no, I'm gonna stay. I
Speaker 4: think I'm just gonna say, and then he did four terms,
Speaker 4: I think we might need a law, and so they
Speaker 4: had to do a law to get him to go.
Speaker 4: But he was you know, the consent of the people
Speaker 4: said we wanted him for life, and we got president
Speaker 4: for life and so. But Trump is not even at
Speaker 4: least a FDR. Was still of that same elite class,
Speaker 4: but he was just a trader to that class.
Speaker 1: I'm willing to be traded.
Speaker 4: Trump comes of the kind of immigrant that came in
Speaker 4: long after all that shit was created. His family gets
Speaker 4: here in the late nineteenth century that the granddaddy, you know,
Speaker 4: the progener is a pimp. He's like, I'm a pimp woman,
Speaker 4: and try to find.
Speaker 1: Gold, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: They come from like a common But his whole thing
Speaker 4: was just from the grandfather, the parents on the dad,
Speaker 4: all of them are just about the money grubbing grift
Speaker 4: that America and its freedoms provide. They never bought into
Speaker 4: the sort of the sort of dreamscape of democracy. They
Speaker 4: just are like, oh, we can get rich here. And
Speaker 4: this is all Trump inherited was the grimy, grubby grift.
Speaker 4: That's what his family was about. Escaping Bavarian laws, about
Speaker 4: you know, conscription for the draft, raft dodging, grimy real
Speaker 4: estate and Queen's where we're going to keep the lax
Speaker 4: out of our buildings. We're gonna say, we like the Jews,
Speaker 4: but we kind of hate the Jews.
Speaker 1: We're gonna like that he's anti Semitism right too exactly.
Speaker 4: So it's like, yeah, they would have been quite at
Speaker 4: home in Nazi Germany. These these these drumps, and this
Speaker 4: is what we've got. And so they are norm breakers
Speaker 4: because they don't believe. I think people just presume he's
Speaker 4: breaking the norm. No, he doesn't believe in them.
Speaker 1: But there is also this question and this is like
Speaker 1: Trump but this is also I think America right now,
Speaker 1: which is we have hit a moment where there is
Speaker 1: there is no such thing as too much right, Like
Speaker 1: you have someone like Bezos where right, or you have
Speaker 1: someone like Zackerberg. You know, these people have decided that
Speaker 1: trump Ism will help them get what they want, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that so talk us through how you think,
Speaker 1: because that seems like part of this.
Speaker 4: It is it's the same thing, right, These are I mean,
Speaker 4: and look at all this the PayPal mafia. These are
Speaker 4: white South Africans whose people dragged every resource and you know,
Speaker 4: possibility out of South Africa, rinsed it clean and then
Speaker 4: bounce to America to do it here. They took and
Speaker 4: stole everything that they could from South Africa, left its
Speaker 4: indigenous people with nothing, destroyed their lives, enslaved them. These
Speaker 4: are the you know them and the Africaners, and then
Speaker 4: moved in and said that God said we could do this.
Speaker 1: We're taking everything.
Speaker 4: We're going to rinse this country clean of its resources,
Speaker 4: leave it empty, dry, a shattered hule, and then we're
Speaker 4: going to come to America and reproduce the same thing.
Speaker 4: That's all these people are jeff bezos. These people don't
Speaker 4: they don't care about democracy. They're just there like Trump.
Speaker 4: They they you know, they're not doing this at under duress.
Speaker 4: This is who they are. Mark Zuckerberg, he literally he
Speaker 4: and the winkle Vasses, the winkle Vai as they call
Speaker 4: them at Harvard. Facebook was just a way to rate girls' looks. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it wasn't some high mind did idea of creating a
Speaker 4: public square. No, it was to rate women in the
Speaker 4: most nasty, misogynous way.
Speaker 1: And they took that paper. It wasn't even an original idea.
Speaker 4: They used to just take the Facebook and circle girls
Speaker 4: that are a ten and girls that are a two.
Speaker 4: Then they took and digitized that and created a thing
Speaker 4: that's only purpose is to make this Mark Zuckerberg rich.
Speaker 4: The only purpose that Amazon isn't about making the small
Speaker 4: family store taking it digital. It's about making him rich.
Speaker 4: This is the new ethos of America. And I hate
Speaker 4: to say it. The founders were like, what we got
Speaker 4: to do to be rich? Oh, we got to enslave
Speaker 4: these blacks. Okay, we're gonna kidnap them from where napped. Okay,
Speaker 4: we're gonna take them, put them like kindling, tie them
Speaker 4: up in a bowl, and okay, if that's what we gotta do,
Speaker 4: So we want to give them all of this credit
Speaker 4: for high mindedness. They were just like, no, we're going
Speaker 4: to do slavery to get rich, and we don't want
Speaker 4: to be taxed revolution And so you've bequeathed a nation
Speaker 4: who It's why a lot of our families come here,
Speaker 4: because it's like, oh, this is a place where you
Speaker 4: can prosper financially. This is a country built solely on capital,
Speaker 4: but it's layered over with this sort of false morality
Speaker 4: that says it's Christian, but all it really is is
Speaker 4: just rubby, grimy, greedy, fucking capitalism. So Trump is the
Speaker 4: perfect president. We actually deserve this. This is the president
Speaker 4: America has earned in some ways. I mean, it's the
Speaker 4: president America wants apparently, so heart's desire.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's funny because it's like, I feel like
Speaker 1: we've been through so much. I was thinking about that
Speaker 1: Psyche gall with the Biden Relax. In my mind, a
Speaker 1: lot of mistakes were made, and you know, you can't
Speaker 1: I don't know that you can necessarily blame one person
Speaker 1: for it. What it feels like. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I've been really happy, one of the very few
Speaker 1: things I've been happy about is that Trump. One point, now,
Speaker 1: it was like, if you were a Democratic politician, you
Speaker 1: could say Orange Man bad and you could raise five
Speaker 1: million dollars. Yeah, right, have a best selling book and like,
Speaker 1: and this time that's not true. And ultimately, actually I
Speaker 1: think it's better. So, like I'm thinking about Gavin Newsom,
Speaker 1: like I have never seen a Democratic politician do something like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're gonna take five seats. We're gonna fucking take five
Speaker 1: seats and we're gonna do a special election for it.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen that? Because I'm still seeing Chock
Speaker 1: be like, we won't go I voted No, it discussed.
Speaker 4: They don't get it because I think, and again, if
Speaker 4: you go back to why eighty million people knowing that
Speaker 4: Donald Trump was responsible for a million dead in COVID,
Speaker 4: knowing that that happened, why would they choose him? Again,
Speaker 4: if you ask people why they voted for him, I
Speaker 4: go right back to my original thesis.
Speaker 1: They say, he made me money. I made more money.
Speaker 4: Why were they mad about COVID shutdowns? Because we couldn't
Speaker 4: make money?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: Because Americans have been groomed to think that the only real,
Speaker 4: true American.
Speaker 1: Value is greed. Greed is good.
Speaker 4: It is the American primary value. All of the religious
Speaker 4: lies and bullshit is just a way to control women,
Speaker 4: control blags, and make more money.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So in a.
Speaker 4: Money culture, of course, people said, I wasn't making money
Speaker 4: with Biden.
Speaker 1: I'm making money with Trump. Give me that, right.
Speaker 4: And now they're realizing, oh shit, you're gonna deport me
Speaker 4: and my friends and my family, and the tariffs are
Speaker 4: gonna get they But in their mind, a lot of Trumpers,
Speaker 4: a lot of these voters were not like mega cultists.
Speaker 4: Some of them just were like, he's going to get
Speaker 4: me money.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Even a lot of the Latino voters. People think immigration
Speaker 4: is their number one issue. No, when you pull Latinos,
Speaker 4: it's economics, it's financial so because this is the country building.
Speaker 4: But I think what happens with the Democrats, they are
Speaker 4: not that. A lot of Democrats like the Shumers.
Speaker 1: Of the world.
Speaker 4: They're goo goo good government people. They're the kid who
Speaker 4: ran for student council.
Speaker 1: Prevent the nerds. They're nerds, and so.
Speaker 4: In their mind they're like, no, it's about the government,
Speaker 4: and Americans like, nah, man, it's about the coins. I
Speaker 4: want Trump And now that it's not working out, what's
Speaker 4: happening is the kind of Democrat who's built for this
Speaker 4: is the kind that understands the culture. The culture right
Speaker 4: now is crass, it's memes, it's vibes.
Speaker 1: You gotta be and Gavin gets it.
Speaker 4: Gab is always kind of in ahead of his ahead
Speaker 4: of the curve a little bit.
Speaker 1: He was on gay marriage, right.
Speaker 4: He just understands the vibes and so he's like, no,
Speaker 4: I'm going to ride this vibe, but I'm going to
Speaker 4: ride it at a time when people are realizing what
Speaker 4: we need now is to ameliorate the greed culture and.
Speaker 1: Go to an affordability culture. Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Because if you can't make it, if you can't financially survive,
Speaker 4: then greed culture isn't helping you. Right now, I need
Speaker 4: like what mom Donnie is doing, which is survival culture.
Speaker 4: And he's now we've moved from greed culture to where
Speaker 4: people are kind of disgusted by greed culture.
Speaker 1: Because you can.
Speaker 4: If I can't make it, then I'm disgusted by greed culture.
Speaker 1: And he gets it. Now it's survival culture.
Speaker 4: And also it's pushing back on cruelty, on the cruelty
Speaker 4: culture of Trump and saying, oh, I can give it
Speaker 4: right back to you, and that's what people want.
Speaker 1: I don't want Schumer being like.
Speaker 4: We did forty days of a holdout furnving.
Speaker 1: Let's just gaming this out. Had it been you, what
Speaker 1: would you have done. You definitely have to shut down
Speaker 1: the government. I know it's coming right, but what's your asks?
Speaker 4: First of all, I don't believe Chuck Schumer when he
Speaker 4: pretends that he was against this, because they're either they're
Speaker 4: only two choices for Chuck. Either, you are a week
Speaker 4: leader who had no control of your caucus and eight
Speaker 4: members went behind your back and changed the policy that
Speaker 4: you were leading on without you and then left you
Speaker 4: to vote know for it, which means you shouldn't be leader.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's choice hey. Choice B is you hid behind.
Speaker 4: Those eight people because none of them are up for
Speaker 4: reelection next cycle.
Speaker 1: And some of them are retiring and some of them
Speaker 1: are for they are exactly like if you look at
Speaker 1: each one of those eight, each one is in a
Speaker 1: unique position to be able to vote yes.
Speaker 4: Correct, correct, you know Durban's leaving Jean Shah like there,
Speaker 4: you picked the exact right group of people to tuck
Speaker 4: yourself behind, and which is also you're not a good leader,
Speaker 4: so either way, it's not good. But then the third
Speaker 4: piece of it that to me is the most egregious
Speaker 4: is that you let this happen anyway, the shutdown happen anyway,
Speaker 4: with no plan to win, no plan to what the
Speaker 4: finish line looked like. So you didn't think through that,
Speaker 4: which means you're not a good leader, and also no
Speaker 4: plan to ameliorate what you knew would be the suffering.
Speaker 4: And you're the only political party of the two that
Speaker 4: actually cares about the suffering. Republicans, let me be clear,
Speaker 4: they don't care if their own people starve to death
Speaker 4: and sy They don't care if their own people have
Speaker 4: no health care and die. They genuinely do not care
Speaker 4: about the life and death of their own citizen, their
Speaker 4: own constituents, and voted for them, Nor does Trump. None
Speaker 4: of these people care about anyone. The Democrats actually are
Speaker 4: the Google government people who do care. But you're tell
Speaker 4: me you had no plan. So if it was me
Speaker 4: and I'm the leader, I would say, first of all,
Speaker 4: no one goes off my message. If you we're gonna
Speaker 4: all do the same thing together. And if you don't,
Speaker 4: good luck with your reelect because you won't get a dime.
Speaker 1: Your reelect won't happen.
Speaker 4: All they care about is getting reelected and say I'll
Speaker 4: promise you you will be funded. So I would Nancy
Speaker 4: Pelosi them, you will stick with my plan.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's number one.
Speaker 4: But next I gotta have a plan. The Democrats said,
Speaker 4: no health care, no vote. That was there.
Speaker 1: That's what they set up as their metric for success,
Speaker 1: which they knew was never gonna happen. That was millions
Speaker 1: of dollars like it, ye god, they know it was right.
Speaker 4: They knew that these people fundamentally hate Obamacare and The
Speaker 4: whole point is it's a skinny Obamacare repeal, so like
Speaker 4: it is, Yeah, it's a skin and they want health
Speaker 4: care costs to go up, up, up, up, up up
Speaker 4: up right, So you don't have an endgame that you
Speaker 4: know can be successful.
Speaker 1: But what you could have done is you could have
Speaker 1: put on the.
Speaker 4: Table a series of things Republicans would have to say
Speaker 4: no to in public.
Speaker 1: So if you're gonna, I think no healthcare.
Speaker 4: Novte was smart because they did rally people to say,
Speaker 4: even people who were literally losing their jobs and hungry,
Speaker 4: and they were like, keep fighting, because we can't afford
Speaker 4: to let these subsidies go down.
Speaker 3: They did.
Speaker 4: They never, though, proposed a series of things that were
Speaker 4: very hard to say no to. You know, you could
Speaker 4: have done things like first of all, they never highlight
Speaker 4: I was highlighting it on my podcast every day. They
Speaker 4: were not highlighting the fact that you all made the
Speaker 4: tax cuts permanent. The tax cuts were just as temporary
Speaker 4: as these subsidies.
Speaker 1: If you could do one, why can't you?
Speaker 4: Why weren't you saying that every day, Chuck, you made
Speaker 4: this one permanent, which costs four trillion dollars. This one
Speaker 4: costs less than a trillion. This is only a third
Speaker 4: of a trillion, so this one's cheap. So they should
Speaker 4: have But number one, that messaging was poor. They should
Speaker 4: have made that very very clear. They should have made
Speaker 4: the point that the Speaker of the House is literally saying,
Speaker 4: no food unless you let me make your health care
Speaker 4: cost gout right, you starve unless you let me. They
Speaker 4: should have been saying that people on social media were
Speaker 4: saying it. They weren't saying it. And then you just
Speaker 4: keep ratcheting up the ask. You say, okay, we want
Speaker 4: the healthcare subsidies to be made permanent. You're saying you
Speaker 4: don't like them because you don't. The Cato Institute says,
Speaker 4: the subsidies go to the insurance Company's fine.
Speaker 1: Our ask is flip the subsidies making go to the people.
Speaker 4: Can you imagine how powerful the ass would have been
Speaker 4: if we say that we the Democrats have said we
Speaker 4: ourselves are willing to update Obamacare, and we're able.
Speaker 1: We want to make this change.
Speaker 4: The subsidies will go to the people in an account
Speaker 4: the people can control. And we want the same amount
Speaker 4: of subsidy. But rather than sending it to United health Care,
Speaker 4: let's send that subsidy to the people. Dare you to
Speaker 4: say no to that? Now, the American people have a
Speaker 4: stake in no health care, no vote, because now you're
Speaker 4: saying money for me, because I remember, we're in an
Speaker 4: economy that is about the benjamins. It's about money. And
Speaker 4: now if you say to people, we the Democrats are saying,
Speaker 4: you get the ultimate stimmy your money, not in a
Speaker 4: subsidy to your health care company, but a subsidy to
Speaker 4: you make and then say are you gonna vte for that?
Speaker 4: And you keep ratcheting up that ass publicly so that
Speaker 4: people know what you're fighting for that is going to
Speaker 4: benefit them personally. And then if they say no to that,
Speaker 4: then you say, okay, you don't want that. What if
Speaker 4: we just do single pair and then explo am to
Speaker 4: people what that is and say why don't we say
Speaker 4: that where.
Speaker 1: Everybody gets you. Now you don't pay nothing.
Speaker 4: To go to the doctor, and can you imagine listen,
Speaker 4: just keep making a public ask. And then if Republicans,
Speaker 4: well you know they're going to say no, but then
Speaker 4: you they were already losing the shutdown war. But if
Speaker 4: Democrats had been putting out there literally the subsidy people
Speaker 4: don't even know what the subsidy going to. Can you
Speaker 4: imagine Republicans having to say no in Missouri to their
Speaker 4: Missouri constituents, white folks coming up to them and say,
Speaker 4: why can't I have this subsidy in my account?
Speaker 1: Why can't healthcare? Why can't I have free health care? Why? Why? Why?
Speaker 1: And I have to say that I think my family.
Speaker 1: The worst moment of the whole thing was Angus King saying, well,
Speaker 1: we stood up to Trump and it didn't work. Like what,
Speaker 1: First of all, it did work, you fuckingmore. But second
Speaker 1: of all, like my head nearly exploded.
Speaker 4: At a certain point, it's voter suppression. You had people
Speaker 4: come out and seven million people came out minimum for
Speaker 4: these No King's Day protests. This is fueled by them
Speaker 4: supporting your position, Democrats. Then you have an election day
Speaker 4: that was a blue wave wipeout for Republicans, and it's
Speaker 4: all the strength of these same issues. And then you're like, yeah,
Speaker 4: but that didn't work, Let's go ahead and lose.
Speaker 1: Unucking believable read thank you for joining me, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 4: Maybe these Democrats will learn one day, or or they
Speaker 4: go listen to one day.
Speaker 1: Mike Duggan is the mayor of Detroit and a candidate
Speaker 1: for the governorship of the Great State of Michigan. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics, Mike.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you role.
Speaker 1: This is a it's not a hyperlocal story, but it's
Speaker 1: a story that you kind of have to be in
Speaker 1: politics world or live in the Great State of Michigan
Speaker 1: to understand. So I would love you to just explain
Speaker 1: a little bit about the job you have recently done
Speaker 1: and then about your race for the governorship of Michigan.
Speaker 5: Well, I am finishing up my third term as the
Speaker 5: mayor of Detroit, and when I got elected, the city
Speaker 5: was in bankruptcy. People will remember when Detroit was the
Speaker 5: largest municipal bankruptcy in history. Half the street lights were out,
Speaker 5: the cops didn't show up when you call, the parks
Speaker 5: were closed and overgrown, and we had forty seven thousand
Speaker 5: abandoned houses. But mostly what we had was a politics
Speaker 5: that was just device. It was us versus them, black
Speaker 5: versus white, city versus Summers.
Speaker 3: And I ran first white candidate in forty years.
Speaker 5: I ran in an eighty three percent African American city
Speaker 5: by going house to house and sitting in people's living
Speaker 5: rooms and saying, you know, the Detroit I grew up
Speaker 5: in was a special place, and we can build a
Speaker 5: great city again. And Molly, the building I'm sitting here
Speaker 5: talking to you on on the old Hudson side is
Speaker 5: a forty five story building that wasn't here three years ago.
Speaker 3: It's part of the recovery of the city to try
Speaker 3: and we're very proud of it.
Speaker 1: What was your background before you became mayor of Detroit.
Speaker 5: I ran the Detroit Medical Center, which was the big
Speaker 5: hospital system here, eight hospitals, eleven thousand employees. We saw
Speaker 5: a quarter of the Medicaid patients in the state of Michigan,
Speaker 5: and the board had voted to close the big hospitals
Speaker 5: because they were going broke. I had been the elected
Speaker 5: prosecutor at the time. The Medical Center board offered me
Speaker 5: the job, and I took it on the condition they
Speaker 5: give me six months to turn the hospitals around and
Speaker 5: not close anything. And we upgraded the care. We cut
Speaker 5: the weight times of the emergency room from three hours
Speaker 5: to thirty minutes.
Speaker 3: People showed up.
Speaker 5: We grew from eleven thousand to fourteen thousand employees, and
Speaker 5: so people in the city all had a very strong
Speaker 5: opinion of the job I had done running the major
Speaker 5: hospital system, and but will they give me a chance
Speaker 5: as the mayor city Detroit.
Speaker 1: There's so much interesting stuff and everything you've just said,
Speaker 1: I wonder ay you decided to run for office. One
Speaker 1: of the things I see when I talked to people
Speaker 1: is that a lot of very good people, we just
Speaker 1: don't have the stomach for it. So just talk us
Speaker 1: through that decision.
Speaker 3: I grew up in Detroit.
Speaker 5: In the course of my lifetime, everything that we knew
Speaker 5: was taken away from us. The auto plants moved out,
Speaker 5: the banks moved out, the movie theaters moved out.
Speaker 3: A million of our neighbors moved out.
Speaker 5: And when I came out of law school, I just
Speaker 5: wanted to do something in the city, and I had
Speaker 5: one job after another until I became the prosecutor. But
Speaker 5: if they had closed the hospitals that saw three hundred
Speaker 5: thousand patients a year in the emergency rooms, the city
Speaker 5: would have been devastated. So I literally quit the prosecutor's
Speaker 5: job midterm, and I went in and I was actually
Speaker 5: criticized some of the papers saying I wasn't qualified because
Speaker 5: I hadn't done healthcare and the chairman of the board said, well,
Speaker 5: we just had a doctor and he lost one hundred
Speaker 5: million dollars a year for five years. We're going to
Speaker 5: try somebody from outside. And I just said, why are
Speaker 5: people sitting on plastic chairs in the waiting room for
Speaker 5: three hours at a time. You guys want to keep
Speaker 5: blaming Federal government doesn't pays us enough. State government doesn't
Speaker 5: pay us enough.
Speaker 3: How about we upgrade the state edited a care.
Speaker 5: I tore a part the entire process and kicked off
Speaker 5: the thirty minute guarantee. If we didn't see you in
Speaker 5: thirty minutes or less, we gave you two tickets to
Speaker 5: a Tiger gate. Now that was two thousand and four
Speaker 5: in the Detroit Tiger's lost one hundred and four games
Speaker 5: that year, so the team was willing give be a
Speaker 5: really good deal on those seats.
Speaker 3: But people just poured back in.
Speaker 5: And I had this idea that a lower income people
Speaker 5: in Detroit deserved exactly the same standard of care as
Speaker 5: the wealthier people of the suburbs. And when you deliver care,
Speaker 5: it's amazing how profitable your hospital is.
Speaker 1: I feel the way you feel about Detroit about New
Speaker 1: York City. Now New York city is much less shitty
Speaker 1: than it was when I grew up here, So I'm
Speaker 1: very you know, it's different. We've watched it go the
Speaker 1: other way, but I certainly understand loving the place you're from.
Speaker 1: Detroit was really a city in trouble. Is Michigan a
Speaker 1: state in trouble? And what is your plan for the state.
Speaker 3: As everybody knows, Michigan is a purple state.
Speaker 5: From your national perspective, that means it's in play for
Speaker 5: the presidential If you live here, the implication is much worse.
Speaker 5: Every two to four years, the State House, the state Senate,
Speaker 5: the governorship, they flip back and forth between Republicans and Democrats.
Speaker 5: And the last few times, two of the three thousand
Speaker 5: votes statewide decided who whether the Republicans or Democrats, were
Speaker 5: in charge of the legislature.
Speaker 3: And what has happened is they are so close that
Speaker 3: that the Republics and Democrats have become completely obsessed with
Speaker 3: am I in the majority? Do I get the majority?
Speaker 5: And now the last state report, more than sixty percent
Speaker 5: of third graders in the state of Michigan do not
Speaker 5: read a great level.
Speaker 3: It's just that's not Detroit, that's the whole state. Of Michigan.
Speaker 5: We're near the bottom of the country, and every two
Speaker 5: years is the Republicans and Democrats take control. They changed
Speaker 5: the curriculum, they changed the measurement on the schools, they
Speaker 5: changed the requirements of the teachers, and these teachers and
Speaker 5: principles have literally had five changes in how schools are
Speaker 5: measured in twelve years, and they wonder why our.
Speaker 3: Teachers can teach.
Speaker 5: And so I looked at this and said, I could
Speaker 5: get elected governor as a Democrat and all the Republicans
Speaker 5: would be against me because they tried.
Speaker 3: To be of the legislative races.
Speaker 5: And in two years, even if the Democrats won, the
Speaker 5: Republicans win the next time, and I wouldn't be able
Speaker 5: to get anything done. So I thought, maybe we need
Speaker 5: a different kind of politics.
Speaker 1: And you have so far really knocked the race into
Speaker 1: something totally different. So I am very curious to know
Speaker 1: a little bit about how you did that, because the
Speaker 1: Democrats had a candidate they picked, and the Republicans have
Speaker 1: that poor guy they keep running. So tell us sort
Speaker 1: of how you got into this race and probably didn't
Speaker 1: everybody tell you not to do it.
Speaker 5: I tell you, the people who live here are tired
Speaker 5: of it. And you know, I watched Rick Snyder, who
Speaker 5: was a Republican governor for eight years, and he did
Speaker 5: a lot of things I didn't agree with. But when
Speaker 5: the Democrats got a trifecta on the Democratic side literally
Speaker 5: in two years, they reversed everything that he had done
Speaker 5: in eight years. And then we got a Republican House,
Speaker 5: they ready started to reverse what the Democrats have done.
Speaker 5: And if you live here, you say, this is crazy.
Speaker 5: We don't have an economic development strategy to attract businesses
Speaker 5: that ever last more than two years.
Speaker 3: So I write, what if I do this? What if
Speaker 3: I run as an independent?
Speaker 5: I'm not going to get engaged in the Senate races
Speaker 5: of the House races. It's just like I did in
Speaker 5: the city of Detroit when I put the black versus
Speaker 5: white politics behind us in twelve straight years, I got
Speaker 5: city council to work together for Detroit's recovery. What would
Speaker 5: happen if I worked with the people from the two
Speaker 5: parties and pass things on a bipartisan basis. So every
Speaker 5: election isn't the most important election in history because we
Speaker 5: actually agree on things. There's nothing about teaching third graders
Speaker 5: to read.
Speaker 3: You need to teach them filects. You need to have
Speaker 3: them in small groups. You need to have tutors for
Speaker 3: the kids who are falling behind. You need to have
Speaker 3: the same curriculum for five straight years and not change it.
Speaker 3: There's nothing about that that's Republican or Democratic, but Republicans
Speaker 3: and Democrats use the school rules basically as political weapons
Speaker 3: right now, the way the parties are using the SNAP
Speaker 3: program nationally as a political weapon.
Speaker 5: I said, what if I just try this? And the
Speaker 5: response has been unbelievable. And I started out way behind,
Speaker 5: and in May they did a poll that I was
Speaker 5: within fourteen points to the top candidate. And then the
Speaker 5: last poll that came out, Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic likely nominee,
Speaker 5: is at thirty. John James, the Republican likely nominee, is
Speaker 5: at twenty nine, and I'm at twenty six. And the
Speaker 5: interesting thing is half of my supports coming from Democrats
Speaker 5: and half my supports coming from Republicans. And basically it's
Speaker 5: just people who are saying, you're not solving our problems.
Speaker 5: We spend all your time final with each other.
Speaker 1: That is wild. And what do you think of yourself as?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 5: I think of myself as a problem solver, and so
Speaker 5: as mayor Detroit, it is hard to describe. Imagine a
Speaker 5: city sliding into bankruptcy for years.
Speaker 3: How do you get re elected in that situation? You
Speaker 3: know how you get reelected.
Speaker 5: You are the best person in blaming somebody else for
Speaker 5: the problems. You don't have accomplishments to run on. And
Speaker 5: I came in and said, this is going to stop.
Speaker 5: I'm not blaming anybody. The black versus white city versus
Speaker 5: suburbs stuff is going to stop. If you vote for me,
Speaker 5: We're going to build a city that's opened everybody. And
Speaker 5: I got re elected the second time with seventy two percent,
Speaker 5: and the third time was seventy five percent. And last
Speaker 5: night the city council president, who was my partner, just
Speaker 5: got elected to succeed me with seventy seven percent.
Speaker 3: Mary Sheffield.
Speaker 5: This city is coming back dramatically because we have gotten
Speaker 5: the US versus Them politics behind us and people here
Speaker 5: in southeastern Michigan. You don't have to explain to anybody. Come
Speaker 5: downtown and you see the crowds on nights and weekends.
Speaker 5: It's unbelievable what we have. We got ten billion dollars
Speaker 5: in investment going into the city today auto plants and
Speaker 5: new hospitals and new distribution centers and new tech companies,
Speaker 5: and so people in southeastern Michigan get it. When I
Speaker 5: go to the outstate areas that are in the Detroit
Speaker 5: media market, I'm having to introduce myself to largely rural
Speaker 5: Republican fall folks who say, what does the marriage Detroit
Speaker 5: know about our problems? And it's been a fascinating process,
Speaker 5: and I'm making some traction.
Speaker 1: I completely get that, you know, as someone who comes
Speaker 1: from my political world that I think of myself as
Speaker 1: a seventy percent in the middle married to a venture capitalist.
Speaker 1: So I'm hardly, you know, from some kind of wild
Speaker 1: lefty stock, though my grandfather was a communist. But you
Speaker 1: have a state where you have like the Michigan Militia, right,
Speaker 1: you have a group of people who tried to kidnap
Speaker 1: the governor. So as much as like I want desperately
Speaker 1: to solve problems, you're going to hit some partisanship.
Speaker 5: And if you saw what happened in the city every
Speaker 5: time we do a development project. We brought a Jeep
Speaker 5: plant here with five thousand employees, and Jeep promised and
Speaker 5: lived up to the commitment that every single hire would
Speaker 5: be from the city of Detroit. Even with that, I
Speaker 5: had protests on the far left about the fact that
Speaker 5: we were giving tax breaks to what was then Fiat Chrysler.
Speaker 5: But I had the United Auto Workers with me, I
Speaker 5: had the construction trades with me, and I had the
Speaker 5: people of city Detroite those who were protesting on the
Speaker 5: far left. We listened respectfully, came to the meetings, but
Speaker 5: they didn't represent the majority Detroit, and we approved it quickly.
Speaker 3: It's the same thing.
Speaker 5: The Michigan militia is not going to support me, and
Speaker 5: the far left isn't going to support me, and I
Speaker 5: don't worry about that. There are Americans. They are entitled
Speaker 5: to their perspective. But I'm talking to the person of
Speaker 5: the middle who wants their kid to be able to
Speaker 5: have a job in Michigan not have to move out
Speaker 5: of state. And the great majority of those people are saying,
Speaker 5: where's the economic opportunity for us?
Speaker 3: I look at what Mike did in Detroit and all
Speaker 3: those jobs that came back to the city. What would
Speaker 3: it be like if they came back to the state.
Speaker 1: So what will it look like for you now to
Speaker 1: campaign and you have a year. What does Michigan look like?
Speaker 1: How do you campaign in Michigan? Every place is different.
Speaker 1: Talk us through it.
Speaker 5: January one, I will no longer be the mayor and
Speaker 5: that will free up a lot of my time. So
Speaker 5: you could imagine the last twenty four hours I've been
Speaker 5: consumed with dealing with the snap crisis. Residents have had
Speaker 5: their food benefits shut off, and this nonsense going on
Speaker 5: between the Republicans and Democrats in Washington doesn't like it's
Speaker 5: going to be solved anytime soon. So the last week
Speaker 5: we set up eighty five emergency food distribution site. I
Speaker 5: turned to Detroiters on social media and I said, we
Speaker 5: need volunteers to staff them. A thousand Detroiters volunteered, and
Speaker 5: I spent the whole morning out at one of these sites.
Speaker 5: But it's heartbreaking to see these blocks of cars. We
Speaker 5: got cars lined up three blocks deep to get food
Speaker 5: for their family because this week they should have had
Speaker 5: their monthly check to buy the food for the week.
Speaker 5: This is the kind of stuff I haven't spend way
Speaker 5: too much time on. But that's my job for the
Speaker 5: next eight weeks. But between that, I've been going up
Speaker 5: to farms I've been going up to small towns and
Speaker 5: it is absolutely fascinating to sit with folks who say,
Speaker 5: to me, what does the mayor Detroit know about us?
Speaker 5: We've been ignored, We've been forgotten. Nobody cares about us.
Speaker 5: I said, let me tell you about talking representing people
Speaker 5: who have been ignored and forgotten. Come to some of
Speaker 5: our neighborhoods where I had families on a block with
Speaker 5: four abandoned houses, no park, no street lights. Cops didn't show,
Speaker 5: I didn't complain about it. We solve the problems. Let's
Speaker 5: talk about your problems. And it's amazing these folks these
Speaker 5: rural areas. Their shoulders relax and they think, maybe I've
Speaker 5: got more in common with Detroiters than I ever would
Speaker 5: have thought. And then we start talking and I see
Speaker 5: the same kind of dynamic when I first ran from Ara,
Speaker 5: going from a house to house in the city, saying
Speaker 5: we do have more in common, and I think I
Speaker 5: can actually build a bipartisan coalition to win this thing.
Speaker 1: And of all people on food, salm to our children.
Speaker 3: It is ridiculous.
Speaker 5: And the notion that they are all poor and black
Speaker 5: in the inner city is absolutely not true.
Speaker 1: It's like significantly more white people on it than And.
Speaker 5: It's really interesting as I can go into some of
Speaker 5: the rural areas, there are a lot of areas where
Speaker 5: they are starting to get disenchanted with Donald Trump. We've
Speaker 5: got a lot of soybean farmers here who lost their
Speaker 5: exports to China. We've got autoworkers who are starting to
Speaker 5: lose jobs over the Canadian tariffs. But when you talk
Speaker 5: to them, they're not turning to Democrats. It don't see
Speaker 5: the Democrats is their solution. And the question they get
Speaker 5: is we voted for Democrats, we did badly. We voted
Speaker 5: for Republicans and we do badly. And right now there's
Speaker 5: so much fighting with each other. Is there another choice?
Speaker 3: And I'm just going to see whether people I will
Speaker 3: try a different path.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure you know about this that in rural
Speaker 1: areas there's a democratic penalty if you have a D
Speaker 1: next to your name, which is something we saw Dan
Speaker 1: Osborne and Nebraska run on. We're probably going to see
Speaker 1: more of that.
Speaker 3: So Molly, I went up to a small town called Lexington.
Speaker 5: Here thousand people in a town one hundred showed up
Speaker 5: at a bar to see me on a Tuesday night,
Speaker 5: which I was like, I can't, I can't believe this,
Speaker 5: And the grocer across the street took a special sign
Speaker 5: down for the week and said, welcome to Lexington, Mike Duggan.
Speaker 5: And after we started talking thirty forty minutes and they
Speaker 5: got relaxed and laughing and comfortable. I said to him,
Speaker 5: how many of you would have shown up here tonight
Speaker 5: if I were running for governor as a Democrat? And
Speaker 5: about a third of the hands of the room went up,
Speaker 5: and then they looked at each other they started to laugh.
Speaker 5: But these are their friends and neighbors in a small town.
Speaker 5: But it's what you say, if you put a D
Speaker 5: in front of your name, there's a whole chunk of
Speaker 5: the country that won't even listen to you. And the
Speaker 5: same is true if you put an R in front
Speaker 5: of your name, as a chunk of the country that
Speaker 5: won't listen either. What I'm finding is, I'm running is
Speaker 5: an independent and I'm not saying they're there yet.
Speaker 3: But boy, are they interested in having a third choice?
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: I understand you know a lot of the hospital administrator stuff.
Speaker 1: I understand how you maybe fix the city, you get
Speaker 1: people to build factories, but it's a lot of organization,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of detail work, it's a lot of
Speaker 1: putting what works best first. But I just wonder, is
Speaker 1: there some other secret sauce I'm missing here?
Speaker 3: So the secret sauce you're missing is this.
Speaker 5: Every Democratic candidate right now has their talking points off
Speaker 5: of their polsters.
Speaker 3: And it says costs are rising too fast.
Speaker 5: I will bring them down. Donald Trump is bad for you.
Speaker 5: I will fight him, and I will be on the
Speaker 5: side to teach. But you look at their life. They've
Speaker 5: never done a thing on any of those issues. And
Speaker 5: what people here see is that when I ran for
Speaker 5: mayor and set in living rooms in an eighty three
Speaker 5: percent black city and said I believe I can change
Speaker 5: politics a we could get investment. We did land ten
Speaker 5: new auto plants and cut the unemployment rate from twenty
Speaker 5: percent down to eight percent. We cut the homicide rate
Speaker 5: more than a half by both putting cops on the
Speaker 5: street but running great prevention programs. We rebuilt the riverfront
Speaker 5: to the point where it is spectacular. The crowds downtown
Speaker 5: Detroit are huge on nights and weekends. So what I
Speaker 5: have going for me is while the other people are
Speaker 5: repeating what's on their pollsters talking points here, they look
Speaker 5: and they say, Mike actually did it. And that's really
Speaker 5: the reason I am almost in a dead heat is
Speaker 5: because I have something to the other two don't have.
Speaker 5: I actually have a track record of accomplishment.
Speaker 1: Mike, it was great to talk to you. I hope
Speaker 1: you'll come back as you keep going, maybe February and March.
Speaker 1: Check in with us, tell us how it's going, okay.
Speaker 3: Would love to and thanks for Mally.
Speaker 1: No moment, Jesse Cannon, Molly jun Fast.
Speaker 2: Would you be shocked if I told you that Jesselen
Speaker 2: Maxwell sitting down in a country club prisoner is being
Speaker 2: waited on hand and foot for some reason. I just
Speaker 2: can't figure out what it could be. Any ideas, no, no, what. Well,
Speaker 2: Jamie Raskin has this whistleblower who says that's what's going on.
Speaker 1: I am shocked to hear that the Trump administration is
Speaker 1: protecting the partner of Jeffrey Epstein. But why it is
Speaker 1: a mystery, and certainly not that Donald Trump is implicated
Speaker 1: and Ebstein files because that would be breezy and no
Speaker 1: one's that.
Speaker 2: Are you saying the pedophile cabala As call is coming
Speaker 2: from inside the house.
Speaker 1: Not I. I am not saying that. I am absolutely
Speaker 1: not saying that. I would not say something like that.
Speaker 2: Neither would I, especially since I like not being sued.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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