Speaker 1: Good morning, everybody, Happy Friday. How's everybody doing?
Speaker 2: Hey guys?
Speaker 3: Well hello, hello, good how are you guys?
Speaker 2: I think we're about to hear how how Ryan's doing? Actually?
Speaker 4: Yeah, indeed, Well, first of all, Ryan, did you recover
Speaker 4: from You've had a pretty uh intense week going to
Speaker 4: and then making it back for your son's birthday and
Speaker 4: all that.
Speaker 3: Crazy, Right, it's crazy.
Speaker 5: I put in my veins. I'm I'm feeling good. Yeah,
Speaker 5: Like it's an invigorating week, is.
Speaker 6: What it is.
Speaker 2: Did you did your micro dose through it?
Speaker 5: I didn't. I didn't even have to micro dose through it. Also,
Speaker 5: I always remind myself that it's not really work. It's
Speaker 5: just I just I really like get to do stuff
Speaker 5: I enjoy doing and get to be at like historic events,
Speaker 5: like people who are actually doing work and waking up
Speaker 5: like before the sun sun is up, out the door
Speaker 5: before the sun is up, or like working on.
Speaker 2: What we call that breaking points.
Speaker 5: That's true, but still that's a couple of hours they're
Speaker 5: doing that, and it's like eight, ten, twelve hours and
Speaker 5: then another job. So like that's the Those are those
Speaker 5: are people who work.
Speaker 6: I don't. I don't even think of it as work.
Speaker 4: People who know Kyle know that it's impossible to get
Speaker 4: him out of the house to do basically anything. But
Speaker 4: even he watching the Zorn victory party videos was like, damn,
Speaker 4: we should have gone. I was like, you, I see
Speaker 4: that now, There's no way I could have convinced you
Speaker 4: to go in advance.
Speaker 7: I saw the funniest posts in response to Kyle's victory
Speaker 7: posts where he was playing music and smoking a cigar.
Speaker 7: Someonewted it and was like, damn, when did Kyle become Dominican?
Speaker 1: He was proud of that. He was like, did you
Speaker 1: see this one?
Speaker 6: So good? Anyway?
Speaker 4: Yeah, should we jump in and Ryan, you've got an
Speaker 4: update for all of us drops out as being sued
Speaker 4: and in the UK where the libel laws are insane,
Speaker 4: so you want to give us the tea here of
Speaker 4: what's going on.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And this is also invigorating in a way because
Speaker 5: this is this comes with this comes with the territory
Speaker 5: of doing investigative journalism. And actually we're not technically being sued.
Speaker 5: The writer Owen Jones, who wrote the piece for us,
Speaker 5: as being sued, and that's because of the complications of
Speaker 5: UK libel law. They can go directly after him. But
Speaker 5: we are. We are defending the case. The reason we're
Speaker 5: talking about it now is that some of the documents
Speaker 5: became public recently in the Telegraph reported about the case.
Speaker 5: Otherwise we were just fighting this behind the scenes. But
Speaker 5: we've already racked up roughly like forty thousand dollars in
Speaker 5: legal bills and are barely in the beginning stages of it.
Speaker 5: It's utterly insane how expensive this stuff is. But we
Speaker 5: are one hundred percent standing behind the story and we're
Speaker 5: planning to defend it in court. So we set up
Speaker 5: a legal fund that people can support overnight. We set
Speaker 5: it up yesterday overnight. People have given so far more
Speaker 5: than fifty thousand dollars wow in our so that's more
Speaker 5: than our bills so far. Now the bills are going
Speaker 5: to continue to rack up. If we win a full victory.
Speaker 5: There is a real expectation that we could actually recoup
Speaker 5: all those costs, and that the the BBC editor who's
Speaker 5: suing us would have to pay for our legal costs.
Speaker 5: And I do expect that that's likely to happen. But
Speaker 5: in the meantime, we've got to we have to. You know,
Speaker 5: the lawyers keep sending invoices and we have that's amazing.
Speaker 5: We have to keep paying them, so thank you to
Speaker 5: everybody who gave overnight. Well we can put the link,
Speaker 5: I guess in the description. You can find it on
Speaker 5: my pin tweet.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 5: And the more we have then the more it sends
Speaker 5: a signal to plaintiffs in general, like if you come
Speaker 5: after us, like we will defend ourselves. And we have
Speaker 5: a community of readers who will help us defend ourselves.
Speaker 5: We have libel insurance, but there's a significant deductible that
Speaker 5: you have to hit. As anybody who's in journalism or
Speaker 5: understands the idea of insurance like that's how that works.
Speaker 5: So we're nowhere near the deductible yet. And you know
Speaker 5: every dollar you have to spend on that, it takes
Speaker 5: away from the journalism. So any any help is you know,
Speaker 5: deeply appreciated. And we and we do expect that we're
Speaker 5: gonna we're gonna win this.
Speaker 1: We don't want to too.
Speaker 4: I remember when this came out in depth investigation into
Speaker 4: a systemic bias at the BBC in their Israel coverage,
Speaker 4: and so you know, I understand why they were upset
Speaker 4: by it, but that you were saying they haven't really
Speaker 4: alleged that you got anything wrong, and I know you
Speaker 4: guys one hundred percent stand by the reporting, right.
Speaker 5: They say that our kind of conclusions are wrong, but
Speaker 5: they don't allege any errors in fact, Like UK law
Speaker 5: is very strange. It's like, yes, like, what do you
Speaker 5: mean has.
Speaker 3: It always been like that?
Speaker 8: Ryan, Because essentially they're alleging that you've hurt his feelings
Speaker 8: right about It's.
Speaker 5: One of the reasons that I'm such a strident defender
Speaker 5: of the First Amendment, Like the First Amendment is actually meaningful,
Speaker 5: it actually matters, and the UK doesn't have one, and
Speaker 5: they deeply suffer for it. Chris and I were just
Speaker 5: talking about we don't quite understand how they have this
Speaker 5: coexisting of this rabid tabloid culture where they just recklessly
Speaker 5: publish all sorts of nonsense. Yeah, also these bizarre libel laws.
Speaker 5: It's not clear how those two things coexist together. If
Speaker 5: anybody understands that, maybe, like you know, lucidate that in
Speaker 5: the comments for us, because it's really weird. It's like,
Speaker 5: because they there's a fact check piece piece we took
Speaker 5: very seriously. There's you know, it's it's accurate as you know,
Speaker 5: we stand behind it. We're still you know, getting drained
Speaker 5: of all this money to defend it in court, wherein
Speaker 5: in the US a suit like this would be like, no,
Speaker 5: you don't have any case.
Speaker 6: Here go.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: My theory about that is always that it's the way
Speaker 7: that people get around the laws is by burying things
Speaker 7: in crazy sourcing. So you get someone in the royal family,
Speaker 7: like associated with the royal family, tell you something crazy
Speaker 7: and then attribute it to a source, right, and that's
Speaker 7: how they I don't know that's my best theory, but
Speaker 7: I was gonna say, right. And also people should realize
Speaker 7: if you you don't want to set a precedent in
Speaker 7: the wrong direction either, because with small indie media booming
Speaker 7: right now, the process can be the punishment. So if
Speaker 7: you start filing a bunch of lawsuits and people don't
Speaker 7: have money need to defend themselves because lawsuits are extremely
Speaker 7: expensive and CNN and yeah, obously they have you know,
Speaker 7: the all of the resources in the world bus lawyers
Speaker 7: that are on their staff. It's different than if you're
Speaker 7: just going after the indie publications who can be bankrupted
Speaker 7: just by the process.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: That's a great point. If powerful people are powerful interests
Speaker 5: think that they can shut down independent media by just
Speaker 5: lobbing a bunch of lawsuits at them, they're gonna then
Speaker 5: they're gonna keep doing that. So if you give, if
Speaker 5: you give on that, then they're just gonna keep going.
Speaker 5: But if you defend yourself and it actually ends up
Speaker 5: costing them, then they're gonna think twice the next time
Speaker 5: they think about going after this outlet or any other
Speaker 5: independent outlet, be like, oh wait, they have a huge
Speaker 5: audience that is going to support them if we come
Speaker 5: after them, So we have to then factor that in
Speaker 5: to our calculation of whether or not we want to
Speaker 5: launch this suit.
Speaker 8: M's all right, well, we're gonna keep a link in there.
Speaker 8: Let's keep funding drop site because, like Ryan said, drop
Speaker 8: site is the tip of the spear against the BBC
Speaker 8: censorship regime and against many other things.
Speaker 4: By the way, I think people know at this point,
Speaker 4: how truly, and I mean, if we don't have drops
Speaker 4: I doing this reporting during the course of this genocide,
Speaker 4: there's just so many stories that would never have brought
Speaker 4: to light. And I don't even think I have to
Speaker 4: say that. I think people just know that that's obviously
Speaker 4: the case at this point. So heartening to see people
Speaker 4: backing you up with their dollars and showing how much
Speaker 4: they support the work that you guys do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I appreciate you all.
Speaker 6: Yep.
Speaker 8: I will be making a sizeable twenty dollars donation at
Speaker 8: the end of the show. Okay, So we have a
Speaker 8: big show. We have a lot to get to. We're
Speaker 8: gonna try to fly through a lot of topics. We've
Speaker 8: got election stuff, we have more shutdown stuff happening with
Speaker 8: the airlines closing flights. And we have Michael Blake. He's
Speaker 8: a former DNC weis chair I.
Speaker 5: Believe and the Bronx.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he just announced. We met him at the
Speaker 3: zor run event.
Speaker 8: But he just announced a primary run against Richie Torres.
Speaker 8: So we'll be speaking to him a little bit later
Speaker 8: in the show. But first we want to go to Emily. Emily,
Speaker 8: it was a big election, this a few days ago.
Speaker 8: What day is it, I guess it was this week. Still,
Speaker 8: it was revolutionary, you know, an underdog came from behind,
Speaker 8: challenged the entire system. Of course, I'm talking about Abigail Spanberger. Emily,
Speaker 8: what do you make of it? Because you left the
Speaker 8: livestream early. Any big reactions from you before we get
Speaker 8: to some of the cobe The margins.
Speaker 7: Were just sending its your guys is analysis, I think,
Speaker 7: is what I shared. The margins were higher than what
Speaker 7: Republicans expected in Virginia and New Jersey. And just before
Speaker 7: we went to Ara was reading Political Playbook this morning
Speaker 7: and Mikey Cheryl has a quote in it where she says,
Speaker 7: if I'm talking to you about abortion and you can't
Speaker 7: pay your rent, then we're not having a conversation. I'm
Speaker 7: paraprising her, but that's the gist of what she said
Speaker 7: to Political Playbook. And I feel even these sort of
Speaker 7: Spamberger Mikey Cheryl types have kind of unlocked the key
Speaker 7: to finally, after ten years, actually challenging MAGA on some
Speaker 7: of those actual questions that people go to sleep with
Speaker 7: and wake up in the middle of the night with.
Speaker 2: And that's a I think, a revelation.
Speaker 7: It shouldn't have been that hard, I guess, but I
Speaker 7: think that's where I think that's how Zoron beat Andrew Cuomo.
Speaker 7: And the meantime, what we've seen is Republican reaction being well,
Speaker 7: we have a little bit of a copilation.
Speaker 2: That's what we're calling it Griffin a copalation.
Speaker 7: This is Representative Lisa McLain on CNN explaining what happened
Speaker 7: on Tuesday to Jake Tapper.
Speaker 9: The politics of this for a second, because you know
Speaker 9: President Trump told Republicans earlier this morning. According to a
Speaker 9: source talking to CNN, the Republicans are getting killed politically
Speaker 9: on the shutdown. And if you look at what happened
Speaker 9: last night, it is hard to say that there is anything.
Speaker 5: In the election results.
Speaker 9: And I'm looking at not just like I get it,
Speaker 9: New Jersey's a democratic state, but looking at Republican counties,
Speaker 9: looking at Republican sheriffs that lost their jobs, It's hard
Speaker 9: to see anything last night that was an endorsement of
Speaker 9: what the Republican Party is doing right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Well, let me give you the other side of that
Speaker 10: of that story is voter turnout from Republicans was not high,
Speaker 10: not high at all. But I think part of that
Speaker 10: reason is because Republicans for the most part, are happy
Speaker 10: with what's happening. The borders closed. Crime is down. In
Speaker 10: inflation under Biden used to be nine percent, it's now
Speaker 10: down to three percent. Interest rates are down, mortgages down.
Speaker 10: Let me I know, let me just finish. Let me
Speaker 10: just give you the let me just give you the
Speaker 10: other side. High shop at the same grocery store that
Speaker 10: anybody else does. So you see, is there more work
Speaker 10: that needs to be done? Absolutely there is. That's why
Speaker 10: in the Working Families tax Cut, we did just that.
Speaker 8: We so emily the tap that people are too happy,
Speaker 8: that the key to an election defeat is happiness.
Speaker 7: Too happy to vote for winsome Earl series obviously like
Speaker 7: the because she's saying Republican turnout is low. But that's
Speaker 7: I mean, this was part of what jd Vance wrote
Speaker 7: the next morning as well, the low propensity the Republican
Speaker 7: base is now the low propensity base, and more needs
Speaker 7: to be done.
Speaker 2: I actually think that's that's true. I mean, anytime you
Speaker 2: have midterm.
Speaker 7: Cycles or off your cycles, then yes, you need to
Speaker 7: be focused on mobilizing your own voters, especially if they
Speaker 7: tend to be low propensity voters. But in a place
Speaker 7: like New Jersey, where Donald Trump was actually close to
Speaker 7: Kamala Harris, like the margin was closer than people realized,
Speaker 7: what we're looking at is the Republican Party losing swing voters.
Speaker 7: And that's I mean, the margin for Mikey Show I
Speaker 7: think ended up being about thirteen points, about fifteen for Spamberger,
Speaker 7: double digit wins in states where.
Speaker 1: You could J Jones out J Jones Kamal Harris.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 4: And the lady, the lady who leaked the text, the
Speaker 4: Republican lady who leaked the text lost her seat. I mean, like,
Speaker 4: that's the most dark, woke moment I've ever heard my
Speaker 4: entire life, which is so true.
Speaker 5: But sort of what was the relationship between those two
Speaker 5: that they were sending these kind of texts? That's what
Speaker 5: I want to I wondered that, right, where are the
Speaker 5: investigative reporters? Where the tabloids, speaking of the UK tabloids,
Speaker 5: where's the Richmond tabloid? It's gonna like on Earth, what's
Speaker 5: going on? What's going on with these two?
Speaker 4: I'll ask that guy Ben Tribbett, not Larry Sabato, if
Speaker 4: you can, if you can dig into that one.
Speaker 5: But they all know, I bet they all have some
Speaker 5: rumors going around, but they.
Speaker 4: Well that's probably why she was like reluctant to relase
Speaker 4: because you know, normally, first of all, why are you
Speaker 4: texting Republican not stuff? Why are texting anyone that stuff,
Speaker 4: but especially where would you know.
Speaker 2: How would you put that down in writing? That's like.
Speaker 5: They both, ma's what's the situation here?
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know.
Speaker 4: And the other thing that I saw is I don't
Speaker 4: this this person he was talking about that he was
Speaker 4: gonna had the two bullets for this is like a
Speaker 4: totally unremarkable state legislator. Like, I have no idea what
Speaker 4: this person did to whatever. I mean, when I first
Speaker 4: saw the story, I was like, Oh, that's probably like
Speaker 4: the text, they're probably blowing it out of proportion. And
Speaker 4: then I read the text and I was like, holy
Speaker 4: hell yeah, And I mean it is like, on the
Speaker 4: one hand, Emily, I think you're right that Zoron really
Speaker 4: led the way with the affordability message, and Democrats saw
Speaker 4: how powerful that is. Now they're not going to embrace
Speaker 4: all of the Zoran policies, but they were like, oh,
Speaker 4: this guy's onto something. He's onto something so much that
Speaker 4: he was able to go from zero percent in the
Speaker 4: polls to really like defeating by a landslide, this political
Speaker 4: zion with all the dollars behind him. Not to mention
Speaker 4: other you know, Brad Lantern and Scott's dream around. You
Speaker 4: were pointing this out other like significant progressive figures in
Speaker 4: the city. This stuff is potent. I do think that
Speaker 4: they leaned into that messaging. I also think that it
Speaker 4: really Democrats were ready to vote for anyone.
Speaker 1: With a D by their names.
Speaker 4: It did not matter where your ideal, what your messaging was,
Speaker 4: where you were ideologically, whether you'd threatened to murder your
Speaker 4: political opponent and their children, didn't matter.
Speaker 1: They were going to vote for you.
Speaker 4: And you know, it was certainly look the turnout thing
Speaker 4: is trite and cliche to say, but there were also,
Speaker 4: I think it was the New York Times den analysis,
Speaker 4: there were also some Trump voters who switched sides.
Speaker 1: Abvio Bamberger.
Speaker 4: I believe one like nine percent of the people who
Speaker 4: self identified, you know, told pollsters that they were Trump voters.
Speaker 4: And that mays sound like a small number, but when
Speaker 4: you're talking about, you know, midterm alige, when you're talking
Speaker 4: about the next election, that level of a switch from
Speaker 4: one party to the other is actually massive. And then
Speaker 4: obviously you saw huge swings in demographics that Republicans have
Speaker 4: been really proud of, picking up gains in Latinos in
Speaker 4: particular young men in particular demographic groups by the way
Speaker 4: that they have based their jerry mandered maps on holding
Speaker 4: on to some portion of you know, really putting into
Speaker 4: jeopardy their plans to redraw things in a way that
Speaker 4: are going to be more beneficial to them. And so
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm genuinely curious from you, Emily, like I
Speaker 4: know what jd. Vance is saying publicly, like, oh, this
Speaker 4: is no big deal. These were blue states. I don't
Speaker 4: believe for a second that he thinks that you can't
Speaker 4: lose by twenty points in two statewide races in Georgia
Speaker 4: and think that this was like one off, nothing to
Speaker 4: see here, or lose your supermajority in Mississippi and be like, oh,
Speaker 4: this was just some blue state stuff, not that you know,
Speaker 4: don't worry about it. So privately, what are people saying privately?
Speaker 4: What are people thinking about what happened here? And like
Speaker 4: how or if they're going to adjust in any sort
Speaker 4: of way.
Speaker 7: Well, I think so Vivek Ramaswami had probably the most
Speaker 7: I think popular response as obvious that maybe to say,
Speaker 7: and it was echoed by Vance in his own post,
Speaker 7: where eventually Ramaswami Advance just converged on the same message,
Speaker 7: which is that you have to focus on affordability and
Speaker 7: costs of blimming.
Speaker 2: Then Donald Trump came out and said the same thing.
Speaker 2: He's like, they have this new word affordability later in.
Speaker 7: The day and affordability Yeah, yeah, people, I mean long
Speaker 7: lost word. It's like, what did he he calls There's like,
Speaker 7: what does he say, like refrigerators at sometimes.
Speaker 1: One word he loves? Yeah, forget about that word. Yeah.
Speaker 7: But so I think people are and it's insane again,
Speaker 7: but I think it's especially been I know, Chris, we
Speaker 7: also want to talk about the Heritage Foundation stuff, but
Speaker 7: I think it's especially been the the contrast between the
Speaker 7: entire professional right in Washington, d C. Focusing relentlessly on
Speaker 7: leaks coming out of a think tank, while you get
Speaker 7: creamed in a mid term election cycle where I'm pulling
Speaker 7: up the data here like independence swung big in a
Speaker 7: lot of these key races towards Democrats, and that was
Speaker 7: not the case in twenty twenty four. So when you
Speaker 7: see numbers like that and you look at what the
Speaker 7: right has been focused on the last couple of weeks,
Speaker 7: it puts it in pretty stark relief. And so I
Speaker 7: mean it's like pretty I feel like it's pretty obvious.
Speaker 7: But these professional people should not need reminders that normal
Speaker 7: human beings have to pay their bills. But one of
Speaker 7: those lessons you'd think the Republicans might have learned from
Speaker 7: ten years of Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Sorry my phone just went off, but have not.
Speaker 4: I would submit that the problem isn't so much the
Speaker 4: debate over like Nickfwonta's and Israel and whatever. It's the
Speaker 4: fact that there's a question of whether Nazis are allowed
Speaker 4: in the coalition and the way that extremist policies and
Speaker 4: ideologies are expressed from the top of the party, and
Speaker 4: the way that that is incredibly repellent to a lot
Speaker 4: of normal people.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: I mean, Stephen Miller's on the other side of the
Speaker 4: quote unquote Jewish question. But this is the guy who's
Speaker 4: leading all the immigrations. They just did some like world
Speaker 4: only taking white refugees thing. You've got the mass that's
Speaker 4: in the street, the you know, now the Kavanaugh stops
Speaker 4: where you can just overtly racially profile. Every day there's
Speaker 4: news stories coming out about how Greg Bavino lied in court,
Speaker 4: how they're tear gassing two year olds. You know, how
Speaker 4: they're bragging about how their marksmanship after they shoot an
Speaker 4: American citizen five times in the back. And so what
Speaker 4: I said is, you know, I think people actually will
Speaker 4: put up with a lot of authoritarianism, but only if
Speaker 4: they're getting some shit out of it, not just for
Speaker 4: the sake of sadism, Like we're not all psycho terrorists
Speaker 4: like Steven Miller. So you know, if it was making
Speaker 4: the trains run on time and people's rents would coming down, whatever,
Speaker 4: then I think, yeah, people would be like, well, that's
Speaker 4: not great, But what are you gonna do the way
Speaker 4: that they do with let's say the Kelly right where
Speaker 4: they had a massive crime problem and his I don't
Speaker 4: think that I would never support his policies, but they
Speaker 4: genuinely brought the crime down. People like, yeah, what are
Speaker 4: you gonna do here?
Speaker 1: You have an.
Speaker 4: Administration where their authoritarianism is making things more lowles us
Speaker 4: injecting more chaos, more criminality into their streets in their communities.
Speaker 4: And at the same time they're cozied up to a
Speaker 4: bunch of oligarchs giving away giant tax cuts to the rich.
Speaker 4: Your rent is going up, your groceries are going up,
Speaker 4: your energy bills are going up, which by the way,
Speaker 4: is related to giving the store away to the oligarchs
Speaker 4: are putting these data centers into your town, And.
Speaker 1: What are you doing.
Speaker 4: You're throwing yourself great Gatsby parties and building yourself an elaborate, gilded,
Speaker 4: multi hundred million dollar ballroom, which seems to be the
Speaker 4: thing you actually care about versus anything else that's going
Speaker 4: on in the world. So, you know, I think voters
Speaker 4: are getting the message like, oh, you were lying when
Speaker 4: you claimed you cared about me in my life. You
Speaker 4: were lying when you said that you cared about the
Speaker 4: affordability crisis. That was just political language meant to sucker
Speaker 4: me into voting for you. And so if you're a Democrat,
Speaker 4: like all the you know, the mass thugs in the
Speaker 4: street and all of that hyper energizes you. If you're
Speaker 4: an independent, you're apalled but that, and you are very
Speaker 4: disappointed and unhappy with the state of the economy, which
Speaker 4: some seventy plus percent of voters say is poor. And
Speaker 4: if you're a Republican, you're like pretty depressed because you
Speaker 4: know there were some Look, you said you were going
Speaker 4: to release the Epstein viles. You didn't do that. You
Speaker 4: said you were you know, you said you're going to
Speaker 4: be looking out for me. I'm not feeling that great,
Speaker 4: and now I'm not ready to vote for Abbigail Spanberger.
Speaker 4: But maybe I'm just not going to have time on
Speaker 4: that day to get out and vote. So to me,
Speaker 4: it's not a mystery of what went wrong here. But
Speaker 4: you know, I feel and Sager kind of raised this point.
Speaker 4: I feel a little bit like when Democrats would start
Speaker 4: to say, like, oh, we got to re message, we
Speaker 4: got to talk more about this, we got to talk
Speaker 4: more about that. It's like, no, you don't need to
Speaker 4: talk more about affordability. You actually need.
Speaker 1: To deliver for it, Like you have a reality problem.
Speaker 4: And unless you're going to do a total one eighty on,
Speaker 4: you know, pull the National Guard out of the cities,
Speaker 4: pull the mass thugs out of the streets, really do
Speaker 4: some unorthodox things for Republicans that are going to change
Speaker 4: people's material conditions, Like immediately you are in for a
Speaker 4: massive reckoning come twenty twenty six. And I think that
Speaker 4: cake and a lot of look, a lot of things
Speaker 4: can happen, but in a lot of ways, that cake
Speaker 4: is pretty much baked.
Speaker 2: I'll toss it to Ryan and Griffin after that.
Speaker 7: I mean, I think the fact that they don't even
Speaker 7: talk about it, and they're like looking back and realizing
Speaker 7: that the president spent the last year roughly focused on
Speaker 7: foreign policy. Obviously they had their one big, beautiful bill,
Speaker 7: but they're looking back and saying in the last three months, like,
Speaker 7: why was nobody talking about this? And I think with
Speaker 7: that mikey shall quote, you can interchange a lot of
Speaker 7: things from abortion, you could put in talking about Israel,
Speaker 7: talking about you know, whatever else Trump has talked about,
Speaker 7: and many different the White House, like getting rid of
Speaker 7: the East Room.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, I mean all the ads in Virginia, A
Speaker 4: big proportion of the Republican ads in Virginia were about
Speaker 4: transgender issues, you know, and yeah, people are like, maybe
Speaker 4: I don't agree with her, but you know what, I'm
Speaker 4: struggling out here, and I'm not voting for another Republican
Speaker 4: right now.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And that's a I post about this aftersus like you,
Speaker 7: it's not like Capital Pea, Capitol w Peak woke anymore.
Speaker 2: When Yunkin came in and was able to talk about
Speaker 2: a lot of these things.
Speaker 7: The future politics doesn't look like twenty twenty one and
Speaker 7: that should have been fairly obvious.
Speaker 2: What if you want to talk about those things.
Speaker 7: If you want to, first of all, you have to
Speaker 7: be careful to actually talk about what matters to people.
Speaker 7: And if you insist on talking about them, because those
Speaker 7: things do matter to some people, to many people, then
Speaker 7: you should tie it back into the conversation about like elite.
Speaker 7: Bernie does this all the time about elite distractions. But
Speaker 7: you're probably you could go further. You see, these are
Speaker 7: the same people sowing discord in your school district that
Speaker 7: are also bankrupting you and making your life miserable in
Speaker 7: a myriad different ways. But Republicans will believe that, and
Speaker 7: centrals Democrats certainly don't believe that.
Speaker 2: So but yeah, I think they do need to.
Speaker 1: You're actually the one constantly bringing it up.
Speaker 4: You know, you'd be like my opponent's obsessed with this
Speaker 4: thing that I just cannot stop talking about twenty four
Speaker 4: to seven and have spent millions and millions about dollars
Speaker 4: on and she's not saying anything about you know.
Speaker 7: Today, Spimberger didn't talk about it right, right, And that's
Speaker 7: the difference between twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five
Speaker 7: is Spimberger's not talking about it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and real quick because I know we got to
Speaker 5: move because we got Blake coming pretty soon. A couple
Speaker 5: of things that she said. She said grocery prices are down.
Speaker 5: It's not true. Grocery prices are up. She said energy
Speaker 5: prices are down. I think gas prices are down about
Speaker 5: ten cents a gallon since Trump took over, but electricity
Speaker 5: prices are absolutely through the roof. And she said mortgage
Speaker 5: rates are down, which is true. Mortgage rates when Trump
Speaker 5: came in, we're close to seven Now. I think today
Speaker 5: they're at around six point two still, but that's still
Speaker 5: way way above what people want and need to be
Speaker 5: able to unlock the housing market. And the way that
Speaker 5: he has brought down rates so far is to destroy
Speaker 5: the economy, like to produce. You know, we're seeing like
Speaker 5: record amounts of layoffs. Somebody said more firings this lilast month.
Speaker 5: Then since twenty twenty two thousand and three. We don't
Speaker 5: have the data on it because the government's shut down,
Speaker 5: but when the new data comes in, it's probably going
Speaker 5: to be shocking, and that that deterioration of the economy
Speaker 5: has finally sparked the FED to reduce interest rates, which
Speaker 5: flows into mortgage rates. So it's like, Okay, good job
Speaker 5: getting you know, mortgage rates down by like, you know,
Speaker 5: sixty basis points, but at the cost of like a
Speaker 5: deteriorating economy.
Speaker 3: Speaking of the economy.
Speaker 6: Go for it.
Speaker 4: I was going to say, I I'd like to play
Speaker 4: the Steve Bannon sat if we've.
Speaker 3: Got that, we'll do that. We'll get the airlines.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then because yeah, go while you're pulling that up,
Speaker 4: I can just update people a little bit on the
Speaker 4: airlines piece, though, because as the shutdown you know, continues
Speaker 4: on and Democrats I think feel pretty vindicated in their
Speaker 4: position and given the electoral wrong that they were able
Speaker 4: to pull off this week. Meanwhile, you have forty two
Speaker 4: million people who don't have are not receiving food stamp
Speaker 4: benefits on which they rely. You have a federal judge
Speaker 4: who first ordered the Trump administration, Hey, you do have
Speaker 4: emergency funds. You have to tap Trump administration, as they
Speaker 4: frequently do. We're like, oh, yeah, we'll try, and we're
Speaker 4: getting around to and blah blah blah. Court came and said, no,
Speaker 4: you have tilled this Friday to pay out one hundred
Speaker 4: percent of the benefits that are owed. Now the Trump
Speaker 4: administration is appealing that. So people continue to go without
Speaker 4: these food benefits, and you know, you're starting to see
Speaker 4: the stories of I had to go dumpster diving in
Speaker 4: the Walmart parking lot to be able to feed myself
Speaker 4: of my family. You know, I have to pick do
Speaker 4: I put the dollar fifty I have in my back
Speaker 4: bank account towards half a gallon of gas to you know,
Speaker 4: to go to the food bank, or to go to
Speaker 4: the store, or you know, if I have to go
Speaker 4: to work, like I genuinely don't know what I'm going
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 1: So I'm already.
Speaker 4: Because it's not like the food stamp benefits are super
Speaker 4: luxurious to start with. By the end of the month,
Speaker 4: they're gone and you're waiting for that next tranche to hit.
Speaker 4: And so you know, people really feeling the pain there.
Speaker 4: And now we already have a lot of chaos in
Speaker 4: the air because there's been every day you see ground
Speaker 4: stop here, groundstop there, groundstop wherever, because air traffic controllers
Speaker 4: are not getting paid. I saw somebody share online like
Speaker 4: the zero dollar pay stub that they receive for working
Speaker 4: as an air traffic controller. And now the government is
Speaker 4: going to enforce a ten percent cut on all airline
Speaker 4: flights to deal with the fact that, you know, you
Speaker 4: still are shut down and people aren't getting paid, and
Speaker 4: so people are not showing up to work and they're
Speaker 4: taking their leave, et cetera. Not to mention like these
Speaker 4: are the kind of jobs where you really want people
Speaker 4: to be like locked in and not having to worry
Speaker 4: about am I going to be able to like pay
Speaker 4: my health insurance premium and make my rent this month? So,
Speaker 4: you know, as we had into Thanksgiving here people with
Speaker 4: no food stamp benefits and looking at the air travel situation,
Speaker 4: which is already a nightmare, and wondering if their holiday
Speaker 4: plans are even remotely possible. At this point, I feel like,
Speaker 4: you know, we're already at the place where these things
Speaker 4: are becoming incredibly painful.
Speaker 6: Let's hear a.
Speaker 3: Little bit from the airlines.
Speaker 11: Let's put this all into context. The US handles about
Speaker 11: forty five thousand flights a day. A ten percent reduction
Speaker 11: of that is worse than the worst cancelation day of
Speaker 11: the past year every day until the shutdown ends. So
Speaker 11: this is not a small tweak. Aviation's a multi billion
Speaker 11: dollar industry. And when you slow the system, you slow commerce,
Speaker 11: air travel, supply chains, deliveries nationwide.
Speaker 6: The clock is really ticking now.
Speaker 11: Never in modern US aviation history has the federal government
Speaker 11: done an across the board cut of flight capacity like this,
Speaker 11: and now it seems that passengers are going to be
Speaker 11: the one paying for it.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I'm going to a conference in Lisbon on Sunday night,
Speaker 5: and so I don't think they're canceling the transatlantic flights
Speaker 5: for like economic and geopolitical reasons, but who knows.
Speaker 6: We'll see.
Speaker 3: Maybe yeah.
Speaker 5: For me on Wednesday, but maybe I'll maybe I'll actually
Speaker 5: be there.
Speaker 7: And it's just the idea that everyone is going to
Speaker 7: see this and blame Democrats when Republicans are in power.
Speaker 2: It just I mean, like, I I understand Democrats are
Speaker 2: the ones withholding their votes.
Speaker 7: I get that, But I think what Trump is realized
Speaker 7: just since the elections, if these leagues are to be believed,
Speaker 7: is that they're the ones that are in power and
Speaker 7: people are pointing the fingers at them. So when Sean
Speaker 7: Duffy is the one who's the head of transportation and
Speaker 7: has to go out and talk about this, they're like, oh,
Speaker 7: this is the Trump guy, right, Like, that's just the
Speaker 7: association people make in their minds. This is that this
Speaker 7: is the Trump administration, who's who's telling us about these shutdowns,
Speaker 7: and it all goes back to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Trump has been saying that, you know, energy costs are down,
Speaker 8: which we have a clip of right here, So huge truth.
Speaker 8: This is his pivot to affordability.
Speaker 12: Let's take a listen, talk about the cost of Thanksgiving
Speaker 12: and the cost of living through Thanksgiving and enjoying Thanksgiving for.
Speaker 5: That it is for me at a later time.
Speaker 11: Our energy costs the way down, Our groceries are way down.
Speaker 11: Everything is way down, and the press isn't reported the
Speaker 11: press reports whatever.
Speaker 6: The con people say.
Speaker 2: You know, I called the Democrats con men and women.
Speaker 8: All right, so Crystal, you have been debunked. Actually everything
Speaker 8: is cheap and everything's down.
Speaker 4: Well, I did see there was a community note, which
Speaker 4: are getting I think rare at this point. But on this,
Speaker 4: on this clip of the president, apparently the Walmart basket
Speaker 4: of goods he's talking about contains like eight fewer items
Speaker 4: than it did last year, and they swapped in like
Speaker 4: the Walmart brand for the brand names or whatever. So
Speaker 4: we're not comparing apples to apples here, not that any
Speaker 4: of you needed me to tell you that, because you
Speaker 4: all exist and presumably eat food and purchase it at
Speaker 4: some spore somewhere and so have some awareness of what
Speaker 4: the prices are doing right now, which is really the problem.
Speaker 4: Like you know, I think we're not getting economic data
Speaker 4: from the government because of the shutdown. Even before that,
Speaker 4: there was a question of whether getting data at all,
Speaker 4: or accurate data. I think there was a sense from
Speaker 4: the Trump administration that if they just fudge the numbers
Speaker 4: that they'd be able to lie to people about what
Speaker 4: was going on with the economy. That is not going
Speaker 4: to work because people have their own direct, tangible experience
Speaker 4: of what's in my bank account? Can I afford the
Speaker 4: things that I could afford previously? Am I making it
Speaker 4: to the end of the month? Do I have sufficient
Speaker 4: money for rent? Can I ever dream of owning a
Speaker 4: home or paying my health insurance premium? You know, so
Speaker 4: I don't need like a government statistician to tell me
Speaker 4: how things are going for me economically in my own life.
Speaker 1: He go ahead, Ryan, No.
Speaker 5: I was just saying exactly right. Trump's consolidation of the
Speaker 5: media is like obviously that's helpful to him. But controlling
Speaker 5: CBS News is only going to get you so far,
Speaker 5: because exactly like people live in the world. They go
Speaker 5: to the grocery store, they see what a bad cost,
Speaker 5: they know what it used to cost. They see their
Speaker 5: checking account, they see they know what they used to
Speaker 5: have at the end of the month, and now what
Speaker 5: they now have at the end of the month. And
Speaker 5: you know, nothing Barry Weise tells them is going to
Speaker 5: change that. So you can only you can only go
Speaker 5: so far with the you know, the control of the media.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's totally true. So I don't know.
Speaker 4: I mean, Ryan, do you think I saw before the
Speaker 4: election there was some sense of Democrats being like, oh,
Speaker 4: maybe we'll take a deal. Then I saw there was
Speaker 4: you know, Bernie Sanders was trying to rev up all
Speaker 4: the troops like they're you know, you got to stand
Speaker 4: strong at this point. I saw an axious article that
Speaker 4: was like Democratic members of the House and activists are
Speaker 4: telling leadership there will be hell to pay from the
Speaker 4: base if you guys cave at this point. So where
Speaker 4: do you think, you know things stand in terms of
Speaker 4: how Democrats are thinking about this.
Speaker 5: I think I think Republicans are also and curious families
Speaker 5: take on this very motivated in the Senate to get
Speaker 5: a deal because Trump is putting enormous pressure on them
Speaker 5: to get rid of the filibuster. They don't want to
Speaker 5: get rid of the filibuster. They probably don't even have
Speaker 5: the votes to get rid of the filibuster, and so
Speaker 5: in order to get rid of that pressure, they need
Speaker 5: to get out of this shutdown. So you know they're
Speaker 5: talking about Democrats want to vote. They're like, just give
Speaker 5: us a vote, Like, we're not demanding the subsidies, Like,
Speaker 5: just give us a vote on the subsidies, and we
Speaker 5: expect that if you put it on the floor, it
Speaker 5: will pass and then we open the government back up.
Speaker 5: So that I feel like Democrats are dug in on
Speaker 5: that on that point, which.
Speaker 7: Means I mean so Republicans are never going to do
Speaker 7: that because it forces them to look like they're voting
Speaker 7: against the substace was actually I don't know if it
Speaker 7: was hickem Jeffrey's idea. It seems like the Schumer idea
Speaker 7: to me. But that's quite a clever trap. But what
Speaker 7: that will do is force Republicans to come to the table,
Speaker 7: give a little bit of something to get out of
Speaker 7: that public relations nightmare. Now, the substance of it is
Speaker 7: obviously a nightmare for everybody who's about to see a
Speaker 7: massive spike and is already seeing the massive spike. But
Speaker 7: that's how dumbs are negotiating by putting Republicans in a
Speaker 7: little bit of a pr pickle, by making them vote
Speaker 7: on it, so that means Republicans are going to have to,
Speaker 7: in all likelihood give something. And that's what Trump has
Speaker 7: been absolutely resistant to doing. And if the midterm or
Speaker 7: the off your elections kind of broke his resolve on
Speaker 7: that question, seeing what happened just basically across the board
Speaker 7: with them running up the margins, maybe that's the Maybe
Speaker 7: that's the sign that you, John Thune and Mike Johnson
Speaker 7: need to actually go to the table and have serious
Speaker 7: conversations about what policies there's give and take on.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, And part of the reason why Republicans are very
Speaker 4: adamant about not getting rid of the film is I
Speaker 4: think it's starting to set in for them that they
Speaker 4: are not going to always be in power, that some
Speaker 4: of the wilder things that are being done by the
Speaker 4: Trump administration they're starting to imagine what if president.
Speaker 1: Of AOC had those powers?
Speaker 4: What could she not that she would because I don't know,
Speaker 4: Democrats don't seem to use power in the same way
Speaker 4: Republicans did.
Speaker 1: But it's also a different day.
Speaker 4: You just add, you know, normy liberal voters vote for
Speaker 4: a guy who threatened murder's opponent, political opponent. So it's
Speaker 4: a different vibe out there than it used to be.
Speaker 4: We're no longer doing the like you go low, we
Speaker 4: go high thing that's that's out the window. So you know,
Speaker 4: with the like the Supreme Court and the tariffs, right,
Speaker 4: they were floating, Okay, well, could a future president declare
Speaker 4: a climate change emergency? I saw some reporting about Republicans
Speaker 4: privately being like, you know, if Biden had sent let's say,
Speaker 4: Illinois National Guard troops into my state of Arkansas, Oklahoma
Speaker 4: or whatever, we would have lost our damn minds. Not
Speaker 4: so sure about this precedent. And you know, it's the
Speaker 4: same thing with the filibuster, where they're like, okay, if
Speaker 4: we get rid of that, they could add senators from DC,
Speaker 4: they could add senators from Puerto Rico, they could you know,
Speaker 4: they could add ceases, Supreme Court or at least term
Speaker 4: limit or age limit the Supreme Court. These things would
Speaker 4: be much more on the table and would change some
Speaker 4: of the balance that right now is you know, in
Speaker 4: favor because of Republicans. Rural dominance is kind of electorally
Speaker 4: favorable towards Republicans. So in that vein, there was a
Speaker 4: clip from the clip from Steve Bannon that I've been
Speaker 4: itching to get to, where he told an audience like, hey, listen,
Speaker 4: if they win the min terms, some of us, including me,
Speaker 4: are going to jail. Let's go and take a listen
Speaker 4: to the way that he frames us.
Speaker 12: And I will tell you right now, as God is
Speaker 12: my witness, if we lose the midterms, and we lose
Speaker 12: twenty twenty eight, some in this room are going to prison,
Speaker 12: myself included.
Speaker 6: They're not going to stop.
Speaker 13: They're getting more and more and more radical, and.
Speaker 6: We have to counter that. And what do we have
Speaker 6: to counter it with.
Speaker 3: We have to counter it with.
Speaker 13: More action, more intense action, more urgency. We're burning daylight
Speaker 13: if you look across every aspect of this. We have
Speaker 13: to codify what President Trump has done by executive order, right,
Speaker 13: we have we have to codify it.
Speaker 1: Some tepical posture. Yeah, if he's worried about we've.
Speaker 5: Got we're not letting, then we're not letting. The AOC
Speaker 5: regime put Steve Bannon in jail.
Speaker 4: I am not aware of any recent Steve Bannon crimes.
Speaker 4: I mean, he did already go to prison for some things.
Speaker 4: You know, we had to whole build the wall for
Speaker 4: aud and whatever. I'm not aware of any new Steve
Speaker 4: Bannon crimes. I do have some other people in mind
Speaker 4: who are committing crimes that I don't think Steven Miller
Speaker 4: should feel comfortable with his you know, ongoing freedom in
Speaker 4: a few I think some of these things will be
Speaker 4: littmus to us in a democratic primer.
Speaker 1: I don't think he's wrong.
Speaker 4: About that, but they're you know, their sense accurate or
Speaker 4: not right, because again I don't see Democrats using power
Speaker 4: in the same way that Republicans do. Their sense whether
Speaker 4: that is accurate or not, that this is existential. I'm
Speaker 4: sure Emily is going to color the you know, their
Speaker 4: approach to politics and the way that they conduct themselves
Speaker 4: from here on out.
Speaker 2: Well, Yeah, I mean I think it already is.
Speaker 7: I agree, Yeah, I think Bannon went to prison for
Speaker 7: defying a subpoena, congressional subpoena. It was almost unprecedented. I
Speaker 7: may have literally been unprecedented. I think maybe it happened
Speaker 7: one other time or you would know this, but it was.
Speaker 7: I mean that after that, it changed the way a
Speaker 7: lot of people saw these things. Actually, I doubt that
Speaker 7: Stephen Miller is fully comfortable. I'm sure he understands that
Speaker 7: there could be, you know, significant legal challenges or whatever
Speaker 7: mounted by Democrats from their back of power and a
Speaker 7: lot of this. I mean, Biden declared an emergency to
Speaker 7: do student loan relief and honestly, nobody really cared like
Speaker 7: that wasn't a major issue that the public backlash was
Speaker 7: crazy over. And partially the reason that a fairly career,
Speaker 7: moderate establishment guy like Joe Biden did that is because
Speaker 7: Donald Trump violated lots of norms, and again nobody cares.
Speaker 2: Seems to care.
Speaker 7: Maybe the one norm that there's been significant backlash too
Speaker 7: was law fair against Trump. I think the public had
Speaker 7: a reaction to that that was overwhelmingly negative. But otherwise,
Speaker 7: something Ryan said, I don't know six months ago, it
Speaker 7: just like stays with me and haunts me. It's like
Speaker 7: you don't want to be the type of country where
Speaker 7: anybody who runs for office does so with the expectation
Speaker 7: that they could go to prison, because the incentive structure
Speaker 7: is just a disaster in that case, and it just
Speaker 7: creates a total rot that we've always been priding ourselves,
Speaker 7: So we've always prided ourselves and sort of having a
Speaker 7: system that's better than that.
Speaker 2: And the system depends on the the.
Speaker 7: People, and that's where things are looking.
Speaker 3: You have a question to Ryan on that.
Speaker 8: That doesn't make sense to me, because then doesn't that
Speaker 8: just give people that, like you, once you get in
Speaker 8: an office, you can commit any crime. Isn't like so
Speaker 8: many of our problems built around the fact that none
Speaker 8: of these people go away, Like there's no elite accountability.
Speaker 2: Yeah, be true.
Speaker 8: The architects of the Iraq War like everything around.
Speaker 3: So, like what do think about that?
Speaker 5: Both things are true if you accept like that, you know,
Speaker 5: there are some norms that are that we abide and
Speaker 5: like let's say we don't torture people, and that when
Speaker 5: Obama comes in, he launches an investigation into torture and
Speaker 5: did people break the law when it comes to torture?
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 5: And if the public broadly across the board accepts that
Speaker 5: that behavior was outside of the norms of what we allow.
Speaker 5: Then that does not create a precedent that everybody then
Speaker 5: assumes if they lose office, that they're going to go
Speaker 5: to prison, because the are a lot of countries where
Speaker 5: that is just an accepted kind of part of cost
Speaker 5: of doing business. I'm going to get into politics, and
Speaker 5: I know at some point I'm going to get thrown
Speaker 5: out office and I'm going to go to prison, and
Speaker 5: then I'll probably get out of prison. Like basically every
Speaker 5: prime minister in Pakistan is going to prison at some
Speaker 5: point and then oftentimes comes back and becomes a prime minister.
Speaker 6: Again.
Speaker 5: It happens the current one in fact. But if you
Speaker 5: start prosecuting people for things that are within the norms,
Speaker 5: that's when just because they're your opponent, that's when it
Speaker 5: creates this unwillingness then to seed power.
Speaker 7: Then, and you don't get prosecutions for like, well, I
Speaker 7: don't know, war crimes, like crimes against humanity.
Speaker 2: You get ham Sandwich prosecutions where.
Speaker 5: It's like cooked up stuff like this mortgage broad nonsense,
Speaker 5: where like it's clearly James has like a second home
Speaker 5: where her niece lives in it and the Trump administration
Speaker 5: jins up this fake prosecution to say like, oh, it's
Speaker 5: like this is actually a rental property and she claimed
Speaker 5: it as primary. It's like rental, who's the renter? There's
Speaker 5: no renternet.
Speaker 3: I get it for the fake crimes.
Speaker 8: But like, so are we saying that Steven Miller shouldn't
Speaker 8: like go to jail for his crime?
Speaker 5: So that that's what that's why I'm saying that you
Speaker 5: have to have full public buy in to go after
Speaker 5: people for crimes they committed while in office, like Nicks,
Speaker 5: like Nixon, Like let's say he wasn't pardoned. The public
Speaker 5: was bought in on prosecutions because what he did was
Speaker 5: assumed to be outside the bounds of what was acceptable
Speaker 5: and public and people were okay that nobody's above the law.
Speaker 5: And so if you if if you get the public's
Speaker 5: buy in, but in both both parties, then you can
Speaker 5: do it and you don't create a cycle of everybody
Speaker 5: just throwing each other in prison. So that's that's the
Speaker 5: that's the distinction. There doesn't mean you can't have accountability.
Speaker 5: It just means if you throw everyone in prison for
Speaker 5: being on the other side, and you really undermine the
Speaker 5: ability of the elections to actually see a real peaceful
Speaker 5: transfer of power, because.
Speaker 3: You can break you need a power, right, so if
Speaker 3: you break the law.
Speaker 7: Law.
Speaker 5: Yeah, let's say Biden went through like the Supreme courts like, no,
Speaker 5: you can't do the debt cancelation, which they told him,
Speaker 5: and he's like, no, you're that you're wrong, I can
Speaker 5: do that, Like I disagree, and he just does it
Speaker 5: and the public is like, good, yeah, I f the
Speaker 5: Supreme Court on this, like who, Like, who's the Supreme
Speaker 5: Court to come in?
Speaker 6: They're wrong?
Speaker 5: And then the public's with you, and then you don't
Speaker 5: lock Biden up for that.
Speaker 2: But this is why Bannon is scared.
Speaker 7: Because Bannon went to prison for a fairly norm breaking
Speaker 7: prosecution over subpoena defiant and nobody cared, right, Like the
Speaker 7: right cared, of course, like hardcore and MAGA absolutely cared.
Speaker 2: But the media didn't come to his defense.
Speaker 4: The the I mean, but it is also emily, I mean,
Speaker 4: let's not downplay what he did either. They wanted him
Speaker 4: to testify and he was just like fuck you, and
Speaker 4: like that also doesn't allow your system to function, like
Speaker 4: if people if Congress, you know, has a subpoena power
Speaker 4: and power to investigate and they're going through you know,
Speaker 4: the proper procedure and your subpoena and you're just like, no,
Speaker 4: I'm not going.
Speaker 6: To do it.
Speaker 5: And if you're doing that, you can't, like you can't.
Speaker 4: We can't operate this way, right, And I think there's
Speaker 4: a ryan you race this possibility like that may be
Speaker 4: what we're facing. If if when Democrats take control of
Speaker 4: the House, for example, you could see you know, a
Speaker 4: lot more of that.
Speaker 1: Where dy in theory have some power.
Speaker 4: But if it's if people just refuse to you know,
Speaker 4: refuse to submit to the subpoenas and the administration refuses to comply,
Speaker 4: then you're at the mercy of you know, whatever judicial
Speaker 4: process to say like no, actually they do have this
Speaker 4: power and you have to comply.
Speaker 2: So I just think it when it happens in one
Speaker 2: direct o. Sorry right now, I'll just saying what it
Speaker 2: happens in one direction. That's where ban is like people
Speaker 2: don't care, people like it doesn't.
Speaker 1: Doesn't But what's another equip I mean, what's another.
Speaker 8: Equivalent komy right, Like we were arguing about Kome the
Speaker 8: other week, and that doesn't I mean, it's different slightly
Speaker 8: different crime, but I mean kind of similar settings.
Speaker 4: Tommy didn't commit. I mean, I think the Komi prosecution
Speaker 4: is total and complete bullshit. And that's not to say
Speaker 4: I'm a Kobe fan, but like, give me an equivalent situation.
Speaker 1: There may be one. I'm not saying that there's not.
Speaker 4: I'm just not aware of an equivalent situation where you
Speaker 4: had a Democrat who was subpoena to, you know, testify
Speaker 4: before Congress and they're just like not doing No, I'm
Speaker 4: not going to do it.
Speaker 2: So it has happened before.
Speaker 7: It's definitely happened before where other people have done it,
Speaker 7: but going to prison.
Speaker 2: Let's see, I'm looking up. I'm cracking it right now.
Speaker 6: Not really.
Speaker 7: I think a lot of it came from like Cold
Speaker 7: War wargate days. Yeah, it looks like the last one
Speaker 7: before Bannon was like in the mid eighties, and.
Speaker 5: It happens to journalists, like journalists get subpoena for their
Speaker 5: sources and journalists refused to give the sources.
Speaker 2: Judy Miller, again, this is.
Speaker 4: Not like that's you know, that's not the same either,
Speaker 4: because that's like a principle just didn't want to say
Speaker 4: anything that was inconvenient for Trump, you know, yeah, but
Speaker 4: the point.
Speaker 5: The point is it's not unprecedented to go to prison
Speaker 5: for refusing a subpoena.
Speaker 4: Yeah so yeah, So your point is even journalists who
Speaker 4: have like a good reason to refuse it have still
Speaker 4: been in prison for it.
Speaker 5: Right, And that was a really awkward time for people
Speaker 5: because Judy was, you know, one of the most discredited
Speaker 5: reporters out there, but you still had to stand by
Speaker 5: the principle that protecting your sources even if they're awful.
Speaker 7: Other examples like Eric Holder, Lois Learner, those are good examples,
Speaker 7: but also Carl Rove, that's one of the things Ali
Speaker 7: North was pardoned for, and Elliott Ambram's was pardoned for.
Speaker 7: Actually I'm going deep now, but anyway, Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 7: it's a bad situation.
Speaker 2: So it's bleak, it's bleak, it's bleak, all right.
Speaker 5: Joining us now is Michael Blake, former mayoral candidate, former
Speaker 5: vice chair of the DNC, former assemblyman from the Bronx,
Speaker 5: who has launched this week a primary challenge to Representative
Speaker 5: Richie Torres. Michael, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 6: Great to be with you. How are we doing today?
Speaker 5: While doing good? You're joining us from Puerto Rico. I understand,
Speaker 5: which it seems like everyone in the New York echelon
Speaker 5: is there, Mom, Donnie, I've seen a bunch of other
Speaker 5: people are in Puerto Rico. What is what is what's
Speaker 5: going on there?
Speaker 11: Like?
Speaker 5: Why did everybody DeCamp?
Speaker 6: Kathy Hockle Kathy, I mean the elected officials that care
Speaker 6: about New Yorker here, which is why Richie Torres is not.
Speaker 6: And so right we are here at the SOMOS conference.
Speaker 6: It is one of three major political events that happened
Speaker 6: for New York throughout the course of the year. Uh.
Speaker 6: And when you think about the Bronx and you think
Speaker 6: about New York, Puerto Rico is obviously intertwined. And so
Speaker 6: just yesterday I was able to go spend some time
Speaker 6: with powerful Puerto Rico local nonprofit doing incredible things. Today
Speaker 6: I'm leading a session around democracy in the community. And
Speaker 6: if you care about New York, you care about Puerto Rico.
Speaker 6: And if you care about the Brons, care about Puerto Rico,
Speaker 6: which is exactly why I'm running for Congress, because you
Speaker 6: need to have someone who's actually going to fight for
Speaker 6: the people in the Bronx. And Richie Torres once again
Speaker 6: is absent, Griff, can you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, can you cueue up his uh Michael's launch video
Speaker 4: so we can all get a taste of that. I
Speaker 4: really watch watch closely because there's a bit of a
Speaker 4: cameo from some folks that you might know here.
Speaker 5: And as I was living in these slum conditions, the
Speaker 5: city was spending more than one hundred million dollars on
Speaker 5: a golf course.
Speaker 2: Is just exposed for secretly investing in genocide. Well, these
Speaker 2: things I say about Richie Torres.
Speaker 6: Since twenty twenty one, Richie Torres has represented New York's
Speaker 6: fifteen congressional district, the poorest congressional district in America. In
Speaker 6: twenty twenty five, Richie has nearly fifteen million dollars on hand,
Speaker 6: largely from APAC, while many of his constituents barely have
Speaker 6: fifteen dollars to get buy. So he spent the last
Speaker 6: fifteen days hearing from the people about why they are
Speaker 6: ready for a change.
Speaker 2: I saw Richie. I know he suffered.
Speaker 6: What happens to you is you get boughted.
Speaker 5: It is so hard to keep your moral integrity once
Speaker 5: you start jogging the money he profited from.
Speaker 6: He talks about that place far more often than he
Speaker 6: talks about the Bronx.
Speaker 11: You were criticized for black donation the architects of the
Speaker 11: housing crisis.
Speaker 2: What an asshole.
Speaker 6: But you cannot be a representative in a school New
Speaker 6: York and you call.
Speaker 2: That Richie Dorris sucks not as always.
Speaker 6: Richie cares more about BBI than he cares about the Bronx,
Speaker 6: more about APAC than he does about your academics. So
Speaker 6: do you want to stay with someone who only wants
Speaker 6: to care about them sell or do you want to
Speaker 6: have someone in me and Michael Blake who actually wants
Speaker 6: to care for the people. I'm reimagining what the city
Speaker 6: can look like. I'm named after Jamaican prime ministers Michael Manley,
Speaker 6: Alexander Bustabonte, Brokee, Crested and Burnside. Remember the days back
Speaker 6: in the day when you go to Woolworth to go shop,
Speaker 6: stay key, go kick it.
Speaker 2: Track record spoken for itself for years.
Speaker 6: When we think about why elect me, think about cost
Speaker 6: of living and affordability, we can get people in better.
Speaker 6: Tack thinks about a new vision when it comes to education.
Speaker 6: I will hold out an extensive education plan and lastly
Speaker 6: show the vision of how we can bring real change
Speaker 6: to the district.
Speaker 4: So Michael, I think the ad speaks for itself. The
Speaker 4: launch video speaks for itself. In terms of the case
Speaker 4: against Richie Tours. I also will say, I don't know
Speaker 4: that our audience needs the case made against Ritchie Tours.
Speaker 4: I think they're all on board with, you know, wanting
Speaker 4: to see a change there. But just give our audience
Speaker 4: a little bit of a sense of who you are.
Speaker 4: How'd you end up in this place, you know, your
Speaker 4: sort of political journey to this moment.
Speaker 6: This is home for me, Crystal. I'm born and raised
Speaker 6: in the district. I grew up crusted in Burnside. I
Speaker 6: always tell people, you know, I'm a PS seventy nine
Speaker 6: one ateen you deal with Clinton High School kid. My
Speaker 6: elementary school is the one that Jonathan Colezl wrote about
Speaker 6: in Savage Inequalities. My high school is the one that
Speaker 6: has the largest alumni association in the world. So James
Speaker 6: Baldwin County Coloring, Charlie Rangele, and we have for decades
Speaker 6: been the poorest congressional district, where a place that's constantly disrespected.
Speaker 6: My family's from Jamaica. I'm actually going to be going
Speaker 6: down next week to go check on families in Jamaica
Speaker 6: and figure out how we mobilize in the community. My
Speaker 6: full name is I'm named after Jamaican Prime Minister. So
Speaker 6: I always tease my mom that her and Daddy are
Speaker 6: the reasons I am this. You know that I am
Speaker 6: the epitome of a Jamaica's stereotype of tree job. So
Speaker 6: I'm I'm a preacher, I'm a public servant and been
Speaker 6: in journalist. I'm doing this because we deserve better in
Speaker 6: the Bronx. I'm doing this because right now we have
Speaker 6: someone who is not focused on what's actually happening on
Speaker 6: the ground. We're actually not helping people by wages. We
Speaker 6: have longer pantry lines, Christa Rhyan, everybody. Earlier this week
Speaker 6: I was at a seven day Adventist church where there
Speaker 6: are more than four hundred people standing in line at
Speaker 6: a weekly food pantry. So you have a scenario where
Speaker 6: we're not being helped, we're not being represented, and someone
Speaker 6: in Richie Torres who just doesn't give a damn bout us,
Speaker 6: And when we think about them, the moment that's at
Speaker 6: stake right here, as we just saw with Zoron's win, well,
Speaker 6: I probably cross endorsed. We cross endorse each other in
Speaker 6: the Mayo primary. I said very clearly, if it's not me,
Speaker 6: it should be him, because we were talking about the
Speaker 6: most important issue that people cared about, which is cost
Speaker 6: to living. And people are ready for a new generation
Speaker 6: of leadership and they're tired of these folks who don't
Speaker 6: give a damn about them. And Richie Torres is that
Speaker 6: that's why im running?
Speaker 5: By the way, Yeah, yeah. For people watching, the book
Speaker 5: Savage and Qualities is a searing portrait of education, the
Speaker 5: education crisis of inequality. Uh in America. That's amazing that
Speaker 5: you went to that school.
Speaker 6: People.
Speaker 5: Everybody should check that check that book out.
Speaker 6: I was there at the time he wrote about it.
Speaker 6: Bryan James, did you know him?
Speaker 5: Because didn't he speak? Didn't he teach at the school
Speaker 5: for a while I knew.
Speaker 6: I actually got to meet Jonathan afterwards. James Carter was
Speaker 6: my principal, and I said often, Hm, Principal Carter was
Speaker 6: I think the only black man I could remember in
Speaker 6: an education role until I got to college. Wow. Wow wow.
Speaker 5: So when we want to talk about the Bronx soon
Speaker 5: as the as the as your launch ad makes clear,
Speaker 5: like you're You're you're hitting him from both directions, saying
Speaker 5: that he's too focused on his support for Israel and
Speaker 5: not focused enough on the on the Bronx. What has
Speaker 5: been your own journey, you know when it comes to
Speaker 5: support for Israel, my understanding, you tell correct me, I'm wrong.
Speaker 5: You took an APAC funded trip, which is the thing
Speaker 5: that you know, most politicians are offered an APAC trip
Speaker 5: to Israel to get the propaganda version. When was that?
Speaker 5: What was that trip like? And what is your journey
Speaker 5: been like on the question of the US relationship with Israel?
Speaker 6: Absolutely, like all things life, is that journey and it
Speaker 6: has been that journey to see the truth right. So
Speaker 6: for context, I was an Obama's staffer who came back
Speaker 6: to New York. I got elected to office in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 6: In twenty fourteen, I took that trip. I've been to
Speaker 6: Israel twice. I went to Israel APAK once and I
Speaker 6: went with JCRC as well, just community, real counsel. And
Speaker 6: what you see very quickly is breathtaking in many ways.
Speaker 6: Of yes, you can act now knowledge and recognize the
Speaker 6: power and beauty that happens in all parts of our world.
Speaker 6: But I remember being a part of a meeting where
Speaker 6: an individual set apartheid is happening, and then the meeting
Speaker 6: was stopped. I recognize and saw the power of when
Speaker 6: you have someone who was from Ethiopia talked about the
Speaker 6: recognition of Israel and that dynamic. I get that, and
Speaker 6: I saw that. I appreciated that, but Ryan Christ and
Speaker 6: everybody that the journey continued thereafter because you start to
Speaker 6: then realize slowly that you were being given a side
Speaker 6: that's not giving the full picture. Twenty seventeen, I spoke
Speaker 6: at an APAC conference and particularly it was around Black
Speaker 6: and Jewish leaders coming together for that moment, and I said,
Speaker 6: within one of those events, APAK had changed my life
Speaker 6: forever in that moment because quite frankly, it allowed me
Speaker 6: to go to Israel, which I had never been before,
Speaker 6: to see it, which I'm also an ordained reverend, which
Speaker 6: obviously adds to this dynamic. You know, I was able
Speaker 6: to baptize people in the River Jordan. I was able
Speaker 6: to pray at the Western Law, I was able to
Speaker 6: lead the sermon on the Mount. But as soon as
Speaker 6: we came off stage, bib Nan Yahoo was speaking virtually
Speaker 6: and when the reference of President Obama was made, the
Speaker 6: room started to booth, and that's when you start to
Speaker 6: realize that you are being pushed a message from a
Speaker 6: pack that is not fully true and direct and sincere
Speaker 6: about what is happening. Now people will say to me, well,
Speaker 6: why did you continue to go to some of the meetings,
Speaker 6: because you know, at the end of the day, with
Speaker 6: any journey, you want to learn what's happening. But then
Speaker 6: you get to a point where you say enough is enough.
Speaker 6: And what has happened. What has happened is that you
Speaker 6: have an organization in a pac where just earlier this
Speaker 6: year was reported that forty six percent of their donors
Speaker 6: in democratic primaries had also given to Republican races for
Speaker 6: the purpose of having a Republican light democrat in these races.
Speaker 6: What has happened is that you have a genocide that
Speaker 6: is occurring and as a human being to ignore that.
Speaker 6: And it's not just Michael Blake saying that, that's the
Speaker 6: United Nations and so many others that are stating that
Speaker 6: you cannot ignore that. Let us also be very clear
Speaker 6: that to tell a black man who has endured racism
Speaker 6: and poverty and challenges who also preaches that me being
Speaker 6: critical of a government does not make me anti Israel
Speaker 6: in the same way I've said to folks, if you
Speaker 6: could criticize Donald Trump, that does not make you anti American.
Speaker 6: And we have allowed right now this game where people
Speaker 6: are trying to push me into a box and push
Speaker 6: others into the box. And what's actually true, so where
Speaker 6: we're at right here today is that journey is a
Speaker 6: continual one. And unless you were with me where I
Speaker 6: prayed and cried with people because it was Jews, Christians
Speaker 6: and Muslims, they would have prayed together, who at the
Speaker 6: same time have now elected a thirty four year old
Speaker 6: Muslim South Asian man as mayor, who at the same
Speaker 6: time can acknowledge the magnitude of it. And then, lastly,
Speaker 6: on a final personal note, in terms of that journey,
Speaker 6: World Central Kitchen and Jose Andras many people have seen
Speaker 6: is a dear friend. Jose has been a blessing to me.
Speaker 6: He brought World Central Kitchen to the Bronx during COVID,
Speaker 6: which I will say that in twenty twenty, when we
Speaker 6: were focusing on feeding families, Richie towards focus on raising money.
Speaker 6: One of the people in world such in Kitchen Zuri
Speaker 6: was one of the individuals that was killed by the
Speaker 6: attack that came from the Israeli government where they said, well,
Speaker 6: it wasn't our intention, and that was not the case.
Speaker 6: And so when I asked people is to look at
Speaker 6: the breadth of it all. The journey has been very
Speaker 6: real for me. It's one where you understand that information
Speaker 6: is being given to you that's not fully comprehensive. But
Speaker 6: we're at today is you can say at the same
Speaker 6: time that yes, what Hamas did is inhumane, and at
Speaker 6: the same time that Palestinians losing their lives because of
Speaker 6: a genocide is inhumane. You can say at the same
Speaker 6: time that we must end anti Semitism, while at the
Speaker 6: same time we've got to end Islamophobia, and others who
Speaker 6: are unwilling to say that should not be in office.
Speaker 7: One question I have from the ad based on everything
Speaker 7: you just outlined, it seems to me a calculated strategy.
Speaker 2: When you mentioned Richie Torres.
Speaker 7: An apac you tie that right back to what you
Speaker 7: discussed as your sort of central motive for running for office,
Speaker 7: which is affordability.
Speaker 2: And cost of living.
Speaker 7: And I was just curious if that was intentional, if
Speaker 7: that is part of how you see making this argument
Speaker 7: because it's easy, especially when with you, when you're in
Speaker 7: the online discourse, to get down the rabbit hole of
Speaker 7: elite obsessions and having some of these fascinating conversations about
Speaker 7: history and all of that. But for a lot of
Speaker 7: average people, they're trying to put food on the table.
Speaker 7: So was that a concerted strategy to tie these all together?
Speaker 7: And how do you see the connection between Torres being
Speaker 7: a kind of guy who takes money from a pack
Speaker 7: and is also maybe behind on economic populism.
Speaker 6: That he's not focusing on the number one issue, which
Speaker 6: is cost of living. He's not focusing on how people
Speaker 6: need help. You know. Look, I'm that kid that understands
Speaker 6: when we had to sell dinners on Saturday afternoons to
Speaker 6: pay rent. You know that first year in the Assembly
Speaker 6: when I slept on the couch because I couldn't afford
Speaker 6: the dynamic of going back in Alboney, Like, the reality
Speaker 6: is people are struggling, even if they have multiple jobs,
Speaker 6: they are struggling. They're wondering how they're gonna pay their bills.
Speaker 6: And I wanted to be very clear that his focus
Speaker 6: on a pack and supporting a pack as it is
Speaker 6: and continues to be, is not having a focus on
Speaker 6: what the people need right now, which is better housing.
Speaker 6: For example, Richie set himself that nights of New York
Speaker 6: City Housing Authority public housing is federal oversight. There was
Speaker 6: an explosion that happened at the Mitchell Houses just recently.
Speaker 6: Richie also was the chair of Housing in the City Council.
Speaker 6: So when we think about the dynamic, it's been a
Speaker 6: continual failure of not fixing the problem when it comes
Speaker 6: to housing. When I talked, as I said in the ad,
Speaker 6: what would I do end credit scores being used for
Speaker 6: housing applications and have a local median incomes because every
Speaker 6: meediing income is not working for us on the ground.
Speaker 6: So to your question, I'm able to say, let me
Speaker 6: focus on helping people. When Richie has not been focused
Speaker 6: on helping the people. When we talk about what's going
Speaker 6: on as it relates to Puerto Rico, the need for
Speaker 6: self determination, he has not been focused on this. When
Speaker 6: we talk about what's going on in the Caribbean. In Jamaica,
Speaker 6: immediately I said, how do we help our Jamaican, our Dominican,
Speaker 6: our Haitian communities All the same time, when we talk
Speaker 6: about what's going on on education, where schools are wondering
Speaker 6: right now, how is it that we're going to be
Speaker 6: able to help these kids go to school and graduate
Speaker 6: from school. I want it to be very clear that
Speaker 6: all of those things have gotten worse under Richie Torres,
Speaker 6: and Richie Torres has made a decision that his focus
Speaker 6: is not the people of the Bronx. It has been
Speaker 6: to apac.
Speaker 4: Michael, tell people a little bit about what would your
Speaker 4: specific policy priorities be.
Speaker 1: You know, are you are you a Medicare for all guy?
Speaker 1: Are you? You know?
Speaker 4: What are what are some of the things that you're
Speaker 4: really wanting to prioritize if you were elected to Congress.
Speaker 6: First and everything's gonna be around costs of living in
Speaker 6: the economic issue, so I've talked about slut. Credit scores
Speaker 6: for housing have to end. It is a institutionally racist,
Speaker 6: discriminatory policy that you're telling someone who pays their rent
Speaker 6: on time, that pays their bills on time, that the
Speaker 6: reason why they are unable to get access to a
Speaker 6: new home is because of a credit score. Because someone
Speaker 6: might have missed a bill by a day, but they
Speaker 6: paid their rent. It makes no sense whatsoever. It's purely
Speaker 6: the block people out the game. When we think about
Speaker 6: local media and income area median income does not work
Speaker 6: when you have Westchester County and other counties being a
Speaker 6: part of what's calculated for AMI and New York. It's
Speaker 6: making it more expensive for us to have a home
Speaker 6: in New York. These are federal policies that have local
Speaker 6: dynamics that I talked about in the previous race, because
Speaker 6: they're all intertwined because it impacts us in here in
Speaker 6: the city. When it comes to healthcare, we do need
Speaker 6: to medicare for all. We do need to be very
Speaker 6: focused on how we're helping more people to have coverage
Speaker 6: because what are we watching right now. We're watching every
Speaker 6: single day people genuinely wondering will I be covered for
Speaker 6: my healthcare. I'm wondering do I have money for prescription drugs.
Speaker 6: I'm wondering what happens for these bills. And so we
Speaker 6: have to be serious about this, as you all know,
Speaker 6: and when I work President Mama and their affordable care,
Speaker 6: there are things we could have gone further, and we
Speaker 6: should have gone further, and this is the moment to
Speaker 6: do so right now. And I also think Crystal to
Speaker 6: the question of where do we stand in this moment,
Speaker 6: because you're going to have individuals that are going to
Speaker 6: try to paint me and paint anyone that is critical
Speaker 6: understandably of being anti of communities. What people are looking
Speaker 6: for is how do you communicate a vision where everybody
Speaker 6: can win and thrive? And I can't represent an area
Speaker 6: like the South Bronx and the fifteenth district without understanding
Speaker 6: that everybody has to have a voice. Multiple times throughout
Speaker 6: the mayoral election, including the Thursday before the election, Richie
Speaker 6: Torres refused to endorse Zarmamdani specifically because he said, of
Speaker 6: one community within the district, he stood by a man
Speaker 6: who had sexually assaulted women, stood by a man where
Speaker 6: thousands of people died during COVID, stood by men who
Speaker 6: had done all those things. And so while there's also
Speaker 6: policy priorities that I have just laid out, Crystal, there's
Speaker 6: also just the humanity that you got to have someone
Speaker 6: who's actually going to care for you and care for
Speaker 6: everybody and actually create a space that we can have
Speaker 6: some real conversation and not have someone Richard Torres who
Speaker 6: literally said when someone came up to him that he
Speaker 6: disagreed with to go fund yourself. That's not what you
Speaker 6: need as a representative. I know that surprised people that
Speaker 6: a Reveren would cuss, but I am Jamaica from the
Speaker 6: Bronx and you just gotta be ready for that kind
Speaker 6: of day.
Speaker 4: Michael, can you talk a little bit about My understanding
Speaker 4: is Richie's approval rating in the district's pretty favorable, and
Speaker 4: you know, can you talk about the difference between perhaps
Speaker 4: how he's perceived in the Bronx versus his image nationally.
Speaker 6: Certainly well, I also would say favorability and job performance
Speaker 6: are not all inter twined in terms of how someone
Speaker 6: can get elected or re elected. Right, you had many
Speaker 6: people that had high favorability ratings who lost races itself,
Speaker 6: whether that be Eric Canter, whether that be Karmsman, Crowley
Speaker 6: and alc. I mean we have seen that. And when
Speaker 6: you have that communication to let people know about what
Speaker 6: has not been happening, they shift pretty quickly within the district.
Speaker 6: Right when you see the energy that has happened for
Speaker 6: us on the video where more than two million views
Speaker 6: have happened on it thus far. That's not just nationally,
Speaker 6: of course, that's all across the board. It's people feeling
Speaker 6: that he is not being a voice for them, that
Speaker 6: he's not helping him not representing them in a serious
Speaker 6: and continual way. Somebody can show up to your church,
Speaker 6: they could show up to your community center, they could
Speaker 6: show up to your local school, but it doesn't mean
Speaker 6: they're actually fixing the problem. And what we will communicate
Speaker 6: is that you might like Richie Torres because he might
Speaker 6: smile in your face and try to be kind to you,
Speaker 6: but he's actually not helping you and your life has
Speaker 6: not changed for the better. And when you make that
Speaker 6: clear comparison, people understand that Nowally, because people have been
Speaker 6: clearly watching in what has been going on consistently, I
Speaker 6: think you can see how people feel about Richie. They
Speaker 6: feel that this is a man who, by his own
Speaker 6: the own data, I think last was like twenty three
Speaker 6: hundred percent talked more about what was happening in another
Speaker 6: country than in his own community. People pay attention to that,
Speaker 6: And again, I want to keep being real clear to
Speaker 6: everybody listening because what you're gonna have happen and watching
Speaker 6: because what you're gonna have happen is like, well, are
Speaker 6: we trying to pull people apart? Now, I'm just trying
Speaker 6: to keep it real. Try to be real with you
Speaker 6: that at the end of the day, just because someone
Speaker 6: shows up when it's convenient doesn't mean that they're helping you.
Speaker 6: And Chris, I'm gonna make it real. Practical horrors congressional
Speaker 6: district in the country. People wondering if they're gonna have food,
Speaker 6: People wondering how they're gonna get groceries. People want how
Speaker 6: they gonna pay their bills. The man got fifteen million dollars,
Speaker 6: Why he's not using that money to help you? Why
Speaker 6: is he not putting it towards community efforts immediately and
Speaker 6: consistently at a higher and continual degree. Now he'll say, yes,
Speaker 6: I've helped you, and I got some federal funding here
Speaker 6: and there. But how you use this moment a leverage
Speaker 6: is real and so people see him for who he is,
Speaker 6: which is why we have the energy that's happening right now.
Speaker 6: It's why we're going to start rolling out endorsements next week.
Speaker 6: That's why we're going to be showing momentum consistently. It's
Speaker 6: the reason why we have had people of all different
Speaker 6: spectrums from across the district already saying we're ready.
Speaker 3: There was Ryan go for it, and I got a question.
Speaker 5: Just just real quickly. Yeah, there was some real hope
Speaker 5: when he was elected in twenty twenty that as as
Speaker 5: somebody who he grew up in public housing in the district,
Speaker 5: obviously like a very very bright, like hyper intelligent guy,
Speaker 5: especially compared to the rest of Congress, which I somebody
Speaker 5: who's covered it for twenty years, I can tell you
Speaker 5: they it struggles down there.
Speaker 6: That he would be you just gave rights to arrest
Speaker 6: of them. But I appreciate that right there.
Speaker 5: That he would that he'd be a voice for the
Speaker 5: poor like that somebody who came up in the poorest
Speaker 5: district and is now representing it and was able to
Speaker 5: articulate a vision of fighting back again against against that,
Speaker 5: that that finally there'd be because so many of the
Speaker 5: poorest districts are represented by people who take corporate pac money,
Speaker 5: represented by people Republicans and the Freedom Caucus, and they
Speaker 5: just they don't stand up for their district. They stand
Speaker 5: up for the people that fund their campaigns. And that
Speaker 5: hope from Torres was dashed that, you know, because he
Speaker 5: as you said, all he's talked about, you know, as
Speaker 5: far as the public understands is is Israel and whether
Speaker 5: you agree with them or disagree with them on it,
Speaker 5: like that's what does that have to do with the BRONX?
Speaker 5: So if you were able to get in, like, how
Speaker 5: would you be that voice for the BRONX, Like what
Speaker 5: are what are the what are the issues that you
Speaker 5: would try to force into the national conversation that that
Speaker 5: aren't there because these poorest districts in the country just
Speaker 5: generally not there's some exceptions, don't have representatives who speak
Speaker 5: on their behalf.
Speaker 6: Well to that question, Ryan, let's start from even the
Speaker 6: visual behind you about the squad right, Like, Richie has
Speaker 6: not only just demeaned what's been happening elsewhere, he's demean
Speaker 6: his own Democratic members who are not aligned with him
Speaker 6: consistently repeatedly. You know, the disrespect he's had towards AOC
Speaker 6: to Ilhan, to Rashida and others, and as relates to
Speaker 6: even locally with the DSA, which he called a Mickey
Speaker 6: Mouse club and a Mickey Mouse party. This is the
Speaker 6: rhetoric of Richie Torres that he regularly does going back
Speaker 6: to the twenty twenty race. And I do think this
Speaker 6: is important because it's good context. I pretty much for
Speaker 6: about four to five weeks spent my time feeding people,
Speaker 6: getting out ppe, getting out masked, and helping people in
Speaker 6: the community. Richie was running a divisive campaign, effectively saying
Speaker 6: that we should not let one other person in the
Speaker 6: race because of their stances, and in particular that was
Speaker 6: around say that the homophobe is what his language was
Speaker 6: around Ruben ds Senior. Right, that was Richie's argument on
Speaker 6: why he should get to Congress from the mentally right.
Speaker 6: And what has happened throughout You have someone who stated
Speaker 6: that Governor Hoko is feckless and can deny her own abilities,
Speaker 6: but then he turned when he saw that Zorn had
Speaker 6: won the primary. This is a man who had crossed,
Speaker 6: endorsed Tish, and then Zephyr teach out quite frankly for
Speaker 6: his own political protection. Right, this is a man that
Speaker 6: turned on the city council when it comes to the
Speaker 6: right to noact around criminal justice. There's a man who
Speaker 6: was attacked women when it comes to those that have
Speaker 6: been a part of the women's march. I'm saying that
Speaker 6: to say for context that Richie has been this before
Speaker 6: he even got to Congress. And now people are seeing
Speaker 6: the consistency that he will throw you under the bus
Speaker 6: in a second for his own game. And so for now,
Speaker 6: let's elevate what I have done in New York with
Speaker 6: the My Brother's Keeper program, where we're still the only
Speaker 6: state in the country to have a funded program where
Speaker 6: black boys and brown boys, young men of color can
Speaker 6: go to school and graduate from school. And it has
Speaker 6: now been expanded to My Assistan's Keeper program, so that
Speaker 6: more of our students of color can go to school
Speaker 6: and graduate at a higher rate. Let's expand out a
Speaker 6: true effort around local media and income because clearly the
Speaker 6: poorest congressional districts, not just us, will be substantially able
Speaker 6: to benefit if the housing that you are getting is
Speaker 6: more affordable. Right, Taking those kinds of steps will impact
Speaker 6: us in a very real way. And we talk about
Speaker 6: hope right like you know clearly I was in there.
Speaker 6: You know, yes, we can the Hope Fund. That's about that.
Speaker 6: That's or we came out of a President Obama in
Speaker 6: that through line. We need to be able to believe
Speaker 6: in our people right now. Right, none of us are perfect.
Speaker 6: There is no perfect candidate. Right, You're gonna have people
Speaker 6: you disagree with But I do believe that I can
Speaker 6: restore a vision of what's possible within the district. A district,
Speaker 6: by the way, that voted for zorn the in the
Speaker 6: general election this past week. A district that is forty
Speaker 6: one percent Black, thirty seven percent Latin Know, a district
Speaker 6: where my previous Assembly district is one hundred percent within
Speaker 6: the district, So people know our track record, and now's
Speaker 6: about telling the story of how we're gonna help and
Speaker 6: fight for you and say that if you are ready
Speaker 6: to move on from Richie Torres, my name is Michael Blake,
Speaker 6: and I'm asking that you rock with me so we
Speaker 6: can go to Congress and fight for you.
Speaker 8: I got another question, Michael, for you somebody else that's
Speaker 8: affecting your community, which is Ice. The day after the election,
Speaker 8: a mayor elects or on mom Donnie Is said that
Speaker 8: he would warrn ICE officers against breaking the law in
Speaker 8: his city. But then recently from the ny Daily News,
Speaker 8: there was this scoop that the NYPD Commissioner, Jessica Tish,
Speaker 8: got a heads up from the Trump admin that ICE
Speaker 8: agents were about to conduct their aggressive Canal Street immigration raid.
Speaker 8: Do you think that Mayor Alexora Mondani should fire the
Speaker 8: NYPD committmissioner to someone that's gonna better follow his policies
Speaker 8: of fighting ice, and what would you do to support
Speaker 8: your community to defend them from ice.
Speaker 6: So i'll separate appreciate the question. So that's obviously for
Speaker 6: the mayor like to decide on if he keeps her
Speaker 6: or not, because it's not really a fire. It's like
Speaker 6: he's gonna be the man at charge on January one. There.
Speaker 6: I think it's very concerning that a heads up was
Speaker 6: given that ice was going to raid on Canal Street
Speaker 6: and there was not real protections that happened for folks.
Speaker 6: For anybody that doesn't understand New York City, Canal Street
Speaker 6: is effectively immigrant entrepreneurs, right, That's what's there. And as
Speaker 6: you know, my son of emigrant, myself, my family from Jamaica.
Speaker 6: If you got a heads up that people are going
Speaker 6: to roll on Canal Street, you understand that a lot
Speaker 6: of people are going to get arrested, their lives is
Speaker 6: going to be destroyed. And now we'll have that PTSD
Speaker 6: sitting with them that any moment will Ice come back here. Right.
Speaker 6: So it's a problem, the deep problem that cannot be
Speaker 6: ignored in any possible way. What would I do? First,
Speaker 6: We got to be very clear that we designate our facilities,
Speaker 6: in particular our schools, our community centers, our places of
Speaker 6: worship as safe havens automatically, so that it is very
Speaker 6: clear that ice is not permitted into those spaces. That
Speaker 6: is something that is not currently happening, which is kind
Speaker 6: of wild to think about that, right. It's a reason
Speaker 6: why so many of us who are preachers have to
Speaker 6: be thinking regularly about virtual sermons because as we saw
Speaker 6: recently from National Latino evangelicals that they've had less people
Speaker 6: attending their services because they're afraid that ice will show
Speaker 6: up there. Second is that we have to make sure
Speaker 6: that it is in multi languages, access to lawyers that
Speaker 6: can represent you immediately, as well as the communication that
Speaker 6: is available, especially when you are dropping off your kids.
Speaker 6: Each another way, there was video that just came out
Speaker 6: just this morning of ice detaining someone in a car
Speaker 6: while the man was holding onto his baby having a seizure,
Speaker 6: and what was more important to them was to try
Speaker 6: to rip him away than his child being protected. Third,
Speaker 6: and finally, for now, as it comes to this, we
Speaker 6: got to make sure that we're not empowering and putting
Speaker 6: more money into NYPD surveillance efforts that would be helping
Speaker 6: ICE to attack our communities. And one of the many
Speaker 6: questions that has been lingering around Richie is his support
Speaker 6: around drones has been very nebulous at best. And if
Speaker 6: you are helping ICE to make it easier to grab
Speaker 6: our immigrants, then you should not be representing our immigrants
Speaker 6: in the South, Bronx. And as a son of immigrant myself,
Speaker 6: I'm actually gonna say very clearly, I know how the
Speaker 6: federal government should be working for us, and it is
Speaker 6: not right now because of Richie Torres.
Speaker 3: All right, well, thank you very much, Michael.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And if you can tell people where they can
Speaker 1: follow your campaign, how they can support you, if they're interested.
Speaker 6: I hope everybody's interested after hearing us right now, come
Speaker 6: on not if right now, come on, y'all, So go
Speaker 6: to Michael Blake for Congress Michael Blake foor Congress dot com.
Speaker 6: Follow us on social you'll see the handle Mr Mike Blake.
Speaker 6: You'll see the handle Blake for the Bronx. And we
Speaker 6: need you right now. Look, this is gonna be a
Speaker 6: grassroots campaign. We need you to donate. We need you
Speaker 6: to knock on doors because a lot of people are
Speaker 6: going to be coming for us that don't want us
Speaker 6: to win. But the people have shown right now the
Speaker 6: people ready to win. So if you're ready and say
Speaker 6: we deserve better for the Bronx. My name is Michael
Speaker 6: Blake and I want to be a member of Congress
Speaker 6: and rock with us at Michael Blake from Congress dot com.
Speaker 5: One last question before you go, because I think people
Speaker 5: will want to know how sharp a contrast we're talking about.
Speaker 5: Would you support a full weapons embargo on Israel?
Speaker 6: There should be I mean there we go like how
Speaker 6: can you I know, we gotta go. I just like like,
Speaker 6: how can you watch what's happening and be the same
Speaker 6: right now? And again, I think what is happening in
Speaker 6: this space is that there will be people who hear
Speaker 6: what I just said and they say, well, you're anti Israel. Absolutely,
Speaker 6: It's not about being anti It's about I care for humanity. Right. Yes,
Speaker 6: you deserve to have safety, Yes you deserve the security,
Speaker 6: but if you're watching babies and families, every dollar we
Speaker 6: are spending on that, we are not spending on books
Speaker 6: in the Bronx. We are not spending on making people
Speaker 6: have food and get all the pantry lines. We're not
Speaker 6: spending well making sure you can actually pay your prescription
Speaker 6: drug bills. It's a question around priorities, and mine is
Speaker 6: the Bronx.
Speaker 8: All right, thank you, Michael, and we hope Breaking Points
Speaker 8: makes more cameos in your ads in the future. We're
Speaker 8: excited to see where our next clip appears. So thank
Speaker 8: you so much for your time. I appreciate yall, thank you,
Speaker 8: all right, take care you all right. We are gonna
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Speaker 14: Yeah, that's Robstein Dropstein drops news.
Speaker 1: Yes, Stein News is coming.
Speaker 4: Yeah it is Israel News by the way, so it's
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Speaker 3: We'll see you on the on the other side of that.
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