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