Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds and a shocking new poll from Atlas Intel has Marco Rubio at forty five percent compared to JD. Evans at thirty percent in the twenty twenty eight Republican primary polling. We have such a great show for you today. New York's twelfth District's congressional candidate George Conway Stopspy to
talk about Trump's derangemental state. Then we'll talk to Michigan Senate candidate in the Democratic primary, Doctor Abdul al said about why he is the right candidate for Senate in Michigan. But first the news, Sami.
We have had some wage games in this country because we've had a great run of the economy for quite a long time, and the inflation of Donald Trump's presidency has wiped them all up.
Now, this is the line I would say, Donald Trump has made inflation higher. The guy who you elected to make inflation lower has made it higher. And how has he done it well? It has taken a lot of stupid over the last eighteen months to get here. But what has he done. He's done tariffs, which are inflationary, and then that might have been okay. But my man did the thing that every other president has known not to do since Bill Clinton, which is he went to
war with Iran. And Iran as everyone knew, they would close the straits, and the straits are closed. And now oil and gas are about a dollar and change more expensive in the United States. And don't get me started on diesel. This is exactly what everyone said would happen. I want to rephrase this because I think it's so important. Trump does exactly the thing that everyone says not to do. Don't put your hand to the stove, don't go to war with Iran. It's very expensive. They have a much
higher pain tolerance than you do. As we've seen. It's an enormous country, eighty million people. This is like going to war with California if California had nothing to lose.
And these inflationary numbers are what we should expect. So it was higher than wages, which means that wages grew three point six percent, but it didn't matter because the inflation z point two percent higher than that, which means you may have gotten more money, but your gas is, as all of us know, quite a bit more expensive at the pump. We are heading into summer. Summer is the time when Americans get in their car and take vacations. It's also the time when richer Americans get on airplanes
and take vacations. Airplane tickets, if you haven't noticed, are more expensive because jet fuel is this most expensive kind of fuel. It's from diesel, so they are going to be even more expensive than filling up your tank with gas. It is just a perfect storm. We are heading out into the summer. People are going to be mad. And Donald Trump did this, and they understand that he did this because he could not even come up with any sort of way to sell this war to the American people,
so he just did it. And now the American people are mad.
Let me back you up with some data here at less Intel Pulling, which is one of the most reliable pollsters to pull on do items cost less under Biden or Trump? Nearly every single item, beef, electricity, coffee, gas, chicken, bread, milk, your house, bananas, eggs almost double on nearly every item people say it costs less under Biden.
That's because it did.
Yeah, that's right, But It shows that their whole press strategy is don't believe your lying eyes, and people are believing their truthful eyes.
And you know, it goes back to this idea that I often talk about with Gourbidal, who was someone I knew growing up, who was this very smart thinker, and he had this theory of the case that the American people have no memory, that we are the United States of Amnesia. We know nothing, we remember nothing. Everything goes so quickly for us. But the reality is that even we can keep six months in our head. Trump's been present for eighteen months, and during that time, prices have
gone up. You know, there's one thing that voters really hate. There's like literally one thing they hate. It's like going to the grocery store with the same amount of money and being able to buyize food. And so that's where we are here. This has the generic with Democrats up fourteen points, and that is like carnage for Republicans.
So the way Republicans are counteracting that, of course, is by jerrymandering everything to hell, and the Supreme Court is their William Ablers.
Look, the Supreme Court has decided to be just completely partisan. Now that does not mean the entire Supreme Court, because there are three liberal justices on this court and they are as you and I vote know. It's so to my Air is the one who I think speaks the most forcefully. But Brown Jackson does too. She basically ripped her own cord for their inappropriate decision on Alabama. And look,
here's what's happening Republicans in the Supreme Court. The six to three conservative majority has killed the Voting Rights Act, and now they are signing off on all of this last minute jerry mandering of seat here, a seat there. Trump thinks a seat here and a seat there will save him from losing the House and getting impeached. Perhaps I think Trump may be in more trouble than any things. But that is what is happening here, and the Supreme Court is going along with it.
Yeah.
So what goes hand in hand with this is the Supreme Court's decision on the Voting Rights Act. And we've been talking about how Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry has been a willing participant, but man, this sixty minutes interview with him the other night really really showed the egregiousness of all this.
A lot of people who followed the law think that you should not stop the voting during a primary. So the voting had already started, but Landry was like, I need to make my man Donald Trump happy. So we're going to redistrict even though people are voting. And so what is he doing. He's throwing out these forty five thousand ballots. Now, it is a big deal because it's anti democratic, but it's also a big deal because it shows that the Louisiana governor does not give a fuck
about his voters. And look, we're seeing a lot of Republicans go on sixty minutes. We saw I mean a lot of Republicans by a lot of Republicans. I mean Benjamin net Yahoo was on sixty minutes this week. It's interesting because I was watching that interview with Major Garrett. There are a lot of really good journalists still at CBS, even though CBS has now basically been taken over by its oraitarians, and so it's very interesting to watch them.
But according to reporting today, not for long.
Oh are they all getting fired?
Yeah, that's the week that today.
Sorry, I was out of commission this morning, but I would not be surprised to hear they were all getting fired. But anyway, the last gasps of journalism still live at CBS for now, and watching Major Garrett try to push back pretty interesting. It's worth watching that Net and Yahoo interview. It's certainly worth wondering why the prime minister of another
country is weighing in on our government. I don't wonder because I know what's happening here, and it's just really interesting to watch who is on CBS right now and who is not.
Yeah.
So one of the interesting things is, you know, people can try to play around and be like, oh, polls aren't always accurate, even though they've been much more accurately seemingly for the most part. But one of the things that's always interesting is data. And what we now see is that twenty percent of Americans who are using Obamacare now don't have it anymore thanks to the subsidies expiring and other factors.
And we talked about this. I actually did a video on this for MS Now. This is very easy to see coming a million miles away. Basically, we knew this was going to happen again the last government shut down. Democrats did it. I know we're not supposed to say that, but it's true, and they know it's true, and they say it to be true too, because they were worried about people losing their healthcare. They were worried that twenty
percent of Americans would lose their health care. And that's what we're seeing, a twenty percent decline in enrollment in thirty states. That's because now Obamacare is, you know, a couple thousand dollars more expensive. There's a lot of money and that gas prices, food prices, healthcare prices. Like something's got to give, and people are giving up their healthcare.
And while that is cheaper on the short term and certainly cheaper than not eating, it, ultimately will trickle down to crowded ers and hospitals that are overstretched and all of the things we saw before Obamacare. So this sucks. And remember this was all because of Dode because Republicans wanted attack cut and wanted that money for whatever they're doing, I guess, arms and bombing things. And so here we are,
and look you have this going well. On the other side of the split screen, you have Pete Hagsath bragging about how expensive this war is. We're spending like gonna spend probably a trillion dollars fighting with the country that we literally had a deal with about the nukes. So Donald Trump yet again making crisises that did not exist. Hey, it's Molly john Fast here. My memoir How to Lose Your Mother is out now on paperback, arriving just ahead
of Mother's Day. How to Lose Your Mother has garnered a lot of praise from Good Morning America, then Your Time, Book Review, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and a lot of other outlets. Washington Post. The book is about out what it's like to be part of the Sandwich generation, to take care of your mother and your children. And I talk about being a mother and a daughter and the relationship I have with my mother and all of its complexities. It's funny and it's fraught, and it's sad, and it's about life.
My story, this story, the story of How to Lose Your Mother, follows a year in which my mother, Erica Johng, is diagnosed with dementia, my husband faces a life surrending illness, and what unfolds is a really honest story about what happens when the shit hits the fan and everything goes wrong. As the Washington Post said, the book is filled with lines so good you won't just want to underline them. It's a memoir that continues to resonate, so please pick
it up. George Conway is a candidate in the Democratic primary in New York's twelfth congressional district. Welcome, Welcome, George Conway.
Thank you for having me once again. For the million of the time, I will always It's always like a New Spring.
Show.
So last night you may have had a fun night last night, but you know who did not sleep before going to China in a position of not strength. You went awarein China.
Heina.
My man is going to China with every rich person in America basically and all the CEOs, including Elon mush. But last night he posted fifty five times in three hours. This is the leader of the free world, so to speak. I don't know how free we are. But he started at ten fifteen, as one does, accusing Obama of a coup in twenty sixteen. You'll remember he won in twenty sixteen, so that is an interesting coup. Then ten fifteen again, so that's all. The same minute says Obama works with
the CIA to overthrow Trump. Repost tweets saying Obama is Trader and he should be arrested. Ten twenty two, So seven minutes later at Tacks Dominion voting system for twenty twenty elections says they switch votes again. Ten twenty two says Fulton County, Georgia had twenty twenty fraud exposed there not true. Ten to twenty three accuses Obama of making
one hundred and twenty million from Obamacare. That there are about fifty other times he tweeted, but I just wanted you to get a flavor of what happened last night.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say something really bluntly. The President of the United States is deeply mentally ill. I know it's shocking for you to hear me say that, and it's just something I've been fearing for years to address, as you know, but he is mentally ill.
Feels to me, as someone who has spent the last decade.
Writing about how the Pride, writing and talking about how the president is mentally ill, right.
From my thirties when I was young, to my forties now cruising into fifty. What it feels like to me is that he has all and actually said this on television when we were talking about the push the way Trump treats female journalists versus the way he treated women in twenty sixteen, which was like bad but sort of on purpose, and now he sort of lashes out. It strikes me that Trump has less frontal lobe kind of ability to resist doing the crazy stuff than he did a decade ago.
Right, No, that's absolutely true, and he's absolutely more disinhibited than ever before, which would be the term I think that yes, neuropsychologists and neuropsychiatrists would use. But the fundamental,
the fundamental impulses are still there. I mean, if you know, as I have been chirping about since about twenty eighteen publicly, you go through the diagnostic criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders addition the fifth edition, he is clearly, among other things, I mean, he clearly has narcissistic personality disorder. In fact, he's got basically all nine
of the criteria. You could have written the criteria for him, and he's got the you know, he's got more than sufficient numbers of criteria for, if not all, the criteria for antisocial personality disorder or sociopopy. He's a narcissistic sociopath.
So he spends his time convincing himself that he's been wronged, that he is the greatest thing and the only thing that matters in the world, and that when things don't go his way, it's because people are conspiring against him, they are jealous against them, and there's absolutely some paranoia in there. But of course, if the more you are
obnoxious to people, the more they do dislike you. And you know, he has been able, to some not great extent, not show us everything he thinks at any given moment because people have told him you can't do that, and he understands that if he does on television he will get a backlash. But again, he's more disinhibited than ever because he's aging. He is clearly not as sharp as he was in prior years ago. I frankly don't think
he was ever that sharp. And of course he has managed to get rid of all the people who could possibly tell him, dude, that you can't do this. And and then of course he clearly is hypo manic. He doesn't get much sleep, and he's more anxious than ever before because everything he's done thus far to make himself the greatest thing in the world to make himself. You know, the most important person in the universe is failing. And
he knows that. And he knows deep down, even though he tweets out things like oh, the polls are great like never before, and the oh gas prices are going down, and oh, we won the war against Iran. Deep down he knows that's all bullshit. But deep down he knows that he is looking at a democratic Congress if he doesn't manage to somehow steal the election, which he is talking about because he's talking about putting people troops essentially to enforce election integrity or whatever that that.
The other day.
I don't have the exact quote, so he is you know, this is this is like the movie Downfall, right, I've always you've heard me talk about the movie Downfall before the last ten days of the furor Bunker. This is what happens when a narcissistic as sociopath is cornered. They become more desperate, more delusional, and more dangerous. And that's where Donald Trump is. And that's why I say and I say it, you know, it's part of my campaign stick But I've been saying this all along that He's
only going to get worse, not better. And the most important thing to remember for our current circumstance is that we cannot survive thirty two months more of what we've seen over the last sixteen, not only because what we've seen over the last sixteen, if you keep adding on to it at the same rate, is terrible and dangerous. I mean, he's done enormous damage to the country, enormous damage to its economy, and normous damage to its standing
in the world. But he's going to accelerate in his bizarre t dellusion, and it's going to get get much worse, which is why I'm talking about impeach. And we can't survive, and he's going to get worse, and even the Republicans are going to have no choice but to face up to the fact that for the sake of the country, if not for their own sake, depending on how many of them are left after November, if there's a free and fair election, they have to join with us to get rid of it too.
I want to talk about a wrinkle that I did not see coming, which as someone who has been gaming this out for the last decade, a wrinkle that I did not see coming was that Donald Trump would absolutely crater with Republicans. I did not think, like I actually thought he would just go in there and play golf
and let the economy run on the tax cuts. And I did not think he would go in there and do a lot of really destructive I thought he did destructive stuff, but I didn't know that he would like be able to raise past prices a dollar and a half.
Let me tell you this, I mean, this is a point of disagreement between us. Right. You listen to what I was saying in twenty twenty four, I think. I remember I said it a couple of times, very very directly. I said it once on the comedy channel. He's just going to do everything. It's going to get much, much worse. And I remember a friend of mine said to me, a journalist said to me, well, how could he possibly be worse? And I said, he's going to get worse.
These people can't help themselves. They can't turn themselves off the glory, glorification, and the power is never enough. They are continually hunt, thirsting for ward. He can't go out
and shut up and play golf. He has to be He has an infinite narcissistic thirst that can't possibly be satisfied, and so he has to keep doing things he's he's maniacally to empower himself, and he does this in an impulsive way, in an I'm thinking kind of way, and in a way that's self destructive, and that's what he's going to keep doing, and it's going to be much much worse, and he's going to do much more damage to us.
One of the things that I think people haven't a lot of people haven't learned, is that there is no bottom with this guy. You cannot He keeps going down, down, down, until you know, unless he's physically in pacitated, he's going to get mentally worse, and at some point he's going to lose everybody, including the people who work for him. It's just it's just a matter of time. And the question is do we hasten that process or we just
let it play out passively. And I think we have to hasten that process because the faster we get to the climactic moment here of getting him out of office, the less damage he can do. And that's why I think it's so important to start talking about impeachment and removal right.
Now I agree, but I also like the gas prices is an unforced error, like Americans hate high gas prices, like that, I grew up in the I was born in the seventies. Like, if there's one thing I understand from being born in the seventies, it's like Americans want to be able to get gas, and they want to be able to get it cheaply. The truckers voted in huge numbers for Trump. They are now trying to get diesel,
which is so expensive. It's historically expensive. So for a long time, over the last decade of this conversation, we have wondered if anyone would ever break with Trump in the MAGA crew. But it does seem like at least Republican leaning indies are no longer on the Trump train.
Yeah, I think exactly right. I think that's true. And I think there are a lot of Republicans who will not declare themselves to be independent. I think deep down they've had it with Trump as well. I think one of the things that will happen. What happens is approval ratings are somewhat misleading. This is my theory. Again, I can't prove it because you have to administer sodium pentathal
to basically all the respondents. But I think that when people are asked if they support Donald Trump, if they are a Trumper, a mega person, a Republican, they're going to say yes, do they approve Yes, even if deep down they're having graved doubts because it's part of their identity. They don't want to admit error. The fact that the people on the margins are splitting off is very very
bad for Trump. And the fact that there are people who have, you know, who have previously supported him loudly, are making who are making noises about the twenty fifth Amendment and so on and so forth, is is really, is really really something And I think.
That's Alex Jones and Jones I mean, you know, I mean, I mean, I was I tweeted something the other day.
No, I retweeted Tim Miller saying something about Trump and was then subsequently retweeted by Megan Kelly. Yeah, okay, I mean you were seeing some very very interesting turnarounds. Look, some people who have just basically they they they are either they've either seen enough or they're close to have seen been seeing seeing enough. And I think what the
problem is going to be that. I mean, I think what's going to happen is ultimately all of this turn on the United States Senate and the cowards and the Republican Senate. And I've always said, and I've probably said it fifty times on your show, you can never ever lose money betting on the spinelessess of Republican senators, right right, right, Well, the spinelessness of Republican senators when they are afraid of Trump is what enables them, what keeps them in office.
Sooner or later, that spinelessness is going to push them the other way, because they're going to be afraid of all the people who are now really really unhappy with this guy. And at that some point they're going to say enough, if only to save their own skin, it should be to save the country, and it should be because it's the right thing to do. But I do think we're going to get to the point where it's going to be untenable for Republican senators who will be
in the minority. I believe after January third, for a lot of Republican senators to maintain the position that Donald Trump should still.
Be private, isn't it.
I think what's interesting about This idea is that they don't break with Trump because of morality, and they don't break with Trump because of democracy. They break with Trump because the polling is so bad that they know they can't get re elected if they stay Maga right.
And that was always the calculus with them. They decided to dispense with morality, they decided to dispense with their honor, they decided to dispense with decency, they decided to dispense with the truth because they felt that their political survival depended on doing that. Once they think their political survival depends on throwing Trump overboard, they will do it, yeah, out of the same fear that has driven them to support Trump and enable Trump all these years.
And when that happens, the idea is that Democrats will have their shit together enough to have an impeachment going that gets the Senate correct.
And that's you know, as you may know, I'm running for public office. I'm running for the House, and that's basically my theory, and that's the reason why I'm running. To push that process and to make sure it happens faster rather than slower, and that people and that people don't in a sort of defeatst way say we can't do it.
We can't do it.
No matter how things bad things get, because I think that's just I think that's that's a cop out. B. I think it's bad for the country. C. I think it's cowardly, and D it's just the wrong thing to do.
It's stupid for surviving as a country. Do you think that as we watch this moment unfold that Democrats because we're seeing a lot of like this redistricting, the Voting Rights Act. I mean, this was pretty crazy what came out in Supreme Court last week. You know, no more minority majority districts than a redraw. Well in some states will primaries primary voters were voting. I wonder like it
does feel like Democrats are unable. You know, this is this is so outside of the norms, and Democrats seem unable to fight back in the same kind of way. Now, maybe again, you know that we do have one party that does respect the role of law and one party that doesn't. And so I'm not saying I'm not criticizing Democrats for this, because I know this is an impossible situation, but I'm more just what's your take on this?
Well, you packed the lot into that answer. I mean, I think ultimately we have to get through a system where there is no racial jerrymandering and there is no political gerrymandering, and where districts are set by you know, criteria that is neutral both as to race into politics, and unfortunately we're not there.
And the whole idea on an obvious artisan drawn lines is insane.
It is insane. It's all insane. I think the Democrats have been doing what they have to do to play self, to play defense against people who are changing the rules in the middle of the game. But at the end of the day, I don't think it's going to make a difference, because, first of all, I think things are getting have gotten to the point that they're so bad that Trump would lose no matter how you drew The Republicans will lose no matter how you draw these districts.
And I actually think that in some cases talking to some people who know more about it than me, like I say Mike Madrid, who's an expert in the Hispanic vote the gerrymandering, that some of the political gerrymandering, which
I know is borderline, has probably raced jerry mandering. Also that the Republicans have been doing in places like Texas may actually hurt them, right, because what you're doing, the way what you do to redistrict, if you're trying to help yourself, is you want to spread your voters among more districts. But if you spread your voters among more districts, that means you're making your margins in some districts smaller.
And so most people going on a twenty twenty four.
Map correct and you're counting on say, very strong showing among Hispanics in Texas, you know, and that's the assumption by which you've drawn the map. Then you have effectively what people are calling it now, dummymanded yourself because you're actually spreading out blue voters and not red voters. And you know, you could actually compound an electoral loss by trying to redistrict a state in your favor. So there
are a lot of things here. This is, you know, there's a lot of This is all very complex and multi dimensional about deals with demographics, It deals with voter attitudes, It deals with different segments of the population going different ways in terms of how they're responding to the economic
and political environment. And I think that the bottom line is, even if the Republicans managed to take back one of the some one or two of the seats that they would have lost under to say, the Virginia Plan is not going to help them in the Yet they're still not going to have a majority in the House. And that's all that matters, because all it takes two hundred All it takes is two hundred and eighteen votes to impeach president.
It strikes me that there are Democrats who are not craven and ambitious in the way that the Federalist society has been able to be craven and ambitious. They have not done the kind of stuff that needed to happen to protect or, you know, our democracy. And I think of and look, it's not their fault. This has been
a im possible situation. But I just wonder, if you were to get to win this seat, like there's a lot of frustration at Jeffreys for being a good guy and maybe not a killer, do you would you, I mean, would you vote to support him? Continuing on?
In leadership, I'm going to support whoever has the support of the majority of Democrats, and I think that's going to be leader Jeffries. And I think, you know, I think part of the problem is, to the extent there is a problem, is that the leader of a caucus can't get too far in front of the caucus itself.
And I'm what I'm hopeful for is that the caucus is going to elect more people who want to push harder, and that's going to give more running room, and it's going to help leader Jeffries go in the direction that you and I might like him to go. And so I again, I think I think there's I think there's going to be a different dynamic on January third, twenty twenty seven, if the elections go the way I think
they're going to go. And I think I understand the theory of some Democrats in leadership that in order to win swing dis stricts you have to stick to the economic part and the less talk less about Trump. And I think I understand their reasoning because I think that when you when when a lot of people hear Democrats talk about Trump, they just think, oh, it's more of the same, more of these are just leftists and they
don't like Trump because he's their leftists. And I think that's going to change, because I think people are going to not like Trump because they're paying six dollars at the pump for a ballon for the asoline. And I think it's going to change, like I can help change it because they can't say that about me because that's not my pedigree. All right, I'm here because this guy
was bad. He's a liar, he's a criminal. He lied to you and now he's screwing you over big time and making your life more difficult because he's only in it for himself. And again that that's sort of that's going to be an art. I think that it is going to become more and more. We're going to hear more.
I think democratics, democratic candidates make as they get into the November elections as the economy gets in more difficult, even if even if they if somehow he managed to end the ward turn everything back to the status status bohonte in in Iran, you know, there's still going to be a shortage of gasoline for months and they are not going to go down and things are actually going
to get worse. So I think that what's going to happen is that we're I think the Democrats are if they if they play their cards right, if we play our cards right. I think the Democratic Party is going to be like the Challenging Party. I don't know what the name of the party was, but you know my Yar's opposition party in Hungary, to explain to the public that these guys are are screwing you, they are in it for themselves, they don't care about you and their crooks.
And I think that message, at the end of the day is going to be the message that people are going to just innately realizes the correct message in the fact by November. And I think that's going to change the complexion of the House. I think it's going to change the complexion of the electorate. I think it's going to change the complexion of the House majority. And I think I think that the leadership of the House is
going to respond accordingly. And so I think I think, I think we're going to end up heading in the right direction. And I don't think I don't. I think Speaker Jefferies will be able to lead us there.
George Conway, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Bye.
Doctor Abdul l Sayid is a candidate for the Democratic nomination for Senate in the Great State of Michigan and He is the former director of the Department of Health, Human and Veteran Services for Wayne County. Welcome, Welcome to fast politics, Molly.
It's always a privilege to be with you. Thank you for having me.
Okay, so you are running in this very tight, very exciting three way primary in Michigan for the Democratic Senate nomination. Let's just go back to your central plank here, which is money out of politics and Medicare for all.
Money out of politics, money in your pocket, and Medicare for all. Yeah, so money out of politics. I don't take corporate money. I'm the only candidate my race, Democrat or Republican who never has and never will. I think it is what is corrupting our politics at the outset. It's the reason why we pay more for the stuff we got to buy, get paid less for the work
we do. Watch our tax dollars get misappropriated abroad to drop bombs and buy tanks for foreign militaries instead of investing in you, in your schools, in your healthcare, and money in your pocket. We've got to stand with unions. We've got a tax billionaires their wealth. We've got to enforce our anti oligopoly and anti monopoly policies through the FTC, and we've got to stop sending our money over there so we can use it over here, and then Medicare for All.
We're the richest, most powerful country in the world.
There is absolutely no reason why we have a collective two hundred and twenty five billion dollars in medical debt, which is more than the GDP of half of the states in this country. We can buy every American out of the worry of having to pay for a premium, a copay, or a deductive bleth through Medicare for All, and I think we should.
So you have a MD and a PhD that you haven't done your residency, which means that you are still a doctor, disappointing many on the dumbest line of attack. So you're a doctor, so you know what doctors do? How would that shape your Medicare for All? Because like there's a lot of problems when it comes to healthcare in this country that involve like you get an MRI on eighty sixth Street and it costs a certain amount. You get one on eighty seventh Street and it's half
the price. Just like structural problems that are making it all much more expensive.
I love this question, Mollie, because the user experience for most of us as patients would be that you have a Medicare card in your back pocket, and that card is good for healthcare wherever you need it. No premium meaning the what you pay every two weeks or four weeks that goes away. No copay meaning what you pay at the point of healthcare, No deductible what you have to pay before the health insurance kicks in.
That all goes away.
It is there for you from cradle to grave, does not leave you. If you turn twenty six, or get married, get divorced, or get a job, lose a job, or turn sixty five. It is there for you, good for healthcare whatever you need it. But on the inside of the healthcare system it has a number of positive benefits too.
One of the biggest challenges that.
We have with our healthcare, as you just mentioned, is the fact that there's different prices for the same exact healthcare depending upon where you go. And that's because reimbursement rates get negotiated between big healthcare systems and big health insurance companies in a way.
That's completely opaque.
In fact, they call it part of their own trade secrets, which is absurd. And if you're a private practice physician out there trying to provide healthcare to the public, you're getting a worse deal than the large healthcare systems because the large healthcare systems ineffect negotiate in bulk, so they get way better reimbursement rates. And it's part of the reason you actually can't figure out what you're actually going to have to pay for the healthcare that.
You get when you need it.
And then part of the challenge is that these big healthcare systems use their negotiations in effect to squeeze out the little guy and buy up their practices or other hospitals. It's the reason that we've seen this massive health care consolidation. Met Biccare for All would help to address that in a lot of ways. There is one price that Medicare would pay any provider, so it doesn't matter if you're a big healthcare system or you're a private practitioner, you're getting the same reimbursement.
What that means is if you're a private practitioner, you're providing better care and patients choose you.
You can also grow and you can build a business providing healthcare.
But the other side of that is these huge.
Systems are all reimbursing in a way that always benefits them. The goal of our healthcare system should be to provide us healthcare, but in the end it ends up being to make either a health insurance company, or a hospital system or a pharmaceutical money, which means that all that money gets funneled out of our back pockets and splayed through these huge corporations, and that would end under Medicare for all.
One of the questions I have is like, how do you protect doctors, Like, you know, these doctors are being crunched, and that's part of why you know they're being crunched with malpractice, insurance are being you know right now, it's like sort of a tough time to be a doctor. And then I want you to explain like in Canada, I have seen and a lot of my Canadian friends are actually sort of on the right, so they have shown me things in a way that I think helps
their theories of the case. But I have seen that you can't have the doctor you want, or you can't like I mean, as someone who is an MDPHD, have you thought out the externalities of this.
So number one, if you're a doctor right now practicing, as a lot of my classmates are, I mean, I graduate in medical school in twenty fourteen, that means that most of my classmates there, early on in their practice experience.
They're complaining about a couple things.
Number One, I still haven't paid off my medical debt from medical school. There is actually no reason that Medicare for All couldn't cover the cost of medical school for all graduates work in the system. We already cover the cost of postgraduate education in residency.
And we should because we need more doctors in this country. It's a public service.
We need more doctors. But it's also the incentive of what kind of doctor you become.
If you're graduating with three hundred thousand dollars in medical debt and you're saying, I could make five hundred thousand dollars as a dermatologist or I can make two hundred thousand dollars as a pediatrician. Which one do you pick? And we want more pediatricians in the system. And part of the reason that we don't make them is because people are staring down the barrel at hundreds of thousands
of dollars in medical debt. And on top of that, there are how many particularly really promising students of color who just can't stomach taking on those loans because they might not come from the same wealth, might not have family who can help allay some of those costs.
And I wrote a paper back.
When I was a professor on the cost and the choices of medical debt, and black students take on more medical debts systematically simply because of the consequences of structural racism.
But those two big questions.
The other one is, I'm worried about getting sued, and there's no reason that Medicare for All couldn't it couldn't insure all doctors legally, right, So that goes off the top. And then there's the question of how we get paid. So as the number of physicians being forced into practicing in large healthcare systems has grown, the proportion of reimbursement that goes to those large health systems has also grown
because they have armies of lobbyists and doctors don't. So if you look over the past thirty years, physician or what we call the provider fee in a billing, has only gone up about twenty five percent hasn't kept up with inflation, but the facility fee has like doubled or tripled. So you're seeing big healthcare systems scoop more and more off the top, and so you're benefiting doctor right there by saying no, actually, we're going to change that around.
Rather than more of that reimbursement going to.
Facilities to pay their CEO who's overpaid, we're going to make sure that reimbursement goes back to doctors. And then the last thing I'll tell you is this, there is not a doctor that I know who is not frustrated by the fact that they're burning out because they cannot provide the health care that they want. They don't have the time, and they cannot see the patients who need them the most.
And one of the most.
Important things we could do under Medicare for All is change reimbursements for things like a regular office visit. Rather than an average of eight minutes of an office visit, we can give you fifteen twenty minutes, so you can actually spend time with your patient and get rewarded for doing that because you're actually taking care of the whole patient.
But then even beyond that, we all know, in.
Our healthcare system, if you are low income, it is hard for you to see a doctor in the first place. Medicaid reimburses at substantially lower rates, So we're asking doctors and hospitals and clinics to take a haircut for seeing the lowest income patients. But under Medicare for all, because the reimbursement would be the same regardless of your income, you can now actually care for the patients who need
your care the most. Now, one of the points that you brought up was about Canada, and one of the big issues that I hear all the time is, well, what about the weight times? Do you know what the wait time in America for a cardiologist is on average two and a half months, And nobody tells you should see a cardiologist in two and a half months. Usually they're saying maybe two and a half hours, maybe two and a half days, but not two and a half months.
But that's in our healthcare system as it stands.
I think it's easy to cherry pick stories from other countries about what could go wrong. But here's the other thing I'll tell you, we're the richest, most powerful country in the world. We never look at a thing and say, well, we would do that worse. There is no reason that we couldn't provide guaranteed health care for everybody and do it way better than they do in Canada.
No offense to my neighbors in Canada. I live a mission. We're a border stick. But we could do it better if we chose to.
The reason we don't choose to is because there are too many very large industries who make a tremendous amount of money off the system as it is, pharmaceutical industry, hospital industry, health insurance industry.
We could do it better. There is no reason why we could do better for cheaper.
It's a matter of political will and it's a matter of standing up to the greed of the industry.
So you're in this primary, it is there is a lot going on. Basically, Michigan is a really interesting state because and because you have a Muslim population, you have a Jewish population, you have it all. I was at the Democratic National Convention. I saw that they did not have a Muslim speaker. You know, we had Leon Panetta, but not a Muslim speaker that I think did not serve her for any number of reasons. Now I'm a Jew, very reform, but you know, certainly understand the importance of
what Israel means to Jewish people. I also think net Yahoo's a complete lunatic, makes Trump look like Lincoln. So and I want to know what Michigan looks like, what the Muslim population feels, because some of them went for Trump, not most of them, but a small percentage, and they were used by Trump to try and get more people. You know, they were like one of these swing in
groups that were used by him. And I want you to sort of talk through what you think went wrong there and why you think it's so hard to partner with a group that is just like any other group in this country.
Let me try and break it up into a couple pieces.
I think we tend to focus on the ethnic or religious dynamics of this, and I think in doing that we're doing a disservice to the broader principle. Here I'm running for Senate in Michigan, and here in Michigan, we've got schools that look like they did thirty years ago for lack of the funding to rebuild them. We've got crumbling infrastructure in the forms of roads and bridges and pipes.
We just watched a pipe burst in Rochester Hills, which is home to Stilantis, known as Chrysler to a lot of folks, and we don't have the funding to rebuild that. We can't get our healthcare as we just talked about, and there's a bipartisan consensus on both sides of the Aisle that the best use of our Michigan tax dollars isn't to fix any of those programs, but instead is to send it abroad to foreign governments to buy them
tanks and bombs. And that is I think just inconsistent with what we should be doing with our tax dollars. And I don't believe we should be subsidizing foreign militaries at all.
That includes Israel.
It also includes Egypt, It also includes Saudi Arabia and Jordan, it includes Pakistan. I just don't think that that's the
best use of our tax dollars. That is one principle, but in particular when one of those countries is at baseline in apartheid state and then does a genocide and kills tens of thousands of children, tens of thousands more adults, and we sent them twenty two billion dollars to do it, and then their prime minister comes to our situation room and convinces a president like he's been trying to for forty years, to go to a war with no clear war, aims to spend another thirty billion of our tax dollars.
Ask yourself what that means for a child in Michigan, whether they are a Jewish child or a Muslim child, or a Black child, or a white child, or any of the above.
How does that make sense from a principal standpoint. So a lot of folks want to break this.
Down into well, how are you going to keep these two communities together? And my answer to that is I'm going to lead with principle that the best use of our tax dollars is not to go to war. It's not to do genocide, it's not to uphold apartheid. It's to provide schools and infrastructure and healthcare for our children here at home. And I am Arab, I understand, I am Muslim. But neither is the Arab and Muslim community
a monolith, nor is the Jewish community a monolith. Now I'm always told that somehow, because of my ethnic identity, that my opposition to what.
The Israeli government is doing must be about my antipathy for another group of people.
It is not.
It is about my love for people generally, my love for the people in Michigan, my love for Jewish people who are being told that in their name our country ought to be subsidizing GM aside, my love for Palestinian people who are having their rights taken away from them, and ultimately, in any form of principle, our money should be used on us because we paid for it, That Jewish Israelis and Palestinians should have equal rights to peace, dignity,
and self determination. That we should not be making ridiculous, unethical, immoral war. For all of those reasons, I believe that I don't want us to continue to send our money there when we should be using it here.
I know that that's going to earn me.
Votes both from Jewish community members who've invited me in, because they understand that I love and revere Jewish people and Judaism and Jewish culture and all that it is contributed in our country and across the world. And I understand that that love is the same as I have for Palestinians, and the same as I have.
For kids here in Michigan.
Now, is it going to lose me some votes for people who say, well, for me, Israel is important.
Yes, it is.
But I just don't think that at the end of the day, we can continue to allow this gamesmanship of what votes are you gonna win or lose? Right, or how much money are you going to get from large super PACs to dictate our morals to us. And so if folks disagree with my moral positions, I hope that they'll share where they disagree, but my principles and my positions map and if you can show me where they don't, then please do. I'd love to have a conversation about it.
But nobody has actually shown me that. They just sort of go back and say, well, clearly you're against a group of people.
I was like, no, I'm actually just for all people.
And you are a doctor, which makes you an honorary Jew, because that is the highest level of Judaism, is doctor.
The number of Jentas have come up to me and pinched my cheeks and just said.
As a Jewish mother, doctor is the highest level of Judaism. One of the lost tribes of Israel. So I would love you to talk about this primary because Schumer, who is the leader of the party and who has yelled at me on the phone. Though he I'm not supposed to say that he has gotten involved in your primary. He has endorsed the I think the least good candidate in the field, Hailey Stevens, who is a member of Congress, but cannot get a sentence out. I said it, you didn't.
We all know why he got involved in this primary, and it has a lot to do with APEC and has a lot to do with Israel. I'd love you to talk about what it is like in this primary. Now, you know, you have Senate, the leader of the minority, leader of the Senate getting involved, putting his finger on the scale. Is it working because we're at a moment where, you know, people are pretty mad at politicians on the
left and the right. So is it actually helping you just talk us through what the landscape looks like for you?
Yeah?
Well, yeah, I'm the only candidate in this race who the said of minority leader still opposes.
Yeah, he's really he really doesn't like you.
You really don't like me, Like.
It's the Bernie Staff right too.
I've never met him, you know, and I don't think I will until, of course I win this primary, and then we'll have to have a conversation. But you know, at the end of the day, I'm not seeking his support. My conversation is with the ten million people in Michigan who are going to decide this election, and it always has been. I don't spend as much time thinking about the political gamesmanship of it all, and maybe to my detriment, but like I guess, I'm just not a politician that way.
I'll let the other two folks running in this race figure that part out. But I think every day about how I can build a stronger, deeper relationship with the folks in the state so that they know exactly who I am, why I want to break the chokehold that corporations like dt Our Local Utility and Blue Cross Boushield have had on our politics for a very long time, so that I can start to stand up for the kind of economic opportunities that too many people in the
state can't get. Address the fact that you can't afford your groceries, you can't afford your health care, your kid goes to a broken school, and you're paying five bucks a gallon in gas and finally guarantee you the healthcare that you need and deserve.
So, you know, I don't know why he doesn't like me that much.
I have some ideas, but you know, most of the time that doesn't really bother me that much.
Now here's the thing.
But does it help you on in the field or does it hurt you in the field. That's more of my question.
I don't know because I don't spend much time talking about it. There's another candidate spends a lot of time talking about Chuck Schumer.
I just don't like.
I think the conversations folks are having are not about who the Senate Minority leader is. The folks people are having are what are you going to do about my groceries? What are you going to do about this ridiculous war that's raising my gas price? Is? What are you going to do about the fact that I can't see a doctor? So I don't know if it's helping.
Me or hurting me.
What I do know is that they are going to you know, a pack through one of its many many shell organizations, just did a five point five million dollar buy and from what we hear, they're going to do another five of those and that they're probably going to
be coming from my face. We know that a lot of the folks are on the inside are constantly pushing miss and disinformation about me and my record, But all of that doesn't matter as much as making sure that folks understand that I'm not here to defend myself, like I'm here to defend them against a system that has been corrupted by the likes of corporations and special interests that are who are trying to do the same thing to corrupt this election to so I just try to
just focus on the main issue and just not spend as much time with it. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe that's the Achilles heel, but I'm just not doing this because I care as much about the politics of it all.
I care about the service of it all. So I'm just going to focus there, and so long as I can answer the questions that people have about how we're going to make their life more livable, how we're going to make their budget work every month, how we're going to make sure they can see a doctor, I feel like I'm answering the questions that really matter.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I appreciate you having me.
A moment.
Jesse Cannon by jump Fast.
So one of the things we talk about when we talk about ICE is, you know, this is the unemployable having a war on the employed, and that these people are not careful, that they do not really care if they're careful, they don't care if they mess up.
They don't really care about the collateral damage.
And if that was ever evidenced, is this article on Reason magazine about how a US citizen is suing ICE for arresting them twice.
And they just did it a third time because who cares if they mess up?
Famous lefty magazine Reason, Oh yeah, oh yeah, known to be the home of liberals and do not at all funded by the Koch brothers, if you.
Know what I mean, not all the bible of right wing libertarianism, not.
At all the Republican second son's favorite reading source. Okay, so here we go. What is happening. I know you're going to be shocked to hear this, but as my my man Brett Kavanaugh said when he talks about those Kavanaugh stops, you are technically allowed by this according to the Supreme Court. I guess maybe they walked it back, but you're allowed to stop people if they look Mexican, because it's called Kavanaugh stops, and if you look like you're not a white guy, you can get stopped by ice.
And turns out, guess what happens. You get stopped by Ice again and again and again. I am not laughing because it's so fucking horrible, but it is also you have to admit kind of insane that my man, this is his third Ice stop. By the way, we're seeing people like detained in these jails for like a year. I mean, these people are losing a year of their lives because these ICE people can't read like a document. And it is like this is like authoritarianism but very
very very stupid. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sad to hear the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.