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 the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that US employers added one hundred and eighty one thousand jobs last year, far fewer than the one point four six million jobs that we're added in twenty twenty four.
We have such a great show for you today.
The Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson joins us to discuss the DOJ hiding files that might implicate Trump. Then we'll talk to Michigan Senate Democratic primary candidate Malloy mcmarrow about her run for Michigan's open Senate seat.
But first, The News.
Somalie said Scotis told Trump that he's a reckless, not constitution abiding president about his tariffs. He has decided he will exercise that power because he loves tariffs so much to make a global tariff eighteen percent from ten percent immediately.
So Donald Trump lost against the Supreme Court. Two of his three justices cided against him. Was only Justice Kegstand Kavanaugh joining the Fox News triumpherent of Thomas and Alito, who will let Donald Trump do anything he wants forever and ever and ever. So Justice keg Stand in his descent, said there are other ways to do what you want
to do, big boss, and suggested that there was this workaround. Again, Look, Donald Trump did these tariffs through this emergency executive order which used in emergency powers that never used the word tariff.
Done dun dun duh.
And again Justice Roberts used the major case doctrine, which is the thing he used to tell Biden he couldn't cancel a student loan debt, to tell Trump that he didn't have the authority to do these.
Tariffs Donald Trump.
By the way, tariff's unpopular, inflationary, not helping manufacturing. The only thing they're doing is helping Donald Trump be the autocrat he dreams of being. This would have been an off ramp. This is an excellent off ramp. But because Donald Trump can never take an off ramp, just like we saw in Minnesota when Ice murdered two American citizens, just like we've saw we've seen again and again during Trump's first and second terms, he can never take an off ramp.
So instead of taking the.
Off ramp and being like, oh well, Supreme Court said, I can't do it. He has doubled down, and he did this Mussolini esque, as Rick Wilson says later on presser, where he went on and on and on about how disappointed he was with those two Supreme courtresses who don't love America, and then he went on to effectively put a tempresent tariff, and then he hiked it to fifteen.
And who knows what's going to happen.
Because if there's one thing we know about Donald Trumpetz that he hates acting rationally and he's a very sensitive guy. So expect more uncertainty and craziness.
Yeah, it almost feels like the oppositional defiant disorder is very real in that one.
Yeah, his behavior is irrational and so it's never going to make any sense.
And that's where we are speaking of.
Thank you for setting me up with that. So the DHS has now reversed on their TSA pre check pause as the snowstorm that we're about to endure heads in. I don't know how it's looking in your part of New York, body, but they looking good over here in Brooklyn.
Yes, I saw this when we're talking about what we're going to talk about now in the podcast, and it says, DHS reverses on TSA PreCheck pause and I was like, wait a second. I thought TSA was paused because somebody else had been completed. Need to me about how they were going to pause TSA and you were like, no, no, but they've unpaused it, and there we go. So last Sunday, TSA PreCheck remained operational with no change for the traveling public. So here's the thing. There's a DHS shutdown. You may
know about this. It was because ICE has become a completely unchecked militia that serves the president and searches people's houses and wears masks and kills people. Americans don't like it, and Democrats are trying to renegotiate some common sense reforms, like they shouldn't wear masks and be the guestapo. Republicans are really offended by the idea of even trying to
negotiate anything. Airgo here we are. Look, I just want to say that Donald Trump has billions of dollars for both the Department of Defense and for ICE enforcement.
In the BBB.
These two parts of the government have billions. While they've caught cancer research for children, you know, children's cancer research there's no money for that, but there's tons and tons and tons of money for President Trump's police force. They are buying up warehouses in which they will wear house human beings.
And that is why.
I say to you, there's money for the TSA PreCheck, thank you. I think there's also money for children's cancer research. But then again I'm a libtard.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, this ted talk is not going over well with them, Molly. In Trump's continued demented foreign policy towards Greenland, we now have Greenland's leader saying no thanks to Trump's US hospital vote.
Yeah.
So this is a pretty great little insane bid here. Donald Trump up late on the internet two things that never mean anything good. He is very into AI and posts a picture of a boat trying to appeal to Greenland. And so he says that he's going to send a US hospital boat. He was his two hospital boats that are both in dry dock. So he is going to take a little while unless he's going to send a Disney Cruz with some.
Doctors on it, which again not impossible. I'd believe it if I reddits exactly.
And I want to point out that in this weird truth AI thing, he says working with the fantastic governor of Louisiana. Louisiana, which is a state known for its healthcare. Right, he's going to send the hospital boat to Greenland.
So also known for its close proximity to Greenland. Real direct roots. Yeah.
Well, but also I think it's important to realize that Louisiana is one of the ten worst states for healthcare.
Yes, you might be okay in New Orleans.
There's a pretty good hospital teaching hospital in New Orleans.
Otherwise, I think you probably want to go to North Carolina. So that's why I say to you, this is an insane thing for Donald Trump to truth.
And by the way, Denmark, Greenland they are laughing at us. The leaders of Denmark and the Arctic Territory thought it was pretty funny that Donald Trump was going to lecture them about healthcare, and the Greenlandic Prime Minister said that will be a big no thanks from us, And I think it's an important point. They reiterated that healthcare is actually free in Denmark. Well, it is not free in the United States.
Fun times. So you may remember one Jisland Maxwell from getting special treatment in prison from mister Donald Trump. And now we see that she's fighting the release of documents from Virginia Jeffrey's civil defamation lawsuit because it may not go so well for her keeping her cushy place of the sun in prison.
Yeah. I don't know that we spend enough time talking about this. Glad Maxwell Well is not in the prison she was in before she met with Todd Blanche. She met with Todd Blanche, Todd Blanche said you deserved to be in a nicer prison and moved her to a nicer prison where she can raise puppies and hang out with Elizabeth Holmes. Why did Todd Blanche move her to a nicer, lower security prison.
I think the next segment of this podcast, where you talk to Rick is a very good clue that they would make a lot of sense.
Yeah, so I think it's worth realizing that, like Gillane really wants not to have people see anymore how involved she is with this, and she is really involved with us. And when you listen to if you haven't listened to Saturday's interview with Maria Farmer, please please do because in it she talks about how horrible Gollane Maxwell was to her and how horrible she was the other girls and
how guilty she is in this. But anyway, Maxwell's lawyers are fighting the request to release ninety thousand pages related to Epstein and Maxwell. And by the way, she already is so horrendous. Who even knows the lawyers filed the papers on Friday. This is from a civil defamation suit
brought a decade ago by Virginia Geufrey. You know, Maria Farmer talks about Virginia Geufrey and how she really did spend her life trying to fight back against Golane and Jeffrey, and how you know she gave up her life for this and she died last year right before her book came out. So I hope that all.
Of these files get released.
Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln Project and the host of the Emmy's List. Rick Wilson Epstein files are They're like a rorshack, really given that keeps on giving. Our friend who used to work at The Daily Beast, Roger Sallenberger, has very reporter has discovered a a list explain what this is because it's a little bit complicated.
Roger has discovered a number of files that the DOJ tried to redact once they were.
Were known to exist.
Yes, the DOJ has decided they're going to pull them offline. Why would they do this, Well, they do this in part because in these files there are confidential informant reports and other information that say that it was reported that Donald Trump had had sex with a minor child.
DJ deleted record revealing that Maxwell holds potential blackmail.
That's correct, and well, that's what I was getting to is as And the other part of this that I think really bothers Trump and Todd Blanche, et cetera, is that what they were what they redacted, was stuff that was given to Galaine Maxwell in discovery for her trust, right, and somehow or another, Pam BONDI decided that she would pull this information offline even though it's the hottest piece of smoke and blackmail material that you could have imagined in the hands of of Glayne Maxwell.
Right.
I just find it. I find it fascinating that, as I always find it fascinating. I guess that the Trump folks really think that at this day and age, in what we have in the world we have that includes the Internet, they're going to delete something and make it magically disappear.
Yeah, And I mean it goes back to the release of these files period paragraph And there was really good reporting this week in the Wall Street Journal. Josh Dowcy, who used to kill it at the Washington Post.
Before great work this week.
Bezos ruined the Washington Post and now he works at the Wall Street Journal, which has really good reporting, and he talks about how botch the release was. And there was a lot of files that were for example, they redacted the name Leslie Waxner because they thought Leslie might have been a woman's name.
Yeah.
Sure, that's exactly plausible in every way, and everybody believes that completely.
That's just super super.
Likely that somehow the world's the captain of the world's most giant pedophile ring. It's just mistakenly knew someone. Was she on his majong list or something. Get the fuck out of here.
And and just for another minute on les Waxner, there was he did this really long deposition last week in which his lawyer kept telling him to shut the fuck up.
I believe the phrase was was I will fucking kill you if you say more than five words to any answer. Yeah, And she seems striking to me that the lawyer might have had a level of concern that a that an innocent man might not have had.
Yeah, I mean it definitely seemed like And I want to like talk about Les wax Her for another minute, because we did this interview yesterday for the podcast with Maria Farmer.
Maria Farmer is the first person.
To ever come out against Epstein in a criminal complaint for the FBI and also the NYPD. She has cancer now and is quite sick, so we didn't do it on camera and she can't travel.
And it's worth listening to this interview.
Jesse said he was crying when we taped it. It just is the story of how these women's lives were ruined by Jeffrey and Lass and whoever else, you know. So I think it's worth listening to. And we forget about the victims, you.
Know, mind, I think that's really an important point here, because.
Their stories are when you and I've interviewed a couple, and you've interviewed a couple, and their stories have this sort of sameness about them, but also the pain is individualized.
They were all victims.
Of this system that this guy and his and claim Maxwell and their friends enabled and empowered and ran. But you know, the individual abuses they all suffered are just so horrific and so like you hear you, you hear these stories and it's just like it's so heartbreaking and in every level. And I just find it unaccountable that I go back to this again, that Pam Bondi would not even look them in the face during that last congressional hearing.
Yeah.
And you know Pam Bondi who was famous for when she was early in her career before she ruined herself with Trump as many a person does in the Republican.
Party, as has been known to happen.
So yes, I.
Think there's a there's a phrase that describes it.
Maybe, Yes, I've heard it before about am people dying.
From Yeah, yeah Trump, I heard it.
But she had actually cut an ad against child trafficking.
Mm hmm.
She did, and and that ad was directed by my old business partner, Adam Goodman. Pam Bondie her big things were child trafficking and as she used to say, busting up gangs and criminal elements. Yeah, and yet it seems the criminal element gets more Pam Bondi's attention and deference than the victims.
In this day, I think that we still haven't seen the end of the Ebstein files. You know, there's still millions of documents that are being gone through. There are unindicted code conspirators who will eventually their names will be redected.
We'll become they will become indicted conspirators at some point. I am hoping, as an American and as a human that we will see at some point a Department of Justice, if not this one, bring them to account.
I also wonder when we look at this story, how much you know things don't change until they do, right. The Epstein files don't get released until they do. People don't turn on a president until they do, and they turn on him. And I'm reminded of the moments before Black Lives Matter and the moments before me too, when the culture hit a boiling point, and I think we're there now again, I think.
We're actually past that boiling point now. Weirdly enough, I'm seeing a convergence of anti Trump and pro Trump people pissed off in the same way about the Epstein matter.
Yeah, that makes sense.
I mean I feel like there is a I feel like the world has changed in a I don't want to say fundamental way, but a meaningful way.
Well it's me too again.
Yeah, but the idea that so many of these people are now like, yeah, Trump lied to me. He told me he was going to release these files. And these people really do care about this issue. It is a real issue for these voters who believe that he was going to protect the children from the pedophiles. M hm, and now he's protecting the pedophiles from the victims and the children.
It's amazing.
It is.
It's sickening, but yeah, but it's definitionally amazing as well to see an entire administration fully devoted to ensuring that the relevant information that's hidden in these files is never seen by the public.
Yeah, blows my mind.
It's still going.
So you have these hearings that are going to take place at mar A Lago, that Garcia and that oversight is dealing with, right, and so I think there will be more and we also just have endless documents coming.
We're going to say nothing of the three million that are still hidden.
Yes, and there's probably more and the videos, but we need to talk. And I also think when we talk about I just want for one more second on this subject, we talk about Les Wexner. I think it's important to remember that Waxner is a major GOP donor.
And considered John Husted out of Ohio.
There's running against share Brown, running against.
Share Brown just took a hundred grand from Wes Westerner, And to my knowledge, Mom, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong on this, I'm wrong, But to my knowledge, he has not given that money back, nor will he.
I don't yeah, yeah, I don't think that. I don't think the odds are high that he will.
No, I do not think so. On Friday, Donald Trump was betrayed. Why his Supreme Court justices Justice Amy and Justice Gorsich. You know, they were put in there to do trump S bidding and they just hate America, discuss.
Very bad, very wrong.
And this is one of the most novel Trumpian theories I've ever heard. Molly, Suddenly the Supreme Court is affected by foreign influence.
I'm like, what, what?
What?
What?
Because because Donald Trump can't come up with another explanation, why Amy, Comy Barrett, and why Neil Gorsich have suddenly turned on him and decided to get in bed with that horrible influence of foreign powers the constitution of the United States.
It was an amazing at all trumpy moment there where Donald Trump said there are good justices on the Supreme Court, like Justice in Leido, And.
If the court is influenced by foreign powers, then every vote the foreign those influenced by foreign powers have taken so far should be invalidated. And I think he needs to go ahead and just say I won't abide by any of the decisions that that that this corrupt court has made, including Roe v. Wade, and including of course, yeah Trump versus us.
Other than that, I think we're fine.
I think we're finer than that, right, Donald, Yeah.
One of the things we know about these tariffs is that they do not onshore manufacturing because wildly variable teriff rates that go on and off with the president's mood do not inspire people to build factory.
No, there's no like, there's no construction index like Donald Trump's cyclothymic behavior.
Build a factory, factory in Alabama or what else.
So what it's done has just made things more expensive. But if you think about tariffs as a tool of an autocrat, they make a lot more sense.
Sure, And and look the disappointment he had at that very long castro esque press conference on Friday could not have been more palpable. Yeah, you know, he he was angry and and I can't I don't know who the munchkin he had on the Sunday shows this week was, But that guy's attitude was like, well, you know, the president is right and all these tariffs are so good, and yet Scott Besten sound said, no, nobody's ever going to see that money back.
Sorry, I mean, just like give away the game they're chief.
I mean, so there's all this tariff money, and the tariffs have are now deemed I legal.
Now seventy seven trigillion brazillion.
Right, which we're all getting back.
Right.
Pritzker wrote a really I think effective tweet which was basically like, send a check to each one of my constituents.
Yeah, we lp. He just put on an ad this weekend called It's like pay me dummy.
Yeah.
He really did promise these tariff checks, MOLLI, including in their fundraising emails they were sending out on Friday morning.
Yeah, if you think of them as the tool of an autocrat, it make a lot more sense. He got mad at Switzerland, so he moved the tariff from thirty five to thirty seven or thirty two to thirty seven.
And then you think about tools.
They him, they gave him a watch or something, and he again.
And if you think of tariffs, and if you think of the Trump administration as.
A kleptocracy, and you.
Think of Ebstein Files occupant Howard Lutnik.
Yep business partner of Epstein's.
According to CBS run by Barry Weiss, opened by David Allison, Lutnick's sons have been betting because now you can bet on anything because America is basically Las Vegas on these tariffs being taken off.
So the Lutnix suns just made a lot of money.
Oh it was Lutnik boys. Sure know how to make some cash.
Yeah, they seem really smart.
They're they're they're like the Trump fellas.
They just have a golden touch when it comes I'm to grifting, kleptocracy.
I'm almost embarrassed to be a NAPO baby. I'm starting to think it might not be such a good look.
Listen, I gotta tell you nothing about nothing about a country where the sons of the powerful overlords are dealing in shady financial transactions.
Nothing, none of that scans as good news. With the future of the country.
My favorite part of last week was when the King of England, you may remember England, a country with a king, said.
That he really all must take its course.
Yes, his brother was not above the law.
And even like they may get you know, they're talking about the PM of the UK starmer Stormer getting in some kind of trouble because he put someone in the Epstein files.
Right, Peter Mandelsson from.
Peter Mandelsson as a as an ambassador. Meanwhile, our president features prominently.
And yet he somehow comes out every day now and says, as if to try to magically make it real, I'm completely exonerated.
I'm innocent.
I I'm the one who I'm the one who stopped Epstein.
If you think about Trump as someone who truly believes that there is a percentage of his base that only listens to him.
And there they do.
So every time he's says I'm exonerated, are there are very.
Group of Americans who say, yeah, he's tolerated. Yeah.
Do you think if Trump said things like I'm not exonerated.
No, No, they.
Have a magical thinking about them now that even when he has in the past had to like walk stuff back in the n minor ways like during David all right, no, no, that's it's forty chess. He's secretly working to whatever, and it never seems to it never seems to really catch up with him with that small percentage, you know. And that percentage used to be thirty five percent. Right now it's like twenty. Yeah, and shrinking folks by the day. Take that as a piece of good news in the in a dark world.
I want to talk to you about potentially talented politicians. We're in primary season. There are a bunch of primaries going and and I don't want to talk about specific candidates because I want I have a theory that.
I want you to talk to us about.
I think that Democrats get really stuck in the ideological purity of their candidates and not so interested in their candidates whether or not they're talented.
And and my theory of the.
Case, and I want you to tell me if you think this is right or wrong, is that I think that politicians they kind of don't really believe stuff.
Let's just be honest here.
That's true more in the in the in the observance than the breach, yes.
Right, and Republicans are much more nihilists. But Democrats also can have their opinions changed. And so do you think that democrats are wrong being so focused on the machinations of their politicians' opinions and not on the talent of said politicians.
Discuss if you were putting me in charge of this matter. Talent is the first, second, third, and tenth criteria for these folks. You can have people who are morally perfect and correct. If they can't run a race, and they can't win a race, what good are they? You're You're not helping the party or the country by being by being morally pristine. If the choice is between your guy who's not perfect and somebody who serves Satan, picks the guy who doesn't serve Satan. It doesn't mean that you
can't believe things. People all believe things, and they should. But sometimes you don't say the quiet part out loud. Sometimes you run a campaign instead of a struggle session.
Yeah, and do you think that one of the things Democrats can do at this moment is stop doing those fucking.
Questions? Yeah?
Never about the question. Listen, Listen.
I told candidates back in two thousand and two on the Republican side, because we had.
The same purity test. Bullshit happening.
Okay, So the questionnaires are when different groups.
Right, And by the way, folks, I'm not attacking them.
So when the when the Sierra Club or nay row or or or Moms Against sends you a questionnaire and they demand that you answer it, and they demand you tell them every single thing. When Democrats did that and I was a Republican, you know what I did ninety five percent of the time as a Republican, I'd be like, yeah, look what that dumb son of a bit said in that and I would know, and I would turn that around into negative ads, and those ads would make your
candidate look like a fucking idiot. Right, This is why nobody is served by these questionnaires. Accept the other side. And so Democrats, if you're a candidate, don't answer fucking questionnaires. And by the way, those groups that go we will never endorse you unless you yeah, yeah, they will, Okay, if you're a winner, they will if you if you show that you're kicking ass, they will.
None of it matters.
These people that do this and turn it into a pure check thing, fuck them, no, just fuck them.
Schumer and other members who pick candidates, Yes, do you think that they should be picking the most talented candidates and not the people that are their.
Friends always and forever? Pick talent because look, campaigns in the old days depended more on the internal game. Can this guy raise all the money from the other big guys that I know who're going to sit in the room and write hundred thousand dollars checks to the party committees and all that. Today, campaigns are increasingly being mediated by how good you are on television, how good you are on YouTube, how good you are on Instagram, how
good you are on social media. And listen, there are a lot of things that Democrats would disqualify James tallerco on right, and in a lot of parts of this country, Democrats say, no, nope, nope, he's two to the god stuff.
I don't care for that.
They would be passing on the most talented single candidate I've seen come out of the Democratic field in the last decade by an order of magnitude, you know. And so if you're gonna, if you're gonna pick candidates, pick them because they're good candidates them. Deal with the ideology crap later, because most ideological things, most purity tests again, folks,
I sort of repeat this. The Republican Party has weaponized democratic purity tests like champions, and they disqualified Democratic candidates in the minds of large percentages of voters, especially in red and purple states, based on those said.
Will you come back?
You know I will.
Mallory mcmarrow is a Michigan State senator and a candidate in the Democratic Senate primary in the great state of Michigan. Welcome, Welcome Allarman Morrow.
Good to be back.
So you're running for senate.
This is three way Senate race, and I want you to talk us through. This is the primary. Voting starts. When does voting start? Probably start soon, right.
Well, it's an August primary, so voting starts in June for for the August primary.
So talk us through what your primary looks like. Michigan, it's a Senate seat.
Talk us through us. Sure, So we've got an open Senate seat this year with Gary Peters retiring. Mike Rogers is very likely the Republican nominee. This is the same guy that ran against Alyssa Slotkin last cycle, narrowly lost and is back again this time with Trump's full endorsement and millions of dollars from all around the country right from the get go. On the Democratic side, we have a three way Democratic primary with myself, Abdul lsa Ed,
and Hailey Stevens. I'm excited about it. I mean, I knew coming in that I would have the biggest hill to climb in terms of building name recognition. One of the candidates had run for governor in twenty eighteen, so has run statewide before. The other is a sitting member of Congress from Metro Detroit who had a contentious primary in twenty twenty two. So I had millions of dollars
spent in the Metro Detroit media market for her. But my theory was that once people got to know me and my theory of the case, which is that this is by no means a normal time, by any stretch of the imagination, that operating as if it is is simply not going to cut it, and that I have both the lived experience as somebody who hasn't spent my entire life in politics, but also a track record of beating a Republican incumbent to get into office, helping flip
control of our entire state Senate for the first time in forty years, and as majority whip, I've actually delivered on every single issue that Democrats in Michigan or's written large care about that. That's a blueprint that we can bring with us to Washington. So I filed in April of last year. I was the first candidate in the race's earliest polls showed that I was trailing in third
behind the two other Democrats. I am in the latest Emerson polling now the front runner and leading by five points. So we feel really good at heading into the ayar Who've got the momentum and we're going to do this thing.
So you've had some questions about a pack. It's become a wildly unpopular in the Democratic Party. Talk to me about your position on a pack, your thoughts about a pack money.
Yeah, I would encourage anybody if you haven't. Tom Melanowski wrote an op ed for The Bulwark yesterday really reflecting on what happened in his race and making the case to the Democratic Party that the Democratic Party should cut ties with a pack because, as he pointed out, as Jeremy who heads up J Street has pointed out, it is really funded by Republican donors who intervene in Democratic primaries, and I think has shifted away from perhaps what its
original mission was and what I view is it's a pro net Yahoo organization and a prom organization. So I am not accepting a PAC contributions and I do get asked about it a lot. I mean at every event that we go to. It's something that people want to know, is are you accepting those contributions.
I'm not.
I'm also not accepting any corporate pack donations on my campaign, and that does make it harder to fundraise. But despite that, I've got more grassroots support than my two Democratic opponents combined. I have the most donations from Michigan, and we feel that on the ground people are rallying behind this campaign and it's the right thing to do.
Hayley Stephens was really sort of crowned the Democratic nominee. I have interviewed her, and I actually knew her before she ran for Congress, when she had just worked on the auto bailout. I was struck by how she's not a particularly good speaker. Why do you think she was crowned the nominee so early?
I mean, I don't want to speak for the party writ large.
No I mean, if.
You want to win and you nominate someone who's just not that charismatic, like they are politicians for a reason, right, I mean, it's called a politician, not like our friend or our body.
So I just love you to talk that through with me.
Yeah, you know, I think our party too often makes the mistake and rewrites, redoes history and thinking that it's whoever's turn is next. And it's deeply frustrating to me.
You know.
I know that there are some who think that the next Senator has to be somebody from Congress, you have to have federal experience, and I think that that is wholly untrue. I do believe that experience matters. And in this primary, we've got somebody who's a member of Congress. We have me, and we have somebody who's never held public office before. I have learned a lot about how to serve in the minority in the State Senate, where I served for four years then we flipped control to
the majority. I've learned how to govern. I know how to move legislation. But I would just say that the more that I've gotten to know people, I think that that perception has shifted that there was a lot of expectation that my opponent would be the front runner, and by most metrics, that hasn't been the case. You know, I am now the front runner for a reason. And it's interesting as we talk about the auto rescue that you brought up, that is certainly a huge part of
her background and her story. I was on the other end of that coin. I mean, I went to college to get a degree in industrial design. I designed a concept car when I was still in college. We built it live on stage, full scale, at an auto show. And then I graduated in two thousand and eight and everything collapsed and I had no job, and I had no health insurance, and I had nowhere to live, and I applied to three hundred jobs and the only job that I could get for a long time was folding
clothes for minimum wage. I think that lived experience matters. I mean, when I talk to people all across the state who lived through the collapse of the auto industry, it's a very different experience being on the other end of it. And there are people who have simply given up not only on Democrats, but on politics and on government and on institutions. Because you can do everything right, and you can play by the rules, and you can work hard and you can come out the other end drowning.
And I bring that experience into all of my work. And I think that people can see themselves in this campaign because it's not just about beating Donald Trump. It's not just about putting out press releases or press conferences or messaging bills. We got to rebuild this country so that it actually works for people. And I think you see that in the trajectory of this campaign.
I wonder if you could talk for a minute about the speech that made you famous, because that's when I met you, right, That's when I met you. That's when I met Ray. I want you talk about the speech it made you famous, because it's not so often that a state rep becomes a household name for a speech on the floor.
Yeah, I mean it was wild. So this is twenty twenty two, so it's already we're going on, oh my god, four years ago. And this was during my first term in the State Senate. It was a frustrating term. I mean, I got elected in twenty eighteen, came in in twenty nineteen. I was serving in the minority because I had flipped a district against an incumbent. The Republican leadership had decided no bill with my name on it was ever going to pass. It didn't matter how good it was or
how bipartisan it was. So a few years into the term, and mind you, we had gone through COVID and protests in our state capitol where we had armed gunmen in
our gallery. It was rough. And I woke up one morning in twenty twenty two to find out that a Republican colleague had sent out a fundraising email four or herself accusing me by name of wanting to groom and sexualize kindergarteners and wanting eight year olds to believe they were responsible for slavery, and just the worst of the Trump brand of politics.
I was so very stupid and very stupid. Very stupid, Yeah.
Very stupid. It is. You know, there's this idea that you can just call people whatever you want and there are no consequences. But it really hurt. I remember trying to figure out how I was going to respond and what I was going to do. And I had resigned myself that I wasn't going to run for reelection and that I was in a pretty dark place thinking that I had failed at this job, and I had let everybody down who had knocked doors for me and supported
me in that first campaign. So I thought this was going to be the last speech I ever give in this job. And I came to the floor the next day, and it was really intentional that I wanted to respond to her in person because part of the email she accused me of being a social media troll, and I wanted her to see me face to face. And I came to the floor and and you know, this was during the rise of Moms for Liberty and all of these groups that were claiming to stand for parents rights.
I was the mom of a one year old at the time, and I took back my own identity and I said, I'm a straight, white Christian, married suburban mom who knows hate only wins when people like me let it happen. And oh, by the way, people who are different are not the reason your healthcare costs are too high, or why our roads are in disrepair, why we have a housing crisis, or why teachers are leaving the profession. And I put the video of the speech online, thinking
that's it, and then jokes on me. Tens of millions of people saw it within twenty four hours, and I was on CNN and MSNBC Now, ms NOW and Fox News called me liberal Karen with a headband.
That's right, you did have a headband well, and it was.
You know, it was funny. I was postpartum at that point and I had for terrible hair loss, so that's why it was up in a headband. But the response that I got to that speech it was months. Even just this week, I don't know why. I've started to see it recirculating again online. It feels like every few months it kind of comes back and it picks up steam.
And people wrote me their life story. My po box was stuffed with letters for months and months on end, and I would get emails from Republicans and Democrats and people who were furious, people who are religious, people who are not religious, who just said thank you. And I was dragged back into this work in a really unexpected way because I realized, Okay, I've just been handed a spotlight and we can choose to do something with it.
So I brought on Liz Smith. My husband connected with her, actually DMed her and said, do you want to talk to my wife? We came up with this plan of what if we tried to raise a million dollars to help flip the state Senate, Because, like the speech is great, but we had to prove that this tactic didn't work, and the only way to do that was we got to take away their power. And we ended up raising millions of dollars into a state pack that i'd opened.
I supported a dozen other candidates running for state Senate, brought my volunteers all across the state, and we helped flip control of the State Senate for the first time in my entire lifetime. So I think it's all of that that I bring with me into this campaign. It is communication, It's knowing how to throw a punch, but doing it strategically, because at the end of day, it's
not about going viral. It's about building power to actually fight back against these people and past policies that help people.
You have gotten some pushback from one of the other candidates on your stance on ice. Talk us through what you're thinking is on ice? Also is ice in Michigan right now?
Yeah? They are.
They are in Romulus, which is downriver in Detroit. Ice actually outbid an auto supplier, a Toyota Auto supplier to buy a warehouse to open a new detention center. So I just I want everybody to really grapple with the Trump administration is taking jobs and economic development away from a community that needs it to hows human beings in a warehouse? So I will be out at a protest on Monday. They're opening an operations facility in Southfield outside
of Detroit. We have a detention center in Baldwin where you know, over eighty five percent of the people housed in that detention center have no criminal conviction whatsoever. There was a dad who was picked up, who owns a painting company that's done nothing wrong, picked up when he dropped his kid off at school. Hasn't been seen in a year. Out in Grand Rapids. Another dad was picked up after dropping his kid off at the bus. So the entire bus full of kids watched this happen. And
what I say is is unequivocal. Ice needs to be out of our communities. Immediately, get him off of our streets. They are not doing their jobs. We do not need roving patrols of secret police terrorizing our communities and frankly making the job of local law enforcement that much harder because they're eroding and breaking the trust that that law
enforcement officers work so hard to build. And then, you know, I have been echoing the calls of people like Chris Murphy to say, you know, the Senate holds the power right now and should deny DHS a single penny more until you know, not even nibbling around the edges on reforms, but a complete overhaul of this agency from the ground up. Fire christin home fire, any of the agents who have been hired in the last year, who haven't had proper vetting,
who haven't had proper training. Make sure there are strict use of force protocols and actual ramifications if those are violated, end roving patrols period reassert our constitutional rights to our homes not being entered without a judicial warrant. Make sure there's training, and there's vetting. I mean, all of that. You have to rebuild it completely, and the Senate has the power to do that right now. I know the criticism from my opponent that you're talking about it sounds
nice to yell slogans. It does, but Democrats don't have the power right now. Democrats don't control the Congress, Democrats don't control the Senate. Democrats don't control the presidency. The leverage that they have, and this is where experience as a legislator matters, is in the budget, and you got to use that budget to extract every change that we need so that this agency does what it's supposed to do, which is immigrations and customs enforcement, not terrorizing our communities.
Do you also think, and this is a real question for Democrats for winning in the twenty twenty eight cycle, one of the things we saw was that during primaries, candidates were pushed to take positions that might be more like our dream positions, but positions that if you're running in a purple state for the Senate against a senator who is not a complete lunatic, might be used against you later in the campaign.
I think that's right. I just fundamentally believe like rhetoric is nice and it makes you feel good, but we have to think about results. How do you actually make the change that you want to see? And you're right, especially on purple state. Alyssa. Slotkin barely won against this
same guy who's running again last cycle. So he comes into this race with universal name ID and mind you, he had been a congressman in Michigan years ago, so people already knew him and our party, Democrats, I mean to win, we have to acknowledge people do want safe communities, they want immigration laws enforce. We need steep overhaul of our immigration system to make sure that it's fair, that there are pathways to citizenship, that we can continue to
attract the best and brightest to this country. And we need secure borders. Michigan is a border state. A lot of people forget that, and what this agency is doing
is not law enforcement. It's not and they had the steepest increase of anything in our federal budget at the same moment where the Trump administration is slashing Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security snap benefits, saying we can't have any of these benefits, but we're going to allow secret police go and terrorize and you know, shoot and kill Americans with no consequences. Two of those things can be true simultaneously.
Now there are silver linings. There's a mayor here, the mayor of Sterling Heights, which is in Macomb County, deep red Trump country. He is a Republican turned independent, and he gave his state of the City address recently where he meants no words about Ice and said that Ice is making the job of law enforcement almost impossible and that world would he ever turn over any resident of his city too, in his words, those monsters.
And this is a Republican.
This is a Republican And so that has to be where we step in to recognize there is broad agreement across the aisle that what ICE is doing is not law enforcement and it's not its duty. But Democrats also have to recognize we need to step in and say, yes, we have to enforce our laws. We have to have safe communities, we have to have sensible immigration policies, we need to secure our border, and those things are not
at odds with each other. That is the only way you win a state like Michigan and build an actual coalition to govern.
This is a primary way. You have pushed back from the laugh I like the doctor, I've interviewed him. He's really great, but you know he's very ensconced he's a Bernie candidate, etc. And then you have pushed back from whoever Haley Stevens is for.
It is kind of amazing that you're doing.
So wow, isn't this not how it's supposed to be in a Democratic primary.
Well, I think it just the way you sort of frame that up, and I feel like national reporters watching this race, you know, this has been called the most fascinating primary in the country. In the future of the Democratic Party is going to depend on what happens in this race. That there is this like desire to put the three of us in a clear lane. That's just not how regular people think. I mean, there are people
here who voted for Rick Snyder and Gretchen Whitmer. There are people who voted for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trum. You do not register by party in Michigan. We have open primaries, so you walk into your polling place, you will get a ballot that has the Democratic primary, the Republican party. You pick a lane on the spot in which one I want to vote in. And Michiganers are
fiercely independent and like to make decisions for themselves. So my theory of the case was, let's reject the lanes and the Democratic Party needs to build the broadest coalition possible, and we need to pick up independence Republicans who are not mega Republicans because that is the only way we win here. That is how I won my first election. That's how I swung a district twenty points by picking up a lot of Mitt Romney Republicans who had never
voted for a Democrat before. That's how we flipped control of the entire state Senate in a purple state. That is the way forward. So I am really proud of my team for executing. I mean, we work our assets off on this campaign. We're doing more public events than anybody else, and it shows. We had an event out in Grand Rapids, which not always a Democratic stronghold and still isn't. It's trending blue, but it's Betsy Davos's hometown, and we had an event to announce state Senate majority
leader winning Brinks endorsing me. We held it at a brewery. There was a line around the block and there were people who told us they were waiting to get in, and eventually they had to go home because they just
couldn't get in. And that's that's a great sign. But that to me is people are looking for rational, reasonable, somebody who understands me and what I'm going through and who isn't so wed to like a political purity test of a lane, because that's not how you get shit done in a place like Michigan.
Thank you, Mallory, Thank you, Molly.
No. Rick Wilson, Hello Molly, it's that time.
It's that time.
Donald Trump has told Netflix to remove Susan Rice from its board or quote face the consequences, because nothing says democracy like picking on corporate boards.
Discuss.
Well, let's say this.
When Susan Rice came out and said, we're gonna have to have a period of like national reconciliation when all this is over, she is absolutely correct, and she put it about as mildly as possible, because mine involves tumbrels, pitchforks, torches and guillotines.
Hers is just like woll we got to talk this through.
But Donald Trump had an absolute hissy fit explosion. You know, nethinks very liberal must be destroyed because Susan Rice came out and spoke the truth. And I think this is one more of these examples where if Barack Obama had been mad at a Republican on a board somewhere instead something, imagine, Fox News would have a twenty four hour a day,
you know, authoritarian watch. And this is exactly the kind of fuckery that Trump is throwing out there to please his base and to keep his control over corporate America, which so far has been very effective.
Yeah, and again, Trump is an autocrat who has been winning and winning. And from Jeff Bezos to Mark Zuckerberg, the people who have sat at his inauguration, they have made this possible.
Donald Trump is a monster you created.
Hey.
Look, these guys have built a system, and they told us this system is perfectly good and legal and fine. It is the desirable system by which power is exercised in corporate America, by the White House, by the executive Okay, fine, that's great. Alex Karp from Pollenteer and Sam Altman from Open AI and all these other people that have been massive supporters of Donald Trump, when the jackboot is on the other foot, I don't want them to say a fucking word.
I'm sure they'll be totally cool. Oh yeah, thank you, see it soon.
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