The Real Reason Democrats Caved

Michelin star. I'm checking the veracity of that, and by checking it meaning I'm gonna go in and see if the Michelin start about food is working. Listen, people gotta make this topic. People gotta you know, it's hard out here, man. They might get their money and so I want to make sure I'm contributing in the community.

We even have questioned whether or not we should be telling y'all how many days are.

frankly by a lot of folks throughout this country. But there are other folks who have also been talked about as being losers, Republicans certainly government workers, the folks who lost out their snap benefits, so literally losing, and then all of the folks who would be covered by the Affordable Care Act, that is the whole of America also losing here, So I wanted to have a conversation with my colleagues about who they think the biggest loser is

of the government shut down. So, if we were doing a rapid round, really quick, what do y'all think, who is the biggest loser?

at school. That's what happens when you bring toddlers to your podcast platform.

control both the chambers. They control the House, in the upper chamber in the Senate, and so Democrats had for the first time some negotiating power. And so you know, the Kansas are the KFF. They have an analysis out about the average cost of what people are going to be paying for health care. It can go up to more than one thousand dollars for some people. So imagine for some people this might be an inconvenience, but if you have a life threatening illness and you're depending on this.

This is why I think we have to draw the distinction between structural violence, institutional violence, and physical violence. And right now all of these things are being rained down upon us by the federal government. So I don't want to dismiss the efforts of the Democrats and trying to hold the line for healthcare. Sadly though, I think they brought a knife to a gunfight. You know, they were too eager to capitulate, and they weren't really ready for this.

They could have had kids out there, like, get real live people out there. Get an eight year old standing in front of a camera saying, Donald Trump, I don't have anything to eat because you know, snap didn't come this month. Get somebody sick on camera saying, you know, I don't know if I'm going to be able to live beyond next year, to even vote in twenty twenty six because this president Donald Trump is threatening to take

away my health care. And I just I feel like they were not ready for the moment, and it is such a colossal disappointment to so many people because they ask us to fight every year, They ask us to show up and vote every year, and when it's time to show up for us, the rising majority, the base for Democrat voters, they don't do it. So I definitely understand the frustration all around, and appreciate and understand the frustration in your question.

the gland said we're prepared to fight. And I got to tell you, given the members of the Democratic Caucus and the US Senate, they ranged from everything from Republican light to the left of the left of the left, liberal socialists in the case of Bernie Sanders, who's an independent but caucuses with the Democrats. So the fact that the leader was able to hold together people who cannot

stomach a shutdown. I mean, there are members of the Democratic Caucus who have decried using the shutdown as a way to make up political point and would never have never before been in favor of it. Who Chuck Schumer got to stick with him for forty days. And I think the American people needed to see Democrats do something to show that they had a fight to them. And

I think in the moment that that happened. You saw a lot, You saw a lot of people stand up, speak out from everyday people who, quite frankly, I think inspired this shutdown. The people who were showing up at these protests on the streets, who were chasing down ice, trying to say, get out of our neighborhood, so on and so forth. I think they inspired much of what the members of the elected US Senate did so, and I think that they were successful in bringing a fight

number two. I'm not sure that the previous the elections of a week ago would have been as successful across the board for Democratic candidates as they were at every level of government, from dogcatcher to governor of the of a state. And not only did Democrats win in many of those places, and many of those places they thumped the Republicans. I mean rounded lapse races that were supposed to be too close to call or down to the last minute, got called an hour after the polls closed.

And in the cases of the two governors I'm sorry, the governor of New Jersey and of Virginia, they got double digit leads on their opponents when they were not expected to. I think that the shutdown the energy around. The pushback in the fight helped to inspire people to go to the wall and go to the mat for their elected leadership that they saw was going to the

mat for them. And I think, I think, I think, finally, I would say the ending of the fight was one that could have easily been anticipated by all of us. You took a caucus who is already reticent to use the shutdown as a political cudgel to move public policy. You had a caucus that did not appear fractured up until the point that they started to negotiate to open

the government again. Aside from that, none of us would have been able to name one Senator who was trying to shut the open the government up against the caucus's wishes. They pretty much stuck together until after the elections, when when when they when they couldn't stomach it anymore. But the reason why I say all of us could have predicted the end of this and quite the way that it ended, is one no one has ever extracted major public policy concessions from a shutdown, not Republicans and not

Democrats over our history. Two of the two party system. Democrats were always going to be the ones who could never stomach, a president using children, using the employment of federal workers, using withholding food to families as a weapon against their opponent. We never anticipated a president would be willing to go so far against the American people to prove his political point. But this president was, and we

know him to be almost diabolical and in formation. So when you compare the two Democrats were always gonna be the ones who had a heart for people. They were always going to be the ones who buckled under the pressure to not see people suffer. And if you're at a negotiating table, you'll choose to diabolical one as the one who will be the last to fold every single time. Could we have gotten more with longer? I do think that there could have been more extracted here, But but

I always felt it would end. I don't think they begin with an end in mind. I think they began with a fight in mind, and the end would reveal itself over time. And what they decided was after we thumped folks on election day, that presented the opportunity to make this a keystone issue going into the next year's elections, and it was there. It was their opportunity for an out. That's my guess I think.

The last shutdown that was thirty five days long, I believe was over whether or not we were going to pay for a border wall.

coming out saying that they're gonna soar. They want to make sure if people can survive, you know, a serious health crisis and just you know, engage in practices to prevent a crisis. But the reality of it is is they went and said we're going to hold the line. But they were also errant and I think lacking in compassion when they didn't consider who was on the front line. The people on the front line were those children. The

people on the front line were the TSA workers. And I'm not talking about the folks who make six figures or above in the federal government who said we want you to hold the line. I'm talking about the folks that are members of AFG right, the Medican American Federation of Government Employees, those who said we want you to reopen the government because we need our paychecks. And I'm just saying, when you don't consider the front line in holding the line, you are always going to lose because

who's fighting for you at that point? That is where I think the biggest failure was. And it tells us that many, not just not just the folks who are inn elected office, but we should expect this of our elected officials are still not clear about what it is going to take to adequately combat the enemy.

a snap mutual aid fund. We need to ensure that we have a fund for people to pull from if they're not getting their paychecks, for housing, for all of these other things. None of that was set up. They have campaign coffers, some of them where they could have afforded to make donations to nonprofits to keep these people going.

on the message surrounding healthcare. Republicans own all those healthcare premiums rising, There's not a fix for it. Those costs are going to go up, and Democrats own the issue of affordability. Because I see this White House acting a lot like the Joe Biden White House when it came to issues such as immigration and crime, where Joe Biden and I was guilty of this as well, simply wanted

it was. We would cite statistics when people were saying that they felt something, that they saw something safe, and we would be like, yeah, nah, but the crime rate, filing crime rate gone down x y z, and people were like, nah, that shit, I still don't feel safe. And so you see that, you see the Trump White House doing something similar with affordability. So Democrats are winning

those two issues. The problem that Angela eloquently and passionately hit on is that when we got out of the game, uh you know this week, when we shut the we we shut at the doors, we did so without a messaging apparatus. And so now you depressed your base, which was so excited, and now your base is like, what what what? What happened? Why nobody told us we were

going to do this. I mean, if you go out in front of a camera, or you go to a city and you're talking to people about there's too much pain in the streets, Democrats are going to be the adults in the room, and we're going to keep up this fight for health care, but we're going to reopen the government because this pain has gotten unbearable for our constituents. We're going to continue to fight. Then, maybe you don't have people out here who are struggling to comprehend the

reason why. I mean, I think the four of us get the reason why. We understand the intricacies. We understand the ups and downs and all arounds, and we can talk to folks, including United States senators and people like that to tell us what is going on. But for people who are working every day, who don't have time to scrow x all day long or on Instagram all day long, they just see that the government opened and

Democrats didn't say anything. And I think that that is indicative of a problem we've had since Barack Obama, which is even the good things that we do, we don't know how to message them. It's what I tell. What I tell Black folk call it time. If we don't tell our story, somebody else will, and we have to do a better job, particularly around this issue of sharing our story.

Mine included, y'all's included. But I disagree with you Andrew on this point about the excitement around the elections that we saw. I do not think that was necessarily excitement. I think those voters showed up more as a repudiation against Trump more than it was excitement about the Democrats fighting. I think it is comfortable to how black people have always maneuvered in this country, this misconception that so many people have about black folks. So were these Democratic loyalists,

which is not true. The majority of the country was voting in favor of harm reduction because I can't really think of a united front of Democrats where I've said, like, wow, like they are great job guys, like they are really kicking ass. And I don't know that a lot of people looked at the shutdown that way.

If something's coming at us. Every single day, and what that drove a lot of people to was resignation. I'll just back up. I'm just gonna take care of me, you know, get through my day. And when you see people start to form the formations of a front line, it starts to buck us up a little bit. I think it starts to get us, you know, our spine stiff. And he say, you know what, I'm going back out. I'm going back out, Send me in, send me in,

I'm going back out. So I think part of it there were candidates, there's the repudiation, but I don't separate the repudiation from a demonstrated effect of elected leaders going out there and saying, no, we're going to stop it. All stop, all the presses, everything stops until we get

what it is that we want. It would be crazy of us to think, and would be foolish of us to tell the American people that this campaign of the shutdown was going to result, and the Republicans who had voted over seventy times to repeal Obamacare deciding, Okay, this is it. People are hurting, especially the ones I don't care about, and so I'm going to change my position and now go back on my word and my vote of seventy plus times, and give these folks.

family because of what you're doing. I don't give a damn. Instead, a lot of people sat back and let them control the narrative and introduce stupid things like the Democratics shut down. There was not enough pushback, and it was too many echo chambers regurgitating things that were not accurate, not true, and so people are just sitting around like I don't know.

I mean, the data showed, the polling show that most people did describe lame to the Republicans, but I don't think people were ready to seize on that and take them.

replace Obamacare. They're trying to get to a point where they have trump Care. Trump Care will be HSA's health savings accounts where you're not going to be able to afford chemo or if you have any other life threatening emergency to cover it. Sure, it'll cover your check up, right, But one medical for like if your leg falls off, is not the solution. Yeah, shout out to one medical because I also use it.

it's very simple. People like winners, people like fighters. And I think both of you all are saying the same thing in different ways. I mean, you're just saying in the inverse way, because Tiffany's right. But what happened was those Trump voters were depressed on Tuesday. Last Tuesday. They didn't get what they were counting on. They just thought that everybody else was going to be persecuted. They just thought Trump was going to come in and shit on

everybody else. They didn't realize that he put them all in a toilet together, right, And so you had what, to your point, Tiffany, you had a depressed voting base on that side and a voting base that wasn't excited because they realized that Trump looked at them the same way he looks at us. And then to Andrews's point, you had people who believed whether or not it was it wasn't about them. And I think you're right about this.

It wasn't necessarily about the shutdown. What it was, though, was this movement of energy, and they were just happy to be a part of the fight. They were happy to be a part of energy, and they saw the other side beat down so much. I think sometimes politics is more simple than people give it credit.

not even participating in the process. And I think you saw and the way, the place you saw that more than anywhere was in Georgia, because not only did Democrats run up the score in every single county, but you saw Republican strongholds just not even come out. That level of depression, I believe is something that will be analyzed as well.

in what universe? Is he an alpha male? He has a mitch if ever we've seen one, I've never seen. He wouldn't bust a grape in a fruit fight like he There's nobody I know who would saying this dude is an alpha male. But they will take that and carry that message. They also have a habit of presenting something that is illogical, non factual, and then taking a legitimate point and presenting these two things to the audience like, okay, guys, have at it. What do you think. So it wasn't

that he was some genius communicator. It wasn't that he was so smart. I mean, if you just read the transcripts of some of his speech, if you just watch his debate performance, if you listen to things that he says, when you watch him on the global stage, he has a national and international embarrassment. So I don't think he has this charisma. I think what is so seductive to America and this makes it harder to beat. So I don't know how we beat this, and I don't want

to depress our audience and sound resign. But what is so seductive to the American people is the power of whiteness. So Trump might die, but trump Ism is alive and well because if you can be white, white adjacent, if you can abandon your people and get favor on their side of the divide, that will always appeal to low level, incurious people who are willing to cut their nose off to spite their face, even if it means they're going to hurt themselves if it hurts us, They're okay with that.

not only is he racist, but he used racism as currency. Yes, And what I mean by that for people who are listening is I remember I recall being in the studio one day when he was being interviewed by Jake Tapper and they were asking him to disavowed David Duke. It was a Sunday, and he was like, man, I don't even know who that is. But what was happening on Tuesday was Mississippi was voting in their Republican primary. Right, And so there was always this how do we use

this racism as politics? But there was also something else about Donald Trump that a lot of poor folk, a lot of poor white folk, a lot of people gravitated to one. He has this perception of wealth. He has this now he'dn't been bankrupt thirty seven million times, all this other stuff, it's this perception of wealth. He also gave off this perception of I'm a winner, right, He talked about it all the time. I'm a winner, You're a loser. I'm a winner, you're a loser. It's very,

very simplistic. But he also gave out this if I'm wealthy, I can teach you how to be wealthy. I'm strong, I can teach you how to be strong. And it was very simple messaging that resonated to those same people that came out and voted for him. I mean, eighty million people voted for this guy. Eighty million, and we have to wrestle with the why. I mean, I just think we can't discount the why of that. And it's not giving him props because I refuse to do that.

But what I am saying is, as a candidate, and something we even saw recently in this kind of pull and tug of snap and healthcare benefits, et cetera, is the why people voted for him also leads to the disappointment they're facing today.

He he he is, to use the term from from from from tiffany sort of incurious in all ways, right, he doesn't.

a world. But he also looks like he may have come from around the block, down the street, you know, across the track, and there's a relatability to that because the majority of them are that too, not just the majority are the our our recipients of food stamps, which I'm not shaming. I had him grown up as well, so I'm not shaming that. I'm simply saying, this is the guy who looks like he may have started from

the bottom. Now he's there, even though he started with a millionaire, a loon from his daddy and flushed that away and got mar You know, we know the story. However, he cannote it connotes something else when it's when it's when it's him, and you can't fake it. It is what it is, and it has electual electoral persuasion. What may distance them at some point is if their ship gets bad enough where they have to reach up, look

up for an alternative. But it hadn't the heat ain't come strong enough yet, it's still hasn't come.

called it obamacare because we were celebrating. They called it obamacare because they're racist, Like it's just that simple, and so Angela, can.

Jesus New York. Jeffries has said this is non partisan. This is non partisan, of.

in the Senate that was voted down. They had the one thing that Democrats have been asking for for the last two weeks is at least this messaging vote so they get Republicans on the record, just so we're really clear and we're not ever accused the lines to the American people. That has been the play for two weeks.

That has been the play for two weeks. They were willing to open the government back up with at least eight Democrats in the Senate for a messaging vote, and that still wouldn't have been a win for the American people. Mike Johnson, when challenged on Jake Tapper Show yesterday, says that he's not willing to commit to considering right these subsidies again, even after the House reconsiders this. It's not

clean but their version of a clean continuing resolution. He's not committing to considering a bill that would reinstate these healthcare subsidies.

are needed to drive down costs. Andrews Andrew, and that amendment failed across party lines. We didn't get one Republican. But and Andrew was right. And again I feel like I'm like learning how to mediate you guys, because Andrew was right, and and Angela was right too, Like it was it was. It's politically it's a no win issue, and we know that for every reason that Andrew said. But politically, you know, in terms of political constituencies, it's

a win win issue. You're never going to get them to change on this, however, because the issue is so transcendent. It talked to the end. Democrats won on changing the political conversation very rarely. I mean, you got to remember a year ago, we were trying to figure out what bathrooms people could use. We were talking about we were talking we were, they were but it was but it was it was monopolizing, right. You remember you had that, you had the ad, you had that, they ran ads

on it. I mean that was an ad leading up to the election. We were This was the conversation that was being had, right, and now the conversation in the prison whereby people are evaluating their elected officials has It's hard to do it, but they were able to parallel park a submarine. They were able to literally shift the political discourse and conversation to things that are substance of that we went on, like health care. I just think that's that is the win, and I think that we

just have to we have to take that. Now. The question is in like always, where do we go from here? I mean, that's that is the question that I struggle with all the time. It gives me, It makes my anxiety rage because.

pretty much halts. That's what's on the ballot in the in the mid terms, and unfortunately, my level of expect but my level of what I expect the mcare it is like at the body.

me do some context for the people. So I, in all likelihood, I would have voted to reopen government on the condition, on the condition that we message around the why, because I am in the streets enough to see the pain that this shut down is causing, and I've seen it at the airports, and I know people aren't getting paid and that gives me consternation. But the only way that I wouldn't have done it in the middle of

the night. The only way I would have done it is if I would have been able to either myself clearly articulate the why, or as a caucus we clearly articulate the why. That would be the only way that I would do it. I would have.

the most vulnerable eight Republicans. I could the most vulnerable in the US Senate to go to places where you know, maybe there were split tickets, right they voted a Democratic governor, maybe a Republican president, whatever, But those eight seats would have those senators would have been under duress. Their communities would have responded so much because we would have been dialing ads into there. We would have had a volunteer operation that was making calls into homes.

same five hundred people. I wouldn't have known. It would have felt like the whole world had collapsed on my shoulders. And it would have it would have would it would have cost me all my loyalties to make sure that what I was in line for was to be on the right side of this issue. And I think from a strategic standpoint that may have been the failure is you ain't you know how we say, you're on television, You're not talking to the person I'm right directly across

from talking to people who are through that lens. That's what we're not talking to our colleagues up here. Yes, the negotiation requires an action from them, but we're talking past them. We are talking to the American people, and we're talking to these people in these eight particular places that their folks are right now trying to do a shuck and drive. They're trying to steal, they're you know, they're taking your livelihood away right now in public daylight,

and we got to go get them. And I would have sick them on them, right as they said with Doug, sick, sick them, sick the people on them. And I think they failed by trying to talk to all of them. They failed to talk to eight of them. And that's what we needed.

never right. Know, nobody knows, Okay, everybody. We're gonna get to that listener question later on in this episode. But right now it is our pleasure and privilege to welcome to Native lampod Ari Berman, an incredible journalist and author, to talk to us about Donald Trump rigging the twenty six elections and perhaps the presidential as well.

be worried about a return trip. But I think what I learned from twenty twenty and just the crazy attempt to try to steal the election was we have to take these people seriously. I think a lot of people thought when they started throwing on all these schemes that like Originally they were joking and it wasn't going to happen,

and then momentum just started building. And so when they say they're going to do these kind of things, when they say they're going to seize voting machines, or they're going to put ice at the polls, or they're going to declare a national emergency over elections to give Trump more power, I think we have to take all of these things seriously. And what's different about Trump's second term compared to his first term is he has figured out how to use the full power of the federal government

to his advantage. And they're much more open about what their plan is. They're not trying to hide their authoritarianism anymore. It's right out in the open, and they're basically saying, we know we're going to lose this election if we don't rig it in our favor. That's why he's going all out to jerry Mander and doing all these other things. So I think the plan is really as opposed to being done in the shadows, it's really out in the open in terms of what they're planning to do. Now,

the question is is it going to work? And are people going to be able to stop it.

of staff. Now this was federal gardens. Of course, there are prosecutors in Nevada, Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona, and I think another state I can't remember off the top of my head. So he can't pardon those state selections. But I don't think enough people really understand the concept of how he's consolidated power to the executive branch. In March of this year, he issued an executive order that essentially there are three key pieces to this that I find very concerning, and

I want to get your thoughts on them. The three components. First, there's this show your papers type initiative where you would have to show a passport or something similar to show that you're registered to vote using a federal voter registration form.

He's calling for DOZE, this made up department and the Department of Homeland Security, led by the puppy killer Christy Nome, to obtain state voter files and other records kept by election officials. That's including voterless maintenance records. This is a very frightening thing. Now, you remember what happened when they gave DOZE access to the NROLB, the National Relations Board system. We immediately saw Russian IP addresses making several attempts to

use to access that database. So putting this in the hands of Elon Musk is very scary. So when you look at the collection of what he's done already. I'm curious your thoughts on how we as regular people, what we should be doing to combat that, and what do you think the next steps are in this very Zirphonian, scary process.

here too. So the pardons aren't just backwards looking, which I think that's how it's been reported. They're forward looking as well. They're trying to send a signal to all the insurrectionists who now are off the hook, basically absent state courts, that they can do the same kind of thing in twenty twenty six or twenty twenty eight without any kind of accountability. Now again, we'll see if that holds up. But that's clearly why he's doing it now, to send a signal that this kind of behavior can

happen in future elections. Now on to your points about the executive order. These were all really good points. First off, on proof of citizenship to register to vote, this is a real misconception because people say, oh, it's just voter ID. It's not voter ID. People carry around their driver's license

with them most places. People do not carry a passport or a birth certificate around with them when they register to vote in their day to day lives, and a lot of people don't have those documents to begin with. And if you don't have those documents, like a birth certificate, it can be very difficult, if not impossible, to obtain them.

And so you guys know very well there are people that were born in the Jim Crow South, couldn't go to a hospital, never got a birth certificate they could use in the kind of functional way we think about it. So it's much more draconian than voter i D. A lot more people don't have, and a lot more people will fall through the cracks if it's required. The good news is that part of the law at least has

been blocked by a federal court. Now they're still going to appeal it, but for now it's blocked in court. The second thing is what you said about the EAC, which is kind of this obscure body that was created after the two thousand election fiasco in Florida to try to help stay It's run their elections more smoothly. It's not really functioning that way. And you mentioned the voting machines.

This is really important. Basically, what Trump said in his executive order from March was that essentially all the current voting machines are not certified anymore, and that they need to be certified based on technology that doesn't actually exist

on the market right now. And this is important because this could be a pretext to Trump doing things like you wanted to do in twenty twenty, seizing the voting machines, saying the elections were rigged, saying that we didn't vote on proper voting machines and therefore we have to do X,

Y and Z to try to overturn the election. At the same time that people in his administration, the Justice Department are going around asking states, can we access your voting equipment From twenty twenty, which is totally unprecedented for anyone from the federal government trying to do. Remind me what the third question.

it that. And now they're basically trying to do the same thing through the Justice Department, but it's getting far less attention. So they're trying to get voter data from all fifty states so they can run them through these immigration databases that are not designed for this purpose, so

they can get a lot of false matches. In basics, say, we have found the fraud, we have found the non citizen voting that Trump said exists, and therefore we can call on states to enact of citizenship laws, we can remove people from the roles, we can file new lawsuits, all of those things. And this is happening, unlike in Trump's first term, very much under the radar. The Justice Department's already sued eight states, seven of which are run by Democrats, trying to get this kind of data.

You know, one of the things that I've said on this show when we talked about elections being stolen that kind of thing was I've always fallen back on or relied on the fact that, you know, our elections are probably one of the most decentralized structures of structure in the United States, meaning the power exists at almost such a local level, from your county supervisors of elections, you know, up through the ranks of the you know, and through

the states. And that the law I believe should come down on the side of the states every single time when when in contradiction with the federal government over the way in which it runs its elections. That being said, I'm curious if the president is this time able because he has figured out ways and is manipulating the powers of the presidency, declaring emergencies and so on and so forth, and is able to secure voting equipment, uh from from

from states. For instance, we know he wanted to direct the military to go in and seize the actual voting machines and and ballots. I'm if you were forecasting out assuming he were able to successfully uh be allowed to seize the voting equipment or voting data. Those are two separate voting equipment very specifically, or ballots from states. Are there states that you would list as sort of flag, you know, burning red, as in if they were able to corrupt this system, that's the you know, that's the

kid in kaboodle. Are the states that ought to be perking up thinking about and I'm very specifically thinking about states that might go D or R or are reliably D that may or may not have democratic secretives the states or democratic governors defend back against that kind of federal attack.

your right to vote, and did so in a very intimidating way. So I think that you're right that Trump is going to run into a lot of resistance in terms of his plan to try to just take over the election system, because there's built in protections. The courts have said that he doesn't have the power to tell Congress and the states how to run their elections. There are election officials in both parties that have pushed back

against these efforts. As far as I'm aware, only two states so far, Wyoming in Indiana, have willingly given their voter files to the Justice Department. So it's a nerving that that's happened, But it hasn't been like all of the red states have come forward and say, we want to do this.

are the jerrymandering right. When he wanted states to start jerrymandering. Republicans didn't actually want to do it. Texas Republicans didn't want to do it. Missouri republicans didn't want to do it. North Carolina Republicans may have wanted to do it a little bit more. But the point is is that eventually they complied. And so the question is are they going to comply in the same kind of way or will

this be beyond the pale. The reason for Hope Andrew is that they may say, if we do it now, it's going to set a precedent, and we may not want this being weaponized against us in the other direction.

they want to save their own ass. And so if they start to see that becoming a reality, they may say, we're not going to go along with some of the more extreme things that he's trying to.

didn't put this up. It just so happens to be while we're in a government shut down, And I think what is disheartening is the way in which they move. They will spread certain messages to their base, but they

don't move necessarily in great transparency. And so when I think back to your piece and some of the different flags that you kind of raised that would be the ways that Donald Trump would rig a midterm election in his and the administration and the people who support him, the folks who could have told him, no, we're not going to do this, but fold him. Every time we're talking about folding to day. It's not just Democrats who follow y'all right, These Republicans haven't launched much of an

opposition to stay Donald Trump's authoritarianism. So when you talk about the ways in which he's using ice in federal law enforcement to flood the streets, the ways in which they would undermine the integrity of elections, the ways in which they've weaponized the Department of Justice against his political opponents, even naming Barack Obama as of late, I think he would be probably not able to be prosecuted given the criminal immunity now that the Supreme Court has.

hypothetical questions, what could the president do? These hypotheticals became much less hypothetical over time when Trumps started sending the National Guard to places not just California, but started sending them to DC and Chicago and other places, and basically started focusing only on democratic cities and urban areas in terms of where he would send troops. Then when the Supreme Court said ice could engage in racial profiling, and then you had people like Steve benn And say we're

going to have ice at the polls. So these kind of things are not theoretical anymore. And it's very possible, if not likely, you're going to have the military engage in some kind of election activity that has never happened before in American history. That you could have ice raids in democratic neighborhoods, you could have ice at the polls. I'm not saying any of the stuff will be legal, but I think they're going to try to explore these

kind of things. They were going to try to say, for example, that they want to see the voting machines. The last part of my piece was about just refusing to swear in people all together. What we saw that happen too. I mean, we've never seen a situation where someone has had to sit this long to be sworn in, and people saying, why do they care? Are they just worried about the Epstein files? And to me, it wasn't

just about Epstein. It was about the fact that they are laying the groundwork for if the House is contested, if it's within a seat or two, for example, and there is a member from California or another state where Trump alleges fraud, they're going to try to say, we don't have to sit this person so that Mike Johnson

can remain Speaker of the House. Now, again, we don't know if they're going to get away with it, but they're laying out the groundwork to do so right now, and so all of these things that might have been hypotheticals, they're becoming very real. And I think that's why we all need to really pay attention to what's going on as it happens in real time.

to activate them. And that's what That's what I said earlier, which is that as Trump becomes more unpopular, he will become more authoritarian, but his authoritarianism will be easier to defeat because he's more unpopular. So I do think that the elections Tuesday send a signal that Trump can be defeated, that Trump is can be defeated. I also think it sends a signal that there were some problematic aspects to the voting. Bomb threats called into polling places, for example,

but by and large voting went smoothly. And so I think that can be something that you can And I think it goes back to the message and at the protests around the country, which is that the president doesn't have the power of a king, that he might want to do all of these things, but that he doesn't actually have the power to do so, and that the way to prevent him from doing these kind of things

is to check his power. So I would argue it's going to be much harder for Trump to try to steal the election in twenty twenty eight, either for himself or forever his successor might be. If there's a democratic house, then if there isn't right because if Trump is constantly looking over his shoulder, if he knows that there's some level of accountability coming, then he's going to be less likely to try to pull off these schemes than if

the government stacked with his enablers. But I also think Bakari, I mean, to just ignore it doesn't seem like the answer either, because if he's going to do these things regardless, then I feel like you have an obligation to fight him.

And you look at the jerrymanderin battles for example. I mean, Democrats could have just said, like the we're like the elect we're completely screwed, Like they're just going to go state by state by state and gerrymander and that's what they did initially, and then California said, no, no, we're gonna come up with something creative to try to check them. And then once California came up with something creative, Virginia started saying, well, we're going to come up with something

creative too to try to do something about it. And now the gerrymandering wars, in which the GOP won the first three or four battles, is looking much more like a draw than an outright victory potentially. And so I think that's the example of how you can take something that ultimately is scary to people, can demobilize people, but then use it to try to activate them to realize that the right to vote is still worth fighting for.

end up walking into. And when they're stunned or they're shock they tend to recess, not go headstrong through it, and so I think we talk about it as often, as frequently and as empowering as we can so to prevent people from showing up at a poll and seeing the National Guard and deciding, oh no, back up, reverse, I'm out of here. I don't know what this about,

but I'm leaving. It's best we tell them what to expect so they persist, hopefully in charge right through it and full command of what their rights are to vote and to win. I am sorry, Angela, you got it.

do you communicate that to them? It's not about the people who agitate each other talking because two agitated people are never gonna are. It just doesn't work. I send you so much love because that was just tough and hard.

that this sparked in so many spaces. My dentist was like a really close friend of mine, Doctor Richard Forgore was telling me that people were in his chair telling him he didn't they didn't know that we even knew each other talking to him about the converse. So no matter where you fall on, whichever side of the divide, I really appreciate everybody tuning in and listening, and I still maintain my thoughts. Like I said, my thoughts don't

slay in the wind of public opinion. The first time that I respond to something based on public opinion, I'm a slave to those thoughts, and it would, you know, take away the integrity I have. I do my thinking about a thing before I say it, So I am glad that other people had so many strong thoughts about it, and I hope the conversations continue.

think encourages people to go a different way. Whatever but I just I really I don't like that it makes it hard for me to respond to the substance of the question. When I hear and at hominem attack, I try very very hard not to engage in those I will say that one thing I value very much about our show, my conversations with my brother Lenard, is I am stretched often to reconsider my position to think through things.

To Tip's point, I don't think it means I'm blown by public opinion or swayed by public opinion, but I do think hearing different perspectives informs my opinion.

very accurate. Do you like, is there a line where it's like, it's okay for these people who are on this side of the divide where you can say that, or do you feel like, well, I'm not gonna refer to Clarence Thomas that way anymore, which I hope you always do, because I think I don't think it's name calling. I think sometimes it's an accurate description.

didn't really care what nobody was talking about. I just wanted to make sure that I honored my family and lifted up those people who sometimes don't get the credit they deserve in space as they deserve it.

this show we created a platform for it. But you know, this is a big tent party and one big enough where the voices of people who were very directly affected by US foreign policy wanted to make you know, wanted to make their opinions and depressions known to a larger audience. And the DNC would have created that. But I think, you know, look, this is gonna be a hard one for her to shape because very few people are willing to accept that when you're that adjacent to power, you

have your own power. But then you are that adjacent as a as A as A as A as a listening and sharing and thinking partners to the president and the US policy. It did not translate that there was anything other than support for the the Nehu regime and and and just the rot of death that has encircled that entire region.

a rally, a Trump rally in New York. Well, now we can't believe all these other things that are way far beyond a rally. And if you don't understand the distinction between a Donald Trump presidency and a Kamala Harris presidency, I don't know what to tell you.

our leaders to say, yes, we demand more. And so if you're bombing people who look like me, if you're doing this people who don't look like me, I want you to do everything possible to stop it, even if that means disrupting norms. So I don't have smoke for people who feel that level of pain, for dying children, dying men, dying women, that it is clearly an ethnic cleaning, while some people were walking around with a shoulder shrug

an indifference. I just I understand that level of humanity from folks.

how vastly different they would be on these policies. The fact that Donald Trump has given cover to a war criminal in that Yahoo's currently under like in a corruption trial like this is not Those are not her people, and she made that very Some.

try to. If I could force people to have to care about the range of it, I would, but we can't. And just because we can't doesn't make necessarily their motivation for going to vote or not to vote the wrong with the right one.

not protesting them? They're protesting someone who is essentially an ally and honestly, I hope she doesn't mind me sharing this was like, I want to have a roundtable discussion with some folks who are Palestinian leaders in this space so I can understand where else I can may be able to lend my influence.

I'm experiencing. So a lot of times when we've organized protests within our own movement circles, within our own community, we go to places where we think, one, there is care, you might see me as human just like you, And then two I expect more, and so I want to say that and now we can get to the then happens after. But I think people make those choices very consciously, like this is where we're targeting. I used to I remember I told you when I first got mayor and

they protested me. I was like, I was just watch all at the problem, bring food to you at night. This is that a third Well, now occupy a different space. Now you're the mayor and you represent a system, and that system is not gone just because you're here. It's it's continuing to thrive. So now it's on you. And I know you see me. I know you have love for me, and I know you care, and that's why

I'm here demanding more. Whether that's the right tact, I don't know, or rather I don't think it should be the only exclusive tact. I think you put heat on everybody. But I do know why people make those choices, and its largely because you're going to a target who you think will see your humanity, who cares. And then two to say I expect more, well, I aree.

se Cup and Now you Know with Noah Dibasso. Be sure to give those a follow, and don't forget to follow us too on social media and subscribe to our text or email list on Native landpod dot com. We are Angela Ride, Tiffany Crost, Andrew Gillim and Bacari Sellers. Welcome home, y'allrease order.