¶ Abdul El-Sayed joins the Chuck ToddCast
Well as many of my listeners. Note, if I were running a newsroom, a national newsroom, and said I needed to open a bureau on the midterms and have a bureau that was just focused on how the midterms were going to go, what were the most important races, I would be in one state and one state only, and it is the state of Michigan. Whether it's the governor's race, the senate race. I think a lot of our political confrontations, whether it's left and right, progressive, centrist, a fight on
the right between the right, independence, you name it. Michigan's got it all. So you know I'm going to over index on all things Michigan. Joining me today is one of the candidates in the senate race. It is a candidate. Then in my conversation with Ron Fournier, who is a Michigan native, he was screaming from the rooftops, don't overlook this candidate. The candidate's name is Abdul Lsi ed he joins me. Now, Abdul, nice to meet you virtually here and welcome to the podcast, Chuck.
It is a privilege, in an honor to be with you. Grateful to you, and also if you had that Bureau in Michigan, you would experience the greatest fall that America has to offer, not just because you get to watch my Wolverines, yeah play in the Big House from time to time. But you know, y'all in Miami don't have a bad team either.
No, it's the it's the you know, it's U M versus you of M. As as I've learned over the years, you've run for office before. But and look, your people may not know your background a physician, You're an epidemiologist, You've worked in public health, you've worked in academia. And I guess I'm going to say this. Look, you're you know, you're you're in your early forties. Why a career in
¶ What made you choose politics when your background is medicine?
politics now?
Now?
And I say career? You know, let's let you've run twice, so the career is? Why politics? Now? Why give me your your origin story as to what got you in to this side of the arena.
Yeah, you know, I don't think of it as a career per se.
I grew up wanting to be a doctor, and that's in large part because of my own experiences growing up. My folks immigrated to this country from Egypt, and I was raised by my father who's an Egyptian immigrant, and my stepmom, Jackie, who's a daughter of the American Revolution from the middle of the state of Michigan. And I would get, you know, sent off to Egypt often in the summers, where I'd hang out with my grandmother.
Why is this most intelligent person I ever met, who never got to go to school.
She raised six kids of eight to whom she gave birth to, having died before the age of one. I would go fifteen hours and in that time I am the language for it then, but I would travel about ten years difference in life expectancy. I grew up just outside of the city Detroit. I didn't have to go fifteen hours. I could go fifteen minutes into the city and travel the same ten year life expectancy gap. And
I wanted to do something about that. Growing up, my all my mentors always told me, someday you're going to run for office. I was like, that's nuts. I don't know if you all have seen my name, Abdulah is just like a truncated version of my whole first name, which has got sounds in it that come out.
Of parts of people's throats.
They don't know they have so like that's off limits for me, like so much so that when I graduated from Michigan in two thousand and seven, I was the senior speaker alongside President Bill Clinton, and he comes up to me after the speech. He's like, look, you got a gift for communicating. Maybe he'll run for office a limits or president. I don't if you saw my name, but like there are eleven letters in my name, and that's just the first.
Have you met Barack Ussain Obama? Yes, A lot of people, including this guy here, who thought, ooh, Hussein, is that
¶ The challenge of running for office with a foreign name
going to be an electable I was wondering if he could get elected to the Senate. So I think he disproved this. No, So that's exactly it. This was seven in o way.
I got to watch him run for and win the presidency, and so you know, I went on had my career in medicine, only to realize that the things that were making people sick had a lot to do with access to some very basic things. Do you get to drink clean water, breathe clean air, A forge your groceries, which led me to career in public health. I got to rebuild Detroit's health department, got to lead Wayne County's Department
of Health Human Veterans Services. Across my work, we did everything from put glasses on tens of thousands of kids' faces, take on some of the biggest corporate ruters in our state, erase upwards of seven hundred million dollars in medical debt for three hundred thousand people, and over and over again, you start to come up against the hard issues of politics, the decisions that policymakers make that too often put the kinds of kids that I was trying to serve behind.
And so for me, a lot of this work is about trying to lead in politics that centers the people that we say we care the most about, which is
¶ Centering politics around improving the world for children
our children. It doesn't matter who their parents are, what they do for work, what side of the tracks they grew up on. I think we want in America where every single kid has the best shot at a dignified life,
And for me, that's personal right. I got to have these amazing opportunities that kids growing up just fifteen minutes away from me did not get to have, and I think America would be a better place if every kid got those same opportunities, and that we build our government around them, And so for me, this run for office is about trying to have the conversation that I think sits at the core of politics, who are we and who do we want to be around centering those folks
in the kind of public policy that would dignify them.
Look, I mean, I think it's pretty clear healthcare depends on your status, right how good your healthcare is, if you've got the ability to find specialists, if you've got the and sometimes that's sometimes it's financial, sometimes it's time, it's it's it's location, it's geography, it's all of these things.
¶ Disparities in access to health care based on money and connections
So obviously to me, I now understand why you're a Medicare for All persons, right, which is that this is about You've got to rip off the class issue when it comes to healthcare, because right now, your health outcome depends on your status on the economic ladder almost more so than it does race or gender. Is that is that fair? Yeah?
And Chuck, I'll just you know, take it a step further.
You and I might have the same insurance and I just know enough people that I could get access to different.
Right, you make the right phone call, who know the right person? Look, I experienced this firsthand. My dad was on the liver transparent list and couldn't get on the list. And it turns out and I remember that same year when he was on it, and this is way back in the late eighties early nineties, like Mickey Mannel got three livers or two livers, if I'm not mistaken, and it was like, well, you know his doctor, and then you learn it's everybody's on the same list. But does
your doctor know how to word it correctly? Sometimes it's not even the right call, it's do you know how to word it in such a way that it gets you higher on the list, right?
And that issue, Chuck, is exactly it, right, Like we're talking about differences at the elite opportunities of having health insurance in the first place, but the reality of it is that there are a lot of people who don't have health insurance at all, a lot of folks who have second class or third class healthcare citizenship through something like Medicaid kind.
Of stuff basically, And that's it, you know, right, Yeah, And.
Then even if you have private insurance, experience of that
¶ Health insurance is getting worse despite rising cost
is getting worse and worse. I mean the deductible, the median and deductible, right, which is the money you pay to get access to the healthcare you already thought you paid for in the quote unquote premium every two weeks or four weeks. That median deductible for a family of four is about four thousand dollars. So you're doing the math right. That average family of four makes about eighty
thousand dollars. That means they are forgoing a paycheck to get access to the health insurance that every paycheck has been garnished to pay for in the first place. That's if you have private health insurance. I mean, the system is so broken and you ask yourself why, Well, it's because everyone's got to get paid, right. The health insurance company gets paid, the hospitals get paid, the pharmaceutical or the medical device.
Companies get paid.
And I just think that in America, we ought to have a system where getting paid isn't the operative goal.
It's that you get health care to the patient who needs it.
And I trained as a doctor to practice in a system where I could take care of patients, not get huge corporations paid.
And we don't have to live this way. But it's getting worse and worse and harder and harder.
Deal with this Look, I'm it's a straw man argument. I'm not saying I ascribe to this argument. But you've been to medical school. You know the cost of medical school. That there's this belief that because it costs so much
¶ Insurers and hospital CEOs collude to raise prices
money to become a doctor, therefore doctors should expect to make a lot of money.
And you know, if it was the doctor's pay that was the issue, we could have that conversation. That's not where the inflation in healthcare is. In fact, if you were to actually adjust a physician's pay for inflation between now in the nineteen nineties, it would be as if physicians took a collective thirty five percent pay cut. So
it's not that physicians are getting paid so much. It's that health insurers and hospitals have colluded in a system where they can mutually gatekeep for each other to make sure that they extract more and more from us and more and more of the value in healthcare. So I don't want to Folks leave this conversation thinking, well, healthcare so expensive because those doctors get paid so much.
That's just not what's happening.
It's that those health insurance CEOs get paid so much. It's that those hospital CEOs get paid so much. It's that you have a system of mergers and acquisitions in healthcare that empower all of them to suppress people's wages.
Just this weekend was at a nurse's strike in Flint, right, because they're not able to actually negotiate with their hospital because they're just so few players in town that if you're a nurse, you kind of got to work for one of two different corporations who collude together to suppress wages. It's the way that these really, really big players have come together.
And this is the thing, Chuck is.
I think people understand that, whether it's healthcare, or the price of keeping the lights on your utilities, or it's the price of a plane ticket, that you've got so few players, huge corporations that have been able to ineffect use their money to corrupt our political system to make sure that they end up getting paid more and you have to pay more for the things you buy from them, and you end up getting paid less for the work that.
You have to do for them. That is the essential challenge of our lis.
Some healthcare just happens to be the most obvious, most blatant, and frankly most corrupting and soddening version of all of it.
Let me throw another strong man argument about the cost of healthcare with from the angle of the pharmaceutical companies that hey, it costs a lot of money to try
¶ What should be the cost expectation for pharmaceuticals?
to bring good prescription drugs to market. Therefore, there's a lot of drugs that fail and they've got to eat those costs. So when they have one that succeeds, it's got to pay for all the failures as well. What's reasonable? What should be what should be the expectation on that part of the cost of healthcare, because that's a contributor.
Yeah, and Chuck, I'd say that's a fair argument.
If the marketing budget at almost every fortune five hundred pharmaceutical company wasn't larger than the research and development budget, so you know, you know, fewer glossy adds on TV, more research and development, then maybe I could like squint and see the point. But the hard part is that in this country we pay exorbitantly more for pharmaceuticals than other countries, and the difference is that, frankly, our government is barred in most cases from being able to negotiate
those prices downward. And if you look at how much their CEOs make, how much their c suite makes, how much they return in stock buybox. I worry right that too often the ways that these corporations work is about trying to play finance games around having to sell you pharmaceuticals that you don't have a choice about where you get them. And of course, you know, we can nerd out here a little bit, right, but we know that pharmaceuticals are right the classic, as we say, inelastic demand curve.
That's a fancy economics way for saying there are things you kind of have to buy when you need them, right. So unfortunately, they've always played this game where they just raise their prices because they can, because you're going to
¶ Pharma companies raise prices because they can
buy those medications anyway, because it's literally life and death captive. And so, you know, it's a challenging situation that we have in this country because the fact that healthcare has become so expensive for so many people has actually undermined
trust in medicine and public health or at large. It's the reason that the likes of an RFK junior can go light all of HHS on fire, because folks know that they couldn't get the medications they needed in the context of disease they knew they had, and then all of a sudden, we're inventing new vaccines for a disease that didn't.
Exist a year ago, and we're saying, here, take these for free.
And they're like, look, I know I need insulin, but nobody's ever come up to me and be like, here, take the insulin for free, right, And so it's kind of weird to me that you all don't give me the drugs for the diseases I know I have, when all of a sudden, you're giving me the vaccine for a disease I don't yet have that didn't exist a year ago. And it's the way that we've kept healthcare that people know they need out of their hands because
the prices are so expensive. That has really undercut the knees out of the public health arguments that folks like
¶ RFK Jr. shouldn't be anywhere near healthcare
me have been making for a very long time.
And it's sad to watch a guy like RFK.
Junior, who shouldn't have his hands on, frankly, anything having to do with science and health in this country now come and use that very premise to destroy so much of what's so many many.
People have tried to build.
Actually broaden that issue out a little bit in this respect, which is you were practicing medicine sort of at the arguably at the beginning stages of when doctor Internet would intervene. Right, your patient would come in and say, hey, I read this, doctor, what can you tell me about this? Right? And now, of course, doctor Internet is a gigantic problem, and it's so much bigger, and it's created this misinformation is sort
of now it's becoming public policy and public health. But when did you first start to notice that this was that essentially, and I think you know what I mean when I say doctor Internet, right, where this was really starting to get into the way of healthcare.
Yeah, So I want to be clear, I took my
¶ The impact of the internet on public health
career right as soon as I graduated med school into public health, so I didn't practice day to day. I'll tell you though, that the impact of the Internet, frankly, the impact of algorithmic amplification of of health information, I think, really started to take hold in the early twenty tents.
I mean, you had the advent of Facebook.
I remember being one of the first ten thousand people on Facebook when it came to my university my freshman year, right. And then that when I graduated college, went mobile on the new invention called the iPhone, and I think at that point the Internet company started to realize that they could sustain your attention on that device by feeding you things they knew would create some sort of emotional response.
And health information is one of those things, because of course, you want to keep yourself super healthy, and you know, it's kind of a broken system, and all of the exorbitant ways it's broken can wow and astound, and so this was bound to go viral on the internet when I think about you know, I graduated in med school in twenty fourteen, and I remember having conversations with patients whose care I was involved in as a medical student, and already they'd say, well, I googled my symptoms and
here's what I found. But when I talked to my call in practice, they tell me that the real like, the moment that all of this started to really really take off, was in the early twenty twenties during the pandemic, right, And that was a moment where folks were really paying attention to health and healthcare because it was in the news.
Folks felt like they had zero control over their circumstances, and that the powers that be didn't give them the kind of confidence that they wanted to be able to have the kind of control that they needed in this really scary moment. And I think it opened Pandora's box in a way where you had a profound platforming of folks like RFK Junior in ways that they hadn't had in the past.
So talk to me about some ways to look this is a this is a crisis. I think it's a crisis.
¶ The crisis Kennedy is creating at HHS and CDC
I'm shocked that there aren't more people alarmed at what's happening at the CDC. When I say more people inside the Republican Party sort of whatever's left of the non Trump wing of the party, I mean, this is a national security problem. This is a risk to our economy, let alone an actual risks to both young and old. Right that the ones that are most likely to fall victim to a virus or a disease that we had once IRAQ hated are those with weaker immune systems again,
children or elderly. And you've been in the space of public health, you saw the distrust grow. Do you have good best practices that you think would help restore trust if you were put in charge of the CDC tomorrow. You know, you would have to work on trying to
¶ How can we restore trust in public health authorities?
build trust. What does that look like? What are some good what are some good ideas that you've put into practice that that has helped at least in one on one conversation.
Yeah, I'll say a couple of things. Number one. You know, it's funny.
I have two terminal degrees in health. I graduated in medical school. I did a PhD in public health. And if I walk up to people and say, well, as a double doctorate your doctor, doctor play to you, they consider and call you doctor doctor.
Yeah, but that's actually not the play.
Most often it's like, hey, look, I'm a father of a seven year old and a two year old. I also happen to have a medical degree in a PhD in public health, and I've worked as a health commissioner. But as a father, let me tell you what I was so excited to do when my kids turned one.
Who's give them these vaccines? Why?
Because I've seen what it looks like when somebody gets measles. I know what it looks like to see a kid struggling to breathe because they got the flu. And I don't hesitate to get my kids vaccinated. Now you do you, But let me just tell you what I did with the things that I know. I think that's Number one. We need to communicate as people before we communicate as experts, because the.
Lead with doctor, doctor, They're literally not going to listen to you, Right, that's what you're concerned.
Right. If I have to choose between doctor and dad, I'm going to pick dad every single time. Number Two, I think we need to recognize that there is no difference in the minds of most people between health care and public health. And I think people are really frustrated by health care, and that bleeds into whether or not
they're willing to to trust public health. And I think we need to be very, very smart in public health about advocating for a health care system that gets people the medications they need when they need them, that does not cost them an arm and a leg. It is a crazy thing that in this country, if you get cancer two thirds of the time, you are going to end up in some sort of bankruptcy. That's a crazy thing.
And I think that's a public health issue. And I think when people don't see us talking about the obvious things they have to deal with every single day. They're less likely to listen when we come to them in the moment of crisis and say, hey, we really need you to pay attention to us. They're going to say, where were you when I was struggling for my insulin? Where were you when my mom got sick with cancer and we lost our home over it? And I think we've got to be able to say we were right
there and we were working on the problem. I think
¶ MAHA's appeal is the idea you can control your health future
the third thing, though, is that I think we've got to really really.
Get smart about the question of agency.
And I think what makes the MAHA thing so exciting to people is the notion or not that you can control your health future.
And their whole thing is right.
I mean you've seen the videos, right, they don't want you to know, and you're like, why don't they want you to know? But like, also, what don't they want you to know? And you're always like, okay, I they don't want me to know it, like I should probably know this.
And so there's this idea.
That if you like you know protein max and you you fibermax and you know you take all the right peptides, even though there's no evidence for them, that you can buy yourself out of the uncertainty that comes with.
Living in the world with respect to your health.
And I think we need to be able to understand that instinct in this moment and recognize that what we're asking is for folks to be able to have agency through the collective effort that we put in to protect each other.
Look, this is the challenge, you know, This challenge in health is similar to education.
¶ Parallels between public health and education
Right.
People want more personal choice in where they have they how to educate their kids. At the same time, they want to make sure if they choose the public schools that the public schools are amazing. Yet the more money you take out of the public schools to give people choice in their kids education ends up weakening the entire system.
I think healthcare is a similar issue. This is one of those in theok this is the larger debate about you know, you know, when do you sort of act as a collective and when do you sort of act as an individual? Right? And what what is and if you can you can sell a collective if you're saving the individual right. But this is a tricky I mean, this gets it to sort of the large divide of large government small government.
Right.
The old debates we used to have pre Trump with Trump, right, Trump wants strong, He doesn't want a small government if he you know, he wants an organization he gets to control. He wants a strong, the jackbooted government, right, and he wants to be in charge of all of it. But he doesn't want a small government. So we're not having that debate. But the remnants of that debate is why
it's been so difficult to sell medicare for all politically. Right, it's the and it's the fear of losing the choice. It's not the cost. I've always I know cost is an I think cost is the excuse. I think the harder thing because you said something else really important that I think makes health care policy so hard politically, which is because we all use the system. We think we're experts, right,
we are because our personal experience. We are experts at you know, my father's experience, you know your experience as a father with your kids. We're experts at those experiences. But we actually don't know anything else. But we think
¶ Health relies on both the individual and public health
we know a lot, which is why politically this is such a difficult thing to sell.
I'll say a couple of things on that. Right.
On the education side, there actually is a zero sum invent min of money, right, like either the money goes in or it doesn't go in. But like when it comes to maximizing your own health, like I fiber Max, I protein Max, like I wear two health tractors. Right, And that's not to say that I think that I can protect myself from ever being exposed to the flu when I happen to be out and about in the world.
So I value a public health care system that protects me.
Out and about, while I also do the things that I can do to control my own destiny. And the reality of it is that I think one of the mistakes we make is we actually fall into this this thot this not that trap. It's not this or it's not this, not that it's this or that it's this and that. Right, you can actually do both things like yes, go work out. Yes, if you want to, you know, take so and so supplement, Like there might not be
¶ Healthcare industry has tricked the public using concept of "choice"
much evidence for it, but if you want to, like as long as it doesn't hurt you and you spend the money on it, go ahead. And also we can also get vaccinated to protect ourselves and others. And actually, we want to live in a world where other people are vaccinated because it decreases the probability that we're exposed. The other point I'll make just on Medicare for All what you made about choice, which I think is a
really important one. I think the industry has played this radical game where they trick us about the choice we actually want. I don't think the choice we actually want is in October or November to choose between three plans that kind of look the same, that force us to play Russian roulette with the probability of getting sick based on how big or deductible is. I think the choice we want is to get to walk into whatever doctor we want to go see and to know that we're going to be able to get care.
And the system that we have right now literally robs us of that choice.
Right, the idea that you have in network versus out of network, or you could go and get a surgery and the anesthesiologist who is appointed to your case is now out of network, which means that you have to pay exorbitantly for a choice you didn't get to make.
Right, that's not choice at all.
What Medicare for All does is it's basically like healthcare citizenship. You now get to walk. It's like when you go to Disneyland, right you pay the entry price and then you get to pick which ride you want to ride. Not everybody's choice or experience of Disneyland is the same. Some of somebody rode Splash Mountain, somebody rode Thunder Mountain, somebody rode whatever else mountain there is in Disneyland nowadays. But you got to pick which one you got to
go to because you got to walk in. And the problem right now is a lot of folks are locked out of that system. And it's like, depending upon what ticket you buy, you can only get to some rides but not other rides. And I just think that if the government said, hey, everybody gets a ticket, now you get to decide what experience you want. That's the choice
¶ Would you keep a semi-privatized system under medicare for all?
we all want, and the system that we have right now is taking that away. And I think we need to be able to be very honest with people about what that choice is and how we actually get it.
And I think Medicare for All would be critical to doing that.
So would you have a semi private, hized healthcare system still under a Medicare for All insurance system?
Yeah, Chuck, So under Medicare for all. Health insurance is public.
Healthcare stays private, so private hospitals, private practices, private, whatever, right they're selling health care on the market. You just get to take your healthcare dollar that's given to you. Similarly like Medicare itself, right, that's given to you because because you literally paid your toxes into the system and you got access to it, you get to go and
decide where you get to go. Right now, depending upon what health insurer you have, you are locked out of some providers and not others well, and therein lies the problem.
Aren't you still going to have Aren't you still going to be locked out anyway? Isn't there still going to be a tiered system? You know, if you raise the floor, you're still going to have some that leave the system and go fully private. Or we've seen the the the advent of the concierge doctors and all of that business.
Right now, I would argue that no matter what system you have, you're always going to have right that the elite is that super wealthy or might manufacture their own system anyway, no matter what system you create, because they have the resources to do it. But I feel like we're always chasing that that that would be a semi concern.
Let me say a couple of things.
I'm not as concerned about theoretical questions of super elite people opting out of the system and creating on system. I'm more concerned with whether or not everybody in our society can get access to the health care they need, and that their experience of it gives them quality healthcare and does not cost them a fortune and or potentially
their financial livelihood. And I'll be honest with you in my articulation to Medicare for all, if your union or your employer has a bump over Medicare or whatever, we end up calling the public health insurance system, and you want to use that and you can get health care through that, Okay, that's okay to me. But I think right now is that we're using this false idea of choice to keep us from actually having the choices that
we actually want. Because the vast majority of people right are not going to opt into some kind of service.
¶ Health networks curtail choice and raise prices
They're going to want to go and see the doctor or the clinic of their choice, and under this system, you actually can't do that. Under the private health insurance system, you are relegated to what is quote unquote in network. And I want people to understand what in network means. It means that your health insurer has negotiated, negotiated a buddy price with that particular system so that the transaction, the financial transaction that happens, is beneficial to both parties.
So if you want your choices curtailed by what's.
Financially beneficial to your health insurer and the hospital that you're allowed to go to, Okay, that's the system we have. But if you want to be able to say, hey, look, I think that hospital or that clinician down the street would serve me better and I could get a better experience getting a colonoscopy or a better experience because I have to have gall bladder surgery, I want to go there.
Medicare for All gives you the best shot at that.
Now, if you're somebody in that system who wants to say, look, I'm going to take I'm gonna pay cash and go into concier source system, fine, if that's something somebody wants to do. But that's not a concern to me that theoretically that'll happen, right because under this system, the fact that the vast, vast, vast majority of American public will
have access to this medicare based system. Means that the vast, vast, vast majority of healthcare providers are going to take it, which means that now you can kind of go anywhere and you're free to choose based on what the market was supposed to do. Better service, you get more patients, and you grow. That's how the system is supposed to work.
This is why I love this format so much better than the old eight to ten minute interview. You know,
¶ What did you learn from your 2018 run for governor?
we went We went twenty five minutes on this one topic. Because you need twenty five minutes to talk about it, it's not easy to get the nuance I want to move. I'm going to do a little more hardcore politics with you here a little bit. Let's talk about your twenty eighteen race for governor. What did you learn from it and why did you think you were a better candidate than Gretchen Wimmer.
Yeah, well I learned a lot from it. It was a really intense experience getting to.
My understanding of politics at the time was sort of similar to what you would have in high school civics and based a lot in the advice I'd gotten from people who knew politics better than me. Trump had just been elected. I was aghast at what that said about our country. I happened to grow up in a home where I watched two people from very different walks of life build something that was special and greater than some of its parts.
And I knew I had a story to tell about who we are.
And I knew that I had the capacity to lead government agencies to do good work.
I'd had that experience.
I didn't appreciate just how important it is that people kind of know your name, and I didn't realize how powerful a lot of the party institutions would be when I ran at the time, right I knew that Governor Whitmer was going to be running than State Representative Whimmer was going to be running, And I knew I just had a different story to tell, and I knew I had executive experience government that was different than the experience
that she brought to it. I learned a lot, though, about just how important those relationships in the party could be. And ultimately we had our primary. We finished second of three. We got out spent seven to one, but earned thirty percent of the votes, and coming back at it. I'll be honest with you, I didn't quite appreciate just how big a swing I had taken. I was thirty two, had never run for office in my life. I've had maybe two years of public There.
Is a little bit of who do you think you are? Really? You're showing up here at thirty two. Some of us had to wait twenty years for this shot, right, And.
This time around, I'm forty years old and I was living in my in law's basement. Now I have two kids in a mortgage. I've been around in public service now for about ten years, and folks know who I am. And the thing that folks always kind of say is that, like I do, what, You've been saying the same thing for as long as we've been hearing your name, and I have. And I think that consistency really matters, particularly when it is honest about the structures of our politics
¶ The disease of our political system is money buying politicians and policy
that have failed us. I said something in twenty eighteen. I think folks weren't quite ready to hear at the time, and it's that Donald Trump himself is not the disease of our politics. He's just the worst symptom of the disease, and the disease of our politics is the system that allows huge corporations to buy and sell access to politicians to help write legislation that rigs the rules for them and against us. And you see it happening in every
part of our life. Donald Trump was very good at weaponizing the pain that comes out of that system into a certain nihilism about our politics generally.
And that's exactly what he did.
He did twice. And like I hate to say it, right, Like that's what happens with symptoms. When you treat a symtom, you don't treat the disease, it always comes back worse. And we're dealing with the worst case of these symptoms now.
Well. And I always say this about the voter, which is to go back to a sort of a healthcare metaphor I used to use, which is, you know, why was somebody willing to take a risk on Donald Trump? Because they didn't want to take care of the disease. They wanted to cure it. They either die or cure it, so they'll take something that is extreme because they'd rather have either end it or total relief. I don't want
to manage it. Right, And there was a time and I think the alternative to Trump was no, no, no, no, we can manage the disease. And it's like, you know, I think people get frustrated with that. Maybe I'm botching it.
¶ Trump spoke to economic pain and was able to reach voters
So if you if you want to check, if you want to go for it. Yeah, no, I think, I think.
I think the metaphors is a very good one because the other side of it is it tells us a lot about what people were frustrated about Democrats, particularly now, if you have a choice between one doctor who says your pain is real, I see it, and I know how frustrating it is for you. Here's some crazy ass medication you could take versus someone who just says, I don't think your pain is real. I think, look look at look at the summary statistics of the economy.
Of course, the economy is doing great under my leadership. Which one do you go to?
And one of the first things they teach you in medicine, And you know, folks ask me, like, I don't practice medicine day today. What is the applicability of your work in medicine to politics?
Is to things?
I learned how to listen to people in profound pain, and I learned how to have a conversation with people in profound pain. And I'll tell you that's the thing about pain is that it leads to, especially when it's ignored, a certain level of cynicism about the possibility of cure at all. And so we've got to be really good at meeting people about where they are and what they tell us about their pain, and being honest about what's causing it and how we work together, because that's the
other thing in medicine you have to do. It is like, look, I wish I could stap my fingers and make the pain go away. But here's what we actually can do within the bounds of what we understand. Here's what we can do together. And I promise you right, we're going to do all we can to make this feel better. And I think too often Democrats have said we're not actually like, let's be clear, our donors are part of the problem, and we don't want to face them down.
¶ Assessment of Gretchen Whitmer's governorship
So let's just ignore the pain and pretend like it doesn't exist, which is the best way never to get your patient to pay attention to you ever.
Again.
Assess Governor Wetmer's governorship. Was it better than you thought it would be? Worse exactly what you thought. Is there something you would have done differently?
I mean it's impossible to go back eight years and say I would have done things differently.
Look, I think she did a great job leading through the pandemic.
Obviously, I'm a physician, epidemiologist who ran a health department, so that probably would have been something I would have had a level of insight into that. It's unfair to ask anybody else in public service to have just given my training and experiences. But I think she was strong where she needed to be strong, she was reasonable where she needed to be reasonable, and I think that by and large, folks have been really grateful for her leadership.
You know, no two people are the same. You're always going to deal with things differently. And you know, right now, to be honest in some respects, like when I look at this race and where we are in this moment, I kind of, you know, maybe this is just the person of faith in me, like it wasn't my time.
It was my time for a reason.
And I think about where we are today and the message that I have, and I'm bringing the same message I brought in twenty eighteen.
I think the ability to actually govern on.
The message that you bring is not just a function of that message, it's also a function of whether or not people recognize it and see the structural features as you talk about them around what needs to be done now. And so I just think that this is the right time for a candidate like me, and this is the right moment. I'll be honest with you, right, I see
that everywhere I go. I've been to fifty some cities now, Chuck, I've probably done about one hundred public events, and no matter where I go, right, people are like, it just shouldn't be this hard, And they see in my candidacy both a message that is as urgent as the moment and also a consistency that demonstrates that when I tell you I'm going to show up and I'm going to take that fight on, You're going to believe that I'm
¶ Whitmer tried to work with Trump at times, will you?
going to show up and take that fight on, because you can't look at me and say, oh, that's a guy who doesn't believe what he's saying. So I think this is the right time for my leadership, and twenty eighteen just wasn't.
What do you make of her governing style right now? Where she is work with Trump where she felt like it was in the best interest of Michigan. So I'll tell you this, Yeah, and and what is that line for you? Because even you get elected to the Senate, there's still going to be a Donald Trump in the White House, and that is a basic question. Do you try to work with him where you can or not.
I will just say this, I've I've been around for forty years now, and I've learned that I have a bit more of an instinct for a fight than most people. So you know I am. I Am not going there to make peace. I'm going there to win the peace. And I recognize that winning the piece requires one to be actively engaged in the battle.
So you're there to confront Trump, and Trump is on almost every level. So I'm let me. Let me put I don't want to put words in your mouth, but let me try and push back. If I have done this, maybe you think Governor Whitmer hasn't confronted him the way you would have in this moment.
No, I don't know.
I mean, I've been in public service now long enough to know that you don't really know everything that's on another public servants plate.
You just don't.
And so dot I can't say that I understand the equities that she's trying to balance. And she's been governor long enough now that she both has the trust of the people she governs, and I believe that she's doing her best to try and manage the very difficult circumstance on her plate. I'm running for US Senate, and at
the Senate it's a very different responsibility than as a governor. Right, as a governor, your responsibility is you know that you really do have to make sure budgets balance and that you're able to sustain the critical public services that your government offers.
¶ Trump is exercising far more power than Article 2 permits
As a senator, I am one of one hundred offering critical legislative leadership and accountability to the executive branch. Accountability on Donald Trump. People in Michigan, if they elect me, they will be electing me to go and hold him accountable because he's clearly running in excess of any article to rights that the Constitution or privileges that the Constitution
has given him. And so you know, I may be more purpose fit for this particular job in this particular time against this particular president, but I'm not getting sent out there to a peace I'm not getting out sent out there to tell RFK Junior he's doing a great job, because he's not. I'm not getting sent out there right to allow Donald Trump to continue to run rough shot
over the Constitution. I will be sent by voters in the state of Michigan to reassert the power of the US Senate and the Congress more generally, and to hold Trump and the people he's appointed to key executive office roles accountable for their malfeasance. And I take that job really seriously.
And it just may be that, like this was the right time for somebody like me, because I just don't back down on a fight. And I'll just tell you this, chuck, like you know, my name's been Abdul my whole life. You can imagine, and sure, data schools sorts of stuff. I've dealt with bullies, right, and I've learned that if you let the bully take your lunch money once, you're not going to eat lunch. So I made a hobbit right of never letting bullies take my lunch money.
And so I think we need a lot more of that in DC. Right now.
I find your primary opponents, the three of you. I think these are three really interesting candidates, all of you on your own are interesting, and I'm going to it almost feels like the story of the Three Bears, and it's different different porridges. Right, one's hot, one's cold, and
¶ Differences between you and your opponents for MI senate?
I don't know which one of the voters are going to decide is just right. We don't know who Goldilocs is right now for the primary because you have one. Basically, you guys are making three different i'd argue more stylistic arguments versus. There's some substantive differences. I'm not going to
say there isn't. But my guess is that this feels more to me like a sentiment vote, you know, a fighter conciliator, right, whatever it is that you think the moment needs, is that how you see your two opponents?
No, chack, I'm gonna push back on that question. Okay, I think there are some very serious substantive differences. I have never taken a dime of corporate money. I ran for governor in twenty eighteen. I didn't touch a dime of corporate money. Then you've got a candidate who is
¶ Taking corporate money is a major philosophical difference
taking oodles and oodles of corporate money and another candidate who decided, you know, a couple of months ago that maybe this corporate money thing is really actually part of the problem. I think if that is not central to your assessment of what's what's at stake and what the issues are, there's a fundamentally different thesism that.
For you, so that in your mind almost eliminates one candidate for you.
In your head, I mean, I think in my mind, I think it highlights the difference between me and almost anybody else. Okay, if like, if you're I mean, I told you my thesis on this is that Donald Trump is the symptom of a broader disease. That disease is the way that corporations and special interests can dominate our politics. If you don't see that as the disease, and we're just we're just dealing with with fundamentally different issues, We're.
Way to talk is in your mind, we're just not having.
The same conversation, right.
And the hard part is it really comes down to do you think that Trump himself is the fundamental issue or do you believe that when Trump came down that hideous escalator back in twenty fifteen, there were structural features in our society that people were really really frustrated by that he was able to exploit to come to power. And my point is, yes, you've got to be Donald Trump. I don't back down to bullies. But the second point is this, what are you for? Everybody's against Donald Trump?
What are you actually for?
Right?
I can say Medicare for all because I've never taken a dime from a corporate health insurance company or a pharmaceutical company. I can talk about taking on DTE and our local utilities because they spent two hundred thousand dollars to beat me in my last election, and I've never touched a dime of their money.
So it is a substantive. It's not even substantive.
It is philosophically different about what we think the issue in our public policy and our politics are. So if you want somebody who's going to stand up to Donald Trump and on the next day understand how to address someone like him ever coming to power again, then I'm probably your guy. The other thing I'll say is this, right now, they are tearing apart government as we know it, And ask yourself, what are the skill sets that you want represented.
In the US Senate? Right?
I am categorically different than anybody else in the US Senate, there is not, never been.
You're not a lawyer state, so that automatically makes you a minority of when it comes to Democratic candidates. That I mean. There was a great little stat over the weekend about just how many Democrat elected members of Congress or lawyers versus the other side, which is a lot more diverse backgrounds at least, and I will say.
Neither of it. And I want to be clear.
I have a lot of respect for both of my opponents, and I think anybody running for office right now takes
¶ Reforming public health will require healthcare pros in D.C.
a lot of courage and a lot of effort, and I commend them and anyone running for office right now. But I also say that it's not just that neither of them are lawyers. It's that we are watching the desecration of health and human services, the destruction of a critical piece of notional security infrastructure in health and human
services get destroyed. So ask yourself, what don't we have at the US Senate and what will we need to be able to build our government back to what we should have had right I just want to be clear about this. I don't think that CDC, FDA and IH were serving the best of what they could have been.
I think there was a lot of reform that was possible.
So ask yourself, like, who do you want in the room to build what we should have moving forward for the twenty first century, And I think I offer a very different set of skills. And the third point I'll just make here is this, I don't I'm not a career politician, right, It's not something that I grew up saying I really want to do this.
Well, okay, let me push back. Someone's going to say, well, you ran for office at thirty two and all this, So I take your point, but somebody might dispute that what I would say.
I also rebuilt a health department. I led a different one. I wrote the book on Medicare for All. I trained as a physician and an epidemiologist. And so if you ask yourself what makes people sick, at some point you're probably going to get to that question of maybe it's our politics. So for me, this is like a logical continuation of what I set out to do when I decided I wanted to make my life about improving people's health.
You know, it'd be really interesting if you and Amy acting over in the state next door, end up overperforming there both sort of she you know, she was not a politician, and then saw what happened and decided to
¶ The trend of public health officials running for office
jump into It's interesting to get see more people with public health experience decide, Okay, you know, maybe maybe we had to cut out the middleman here.
And it's not a you know, it's not a coincidence, jrue. I think I think enough of us see what's happened. You get into these rules where you're like, oh, I can really improve the health and well being of my community, and you start to see how.
Political it all is. Then you realize how hard it really is, and you're like, really, why is it so difficult?
Right? Right?
And I just think that like all of this kind it goes together. If you're serious about building the kind of America that dignifies the well being of its children, you do things very differently. And that's you know, when people ask like how come you how come you buck these trends, I'm like, look, if I never get into
public office, that's okay. But I swore an oath and I've tried to do the work that is that that oath implies, and so I would rather not get elected than get elected and hamstring myself to do the work that I got elected to do. So you know, I'm going to run the campaign the way that I think it ought to be run. The last thing that hasn't come up here, Chuck, is is just this our values. When we talk about values should apply in all places in all times.
There shouldn't be on your values.
You're transitioning to the topic I was about to get to. But go ahead, Yeah, I don't.
I don't steal your thunder.
You're welcome. No, no, no, no, I'm just saying that.
You know, there's the difference between a political position and a principle, and the difference is this, if your principles are get kept by space and time, they're not principles, they're just political positions. So, you know, when I think about our responsibility abroad, and maybe part of this is the fact that I actually have experiences being abroad and seeing how people see America because of the things that
too often our policymakers do in very wayward ways. It's a crazy thing to me that we in an era where our kids schools are crumbling, we can barely afford healthcare for our kids, and they're trying to rip it away we send blank checks to foreign militaries to drop bombs on other people's kids and their schools and their infrastructure. And to me, like, you can't say that because you're too afraid of what that might mean for some special interest coming and spending against you.
Then it's just you are playing politics.
I don't play politics, and that is a huge difference between me and Frankly, Unfortunately, too many people running for
¶ How much will Israel/Gaza factor into the election?
USN anywhere, particularly here in Michigan.
You know, look in some ways, I know a lot of national reporters are going to parachute into this race and do the democratic primary story through the prism of Gaza. That that's going to be how this is done, pure and simple. I think the conversation we've had, it's obvious that if you pay attention to this campaign, it's it's it's well, let me ask you this, how much has got what percentage of this campaign in your mind is
about Gaza in the primary? How much do voters care and how much of it do you think it should be a voting issue.
In this primary?
Let me I'm going to push back on the premise of the question for a second, Okay, And because we're in a long form here let me just let me just nerd out for a second here inepidy miology. Oftentimes, what you do is you fit a graph to a set of data, and then you ask about the impact of anyone variable in a particular outcome, as if those variables don't architect on top of each other. And so we end up being implicitly reductive with any lens that
we apply to analyze the situation. So the question that is asked is off and how much of a vote
¶ Calling something a genocide when you see it is a values test
share does Gaza control because of what people think about Gaza? And I think in Michigan quite a lot to answer that question. But I actually think that the operational rule of the question of calling a genocide when you see
it is as a values rarshock test. It is foundational to whether or not I can believe that you're serious when you tell me that you're going to stand up to a corporate CEO or you're going to stand up to Donald Trump, because if you can't call what is happening when they kill eighteen thy, five hundred kids, sixty thousand people total, render their entire homes unlivable, kill journalists, destroy hospitals, and then try and push them into a
different country because they happen to speak the same language. If you can't call that a genocide, then I question your moral judgment generally or your understanding of the English language. So I just think that at some point it tells you whether or not people are actually serious about the
values that they purport to have. So how can I trust you when you can't even push against the enforced language of your own party being enforced by maga billionaires, by the way, to actually show up and fight against Donald Trump, or to show up and fight against the pharmaceutical lobby, or to show up and fight against the corporate insurance CEOs. It undercuts all of those things. So as a direct issue, yeah, it is profound. This is
¶ Was Israel justified in going after Hamas? How much was justifiable?
a genocide that's paid for by our tax dollars that are not being used to spend on our kids. But as an indirect issue, it is become such a moral lens to see the world, because if you can't see the obvious thing in front of you, how can I trust you to see the other things as well? How can I trust you when you tell me you're going to fight for me?
Do you believe Israel was justified to go after Hamas after October.
So I think I think the question is I mean, let me step back. When we talk about justified, right, I don't know what that means in the context of all of this, because you know, I condemned Hamass on day one, and I condemned ham Ass because they killed innocent people. They kidnapped children. Anybody who kidnaps innocent people or kill's children is wrong. That's wrong, right, But then the question of how many then people, right, twelve hundred people were killed innocent people?
That is wrong.
It is condemnable, and that's why I condemned it. But then the question then becomes Okay, so what then becomes justified in the context of that awful atrocity. I think
¶ The extremes on both sides of the war strengthen each other
it's really really difficult to answer what a line would have been because I think a lot of us who've been watching that situation for a very long time would say, we all knew where this was going, and we all knew that there were people like Smotrich and ben Gevier and Netanyahu who were going to see in that in opportunity to answer to a base that sees this as a messianic issue, not just one around protecting innocent people.
Look, I would argue the streams want each other, right, Hamas would love a further to the right Israeli government and vice versa. It's sick to say it that way, but in some way the extremes strengthen each other, which is part of the problem.
And I think that you are exactly you are exactly correct, and then I think about what how do we get to a place where we can imagine an ultimate piece.
¶ We aim, arm and abet Israeli leaders who don't want two states
And that's the worry that I have is that every president before this guy, who's ever been president in the United States since the existence of the State of Israel, has said that they believe in a two state solution. And then the problem with it is that we aid arm in a bed the very people who then want to foreclose on the possibility of a Palestinian state. And yet we're sitting here saying we believe in a two state solution, and then our money goes in a different place.
And so to me, I find some of these questions kind of incoherent because they are decontextualized from the circumstance.
On the ground.
Right, what Hamas did is awful, it's terrible, it's wrong, it's condemnable, and what the Israeli government has been doing is wrong, awful, contemptible and should be condemned. And the problem is that you know I'm running for senator from Michigan, right, I'm not running for senator from anywhere else. My responsibility is to where we spend our tax dollars. And my point is, it's not my job. There's too much hubrius, frankly among American policy makers to get to think that
¶ Tax dollars should benefit taxpayers, not foreign militaries
they get to dictate what the ultimate piece looks like.
It's not my job. My job is to.
Make sure that American taxpayers gets what's best for the taxes.
That they pay.
And I think sending blank checks to foreign militaries and by the way, not just Israel, but Egypt and Jordan and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, right, all of whom have sustained military dictatorships over their own people. I just don't think that's a good value for pay for Michigan taxpayers, which is where I sit. And I don't want my tax dollars going to fund a genocide. I want my tax dollars funding my kids' school. I want them funding
my healthcare. I want them funding my roads and bridges, and that shouldn't be so difficult to communicate while also saying, hey, look, this thing of killing this many people is an obvious genocide. They said they were going to do it, and then they did it. So what else do we want.
To speak to the issue? And I think this is where a lot of it has been very difficult for Jewish Americans, frankly, no different than it was for Muslim
¶ It's difficult to find nuance in our current politics
Americans after nine to eleven, which is, you get thrown into one bucket, and every Jewish American feels like they're being there, you know. And I always say, you know what, there's plenty of Jewish Americans who condemned bb but are pro Israel, and you can have this nuanced position. Except it doesn't look like you can, right. It feels like in our politics today it's very difficult to have that position.
I hope that folks can find space. Right, what is it we all want? We all want everybody to have peace and dignity and the right to self determination. And I think here what we want is not to be assumed to believe anything based on the color of our skin,
or our faith, or our ethnic background. And so I've been very very clear to say that the government of Israel does not speak for the Jewish people or for Judaism, and I think we have to always differentiate between the Jewish people and Judaism and the government of Israel, and any effort to try and muddle those two things up
I think verges on the risk of anti Semitism. And so I think we have to be very, very very honest about sustaining the space where people can have a multiplicity of opinions, and also that we can engage in peaceful, in honest, in direct, in vulnerable conversation with each other about what we think the best course of American action ought to be to beget the outcomes that we want, which is peace, dignity, and the right of self determination
for Palestinians and its Israelis alike. And I just think that if you start with those principles, it becomes a lot easier from there to step forward and say, okay, then what ought to be done? How do we actually do this thing? Moving from this really difficult situation in Chuckov, just go back to the point you made, which is you've got extremes that have dominated the conversation because they can always hijack that conversation and force people to respond
to the most extreme thing they just did. And I hate to say it, but like you've got those extremes winning the day. And I don't know where we go
¶ Money in politics make it difficult to have an honest conversation
from here, but I do hope that more of us, regardless of our ethnic or our faith backgrounds, can have the courage to both differentiate between groups of people and principle and the courage to have an honest, vulnerable, and direct conversation about what the best course of action for the American public is now. Look, there's a lot of money spent in our politics, mainly by maga billionaires with very particular opinions, to try and keep us from having
a direct and honest conversation. Like I told you, I've been all over my state and wherever I go, like I'll be an Escanaba in the up when I talk about the obvious trade off around our tax dollars. It's one of the biggest applause lines I get. I've had people come up to me like, how come I've never heard a politician say the things that you say? And I'll say, well, because you know that point I always make. I'm running on three things, getting money out of politics,
¶ Having a nuanced conversation around the world genocide
putting more money in your pocket and passing Medicare for all that first one right, makes it really really difficult to have a direct conversation about where our tax dollars go because people are too worried that maga billionaire money is going to flow into a Democratic primary and dictate who gets to win and who gets to lose.
Let me ask one question on a word you use. Some people hear the word genocide and they think, oh, I'm not going to be able to have a nuanced conversation with that person. Why are they wrong?
I had a really meaningful experience.
I was invited to speak with the Jewish caucus of the Michigan Democratic Party, and there were a lot of questions about whether or not I would show And of course I was going to show up because I love and revere the Jewish people. I care a lot about my ability to make sure I understand their perspective and that I can serve them, because wants to be clear, like, the fight against Islamophobia is the same as the fight against anti Semitism. Those those those those very.
Right.
And by the way, and.
I had a really well meaning gentleman, you know, he kind of came up to me afterwards, he said, first, I want to tell you you've got some fiz but for having showed up. I said, well, thank you. I appreciate that. He's like, you know, you're real much. I was like, you're really in there we go, I was like, and he was like, but I disagree with you. I was like, that's not surprising to me. But can you share where you disagree? He said, you use the word genocide?
I said, I do. He said why. I was like, well, because the word.
Has a technical meaning and I was trained as a scientist to use the word for the thing that I am seeing. And he said, but how can you call this a genocide in the face of something like the Holocaust? And I said, I can understand the lived experience, or the shared familial, intergenerational experience of the Holocaust and the insane, profound, almost incalculable degree of pain that was inflicted upon the Jewish people by a madman, dictator, genocidal, maniac and Hitler.
I can understand why the pain of that my echo in ways where my use of that word could be painful.
¶ The holocaust can't set the bar for use of the term "genocide"
I understand that, and I appreciate you sharing it. And at the same time, if the only historical moment to which we can use the word genocide is the Holocaust, then we're setting an extraordinary high bar which basically renders the word how genocide unusable in any other situation.
And so I.
Don't know how to both talk about this and say that this is not the Holocaust. Let's be clear, right, six million people did not were not killed or exterminated in gas chambers, and yet the word was meant to protect innocent people from being rendered subjects of war so profound that it targeted them based on ethnicity in a particular place and intended specifically to bring about their particular demise.
I think, in the memory of the Holocaust is our responsibility to make sure that nothing like that, even to a far, far lesser degree, happens again. And so I just think that we have to be willing to use it when we believe that it meets those technical criteria, and that is to me, the best way to dignify, right that awful, terrible memory in a way that renders it meaningful and protects other people from ever having to
¶ Is China committing genocide of the Uighurs?
befall something like that again. But I honestly understand that this is a painful, challenging scenario. So I hope that folks who are listening and folks who hear me use that word understand that I do not in any way undermine or demean the incredible crime against humanity that the genocide of the Holocaust was. But we don't have the
past to control. We have the future to control. And the question of the way we use words to move the future, I think that's that's the way we ought to be all think human.
So should we be saying more directly that China is committing genocide on the leakers?
Yes, yeah, we should.
And the thing the reason that we don't is because China is massively powerful, correct, and they swing their weight around to make sure that we don't use that word, which is exactly why we should. I mean, like, this is the word that is used by definition among people with some modicum of power to protect the powerless. If you're a powerful people, you don't.
Have genocide inflicted on you.
By definition, you are powerless when you have genocide inflicted on you.
So it is all responsibility as people with some modicum of power to have the courage to use it.
Now, the reason that a lot of people don't is because you often are talking about far more powerful actors.
And well and reason, Well, there's another reason sometimes not
¶ Using the word genocide can just "switch off" voters
to use it is that it suddenly the person turns off the head right, they turn you off. I'm not listening to you if you're going to use that right some words. That's why I ask. I mean, and I think you gave it. Look, if every voter gets an opportunity to hear your explanation, then I think you're you're, you're, you're, You're going to have a leg up. But there are some people there's the use of a word right. You
know sometimes what do they call him? What is it Godwin's law on the internet about Hitler?
Right?
And you know when it when an argument certain words. That's why I ask, because that word can just somebody may just literally turn it off. Up, I'm not listening to him anymore. What do you say to that night?
I understand that that is an instinct that's there. I think my job is to if I do my job well, it is to create the space in our public conversation and our civic debate that enables us to do the things we need to do to create the kind of future we all want to live in.
That's the work.
That's what at its best, that's what politicians are supposed to do. And I think if we shy away from using the words as they're defined, I don't know that we are doing the thing we need to do, to do and to beget that future.
In the right way.
And I understand that there's a trade off there, and I think that there is this ability that we all have to also master, which is to be able to use words responsibly, but use words correctly and always always use them lovingly, which is to say, it's out of my love for Palestinian people and my love for Jewish Israeli people that when I see people hurting other people, that I stop that thing from happening.
Look, I don't believe Israel safe until Palestinians are safe.
There's a tradition, a word in our tradition.
It's a saying of the prophet hummad piece me upon him where he said, give victory to your brother, meaning you're like companion the person you're with, whether they're right or they're wrong. And they said, wait, what do you mean by like they're right or they're wrong? He said, if they're wrong, protect them, And I'm sorry if they're right, protect them right. But if they're wrong, then correct them.
¶ People assume having an Arab name means tribal loyalty to Arabs
That's how you give somebody who's wrong victory. And I just think that we would do well. It's not out of a you know, obviously, I'm Arab, I know that, and so when it comes from my mouth with my name, people assume that it's a tribal thing. It really is not. And this is why, like you know, I have taken it on the chin. When I condemned Hamas on day one, folks are like, well, you're not contextualizing it within the
broader occupation, et cetera, et cetera. I was like, look, at the end of the day, if you hurt kids, there's no context needed, and folks will be like, well, like you must you must be a self hating Arab, etcetera, etcetera. Like no, I am just a human loving Arab. Okay, I'm a human loving person. And when I think innocent people are hurt, I'm going to show up and I'm going to say the thing I think needs to be said.
And so I hope folks can understand that sometimes your experience set may give you an insight that's a little bit different. But ask people where their principles are and then ask them to apply their principles in all situations. And when folks asked me, they're like, well, what about Egypt. Then that's the first question I was get. Don't you do you think we should stop sending money to Egypt. I'm like, absolutely, we should, right, absolutely we should. And
folks are like, wait, so so explain that. I'm like, they're like Egyptian people like you. I'm like, yes, you think I'm coming at this as a tribalist, I'm not like. I spent childhood summers in Egypt. I watched as that that tax money made Egyptians less free and less safe from their own government.
It's correct government.
I don't think us sending our money abroad is helping us or helping them. And I think it's the same story when it comes to Israel. And I just think that we should apply our principle everyone.
I could keep going on. You're the exact kind of candidate that I love seeing out there, which is you're unafraid to have a straightforward conversation, you explain yourself, and you know, I always say this politics is not about finding somebody you agree with one hundred percent. Of the time. It's finding someone who you think is willing to hear you out here and simple, right, I say, civilization invented politics so that we would resolve conflicts without death and
without violence. You know, that is why we have politics, That is why we created it. We were tired of making every dispute resolve, resolving every dispute with violence. So look, I see why my friend Ron Fortyer was putting up the putting up the neon sign to saying, pay attention to this guy. He may get some traction. This has been a pleasure. It's good to get to know you.
And you know, that's why I love this long form medium because we can have the nuance which I think we just did both on healthcare and Israel, which was it's needed more and more in our politics, and unfortunately our media environment doesn't always reward that.
Yeah, well, I appreciate you creating the space for it. Appreciate Ron, I mean Ron, Ron has been. Ron told me something when I in twenty eighteen, which I'll never forget. You know, I was out there kind of like doing my thing. I was thirty two, and like you know, I don't know if you remember feeling thirty two, but you feel your emotions a lot more intensely.
And when I had my first kid, Yeah, and then I know you, Jay have all sorts of stuff going on.
Yeah, you feel it right. He pulled me aside to a dou I want you to know something. I was like, we say. He's like, look, I watched I watched Black with Obama when he was young and coming up. I watched Bill Clinton when he was young and coming up. He's like, you're not gonna win this race. I was like, And of course my response was.
Like, how do you know they have for you?
Man? They run the race the first time they ran.
Yeah, right, And he's like, you're not going to win this race, but you need to keep going at this because you got something to share and I'm looking forward to watching what you do next. And it was fascinating because I didn't win the race. And I've stay close to Ron because he's the kind of person who is both extremely astute at sort of reading the tea leaves and has got more experience and forgotten more about politics than I've ever known. But he's also someone who has
that rare gift for mentorship. And I've just been really grateful to him for you know, beingb to share some of that with me. So and I know there's been many many journalists that he's helped mentor so I'm grateful. And you know, anything Ron said nice about me is more because honest nice than it is because me.
But I'm grateful that he introduced me to you.
We've got to share some time, and I've seen really good conversations about things that you know, I wish we had more space and time to have conversations as a community.
And we'll do it again. And when Miami and Michigan meet in the playoff, maybe I'll see it in one of those games.
Hey, well that'll be a lot of fun. That'll be a lot of fun. And I'm sorry for the outcome. But here's I will say this. Just on the college football front, Like I told you, I rooted for the Hurricanes.
Back when I was a kid. Well we would the Michigan was always my team.
But like but but but but but Miami was number two, and you know Miami very much at that at that time, and you remember this, they were like the bad.
Boys of college football, were the rebels.
And like I keep watching all the fallout of you know the controversy of machine.
I'm like, are we bad boys of college football? Now?
Like it's not something I understand Michigan to be, but like I know, well, you know.
It's look look at look at our perverted way. How often we root for the person wearing the black hat and the movies? Right, we love Darth Vaders. We know, we know Darth Vader's name. More people know Darth Vader's name than Luke Skywalker's name. Think about that.
More people know Donald Trump's name than almost anybody else in American politics.
So there you go. That's to drop the mic, all right, to be safe on the trap.
You to appreciate it.
Thank you, m