Ep. 324: Michael Moore is Feeling Pretty Damn Good - podcast episode cover

Ep. 324: Michael Moore is Feeling Pretty Damn Good

Aug 26, 202447 minSeason 4Ep. 324
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Episode description

Michael Moore can't believe how the tables have turned.


Two months ago, the result of our upcoming 2024 presidential election seemed a foregone conclusion, and a second Trump presidency seemed inevitable. But now — just 71 days before the November 5th election — Michael dares to feel hopeful that we may just elect not only our first woman president, but our most progressive!


Also on today's episode, Michael discusses the one stain on an otherwise spotless Democratic Convention: Their disrespect of Palestinian-Americans by not letting a single one of them speak on the stage. Shame! We, their allies, will not be silent about the slaughter in Gaza. 


More to come in Mike’s next Substacks and Podcasts! Sign up (it's free!) at Michaelmoore.com.

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Music in today's episode:

"Lollipop" — The Chordettes

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This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://www.shopify.com/rumble [all lowercase] and get full access to Shopify’s entire suite of features.

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Write to Mike: mike@michaelmoore.com

Transcript

Lollipop, Lollipop Lollipop Lollipop Lollipop Lollipop Lollipop Lollipop Lollipop Lollipop lollipop. I mean, I I don't know if I can remember the last time I was this happy. I am serious. This last week, this last month, what the hell happened? I mean, let's just wind this back. Let's go back two months to the night of June 27th. The debate, the debate that was over seconds after it began. I mean, Biden shuffled his way out onto the stage. We were all like, what is going on?

Jake Tapper asks him a question, the first question. And in the very first sentence, President Biden just mangles it, OK? We all mangle a word or two here and there. So I'm thinking to myself, it's OK. It's just, yeah, yeah, These older guys. Yeah, no problem, No problem. It only got worse in the next 10 seconds after that. And then 20 seconds. And then it was like, all of a sudden, not only was the debate over, Biden implodes, he loses his place, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Suddenly there's a kitchen table involved in the conversation. I don't know what happened, but literally the man implodes. The debate is over. And if you remember the sinking pit in your stomach, the pit had a voice and it spoke to you from deep down. And it said, fuck, the election is over. It's over. Oh my God. Oh my God. And Trump is coming back to the White House. And people I know just turned the TV off right then. They couldn't take it, but I had to.

I don't know. I don't think I'm a masochist. I just had, I had to know what else was going to happen. And I watched it. And then I got to be honest with you when it was all over because I had to write something about this. I had to do something. I just had to get it out. I sat there and I watched the midnight CNN rerun of it. I watched it a second time so that you wouldn't have to. I did it for you, all of you. Oh my God. And do you remember the days

after that? How we all felt we were coming up? It was now the 4th of July week. We're in that next few days. Do you even remember what you did this year on the 4th of July? No, you don't, because she didn't do anything. I don't know. Maybe you were at some cookout, but you were just after three or four beers. You were just looking off into the wind. God, it was over. It was over, which means America was over. The democracy was over. I'm going to be dictator on day one, he said.

Yeah, of course. We all believed it because it was true. And then people started to speak up. You and I were some of those early people saying this can't happen, President Biden, for the good of the country, you have to step aside. Or in my case, I said you have to step down right now. You have to step down because because what you showed us there on debate night was that you are not in in full control.

And it made me sad. And I wish that there was somebody who was there protecting you and making you not have to go through this. And how, how on earth could I or anybody convince you to step down? Use the 4th of July to swear in President Kamala Harris and President Harris. Shock all the dude Bros out there. Name a woman as your vice president, Gretchen from Michigan. I there's any of a number of people that could fit the bill, but two women, Two women, nobody would ever expect that.

Nobody expected that debate. Nobody expected anything. We're watching right now. So keep that going. Keep the shock of it all going. Two women are going to ride into town and clean this shit up. Yeah, well, that was that was my suggestion. And on Sunday afternoon, July 21st, just a couple what, couple 3 weeks later, it took a while. George Clooney, whole bunch of people. Nancy Pelosi, whole bunch of people had to do their part.

But at 1:46 PM July 21st, President Biden did what nobody thought he would do, did what no politician would ever do, which is to voluntarily, willingly give up power. And that's what he did in a tweet. And about 30 to 40 minutes later, he sends out another thing saying that that he's turning the campaign over to Kamala Harris, that he's endorsing her. She should run. She should be our next president. He picked her for this reason.

He knew back then, four years ago, there was a chance he may not make it. And everybody that went to vote for him and her knew that it wasn't just some second name on the ballot. When you look down and you saw her name there, you knew what it was there for. A man that age may not make it another four years. That's just the facts. So we had to vote for him

knowing that that might happen. And probably for the first time ever, you ever voted for a vice president, you knew that you might be voting actually for the next president. And that's what we all did. 7 million plus more of us than those who voted for Trump. And that was the end of Trump. And on that day, on the 21st of July, which as I'm recording this here on Sunday night, that's, that is five weeks ago today. That's all.

It's been 5 weeks. All of a sudden the like, it was like the sun rose again at 2:00 in the afternoon. It, it, it, it was like the world just changed instantly on a dime. And we all got giddy. We all couldn't believe. We couldn't believe it. You know what else couldn't believe it? Trump couldn't believe it. He still can't get. He sits 5 weeks later, he's still complaining and wondering when Biden's going to come back into the race. Oh my God. And so.

And so here it is now just five weeks later and every day just keeps getting better. When has that happened in your life? I don't know when it's happened in mine. I'm trying to honestly think of when did the last time I felt this way day after day after day. Oh my God, it just feels so good. I mean have you taken your blood pressure lately? If you just put your two fingers on your on your wrist to take your pulse, your heart rate has gone down, your blood pressure has gone down.

I'm like how did this happen? Nothing ever good happens. Life, life is hard. Life sucks a lot. It really hasn't sucked it now in about 5 weeks. I'm still on some kind of high. What is that? I mean, I'm not, you know me. I'm not, I'm I'm I don't get excited about politicians or candidates or any of this stuff. All a bunch of hooey. Yet watching the convention this past week, watching Michelle Obama, and who's the guy that she hangs out with? Brock. Yeah, him too. He was great.

They're all great. Al Sharpton, not once, but twice, takes the stage. One time he brings out Jesse Jackson in a wheelchair, The great Jesse Jackson still alive. And the second time, he brings out the five young men who were wrongly put in prison for a crime they didn't commit in Central Park. And they served various lengths of prison sentences that I think went from 7 to 13 years, maybe, maybe longer. Just awful, innocent, innocent

men. Trump at the time taking out a full page ad in the New York Daily News calling for their execution. And now all these years later, he gets to run for president 1/3 time. Wow. No, but no. He's just, he's down at Mar A Lago. He doesn't know what to do. He's just crying his eyes out. He's posting weird, crazy stuff on social media.

I talked to somebody this last week who was connected to his old TV show on NBC, The Apprentice, and this individual said to me, you know, I, I, I have it on pretty good authority that Trump has lost it. I said, what do you mean? He lost it a long time ago. No, no, no, no, no. You don't understand, whatever anybody was worried about with Biden's mental capabilities or whatever this is, this is 10 times that he he, he literally has lost it.

He's gone completely bonkers and and they're doing their best to try and cover it up. So we don't see it, but we're going to see it. We're going to see it in the next week or two. Why? Because this joyride we're on right now is not going to end. We're going to see Trump come apart at the seams. We're going to see it during the debate. The one with with Kamala. We're going to see it all the

way until he collapses. Sometimes I don't know when that's going to happen, but the the the human body and brain can just take so much. And he's already beyond the pale at this point. From this person that was talking to me about this, I'm like, wow. I mean, I don't want anybody to suffer. I don't care how much I don't like them, but wow.

So you mean this whole feeling that we all have right now, it's just going to actually continue because the pundits were all telling us five weeks ago, oh, we were just on a sugar high. The honeymoon will be over in a few days. This honeymoon isn't over. This honeymoon isn't ending. And if it's a sugar high who somebody, some somebody is mainlining sugar into all of us right now, then it's not going to stop. You're saying, Mike, how can this. You mean you're saying this is

going to get better? Yeah. Oh, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I don't want to sound all creepy about this because I am a human being and I do care about my fellow human beings. Even the crackpots and the crazies and the people believe that a fertilized egg is a human being. I try to love them too, but man oh man, oh man. Oh geez. My friends, are you with me on this? Has it not felt this way for the last month or so? Has it not felt this way in this

last week or so? Even when we thought, well, this could be better, the convention, she could, she could say some other things. Where's the Palestinian voice on the stage? That was sad. The big, the big tent, the big rainbow. Everybody allowed in except one group of our fellow Americans. Kind of shameful, but I want to, I want to just, I want to play

something here. You know, she made the obligatory statements that, you know, we as Americans will always defend Israel and we don't want any, any Jewish brothers and sisters to have to suffer anymore, which is all true. Nobody wants that. Absolutely not. And most people I know are able to separate this, even when their Jewish friends are having a hard time separating it. It's OK. You got to give them some slack here.

You got to have some empathy. You know, this is still the generation after World War 2. This is still the people who survived the Holocaust are still with us. But when she said what she said, I just want to play this because more than one outlet has pointed out that of all her policy lines, things that you know, what she believes in and what she's going to do, this was either #1 or #2 on the Plaza meter. And just to give you a, a sense of I'm going to play her what she said about that.

We have to support Israel. So first you're going to hear her say, you know, some the the right thing that she should say about where we will defend Israel and and we will protect the lives of all Jews on this planet or something that. But she makes a number of comments. She says it once, I support Israel, says it a second time, a third time it's like four or five times. And you know, it was kind of like you're sitting there and you're thinking, OK, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But but you don't support, I know you don't support the slaughter of the 40,000 civilians, the 16,000 dead children. You don't support any of that. You know it, I know it. I know you, I know you. Come on and you know me. So let's just knock it off. Why Say something, please, about the Palestinians? And then so she gets nice applause on. I support Israel, says it again, I support Israel.

Nice applause, nice applause. And then she gets the last sentence where she says finally something about the Palestinians and just listen. We don't need a spoiler alert hearing. I just want you to listen to what happens when she does bring up the Palestinian people. But can we roll that? With respect to the war in Gaza, President Biden and I are working around the clock because now is the time to get a hostage deal and a ceasefire deal done.

And let me be clear and let me be clear, I will always stand up for Israel's right to defend itself. And I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself, because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on October seven, including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival at the same time. What has happened in Gaza over the past ten months is devastating.

So many innocent lives lost. Desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking. President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self determination.

And know this, I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran backed. Terrorists. Wow. Wow. And, and did you hear that as she started? She's she's trying to cut off the applause and the screaming and the cheering in favor of the Palestinians and their right to live to liberty and to life and to their own identity and their own country. And they just kept going.

And so she had to try to cut them off because she had to, she had to say something. Really, you know, I'm going to stand up against Iran. And then she went into something about how pro military she is. We learned that with Hillary that if you're a woman running for commander in chief, you know, you better, you better show the country that you got a pair. Oh my God, please in my lifetime make it so that that doesn't have to happen anymore.

But but anyway, so she's saying this and the audience is applauding all this. Yes, we need a strong military. But it what when she went all pro military, They do a cutaway of the front row where her family is sitting, her husband, her step kids, her sister, her sister's kids, they're all sitting there. And, and, and I mean, my podcast is audio, so I can't really show this to you, but I'll, I'll try to post this somewhere so you can see at least a photo of

them. So most of the families applauding her saying this pro military stuff, except her sister, her sister and those two are peas in a pod. And they're they are thick as as any two sisters could be and supporting and loving each other. And her sister is just sitting there, no applause. And then her stepdaughter, pro Palestinian Ella, Doug Emhoff's daughter and Kamala's stepdaughter, there is Ella. And she is not cheering on the pro military part.

She's supposed to be applauding. That's her. That's her stepmom. That's her sister's supposed to be applauding. This is right there on the front row, her own loving family. I, I said that. I said, look at that. This, this is a hopeful sign because I know she loves and cares deeply about her family and what they think. And I just thought, you know, it's going to take a little while. She's not president till 12 O one on January 20th. She may not be able to do a lot right now.

And you know, you can go with us or not. I know a lot of you all, all my friends who are cynics. She's just like all the rest. Yeah, I don't think so. I don't think so. I think she cares deeply about peace and about not killing children in Gaza and that people should have food and water and things like that.

And I think she probably finds Mr. Netanyahu disgusting, a man she wouldn't even show up for when he gave his speech in Congress. She's the president of the Senate as vice president of the United States, that makes her president of the Senate. And she refused to sit there on the stage with him and instead went to a sorority meeting in Indianapolis. Get the point, Bebe? No, my friends, I can't tell you how positive I feel.

And when I and then in the couple days after the convention she started putting out, you know, they keep saying, oh, she's not talking about policy. It's like she's putting out one policy thing after another. And I think it was like literally the day after the convention, she puts out her tax plan of how she's going to raise taxes on the rich and she's going to do everything Biden had already put in his platform

running for a second term. And it was good what he wrote up. And she took all of that and doubled down on some of it. And, and, and not just on, on going after the rich and making them pay more, but also on helping families and, and single moms and all kinds of people bring back the child tax credit and, and, and put more into it more than than what Biden did before. Oh my God, the, the wealthy have got to frigging hate her.

Well, maybe not all of them. That governor of Illinois, he, he seemed OK. I mean, he's not a coach, but he did say he was a a billionaire. Never forget AO CS great line. Every billionaire is a policy failure. Just the fact that we have them means we have failed to do our job. In a democracy, we're where we're supposed to be kind of splitting up the pie as equally as possible. So everybody gets a slice, everybody has a seat at the table. But that's what her whole tax plan was about.

And all the other things that she said here in the last week about, you know, first time home buyers. She wants to make it so that you get, if you haven't, you've you're you're in your 30s, you're in your 40s, maybe you're 50 and you still haven't been able to buy a house, buy a home somewhere that's wrong. She thinks it's wrong.

So she wants the federal government to give all you first time home buyers a check for $25,000 to help you with a down payment that that's not just chump change, that's like it's $25,000. I mean, it's not going to pay the down payment. But damn, look at all the other things that she's proposed, all the other economic ideas, They're really, you can see that, that Trump and the wealthy are really going to go after her. And that's why we have to stand for this.

We have to stand for her, what she's saying, what she's proposing, because in the end, she's bad news. She's bad news for the rich, the greedy bastards who've gotten away with so much, who have been able to cause this. So this fake inflation, it wasn't fake to you or me because prices did go up 910% or more depending on what you were buying. But they went up because because corporate America decided we could get rich right now, we just just pawn it off on inflation, pawn it off on supply

chain issues. Just let's make up shit. The American people are stupid. That's what they think of us. That's how they think they can get away with it. She's not stupid. Look, she's not you. She's not me. But you and I didn't run for president this year. Did Did Did you notice that we could have any one of us could have run for president? We didn't. OK, not quite everyone of us. I know there's people from Ireland listening to this.

Canadians, you can't run and of course you have to be 35 according to the Constitution. So young people who are listening right now, you can't run either if you're here as a migrant, as an immigrant. First of all, thank you for joining us, wanting to live with us. I hope you'll be better treated in the coming years. But sadly, you can't run either because the Constitution says you have to be born here. So, but everybody else listening, you could have run and you didn't.

So now you're stuck with Kamala Harris. I don't think we've ever been stuck with anybody this good. She at 1:46 in the afternoon on July the 21st, she got thrown into this, but she was ready. And as I've said, Biden really is the most progressive president in spite of the horrific flaw that he will be remembered for being the bank and the arms dealer for Netanyahu and his slaughter of the Palestinians. This will never be forgotten.

And just like Lyndon Johnson did a number of good things, but he'll always be remembered for sending those nine boys that went to my high school to Vietnam only to be shipped home in a box. Now multiply that by thousands and thousands of American kids died in that war. And now multiply by God knows by what factor. So you can count the two to four million Vietnamese and SE Asians who died, who were killed by the United States of America.

I think anytime you kill 2 to 4 million people, what do we call that? What does history call it? What will historians 100 years from now say about us? They're going to say, wow, what they did in Vietnam, they started that about, you know, 400 years before Vietnam.

They came as Europeans here. They slaughtered the native peoples of this land, took their land, and then went to another continent, Africa, to kidnap and bring people here to do all the friggin work to build this country into the wealthiest country on the planet in in faster time than any other country had ever been able to build an empire. And it was done on the backs of enslaved human beings. Those that lived, those that weren't lynched, those that

weren't raped and killed. That's who built the early America that we get to take advantage of to this day. We, the society that keeps black Americans on the lowest rung of the ladder, never thinking that we have any responsibility. Well, I wasn't here during slavery. I didn't enslave anybody. Yeah, but you are reaping the benefits of our white, Christian European ancestors who did this.

There was a thing on the news today that thanks to the that last Supreme Court decision against affirmative action that the the freshman class at MIT compared to four years ago, just four years ago this month, freshman class entering MIT and all these other wonderful universities, number of black students is down 10%. White students same. Number as four years ago, just about white students, same, but black students, Hispanic students.

Yeah. All these years after the Emancipation Proclamation and it's still like that. And now. And now we, we OK, I got to keep it down here. I know. But we, we are going to elect a black woman and turn the reins over to her and ask her to go for it. This is what is going to happen in 71 days. I know, don't jinx it. I know we got a lot of work to do. I know every time you thought that was the end of Trump, it's never the end of Trump.

We all have a lot of work to do. Hey, before I continue on, I just want to thank this weeks underwriter, longtime supporter of this podcast, Shopify. As you know, of course, Shopify is the global commerce platform that has helped millions of people from 175 countries around the world start and run and grow

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first order to your millionth. There's a reason that Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States. And we've used them here on this podcast. We'll use them again. So I want all of you to consider signing up for a $1.00 per month trial period at shopify.com/rumble. And that's RU, MB, LE, all in small lowercase letters shopify.com slash rumble, rumble and lowercase do that support the people that are supporting

me with this podcast. Go to shopify.com/rumble right now to grow your small business, no matter what stage you're in, shopify.com/rumble. And thank you Shopify for supporting my podcast and for supporting my voice. All right, so we all have a lot of work to do each day. We should be doing something every single day. Wake up in the morning. What am I doing today to stop

Trump to elect Harris? And you know that even though clearly it seems like there's no chance in hell that that Trump is going to keep his shit together and win this election. And yet you've seen him skate by and succeed every single time when he shouldn't have. And I don't know what has changed to make that special, that special superpower that he has. But it hasn't gone away, my friends. You know it, I know it. And that's why we've got our work to do.

We need to start registering people. Do you realize that in the 2020 election, which had a record turn out, more Americans voted four years ago than it ever voted in any previous election? And yet there were 80 million of us that did not vote, 80 million that stayed home. They either stayed home or they went to vote for local candidates, but they left the top line for president blank. 80 million. He doesn't need a lot to win

some of these states. He won Michigan with 10,700 votes and if you think that's a lot of votes, it's for Michigan. He won by two votes per precinct. Had just two people changed their mind, voted differently, or if we gotten two people out that were non voters and we're staying home, he never would have been president. That's how close this could be again, can't risk it.

That's why each of us needs to start thinking right now who in our family or who in our group of friends is probably a non voter who just decided a long time ago they're all crooks. I don't want to I'm not participating I'm not voting. We, we know who they are in our little circle, right? And we got to make sure they vote well, first make sure they're going to, they were going to vote for her, but we've got to get them registered. We got to make sure each of us

are registered. The one thing Trump is going to spend his money on is trying to challenge anybody who wants to vote for Kamala Harris to try and stop them from voting. So we have to do our work ahead of time here. And, you know, they're the, you know, early voting in many states will start probably by around the end of September, 1st of October. That's just a few weeks away. Everybody has to make sure they're registered. And then you got to get other people to register.

And that's only one of a number of things we all have to do. But we're going to do it right. Everybody. All right, cynics, even you, they're all the same. I know, I know. Yes, they pretty much are all the same. Yes, but we do have a real problem if things take a turn for the worse here, and we can't let this incredible feeling that we have right now, how high we all are, how happy we all are. I still can't think of the last time I was this happy it had to involve ice cream.

I just, I don't let's see what, what? No, seriously, I got to think of of a time in the last 10 years I've been I've been this happy feeling like, Oh my God, maybe, maybe the world hasn't gone to hell in a handbasket. Is my grandpa used to say. I love the feeling that I can't, I can't identify when I felt like this because it feels so fresh and so new and that we are actually going to kick some ass and women and people of color and young people are going to

lead the way. And the rest of us need to get in line, get behind them, support them. It is a great, great moment for all of us. And it's a chance to turn this country around on so many levels. Don't let the past run you right now. The past. I'm talking about the past where we've had to put up with so much shit, so many lies. Weak Democrats who had 49 years to codify Roe V. Wade could have made it the law of the land. We had a number of Democratic

presidents. We had control of both houses of Congress. Nobody ever thought that we should probably maybe also just pass a law that says when a a sperm fertilizes an egg, a human being is not made at that moment. It's life. Yeah, it is life. It's a fertilized egg. But. But that's not really what any of this is about. This is always about power and control, and in this case, power and control over women, because the scary thing about women is there's more of them than there are of us. So.

So men, mostly men and and their female enablers, sad to say, have kept have kept this situation to now a disgusting place where women are second class citizens. Once again, by that Supreme Court decision to get rid of Roe V. Wade, we're going to turn all that around. We're not tolerating this anymore. As she says, we're not going back. We're going forward and either, either dude Bros out there, you can get on board the train.

It's a good train. If you get on our train, you know we're going to get to the point where you're never going to pull out the wallet when you go to the doctor's office. We're going to have universal health care.

If you get sick or your child gets sick, you're going to have paid time off, not having to take time off, but not be paid for it. All this crappy crap stuff that we have to put up with it. No other democracy in in no other industrialized country in this planet has to tolerate this kind of crap. That's where we're heading. Get on board the train, dude. Bros, You're going to benefit

from this too. All right, Well, I'm just going on and on because I just, I'm just so thrilled with the moment we're in. Let's keep it going. Let's get those yard signs out there. Let's put our buttons on our coach, ball caps, our whatever it is, let's have some fun with this. Let's not be afraid to be happy. Life's hard. Life has given us a happy moment right now. Let's act on it. Let's put Trump away for good.

Let's open the doors to our White House, to a woman who two decades ago, 3 decades ago, couldn't even consider this happening. And here we are. All right, everybody. So get busy. Stay high, make a plan, do something every day, even the smallest thing, to push this forward. I'll keep talking to you and giving you some ideas. Make sure you're signed up for my sub stack. It's it's a free subscription. I'll be sending things out between now and the election of things we can all do.

My thanks to my executive producer, Angela Burgos, and to David Chinkula and others who helped me put together this podcast. Thank you, Basil, for everything that you did to help start this podcast. And thanks to all of you who are listening and who are doing what you can do in your daily lives. In the little town in Michigan where I live, two days ago on Saturday morning, all of a sudden walking past my apartment are almost 1000 people.

There's only 15,000 year round people that live in this town up in northern Michigan. There were close to 1000 people marching down the street, marching down the sidewalk, carrying Kamala signs, carrying waving American flags. I saw a Palestinian flag being waved. I mean, everybody who cared about whatever issue they cared about the Women's March was part of this. And these are just average Midwestern Michiganders. And there they were on a Saturday morning.

I thought, wow, I have never in all my years here seen this. Wow. I'll talk to you soon, my friends. This is Michael Moore. This is my podcast. Let's make this happen.

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