Okay, I am joined today in studio, one of the hottest races in America. Of course, I'm talking about the Michigan Senate race. I have Dr. Abdul El Sayed. He is a physician, a former public health official running for U.S. Senate in Michigan. He has spent his entire career eliminating medical debt and taking on corporate polluters. Now he's running a campaign focused on ending corporate influence in politics and standing up for working people. That is such a joy to read that, that you are interested in helping people with medical debt and corporate polluters. How are you today? I am well. It's such a privilege to be here with you. We talk about refreshing the content you're putting out, the conversation that you're leading. I just really appreciate you. It's an honor and a privilege to be with you. Thank you. Right now, we have an incompetent federal government, especially the executive branch and arguably in Congress, for sure in Congress, not even arguably. Gas prices are something that cannot be spun. Triple Trumper, an independent, a leftist, anybody's going to go and fill their car up and it's something that you cannot escape from. What do you see if you were in the Senate right now, what would you be demanding of your colleagues in this very moment? Yeah. Well, I mean, we filled up last week $20 more than we had a month ago. That's a consequence of our tax dollars being used to raise our gas prices. There are two parts to this job. There is the procedural part of the job and then there's the platform part of the job. I think too many folks in the US Senate forget that there's the whole platform part of the job. Your job in the US Senate is not just to do the procedural things. To make sure that you are narrating outcomes for people and explaining what's going on. I think part of the problem is that Democrats have kind of forgotten how to persuade. We've given up on the idea that there are people out there who are persuadable. If we're talking at all, we're talking specifically to people who already agree with us rather than going out there into the places where people can be won over because you're exactly right. If you're filling up your honker truck, at the end of the day, you're paying a lot more money to do it because of the consequences of your tax dollars. Go take that argument out to the people. But then there's the procedural part. Too often, you've got this obsession with procedure as it's supposed to go in Congress. My point is, if you're in the US Senate right now, your job is to put sand in the gears. That's the job. You saw it on the other side with Tommy Tuberville holding up all of these appointments because he didn't get what he wants. I think part of the problem is we're used to losing and we assume that we're the ones who have to play by the rules all the time. I'm so sorry this is a fight. In a fight, there's not a script. In a fight, there is not a business as usual. They're not pretty things. If you're serious about fighting, then you've got to be both out there fighting with words and then fighting with procedure, trying to throw sand in the gears to interrupt and disrupt this Trump administration's insane approach to both war and governance and ice and all of this. It's not going to get along anymore. If you really do believe that this is an existential threat to our democracy, then you better start acting like it. I completely agree. I remember when Obama was president and Mitch McConnell, minority leader at the time, wreaked havoc forever. I don't buy into this, there's nothing really we can do, especially when you look at the approval ratings of the Democratic Party. I want to be clear, I want Democrats to win. I love it when Republicans lose and let me tell you why I love it when Republicans lose. Part of it is for spite. Another part of it is because I lived in a state for 51 years, Oklahoma, where Republican supermajorities got everything they wanted. We went from 17th in the country in education down to 50th. Right now, the Republicans have everything they want. They have the House, they have the court, they have the Senate, they have the executive branch, and they still are unhappy and they have completely made a catastrophe of this country. To me, the through line that I'm in my own political evolution right now, it seems to be that when corporations are giving and funding Trump and funding fascism, these oligarchs are the ones that are funneling money to fascism, but they also, you find out, there's a Palantir check here for this Democrat and there's an A-PAC check here for this Democrat. It just seems to me like they're paid controlled opposition and I certainly understand why the Democrats approval rating is so low right now because you feel like do you believe in anything? I mean, that's exactly the point. Donald Trump has this one neat trick. He will blame every problem you have on an immigrant. You have a job, immigrant took your job. Out of healthcare, immigrant took your healthcare. Out of housing, immigrants living in a house, you should have been able to afford. We have a far better set of answers, which is if you're out of a job, it's probably because a corporation figured out how to offshore automate your job. I mean, think about AI, like that's been the entire business model, is to automate all of the jobs. If you're out of a home, it's probably because a corporation is speculating on the home that you probably should have been able to afford. If you're out of healthcare, it's because a corporation is definitely figuring out how to monetize you because you get sick. We don't say that because too often Democrats are taking money from the very same corporations who are part of the problem. If you can't actually say that, you end up saying nothing at all. We end up with these like mealy mouth, 10 point plans about how we're going to solve this and that, and we dress it up in a bunch of policy speak that itself is incoherent and actually not really consistent with the real problem. I'm all for really good policy. I write policy books. But policy is secondary politics, and your job as a politician is to go out and explain to folks why the problem exists and what you're going to do about it. But if you're part of the problem, you have no actual incentive to explain the problem. So we sound ridiculous. And then what happens is, this is the worst thing, is that consultants come in and they tell you, well, listen, here, we did this poll, and here's the popular thing. You should just say this popular thing. And it turns out that the job is not about saying what's popular, it's about making popular what's right. And then even beyond that, if you're not saying something that's particularly popular because it's kind of obvious, then the consultants tell you, we got to say it with some charisma. So you're out there, and you're watching these politicians say obvious shit charismatically. And you're like, why are you so excited about that? That's obvious. So people are like, public option. You're like, really? That's the best you can do. People are out here going bankrupt over their deductibles, and you're now here talking about a public option that's going to be just as unaffordable as the private options. Problem isn't that we don't have options. The problem is, is that we don't have guarantees. So go out there and fight for something that's actually meaningful, and you might just get people who are like, damn, I like what that person is saying because it actually maps to my life. Yeah. And I think there is this condescension from elected politicians. Put whatever letter behind the last name you want to, Republican, Independent, or Democrat. When they're asked a question, do you believe in this, yes or no? Do you believe this person is a war criminal, yes or no? And they give you a 15-sentence answer. Instead of answering it directly, I feel like I just want to say, do you think I'm fucking stupid? I asked you a yes or no question. We are in the throes of a full-blown fascist takeover with a president who, in my opinion, is committing war crimes by the day. I feel like the entire federal government is run like a bunch of dirty cops. They're supposed to protect us, but they're dirty as hell. So I'm going to ask you some rapid-fire questions. Yes or no? Abolish ICE. Yes. What's the minimum tax rate a billionaire should pay? Give me a number. 8%. On wealth, not just income. Cut off military aid to Israel, yes or no? Yes. Offensive and defensive. Agree. A parent in Michigan is scared their trans kids' healthcare will be taken away. What do you say to them right now, one to two sentences? Rights are rights. We have a responsibility to stand for all rights. I don't care if you're ever going to use those rights or you're not. The minute you allow somebody to take away one person's rights, you are ascending to your rights being taken away. If you cannot stand for trans rights, do not be surprised when they come for your rights. We have a responsibility to stand for everybody, and that is about our relationship to government. I don't care if you don't understand. I want you to understand that all of our rights are intertwined. So yes, we have a responsibility to stand up to trans rights because we have a responsibility to stand up to human rights. I agree. Okay. Rejecting corporate PAC money, yes or no? Every day, all day, forever and ever. Only person in my race who never took corporate PAC money in the past and will never take it in the future and is not taking it now. All right. Let's dive into your opponents right now. So we have Hailey Stevens. Is that her name? She's kind of the establishment Democrat, and I believe she's Chuck Schumer's first pick. Chuck Schumer has two picks, apparently. Okay. They're just neither of them are me. The other one is Mallory McMorro. If I am living in Michigan right now and I am looking to vote, do these candidates take corporate PAC money? They've all taken them in every race they've ever run. I'm glad to hear that one of my opponents has decided that she does not want to take them anymore. That's great. Yeah. I think it's great to stop taking corporate PAC checks, but let's be clear. If you've only ever won elections, taking corporate PAC money, and your whole claim to fame is that you've won elections, then you've won elections on the rules that have broken our politics in the first place. So I think at the end of the day, maybe start to give some of that money back, try and figure out how you can get right on this. But if you didn't realize from the day you started running that corporate PACs are the essential corrupting feature in our politics, then at some point, I think you own explanation as to why. At the end of the day, though, it's not really about them. To me, I want folks to understand that from the day I stepped into politics eight years ago when I ran for governor, I understood that if we are going to continue to play the game the same way it's always been played, we're going to continue to get outcomes that are consistent with what we've always gotten. And we've just watched if things have gotten worse. So you're a medical doctor, and I think something that every American has struggled with is navigating insurance and or to a lot of people not having insurance. A lot of people not even having dental care like a root canal could cause somebody to be completely broke for several months because it's several thousand dollars. And as you head into this campaign and you talk to people on the ground in Michigan, voters, real people, not the consultants, not we're focus grouping this, the real people that you run into, what are they saying to you? What do they want? I think the experience of living in America over the past decade is that things are bad and they get worse. And anytime somebody tells you they're going to make it better, they just make it worse. I wrote a book called Healing Politics where I tried to diagnose this epidemic of insecurity. And insecurity, not talking about like the psychological insecurity that's like insecure about how you look. Now I'm talking about the insecurity of believing that things cannot get better. It doesn't really matter who you are. You are constantly faced with a system and a situation that feels like it's trying to pick your pocket. And it shows up in a lot of different ways. It shows up in the, I can't afford a second bag of groceries. It shows up in the, I am literally avoiding medical care for a problem I know I have because I am worried that I'm going to fall into debt and I can't take that debt right now. It shows up in the, I take my kid to school and that school is the same one I went to 30 years ago and it looks the same as it did 30 years ago. And I try to read with my kid, but my kid can't read. It shows up in the, I don't know what's wrong with the quality of water, but it doesn't look right. It shows up in the, you know, I've had to change my tire three times because there are potholes in my road. It shows up in all those ways. But here's the interesting thing. It doesn't matter if you're talking to somebody at a VFW hall in Escanaba in the Upper Peninsula, or you're talking to somebody at a church in Detroit, or you're talking to somebody at a living room in Grand Rapids. You're talking about the same issues. But here's the thing. Our politicians have taught us to believe that the reason we don't have is because somebody else has. And most of us don't get the incredible privilege of traveling the state like I do, and being able to meet people in their homes, in their churches to see for yourself that actually the problems are the same. And the reason none of us have is because of decisions made by people in DC to make sure people in places like New York and Silicon Valley get more and more and more while they take more and more and more for us. And that's how it shows up. It is painful because the thing about it is this. Most people work hard and they want the good things. And our system has told them that the reason they don't have them is because of their failure. And that's the worst part of it. They're like, what did I do wrong? I was like, well, you didn't do anything wrong. It's that the system is designed to make you fail and to pick your pocket. And you're told that if you just swim a little bit harder, you'll get there. It's like one of those pools where they have the waves, and if you stop swimming and just push you back. But even if you swim hard enough, you just still can't keep up. That's what people are experiencing these days. And at the end of the day, if you're a billionaire or you're a corporation and you can use your money and your wealth and your power to corrupt our whole system, to turn it up higher on everybody and pull and suck more out of them, that's exactly what they've done. So if we don't intervene there, it's just going to get harder. It's just going to get worse. And I did this eight years ago and you can see the difference. It's like when you see somebody walk under a strobe light and they just sort of teleport. It's like you saw the poverty and the challenges then and then eight years on it's just worse. Yeah. You know, I think that there's a really important thing happening right now in American politics. And I can speak because I've been in both positions. Number one, it's fun to sometimes kind of live out and just trump bash and make fun of these goober billionaires because they're so easy to hate and make fun of JD Vance and is he wearing too much eyeliner? It's hard not to make fun of him. Right. Right. And then Pete Hag said, it's just so great. But that's just a symptom of the problem that you just diagnosed. And as I have the last year really been thinking deeper about the problems of America, I look at how right now the democratic establishment kind of wants us to focus on this resistance lip stuff and focus on Donald Trump and bringing back democracy. But there's really a much larger problem, lots of larger problems happening. One thing that I've really opened up my eyes to that I was very indifferent and uninterested about my entire life is Israel and Gaza. I lived in Oklahoma. I was fighting these Christian nationalists. They're removing abortion from our state and, you know, horrible laws to my to the LGBTQ plus community really, really just institutionalized cruelty and bullying to marginalized communities in these Bible belt states. And then I opened my eyes to that and I see the lies that I was told for a really long time from a lot of them from Democrats that Israel's this beacon of democracy and they're surrounded by all these terrorist organizations and we have to support them. I bought into that for a long time. I was like, oh yeah, that's good. I support democracy. Fantastic. I'm all in. You know, yes, we can hope and change. Let's go. And I'm very politically active person. But I see that this is a real moral failing of our country and I've completely gone 180 on that issue. And I see the way Israel is killing little kids, shooting them in the head and in the heart per BBC reporting. Right now in Lebanon, you know, you see 200, 300 people killed total of about 2000 killed. Israel has no signs of stopping bombing apartment buildings. And then you see clips of people going back through the rubble trying to find their pets or their kids. These war crimes and this inhumanity with our taxpayer money, it's horrible enough as is that they're doing it from the people that work so fucking hard and pay their fair share in taxes. Elon Musk paid $0 Tesla zero and then got all these government subsidies on top of that. And then you see, oh, we can afford to do all of these things and we can't afford to help kids with cancer and we're funding this homicidal regime and executing little kids because they're from wherever they're from. You can't help where you're from. I can't help it that I'm an American. You're just you're from where you're from. It doesn't make you an asshole worthy of death. And I'm just really mad about that. I'm really mad about the lies perpetrated by establishment politicians in both parties. You know, I really appreciate you saying that. I was raised by my dad, who's an Egyptian immigrant, my stepmom Jackie, who's a daughter of the American Revolution from the middle of state of Michigan, and my stepfather was Palestinian. And one of the great gifts of my upbringing was the ability to walk between different worlds and talk to people who have fantastically different worldviews so that you can get to the least common denominator of that human experience. Like when your grandmother is somebody who's never gotten to go to school, raised six kids in a one bedroom apartment, or your other grandmother is a nurse who trained in Flint, who raised three kids in a bungalow in the Midwest, when they kiss you on the forehead or make your favorite meal, it's done with the same love, feels the same. And I think about one set of my cousins who struggle to afford very basic things in the United States, who pay their taxes, work really hard. And then I think about another set of my cousins who have lived under a military dictatorship as a function of those exact same tax dollars that my other cousins paid. And you learn to think about the world, both in the question of what do you do to provide for all of us here, the healthcare that folks need and deserve, the opportunities that they need in good schools, functional infrastructure. And also, what does it look like to protect people from living on the wrong side of American power? That humanity, I just wish we saw it in everyone, because at the end of the day, our money is being used to execute children in other countries that should be used to invest in children in our own. It's not even just that it's being misused, it's that we are being robbed of our resources to destroy lives in another place. And at the end of the day, there is nothing that is more centering than looking at your own kids. I got an eight-year-old and a three-year-old. And those little girls, when I walk in the house, they could care less about the campaign. They're the only people who don't ask me about the campaign. I love it. They just want to read a book. They want to go outside and play soccer. They want to just cuddle. Everybody, when they look at their kids, they have the same feeling. I don't know what happens when we lose the empathy of recognizing that at the end of the day, if all of us feel the same way about our kids, we ought to feel the same way about all kids. And that should be the least common denominator of our policy. So when people try to tell you that opposing a genocide abroad is about your hate for a group of people, I always find that to be such a wild thing. I stand up against anti-Semitism because I love people. I stand up against genocide because I love people. At the end of the day, that is the moral least common denominator that should motivate all of our politics. And I hope that people have the courage to move in that direction whichever way it leads them. And if your politicians do not, ask them why their policy proposals don't map to what they say to belief. Just ask. Because normally, the difference is somebody's money. I completely agree. And I think that this is a time right now where candidates like you and candidates like Zoran, there has been really important propaganda messaging that I have fallen prey to. I'm not a religious person. I grew up in the Bible Belt and just think, God, all these religious people are so wacky. So in the post-911 era, Muslims are terrorists. They have all these wives, blah, blah, blah. I fell prey to Islamophobia. I have been Islamophobic before. And what cuts through somebody like me who's open-minded, not really religious, but falls prey to propaganda Islamophobia is seeing people like you when asked, will you throw anybody under the bus to score a cheap political point? The answer is no. That you value universal human rights. And so then when I see some of these democratic politicians that I've liked in the past that seem to want to throw trans people under the bus, I feel like this is really, really dangerous. And let me tell you why. I have some friends in Oklahoma City and they have a 10-year-old trans daughter. It's brutal in Oklahoma right now to have a trans child. She wakes up and says, I think I want to fuck with a lot of Republicans and conservatives today. I'm going to have this trans child. It is a really, it's difficult enough to raise your child on your own. But when you have school systems, school superintendents, governors, House, Senate, Supreme Courts on the state level focused against you, their only choice is to flee to a sanctuary place to raise their child. And my friends can afford to do this. And so I've had this political evolution in rejecting a lot of this corporate bullshit and rejecting a lot of politicians that can't answer a yes or no question. And for sure, the biggest red flag for me is if somebody wants to score a cheap political culture war point and throw somebody under the bus, they will throw your ass under the bus so fast it'll make your head spin. You know, you talk about being under the bus. I know what it's like to live under the bus. Right? I was a junior in high school after 9-11. I remember going from being a kid with a funny name and an olive complexion to being a very particular kind of funny name and a very particular kind of olive complexion. I had to grow up real quick. And when people are so quick to throw you under the bus, you start to see all the other people under the bus. And you realize that at the end of the day, nobody wants to be under the bus. And so you start to think, you know what? I may not understand why you're here. Right? I know intimately why I'm here. But I may not know why you're here. But I do know none of us deserve to be here. So at some point, I think there's an experience of being othered, being told you don't belong, being told you're not quite right, being told that you're weird or you're odd. I mean, I spend a lot of my time apologizing for my name. In politics, you just kind of have to do it. You know what I mean? I love my name. My name means servant leader. It's like a great name for politics, terrible name for politics, but great name for politics. And you start to appreciate the fact that like the thing that people do when they feel down is to make somebody else feel worse. So they feel at least better than somebody. And when you recognize that evil thing that is unfortunately a part of human nature for what it is, then you start to realize the responsibility to reject it no matter who is being thrown under. And it's a conversation I've had with a lot of folks in the Arab and Muslim community, which is to say, I don't need you to understand. But I need you to understand that your rights to pray as you choose to pray, dear Muslim, who puts your face on the ground 34 times a day, which everybody else thinks is weird. Your right to do that is deeply entwined with this person's right to be who they are, to love who they love. And I need you to show up for them because in doing that, you're showing up for yourself. And we're showing up for an America where we embody the idea of showing up for each other. And so much of the challenge that we have when we talk about the good things government can offer is about practicing showing up for each other. I hear all the time from folks who want to make bad faith arguments about Medicare for all, they say, well, I don't want my tax dollars to go to pay for health care for them. I was like, well, do you think they want their tax dollars to pay for health care for you? And they're like, well, no, that's why we should all pay for ourselves. And I'm like, except for you don't know when you're going to need it. You may think you're self-sufficient, but I've seen hospital bills in the hundreds of thousands that neither you nor them can pay. So wouldn't it be smarter if all of us just agreed that we could show up for each other and then all of us benefited? And it's that willingness to intertwine ourselves with each other, to live in community, to see somebody eye to eye, to recognize that like, I may not know you or your experience or how you show up in the world, but I know that when you look at your kids, you feel some kind of way because I feel the same way. And I want to show up for you so you could show up for them. I want to show up for them so they can be there for you. And I know that at the end of the day, if that's all we have in common, then that should be enough. I just want to say that I am, I think these conversations are really important. I think that I have so much gratitude of having an open mind and getting through my own biases and propaganda that I've fallen prey to in the past. And I think America is best because we are multicultural. I think your name's cool. I think you're cool. And I think yours is too. Thank you. If I lived in Michigan, I would definitely vote for you. If I can borrow it for like four months. People are like, wait, your name is Jen Welch. I'm like, yes. Doesn't get much more American. That tell my listeners, listeners, this is so important that we elect people that are not beholden to corporations. It's so important that we elect people that do not fund the oligarchs that are funding fascism, because Trump's going to die. And these oligarchs in this funding is still going to happen. So we have to put up guardrails. So tell my listeners, even if you don't live in Michigan, these races are so important for democracy, for equal rights, because none of us are free until all of us are free. And any politician that tells you differently or prioritizes is a grifter. All right. Tell us how they can donate to you and or donate time online. Tell my listeners how they can get involved in helping you get elected in Michigan. Yeah. It go to our website, optualforsenate.com. Sign up to volunteer. Do donate. I don't take corporate money. I never have. I never will. So I rely on good folks dropping five bucks, 10 bucks, 7000 bucks if they got it. But I do hope that folks will get involved. Also, follow us on socials at Optual LSA to share our stuff. We try to have a good time. This is a campaign that really is about people. I think a lot of folks campaign thinking that if they stack enough cash, then they can run 30-second ads that tell lies about themselves and other people, and that'll be enough. Like, that is not what I want. I honestly, I'm OK with somebody taking the time to get to know me and saying, you know, not quite my cup of tea. I don't want to get money out of politics. I don't want money back in my pocket. I don't want Medicare for all. But like, OK, then I'm not your guy. Right. But I want you to know who I am, warts and all. Right. Nobody's perfect. None of us, as much as Democrats think that, like, if you're perfectly inoffensive, you're going to win an election, nobody's perfectly inoffensive. At the end of the day, if perfectly inoffensive, one elections, Donald Trump would not have been elected twice. It turns out that people want to know who you are. Yeah. And so my goal is to just share what the vision is that we're trying to build from Michigan to build a movement of people. You know, when we organize and I hope folks will sign up to volunteer, I always tell folks, like, you know, the script is about, like, what we're about, right? A lot of folks have these scripts for the volunteers. I don't actually want you to read my script. I want you to read yours because people are going to listen when they understand what motivated you. The work of politics is about trying to take pain and turn it into purpose. And all of us come to this work with our pain, right? We all know what it was like to go without at some point. So what about this movement means that it can turn your pain into purpose? Share that. And if you do, at the end of the day, it's going to be way more compelling than anything we could write for you. I have my pain, you have your pain, all of us have our pain. But when we come together around the mutual experience of that, the password purpose sits. So I hope folks will get started on a website. Check us out, share our stuff. It's been such a privilege to share a really meaningful conversation with you. I'm a big fan. So, you know, I walked into the space here and I was like, I can't believe I'm actually here. Mrs. Welch. We're so happy to have you. I wish you the best of luck. We will check in with you again. The primary is in August. So let's get you back on again, right at the tail end, and let's just get these voters mobilized to go get you to win this primary. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me.
