Rick Wilson & Mallory McMorrow

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts, then add supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-iHeart. Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, and this is Fast Politics, where we discuss the top political headlines with some of today's best minds and the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that U.S. employers added 181,000 jobs last year, far fewer than the 1.46 million jobs that were added in 2024. We have such a great show for you today. The Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson joins us to discuss the DOJ hiding files that might implicate Trump. Then we'll talk to Michigan Senate Democratic primary candidate Mallory McMorrow about her run for Michigan's open Senate seat. But first, the news. Somali, since SCOTUS told Trump that he's a reckless, not constitution-abiding president about his tariffs, he has decided he will exercise that power because he loves tariffs so much to make a global tariff 15% from 10% immediately. So Donald Trump lost against the Supreme Court. Two of his three justices cited against him was only Justice Kegstand Kavanaugh joining the Fox News triumphant of Thomas and Alito, who will let Donald Trump do anything he wants forever and ever and ever. So Justice Kegstand in his dissent said there are other ways to do what you want to do, big boss, and suggested that there was this workaround. Again, look, Donald Trump did these tariffs through this emergency executive order, which used in emergency powers that never used the word tariff. Dun, dun, dun, dun. And again, Justice Roberts used the major case doctrine, which is the thing he used to tell Biden he couldn't cancel student loan debt to tell Trump that he didn't have the authority to do these tariffs. Donald Trump, by the way, tariffs, unpopular, inflationary, not helping manufacturing. The only thing they're doing is helping Donald Trump be the autocrat he dreams of being. This would have been an off ramp. This is an excellent off ramp. But because Donald Trump can never take an off ramp, just like we saw in Minnesota when ICE murdered two American citizens, just like we've seen again and again during Trump's first and second terms, he can never take an off ramp. So instead of taking the off ramp and being like, oh, well, Supreme Court said I can't do it, he has doubled down. And he did this Mussolini-esque, as Rick Wilson says later on, presser where he went on and on and on about how disappointed he was with those two Supreme Court trustices who don't love America. And then he went on to effectively put a 10 percent tariff. and then he hiked it to 15. And who knows what's going to happen? Because if there's one thing we know about Donald Trump, it's that he hates acting rationally and he's a very sensitive guy. So expect more uncertainty and craziness. Yeah, it almost feels like the oppositional defiant disorder is very real in that one. Yeah, his behavior is irrational. And so it's never going to make any sense. And that's where we are. Speaking of, thank you for setting me up with that. So the DHS has now reversed on their TSA pre-check pause as the snowstorm that we're about to endure heads in. I don't know how it's looking. We're in your part of New York, Molly, but it ain't looking good over here in Brooklyn. Yes, I saw this. We're talking about what we're going to talk about now in the podcast. And it says DHS reverses on TSA pre-check pause. And I was like, wait a second. I thought TSA was paused because somebody else had been complaining to me about how they were going to pause TSA. And you were like, no, no, but they've unpaused it. And there we go. So last Sunday, TSA pre-check remained operational with no change for the traveling public. So here's the thing. There is a DHS shutdown. You may know about this. it was because ICE has become a completely unchecked militia that serves the president and searches people's houses and wears masks and kills people. Americans don't like it. And Democrats are trying to renegotiate some common sense reforms like they shouldn't wear masks and be the Gestapo. Republicans are really offended by the idea of even trying to negotiate anything. Ergo, here we are. Look, I just want to say that Donald Trump has billions of dollars for both the Department of Defense and for ICE enforcement. In the BBB, these two parts of the government have billions. While they've got cancer research for children, you know, children's cancer research, there's no money for that. But there's tons and tons and tons of money for President Trump's police force. They are buying up warehouses in which they will warehouse human beings. And that is why I say to you, there is money for the TSA pre-check. Thank you. I think there's also money for children's cancer research. But then again, I'm a libtard. Yeah, unfortunately, this TED Talk is not going over well with them. Molly, in Trump's continued demented foreign policy towards Greenland, we now have Greenland's leader saying no thanks to Trump's U.S. hospital vote. Yeah. So this is a pretty great little insane bit here. Donald Trump up late on the Internet, two things that never mean anything good. He is very into AI and posts a picture of a boat trying to appeal to Greenland. And so he says that he's going to send a U.S. hospital boat. U.S. has two hospital boats. They are both in dry dock. So he is going to take a little while unless he's going to send a Disney cruise with some doctors on it, which, again, not impossible. I'd believe it if I read it. Exactly. And I want to point out that in this weird truth AI thing, he says, working with the fantastic governor of Louisiana, Louisiana, which is a state known for its health care. Right. He's going to send the hospital boat to Greenland. So also known for its close proximity to Greenland, real direct route. Yeah. Well, but also I think it's important to realize that Louisiana is one of the 10 worst states for health care. Yes. You might be OK in New Orleans. There's a pretty good hospital, teaching hospital in New Orleans. Otherwise, I think you probably want to go to North Carolina. So that's why I say to you, this is an insane thing for Donald Trump to truth. And by the way, Denmark, Greenland, they are laughing at us. the leaders of Denmark and the Arctic Territory thought it was pretty funny that Donald Trump was going to lecture them about health care. And the Greenlandic prime minister said that will be a big no thanks from us. And I think it's an important point. They reiterated that health care is actually free in Denmark. Well, it is not free in the United States. Fun times. So you may remember one Gisland Maxwell from getting special treatment in prison for Mr. Donald Trump. And now we see that she's fighting the release of documents from Virginia Giuffre's civil defamation lawsuit because it may not go so well for her keeping her cushy place of the sun in prison. Yeah, I don't know that we spend enough time talking about this. Ghislaine Maxwell is not in the prison she was in before she met with Todd Blanche. She met with Todd Blanche. Todd Blanche said, you deserve to be in a nicer prison and moved her to a nicer prison where she can raise puppies and hang out with Elizabeth Holmes. Why did Todd Blanche move her to a nicer, lower security prison? I think the next segment of this podcast where you talk to Rick is a very good clue that they would make a lot of sense. Yeah. So I think it's worth realizing that, like, Ghislaine really wants not to have people see any more how involved she is with this. And she is really involved with this. And when you listen to if you haven't listened to Saturday's interview with Maria Farmer, please, please do, because in it she talks about how horrible Ghislaine Maxwell was to her and how horrible she was the other girls and how guilty she is in this. But anyway, Maxwell's lawyers are fighting the request to release 90,000 pages related to Epstein and Maxwell. And by the way, she already is so horrendous. Who even knows? The lawyers filed the papers on Friday. This is from a civil defamation suit brought a decade ago by Virginia Giuffre. You know, Maria Farmer talks about Virginia Giuffre and how she really did spend her life trying to fight back against Ghislaine and Jeffrey and how, you know, she gave up her life for this. And she died last year right before her book came out. So I hope that all of these files get released. radio. Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartAdvertising.com. That's iHeartAdvertising.com. Rick Wilson is the founder of the LinkedIn Project and the host of the Enemies List. Rick Wilson. Hello, Molly. Epstein files are, they're like a Rorschach. Very big one that keeps on giving. Our friend who used to work at the Daily Beast, Roger Sullenberger. has discovered a list. Explain what this is because it's a little bit complicated. Roger has discovered a number of files that the DOJ tried to redact. Once they were known to exist, the DOJ has decided they're going to pull them offline. Now, why would they do this? Well, they do this in part because in these files, there are confidential informant reports and other information that say that it was reported that Donald Trump had had sex with a minor child. DOJ deleted record revealing that Maxwell holds potential blackmail. That is correct. And that's what I was getting to. And the other part of this that I think really bothers Trump and Todd Blanch, et cetera, is that what they redacted was stuff that was given to Ghislaine Maxwell in discovery for her trial. Right. And somehow or another, Pam Bondi decided that she would pull this information offline, even though it's the hottest piece of smoke and blackmail material that you could have imagined in the hands of of Ghislaine Maxwell. Right. I just find it. I find it fascinating that. I always find it fascinating, I guess, that the Trump folks really think that at this day and age in what we have in the world we have, that includes the Internet, they're going to delete something and make it magically disappear. Yeah. And I mean, it goes back to the release of these files, period, paragraph. And there was really good reporting this week in The Wall Street Journal. Josh Dawsey, who used to kill it at The Washington Post before Jeff Bezos ruined The Washington Post. And now he works at The Wall Street Journal, which has really good reporting. And he talks about how botched the release was and how there was a lot of files that were, for example, they redacted the name Leslie Wexner because they thought Leslie might have been a woman's name. Yeah, sure. that's exactly plausible in every way and everybody believes that completely that's just super super likely that somehow the world the the captain of the world most giant pedophile ring just mistakenly knew someone was she on his mahjong list or something Get the fuck out of here And just for another minute on Les Wexner he did this really long deposition last week in which his lawyer kept telling him to shut the fuck up. I believe the phrase was, I will fucking kill you if you say more than five words to any answer. Yeah. Which seems striking to me that his lawyer might have had a level of concern that an innocent man might not have had. Yeah, I mean, it definitely seemed like, and I want to talk about Les Wexner for another minute because we did this interview yesterday for the podcast with Maria Farmer. Maria Farmer is the first person to ever come out against Epstein in a criminal complaint for the FBI and also the NYPD. She has cancer now and is quite sick. So we didn't do it on camera and she can't travel. And it's worth listening to this interview. Jesse said he was crying when we taped it. It just is the story of how these women's lives were ruined by Jeffrey and Les and whoever else, you know. So I think it's worth listening to. And we forget about the victims. You know, Molly, I think that's really an important point here because their stories are when you when you and I've interviewed a couple and you've interviewed a couple and and their stories have this sort of sameness about them. But also the pain is individualized. We were all victims of this system that this guy and is and Glenn Maxwell and their friends enabled and empowered and ran. But, you know, the individual abuses they all suffered are just so horrific. and so like you hear you you hear these stories and it's just like it's so heartbreaking and in every level and i just find it unaccountable that i go back to this again that pam bondy would not even look them in the face during that last congressional hearing yeah and you know pam bondy who was famous for when she was early in her career before she ruined herself with trump as many a person does in the Republican Party. As has been known to happen, sadly. Yes. I think there's a phrase that describes that. There may be, yes. I've heard it before about people dying from, yeah, touching Trump. Yeah, Trump. I've heard it. I've heard it. But she had actually cut an ad against child trafficking. Mm-hmm. She did. And that ad was directed by my old business partner, Adam Goodman. Pam Bondi, her big things were child trafficking and, as she used to say, busting up gangs and criminal elements. Yeah. And yet, it seems the criminal element gets more Pam Bondi's attention and deference than the victims in this day. I think that we still haven't seen the end of the Epstein files. You know, there's still millions of documents that are being gone through. There are unindicted co-conspirators who will eventually, their names will be redacted. They will become indicted conspirators at some point. And I am hoping as an American and as a human that we will see at some point a Department of Justice, if not this one, bring them to account. I also wonder when we look at this story, how much, you know, things don't change until they do. Right. The Epstein files don't get released until they do. People don't turn on a president until they do. And they're turning on him. And I'm reminded of the moments before Black Lives Matter and the moments before Me Too, when the culture hit a boiling point. And I think we're there now again. I think we're actually past that boiling point now. Weirdly enough, I'm seeing a convergence of anti-Trump and pro-Trump people pissed off in the same way about the Epstein matter. Does that make sense? I mean, I feel like there is a, I feel like the world has changed in a, I don't want to say fundamental way, but a meaningful way. Well, it's me too again. Yeah, but the idea that so many of these people are now like, yeah, Trump lied to me. He told me he was going to release these files. And these people really do care about this issue. It is a real issue for these voters who believe that he was going to protect the children from the pedophiles. And now he's protecting the pedophiles from the victims and the children. It's amazing. It is. It's sickening. But it is definitionally amazing as well to see an entire administration fully devoted to ensuring that the relevant information that's hidden in these files is never seen by the public. Yeah. Blows my mind. It's still going. So you have these hearings that are going to take place at Mar-a-Lago that Garcia and that oversight is dealing with. Right. And so I think there will be more. And we also just have endless documents coming. We're going to say nothing of the three million that are still hidden. Yes. And there's probably more and the videos. But we need to talk. And I also think when we talk about I just want for one more second on this subject, we talk about Les Wexner. I think it's important to remember that Wexner is a major GOP donor. And Senator John Husted out of Ohio is running against Sherrod Brown, running against Sherrod Brown, just took 100 grand from Les Wexner. And to my knowledge, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong on this, I'm wrong. But to my knowledge, he has not given that money back. Nor will he. And I don't, yeah. I don't think the odds are high that he will. No, I do not think. So on Friday, Donald Trump was betrayed by his Supreme Court justices, Justice Amy and Justice Gorsuch. You know, they were put in there to do Trump's bidding and they just hate America. Discuss. Very bad. Very wrong. And this is one of the most novel Trumpian theories I've ever heard, Molly. Suddenly the Supreme Court is affected by foreign influence. I'm like, what? What? Because Donald Trump can't come up with another explanation why Amy Comey Barrett and why Neil Gorsuch have suddenly turned on him and decided to get in bed with that horrible influence of foreign powers, the Constitution of the United States of America. It was an amazing little frumpy moment there where Donald Trump said there are good justices on the Supreme Court, like Justice Alito and Justice Thomas. Well, you know, Molly, though, if the court is influenced by foreign powers, then every vote the foreign, those influenced by foreign powers have taken so far should be invalidated. And I think he needs to go ahead and just say, I won't abide by any of the decisions that that this corrupt court has made, including Roe v. Wade and including, of course, Trump versus U.S. Other than that, I think we're fine other than that. Right, Donald? Yeah. One of the things we know about these tariffs is that they do not onshore manufacturing because wildly variable tariff rates that go on and off with the president's mood do not inspire people to build factories. No, there's no construction index like Donald Trump's cyclothymic behavior. Build a factory. Well, leave us to build a new widget factory in Alabama or whatever. So what it's done has just made things more expensive. But if you think about tariffs as a tool of an autocrat, they make a lot more sense. Sure. And look, the disappointment he had at that very long Castro-esque press conference on Friday could not have been more palpable. Yeah. You know, he was angry. And I don't know who the munchkin he had on the Sunday shows this week was. But that guy's attitude was like, well, you know, the president is right and all these tariffs are so good. and yet scott bessens out saying nope nobody's ever going to see that money back sorry i mean it's just like give away the game there chief i mean so there's all this tariff money and the tariffs have are now deemed illegal now 1.77 trillion bazillion right which we're all getting back right pritzker wrote a really i think effective tweet which was basically like send a check to each one of my constituents. Yeah, LP just put out an ad this weekend called, it's like, pay me, dummy. He really did promise these tariff checks, Molly, including in their fundraising emails they were sending out on Friday morning. Yeah. If you think of them as the tool of an autocrat, they make a lot more sense. He got mad at Switzerland, so he moved the tariff from 35 to 37 or 32 to 37. And then you think about. They gave him a watch or something and he lowered it again. And if you think of tariffs and if you think of the Trump administration as a kleptocracy and you think of Epstein files occupant Howard Lutnick. Yep. Business partner of Epstein. According to CBS, run by Barry Weiss, owned by David Allison, Lutnick's sons have been betting, because now you can bet on anything because America is basically Las Vegas, on these tariffs being taken off. So the Lutnick sons just made a lot of money. Those Lutnick boys sure know how to make some cash. Yeah, they seem really smart. They're like the Trump fellas. They just have a golden touch when it comes to grifting kleptocracy. I'm almost embarrassed to be a Napo baby. I'm starting to think it might not be such a good luck. listen i gotta tell you nothing about nothing about a country where the sons of the powerful overlords are dealing in shady financial transactions nothing none of that scans as good news for the future of the country my favorite part of last week was when the king of england you may remember england a country with a king said that he really must take its course Yes. His brother was not above the law. And even like they may get, you know, they're talking about the PM of the UK. Starmer. Starmer getting in some kind of trouble because he put someone in the Epstein files. Right. Peter Mandelson. Right. Peter Mandelson as an as an ambassador. Meanwhile, our president features prominently. And yet he somehow comes out every day now and says, as if to try to magically make it real, I'm completely exonerated. I'm innocent. I was I'm the one who I'm the one who stopped Epstein. If you think about Trump as someone who truly believes that there is a percentage of his base that only listens to him. And there is. And there they do. So what every time he says, I'm exonerated. yeah there are there are a group of americans who say yeah he's exonerated yeah do you think if trump said things like i'm not exonerated no no they they have a magical thinking about them now that even when he has in the past had to like walk stuff back in the in minor ways like during right then no no that's it's 40 chess he's secretly working to whatever and and it never seems to it never seems to really catch up with him with with that small percentage you know and that percentage used to be 35 right now it's like 20 and yeah and shrinking folks by the day take that as a piece of good news in the in a dark world i want to talk to you about potentially talented politicians. We're in primary season. There are a bunch of primaries going. And I don't want to talk about specific candidates because I want I have a theory that I want you to talk to us about. I think that Democrats get really stuck in the ideological purity of their candidates and not so interested in their candidates, whether or not they're talented. I could not agree more. And my theory of the case, and I want you to tell me if you think this is right or wrong, is that I think that politicians, they kind of don't really believe stuff. Let's just be honest here. That's true more in the observance than the breach, yes. Right And Republicans are much more nihilist but Democrats also can have their opinions changed And so do you think that Democrats are wrong being so focused on the machinations of their politicians' opinions and not on the talent of said politicians discussed? If you were putting me in charge of this matter, talent is the first, second, third, and tenth criteria for these folks. You can have people who are morally perfect and correct. If they can't run a race and they can't win a race, what good are they? You're not helping the party or the country by being morally pristine. If the choice is between your guy who's not perfect and somebody who serves Satan, pick the guy who doesn't serve Satan. It doesn't mean that you can't believe things. People all believe things, and they should. But sometimes you don't say the quiet part out loud. Sometimes you run a campaign instead of a struggle session. Yeah. And do you think that one of the things Democrats can do at this moment is stop doing those fucking. Questionnaires. Yeah. Talk about the questionnaires. Listen, I told candidates back in 2002 on the Republican side because we had the same purity test bullshit happening. OK. So the questionnaires are when different groups. Right. They send you. And by the way, folks, I'm not attacking them. So when the when the Sierra Club or NARAL or or or Moms Against sends you a questionnaire and they demand that you answer it and they demand you tell them every single thing. When Democrats did that and I was a Republican, you know what I did 95% of the time as a Republican? I'd be like, yeah, look what that dumb son of a bitch said in that questionnaire. And I would go and I would turn that around into negative ads. And those negative ads would make your candidate look like a fucking idiot. Right. Right, right, right. And this is why nobody is served by these questionnaires except the other side. And so Democrats, if you're a candidate, don't answer fucking questionnaires. And by the way, those groups that go, we will never endorse you unless you, yeah, they will. OK, if you're a winner, they will. If you if you show that you're kicking ass, they will. None of it matters. These people that do this and turn it into a purity check thing. Fuck them. No, just fuck them. Schumer and other members who pick candidates. Yes. Do you think that they should be picking the most talented candidates and not the people that are their friends? Always and forever. Pick talent. Because look, campaigns in the old days depended more on the internal game. Can this guy raise all the money from the other big guys that I know who are going to sit in a room and write $100,000 checks to the party committees and all that? Today, campaigns are increasingly being mediated by how good you are on television, how good you are on YouTube, how good you are on Instagram, how good you are on social media. And listen, there are a lot of things that Democrats would disqualify James Tallarico on. In a lot of parts of this country, Democrats go, no, nope, nope, he's too close to the God stuff. I don't care for that. They would be passing on the most talented single candidate I've seen come out of the Democratic field in the last decade by an order of magnitude. And so if you're going to pick candidates, pick them because they're good candidates. Let them deal with the ideology crap later because most ideological things, most purity tests, again, folks, I just want to repeat this. The Republican Party has weaponized Democratic purity tests like champions and they disqualify Democratic candidates in the minds of large percentages of voters, especially in red and purple states based on those questions. Will you come back? You know, I will. Mallory McMorrow is a Michigan state senator and a candidate in the Democratic Senate primary in the great state of Michigan. Welcome. Welcome, Mallory McMorrow. Good to be back. So you're running for Senate. This is a three-way Senate race. And I want you to talk us through, this is the primary, voting starts. When does voting start? Probably starts soon, right? Well, it's an August primary. So voting starts in June for the August primary. So talk us through what your primary looks like. It's Michigan, it's the Senate seat. Talk us through it. Sure. So we've got an open Senate seat this year with Gary Peters retiring. Mike Rogers is very likely the Republican nominee. This is the same guy that ran against Alyssa Slotkin last cycle, narrowly lost, and is back again, this time with Trump's full endorsement and millions of dollars from all around the country right from the get-go. On the Democratic side, we have a three-way Democratic primary with myself, Abdul El-Sayed, and Haley Stevens. I'm excited about it. I mean, I knew coming in that I would have the biggest hill to climb in terms of building name recognition. One of the candidates had run for governor in 2018, so has run statewide before. The other is a sitting member of Congress from Metro Detroit who had a contentious primary in 2022. So I had millions of dollars spent in the Metro Detroit media market for her. But my theory was that once people got to know me and my theory of the case, which is that this is by no means a normal time by any stretch of the imagination, that operating as if it is is simply not going to cut it. And that I have both the lived experience as somebody who hasn't spent my entire life in politics, but also a track record of beating a Republican incumbent to get into office, helping flip control of our entire state Senate for the first time in 40 years. And as majority whip, I've actually delivered on every single issue that Democrats and Michiganders writ large care about, that that's a blueprint that we can bring with us to Washington. So I filed in April of last year. I was the first candidate in the race. Earliest polls showed that I was trailing in third behind the two other Democrats. I am in the latest Emerson polling, now the frontrunner and leading by five points. So we feel really good heading into the on-year. We've got the momentum and we're going to do this thing. So you've had some questions about AIPAC. It's become a wildly unpopular in the Democratic Party. talk to me about your position on AIPAC, your thoughts about AIPAC money. Yeah, I would encourage anybody, if you haven't, Tom Malinowski wrote an op-ed for The Bulwark yesterday, really reflecting on what happened in his race and making the case to the Democratic Party that the Democratic Party should cut ties with AIPAC. Because as he pointed out, As Jeremy, who heads up J Street, has pointed out, it is really funded by Republican donors who intervene in Democratic primaries and I think has shifted away from perhaps what its original mission was. And what I view is it's a pro Netanyahu organization and a pro Trump organization. So I am not accepting APAC contributions. And I do get asked about it a lot. I mean, at every event that we go to, it's something that people want to know is, are you accepting those contributions? I'm not. I'm also not accepting any corporate PAC donations on my campaign, and that does make it harder to fundraise. But despite that, I've got more grassroots support than my two Democratic opponents combined. I have the most donations from Michigan, and we feel that on the ground. People are rallying behind this campaign, and it's the right thing to do. Haley Stevens was early sort of crowned the Democratic nominee. I have interviewed her and I actually knew her before she ran for Congress when she had just worked on the auto bailout. I was struck by how she's not a particularly good speaker. Why do you think she was crowned the nominee so early? I mean, I don't want to speak for the party writ large. No. I mean, if you want to win and you nominate someone who's just not that charismatic, Like they're politicians for a reason. Right. I mean, it's called a politician, not like our friend or our buddy. So I just love you to talk that through with me. Yeah, you know, I think our party too often makes the mistake and rewrites, redoes history and thinking that it's whoever's turn is next. And it's deeply frustrating to me. You know, I know that there are some who think that the next senator has to be somebody from Congress. You have to have federal experience. And I think that that is wholly untrue. I do believe that experience matters. And in this primary, we've got somebody who's a member of Congress. We have me and we have somebody who's never held public office before. I have learned a lot about how to serve in the minority in the state Senate where I served for four years. Then we flipped control to the majority. I've learned how to govern. I know how to move legislation. but I would just say that the more that I've gotten to know people, I think that that perception has shifted, that there was a lot of expectation that my opponent would be the front runner, and by most metrics, that hasn't been the case. You know, I am now the front runner for a reason, and it's interesting as we talk about the auto rescue that you brought up, that is certainly a huge part of her background and her story. I was on the other end of that coin. I mean, I went to college to get a degree in industrial design. I designed a concept car when I was still in college. We built it live on stage, full scale at an auto show. And then I graduated in 2008, and everything collapsed. And I had no job, and I had no health insurance, and I had nowhere to live, and I applied to 300 jobs. And the only job that I could get for a long time was folding clothes for minimum wage. I think that lived experience matters. I mean, when I talk to people all across this state who lived through the collapse of the auto industry. It's a very different experience being on the other end of it. And there are people who have simply given up, not only on Democrats, but on politics and on government and on institutions, because you can do everything right and you can play by the rules and you can work hard and you can come out the other end drowning. And I bring that experience into all of my work. And I think that people can see themselves in this campaign, because it's not just about beating Donald Trump. It's not just about putting out press releases or press conferences or messaging bills. We got to rebuild this country so that it actually works for people. And I think you see that in the trajectory of this campaign. I wonder if you could talk for a minute about the speech that made you famous, because that's when I met you, right? That's when I met you. That's when I met Ray. I want you to talk about the speech that made you famous because it's not so often that a state rep becomes a household name for a speech on the floor. Yeah, I mean, it was wild. So this is 2022. So it's already we're going on. Oh, my God. Four years ago. And this was during my my first term in the state Senate. It was a frustrating term. I mean, I got elected in 2018, came in in 2019. I was serving in the minority because I had flipped a district against an incumbent. the Republican leadership had decided no bill with my name on it was ever going to pass. It didn't matter how good it was or how bipartisan it was. So a few years into the term, and mind you, we had gone through COVID and protests in our state capitol where we had armed gunmen in our gallery. It was rough. And I woke up one morning in 2022 to find out that a Republican colleague had sent out a fundraising email for herself, accusing me by name of wanting to groom and sexualize kindergartners and wanting eight-year-olds to believe they were responsible for slavery. And just the worst of the Trump brand of politics. That's so very stupid. And very stupid. More importantly, very stupid, yes. Very stupid. It is. You know, there's this idea that you can just call people whatever you want and there are no consequences, but it really hurt. I remember trying to figure out how I was going to respond and what I was going to do. And I had resigned myself that I wasn't going to run for reelection and that I was in a pretty dark place thinking that I had failed at this job and I had let everybody down who had knocked doors for me and supported me in that first campaign. So I thought this was going to be the last speech I ever give in this job. And I came to the floor the next day and it was really intentional that I wanted to respond to her in person because part of the email she accused me of being a social media troll And I wanted her to see me face to face And I came to the floor and you know this was during the rise of Moms for Liberty and all of these groups that were claiming to stand for parents rights I was the mom of a one at the time And I took back my own identity. And I said, I'm a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom who knows hate only wins when people like me let it happen. And oh, by the way, people who are different are not the reason your health care costs are too high or why our roads are in disrepair or why we have a housing crisis or why teachers are leaving the profession. And I put the video of the speech online thinking that's it. And then jokes on me, tens of millions of people saw it within 24 hours. And I was on CNN and MSNBC, now MSNOW, and Fox News called me liberal Karen with a headband. That's right. You did have a headband. Well, it was funny. I was postpartum at that point and I had terrible hair loss. So that's why it was up in a headband. But the response that I got to that speech, it was months. Even just this week, I don't know why. I've started to see it recirculating again online. It feels like every few months it kind of comes back and it picks up steam. And people wrote me their life story. My P.O. box was stuffed with letters for months and months on end. And I would get emails from Republicans and Democrats and people who are furious, people who are religious, people who are not religious, who just said, thank you. And I was dragged back into this work in a really unexpected way because I realized, OK, I've just been handed a spotlight and we can choose to do something with it. So I brought on Liz Smith. My husband connected with her, actually DMed her and said, do you want to talk to my wife? We came up with this plan of what if we tried to raise a million dollars to help flip the state Senate? Because like the speech is great, but we had to prove that this tactic didn't work. And the only way to do that was we got to take away their power. And we ended up raising millions of dollars into a state PAC that I'd opened. I supported a dozen other candidates running for state Senate, brought my volunteers all across the state, and we helped flip control the state Senate for the first time in my entire lifetime. So I think it's all of that that I bring with me into this campaign. It is communication. It's knowing how to throw a punch, but doing it strategically because at the end of the day, it's not about going viral. It's about building power to actually fight back against these people and pass policies that help people. You have gotten some pushback from one of the other candidates on your stance on ICE. Talk us through what you're thinking is on ICE. Also, is ICE in Michigan right now? Yeah, they are. They are in Romulus, which is downriver in Detroit. ICE actually outbid an auto supplier, a Toyota auto supplier, to buy a warehouse to open a new detention center. So I just I want everybody to really grapple with the Trump administration is taking jobs and economic development away from a community that needs it to house human beings in a warehouse. So I will be out at a protest on Monday. They're opening an operations facility in Southfield outside of Detroit. We have a detention center in Baldwin where, you know, over 85 percent of the people housed in that detention center have no criminal conviction whatsoever. There was a dad who was picked up, who owns a painting company, that's done nothing wrong, picked up when he dropped his kid off at school, hasn't been seen in a year. Out in Grand Rapids, another dad was picked up after dropping his kid off at the bus. So the entire bus full of kids watched this happen. And what I say is unequivocal. ICE needs to be out of our communities immediately. Get them off of our streets. They are not doing their jobs. We do not need roving patrols of secret police terrorizing our communities. and frankly making the job of local law enforcement that much harder because they're eroding and breaking the trust that law enforcement officers have worked so hard to build. And then, you know, I have been echoing the calls of people like Chris Murphy to say, you know, the Senate holds the power right now and should deny DHS a single penny more until, you know, not even nibbling around the edges on reforms, but a complete overhaul of this agency from the ground up. Fire Kristi Noem, fire any of the agents who have been hired in the last year who haven't had proper vetting, who haven't had proper training. Make sure there are strict use of force protocols and actual ramifications if those are violated. End roving patrols, period. Reassert our constitutional rights to our homes not being entered without a judicial warrant. Make sure there's training and there's vetting. I mean, all of that. You have to rebuild it completely. And the Senate has the power to do that right now. I know the criticism from my opponent that you're talking about. It sounds nice to yell slogans. It does. But Democrats don't have the power right now. Democrats don't control the Congress. Democrats don't control the Senate. Democrats don't control the presidency. The leverage that they have, and this is where experience as a legislator matters, is in the budget. And you got to use that budget to extract every change that we need so that this agency does what it's supposed to do, which is immigrations and customs enforcement, not terrorizing our communities. Do you also think and this is a real question for Democrats for winning in the 2028 cycle? One of the things we saw was that during primaries, candidates were pushed to take positions that might be more like our dream positions, but positions that if you're running in a purple state for the Senate against a senator who is not a complete lunatic might be used against you later in the campaign. I think that's right. I just fundamentally believe like rhetoric is nice and it makes you feel good, but we have to think about results. How do you actually make the change that you want to see? And you're right, especially in a purple state. Alyssa Slotkin barely won against this same guy who's running again last cycle. So he comes into this race with universal name ID. And mind you, he had been a congressman in Michigan years ago. So people already knew him. and our party, Democrats, I mean, to win, we have to acknowledge people do want safe communities. They want immigration laws enforced. We need steep overhaul of our immigration system to make sure that it's fair, that there are pathways to citizenship, that we can continue to attract the best and brightest to this country, and we need secure borders. Michigan is a border state. A lot of people forget that. And what this agency is doing is not law enforcement. It's not. And they had the steepest increase of anything in our federal budget at the same moment where the Trump administration is slashing Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, SNAP benefits, saying we can't have any of these benefits, but we're going to allow secret police to go and terrorize and, you know, shoot and kill Americans with no consequences. Two of those things can be true simultaneously. Now, there are silver linings. There's a mayor here, the mayor of Sterling Heights, which is in Macomb County, deep red Trump country. He is a Republican turned independent, and he gave his State of the City address recently where he meant no words about ICE and said that ICE is making the job of law enforcement almost impossible and that in the world would he ever turn over any resident of his city to, in his words, those monsters. And this is a Republican. This is a Republican. And so that has to be where we step in to recognize there is broad agreement across the aisle that what ICE is doing is not law enforcement and it's not its duty. But Democrats also have to recognize we need to step in and say, yes, we have to enforce our laws. We have to have safe communities. We have to have sensible immigration policies. We need to secure our border. And those things are not at odds with each other. That is the only way you win a state like Michigan and build an actual coalition to govern. This is a primary way you have pushback from the left. I like the doctor. I've interviewed him. He's he's really great. But, you know, he's very ensconced. He's a Bernie candidate, etc. And then you have pushback from whoever Haley Stevens is for. It is kind of amazing that you're doing so well. Isn't this not how it's supposed to be in a Democratic primary? Well, I think that it just the way you sort of frame that up. And I feel like national reporters watching this race, you know, this has been called the most fascinating primary in the country and the future of the Democratic Party is going to depend on what happens in this race. that there is this like desire to put the three of us in a clear lane. That's just not how regular people think. I mean, there are people here who voted for Rick Snyder and Gretchen Whitmer. There are people who voted for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. You do not register by party in Michigan. We have open primaries. So you walk into your polling place, you will get a ballot that has the Democratic primary, the Republican Party. You pick a lane on the spot and see which one I want to vote in. and Michiganders are fiercely independent and like to make decisions for themselves. So my theory of the case was let's reject the lanes and the Democratic Party needs to build the broadest coalition possible. And we need to pick up independents, Republicans who are not MAGA Republicans, because that is the only way we win here. That is how I won my first election. That's how I swung a district 20 points by picking up a lot of Mitt Romney Republicans who had never voted for a Democrat before. That's how we flipped control of the entire state Senate in a purple state. That is the way forward. So I am really proud of my team for executing. I mean, we work our asses off on this campaign. We're doing more public events than anybody else. And it shows we had an event out in Grand Rapids, which not always a Democratic stronghold and still isn't. It's trending blue, but it's Betsy DeVos' hometown. And we had an event to announce State Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks endorsing me. We held it at a brewery. There was a line around the block, and there were people who told us they were waiting to get in, and eventually they had to go home because they just couldn't get in. And that's a great sign. But that, to me, is people are looking for rational, reasonable, somebody who understands me and what I'm going through and who isn't so wed to like a political purity test of a lane because that's not how you get shit done in a place like Michigan. Thank you, Mallory. Thank you, Molly. And now your moment of fuckery. Rick Wilson. Hello, Molly. It's that time. It's that time. Donald Trump has told Netflix to remove Susan Rice from its board or, quote, face the consequences because nothing says democracy like picking on corporate boards. Discuss. Well, let's say this. When Susan Rice came out and said, we're going to have to have a period of like national reconciliation when all this is over, she is absolutely correct. And she put it about as mildly as possible because mine involves tumbrils, pitchforks, torches and guillotines. Hers is just like, well, we've got to talk this through. But Donald Trump had a absolute hissy fit explosion, you know, that thinks very liberal must must be destroyed because Susan Rice came out and spoke the truth. And I think this is one more of these examples where if Barack Obama had been mad at a Republican on a board somewhere and said something, Can you imagine? Fox News would have a 24 hour a day, you know, authoritarian watch. And this is exactly the kind of fuckery that Trump is throwing out there to please his base and to keep his control over corporate America, which so far has been very effective. Yeah. And again, Trump is an autocrat who has been winning and winning. And from Jeff Bezos to Mark Zuckerberg, the people who have sat at his inauguration, they have made this possible. Donald Trump is a monster you created. Hey, look, these guys have built a system and they told us this system is perfectly good and legal and fine. It is the desirable system by which power is exercised in corporate America by the White House, by the executive. OK, fine. That's great. Alex Karp from Palantir and Sam Altman from OpenAI and all these other people that have been massive supporters of Donald Trump. When the jackboot is on the other foot, I don't want them to say a fucking word. I'm sure they'll be totally cool. Oh, yeah. Thank you. See you soon. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best minds in politics make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.