On the Ground in Michigan with Abdul El-Sayed

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I know, but you'll be surprised to learn that didn't fly with Hannah. The three-year-old and the two-year-old at home. Yeah, a little bit going on. So it was a quick trip. Flew out 6 a.m. Thursday, landed in Detroit. Then we went to Wayne County Community College where Abdul was holding this town hall meeting. So we interviewed a bunch of voters coming in. Got to hang out with Abdul for a bit off the record before the event. Watched him speak and did he did a Q&A, a gaggle with press. And then he sat down with us for an interview before he then did a CNN. So it was a very long day for him. So here's a quick taste of what we heard, what we saw, what the ground was like, what Abdul's events, what the interview was like. Watch this. And then John and I are going to talk about impressions from the event, the stakes in the election, kind of the issues that are getting fought and what the path looks like going forward for Abdul. We are at the Wayne County Community College in Detroit, Michigan. We're here to see Abdul El-Sayed. He's doing a It Shouldn't Be This Hard town hall meeting tour. Democracy is supposed to be about sharing in a conversation. About two things. Who are we and who do we want to be? Part of my job is not just to be like, all right, here's what's popular in a poll. It's not just to do what's popular. It's to make popular what's right. At the end of the day, people are good, really. I think sometimes we're afraid of our own shadow. We assume now people are going to like it. We shouldn't be talking about immigration. Yes, we should. What are you afraid of? Oh, wow. What did what some of the voters say? Well, let me tell you guys first about preview the Abdul piece of this, just so folks know. And I'll talk about the voters in the interview. Abdul and I talk about, you know, the difference between the questions he got from voters in the town hall and then the media. You'll be surprised to learn that the voters were not asking about Twitch streamers, but the press corps was. And Hassan Piker, we talked about what Mike Rogers and Ted Cruz had just said about Abdul in Dallas. I'm sure some person screamed, shoot him. We'll play those comments for you guys in a bit. I asked him about kind of like his reflections on 9-11 because we're talking on the 10th and not just kind of like the fear of that day, but being a Muslim in America in that period after. And then I asked him about his image because you and I know him is like our really smart doctor buddy. Yeah. And kind of a nerd. And now, like, there's a lot more bro coming out of that campaign. So I asked him about how he thought about that. The kind of him kind of getting the Tucker Carlson endorsement. We talked about public health. This is about 20 minutes and then worth your time. Most of the voters we talked to were big Abdul fans. Not a lot of undecideds were turning out at this event, but two people that really stand out to me. One was a woman who you'll hear from in the episode who actually knew Adi Barkin. He was a friend of ours. He's an unbelievably brave health care activist. And she talked about getting arrested with Adi and how Abdul's commitment to Medicare for all and health care was what inspired her. To be a part of the campaign. And then I talked to this older gentleman. He's 82 years old and had worked on RFK. The good ones campaign. Wow. How cool is that? I know. That's very cool. It was awesome. The best campaign ever. And he was like the last most inspiring campaign. Yeah, I know. Before the new generation of RFK is, you know, kind of the team version that we got now. But, you know, he talked about Abdul being a breath of fresh air and whatever. So here are some conversations I had. With voters on the ground in Michigan about the election and about Abdul. Can you tell us your name? My name is Jane. I'm Zach Farrell. Aiden. Norris Howard. Christine Ingalls. Othman Ali. Marvin Crawford. Eileen MacDonald. How did you know Abdul? Abdul was in my Advanced Placement Calculus class. So you taught Abdul AP Calculus. I did. I really did. And he was the most brilliant student. I mean, no offense to the rest of my students. Come on. Nobody's good at calculus. He was brilliant at that. He won the math award. He also won the English award when he graduated, which was pretty astounding. I like what he has to say and the manner in which he says it. It's fresh air. It's fresh air and we need fresh voices. I'm 82 years old. My last campaign I worked for was Bobby Kennedy, 1968. I feel like him, Bernie, the whole progressive movement were putting us in the right direction. Fortunately, what happened with the establishment the last few years kind of pushed people away from the Democrats and now people like Abdul are here to save the Democrats again and Bernie and all those progressives. Why do you think, well, why do you like Abdul? Is it a message, a policy area? Policy, money out of politics, Medicare for all, and all the policies he's pushing for. I think the message is clear. His fans are big fans of him. But I think the biggest thing is that. when people finally hear him speak there's a there's a clarity of message and I think also they like that he's kind of not punking out so to speak you know he's very verbose he's very gregarious but at the same time he's kind of a bulldog when he wants to be. I love that he's Medicare for all or health care for all and I love that he wants to stop sending money to Israel that is one of my biggest things that I love about him he's one of the first or yeah one of the first politicians to actually do that. Personally it's a health care for all it's his stance against Iran money out of politics is probably the biggest thing. Money out of politics definitely one of the biggest things and I appreciate the campaign for all Americans not just a specific group. I have six grandkids two great grandkids I worry about him every single day the kids are starting to age out of the 26 year old health cares. And it's not looking too good for a couple of them. And we shouldn't be like this. This should not be this hard every country in the world has health care. We're the only ones that go bankrupt we're the only ones that have to have ration medications. It's it's not right and it's not the way it should be. The young people need something to look forward to in terms of politics and some of the people right now in Washington in Washington should go home. They've they've made a contribution. It's time to go home and let the younger folks be you know when you were working for Obama. That's how I got connected with you. Amazing one. Yes yes I saw that's amazing that that to you. And when you walked there I thought oh my God I know who that is. It's a crap. Oh my God what a small world. Oh my God you were saying you know some people that are very. Very conservative in your life and you know the classic Republican message of why are we giving stuff to them when I'm getting left behind kind of works. Do you do you feel like when you send those people an Abdul clip is he able to break through do they hear him. I think it takes a lot more nuance than sending them a clip because they are very used to just seeing a propaganda message and being like oh that's just the Democrats doing their thing and I think it's going to take a lot of things like this seeing people talking and seeing-- actual conversations being had with people to realize and understand that it is a message for everybody and it is for people like my dad who is doesn't didn't go to college and one of the hardest workers i know have the utmost respect for him and it is important that he sees that and i don't know that the like you're talking about the love island clip i that that's obviously not going to reach him yeah and i i think something like this is important to see him actually talking to constituents and uh realizing that this is a michigan first america first kind of movement as opposed to a specific group of people that the republican party has him convinced that they're the enemy you know and this is something that he can see my dad's like more of a moderate uh democrat and it took a little convincing for him to get behind abdul but his biggest thing was getting money out of politics so he has a sign out so that broke that broke through oh yeah absolutely that's amazing i'm hopeful i'm hopeful that this that that this is the start of something new in this state in michigan because um that there has been a dumbing down a dumbing down of um of intellect a dumbing down and it's and it's down dumbing down and uh it it is it can't continue yeah we can't continue this we can't continue this agreed you can't get much dumber that's the good news we're pretty dumb right now yeah and it's uh it's it's it's it's sickening it's spiritually sickening it's emotionally sickening it's intellectual sickening and we we we've got to get it it's sad i mean here we are the united states of america and here we are in in this this uh uh filth that is stench that is over the whole country i mean i mean i mean i mean i'm i'm 82 i want to see see something refreshing before my last days i want to see us us um evolve become um enlightened you know you know i'm politically enlightened and it's it it uh well i should stop no i listen i really really appreciate it so it's great to see you thank you so much for talking with us yeah well you i i'm so glad to meet you man listen thank you very much it's amazing appreciate it thank you for uh thank you for caring enough to turn out and oh god yeah talk to these guys yes indeed and by the way if you like seeing us getting out of the office going out on the ground on these reporting trips please consider becoming a friend of the pod subscriber you get ad-free episodes you get boat content and you also help us grow our progressive independent media company and just do more stuff like this cover more issues get out into the world so crooked.com slash friends uh check it out it'll tell you all the ways you become a paid subscriber to crooked media crooked.com slash 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minutes and you can get your mail in just a simple for businesses of all sizes including multi-location offices you can even send certified mail with proof of delivery right from your desk we've used stamps.com here at crooked especially when we're mailing out merch it makes life so much easier saves you a bunch of time if mailing is taking more time and more money than it should try stamps.com free for four weeks and get a welcome kit go to stamps.com psa to get this offer today that's stamps.com psa stamps.com psa taxes and fees apply it was great to get out here and you know it's fun to watch these guys on youtube and and see the events but like i think being there in person just kind of like gives you a different sense and and being there in a period of you can see the campaign going from primary to general election mode and that step up in size and intensity um and kind of watching abdul guy go from a guy who was a little bit known in michigan political circles to a guy who was a little bit known in michigan political circles to totally losing his anonymity it is just it is gone now it is not quite the aoc experience because for her like winning the primary was winning the general so she's a national figure right away but abdul is close and also you know unfortunately for him it's backed by 70 million dollars in attack ads that were kind of part of that process um yeah seeing him deal with that was really interesting i've been wondering about that because and he like he ran for statewide office before but that was just a totally different level of like fame uh and people knowing who he is uh i watched the preparing for this i watched uh the event um that you went to and i watched his speech and um his uh and and all the questions listen all the questions too he's it's just i'm sure you uh will talk about this and and and felt this as well but man is it different watching an event and watching the speech versus like what you see and hear from the internet and the media about the race yes yes i i think look we are a dual fans he's been a friend for a long time both of us have donated to the campaign so we are biased but um i came away just being like okay this guy is so talented he's a talented communicator he's a great speaker and he just kind of he seems like a fighter which i think is the thing we've all been talking about that voters want for this moment but john the thing that he has done that i think every campaign consultant would dream of is he has landed on a clear succinct message which is money out of pocket money out of pocket money out of politics money in your pockets and medicare for all to the point where when we were interviewing voters about why they liked abdul they were repeating it back to us and that is the dream he starts the event by saying that and then everyone repeats it back to him like it's a whole i would like i also think for everyone's like well he's got to i mean and we've done this analysis too on this show like he's got to talk about this and he's got to link mike rogers to trump and he's got to be talking about economic stuff and not gaza and israel the time and like he was so on message during that event including the questions he was getting it is like i i would encourage anyone who is doubtful about the race and doesn't isn't sure like just just watch an event um because he and the comfort that he has and the confidence which i think is so huge in a candidate like this is not someone who seems like he i mean first of all you know he's memorized his stump but he is you can tell it's just it feels conversational it feels relevant to people he's not like talking down to folks he's not like doing like here's my line on this and i actually think he even comes off better in person or at these events than he does sometimes like on social media or the interviews oh definitely the goofiness and the sense of humor comes through like so you know you've written a million stump speeches but like politicians don't need your stump speech to be a thing you read verbatim every day in fact that's bad what abdul did very well last night was kind of like work topical things into his remarks and make it new in the frame so we talked about the trump kind of five thousand dollar dividend proposal from dallas and he's like hey you're paying like on average 5600 for trump's vanity trade war with canada you know he's having a pissing contest with the prime minister of canada you pay for it and then he comes back and tries to bribe you for a vote for a little less back and then he talked about how this was the third time you've been offered a check he said remember the doge dividend elon musk got the doge dividend the rest of us are still paying for it and then he mentioned like the lettuce and the listeria outbreak and he said you're paying for it on the toilet too like this funny thing he talked about the the michigan western michigan game um the tour is called uh it shouldn't be this hard tour yeah and he talked about this football game that ended where everyone thinks that western michigan got robbed and he was like man you can imagine western people at western being like it shouldn't be this hard that's funny it's really funny um the jokes were funny he also look again we i asked him about it at the interview but he's broing out hard on the stump there he threatened uh he challenged mike rogers to a no pads oklahoma drill so but even i i noticed that and like even when he did that it didn't come off as like hey dude like it was it was jokey yeah it was joking you know like it down a little bit yeah you can tell even the um i'd heard him do that cheerleader riff like mike rogers is a cheerleader but the way he did it was like tongue-in-cheek and he you know it didn't sound like a politician's riff where you're like and now applaud right like i just thought it was i thought it was comfortable yeah and so um abdul's opponent mike rogers he was not in michigan this week he was in dallas texas for the trumpapalooza uh where he was given a full six minutes and 48 seconds to speak the guy left the state a swing state in the middle of a campaign to go do that um rogers delivered kind of a classic paint by numbers bio speech about his story and himself john this line made me laugh really hard he was kind of trying to tell like a up from your own bootstraps product of the american dream story which is great but the way he phrased it was um that the american dream quote took me the son of a michigan shop team a teacher all the way to be the chairman of the house intelligence committee dude that's the american dream i watched the speech again this morning i was like by myself in my house and i and he did that line and i laughed out loud to myself it's that exact line i was like where's he going to take this and then he's like to the house intelligence committee from the factory floor to the chairman of the deep state that is the american dream like what are you talking about that speech was fun i mean we we can talk about the attacks on abdul in that speech but the fact that um he has nothing to say you get six minutes in front of it's generous to say a national audience because i'm sure not many people were watching at all only 2.5 million watched trump the first night uh total and that's like the fox that's the normal fox audience at night so trump didn't even uh break that but um so i'm sure no one was watching but you have six minutes in a big speech like this nothing about costs in michigan the economy the economy what to do for people it was literally like he did the 9-11 commemoration and all he talked about was terrorism and it was it was as if he was giving the speech in in the 2002 senate race john i literally wrote down i feel like i'm watching the rnc in new york in 2004 it was bush era post-election message let's roll a clip of rogers so folks can see what we're talking about i know what they're capable of and i know what happens when america becomes afraid to call evil by its name september 11th isn't something that we deserved no matter what abdul's buddies say abdul's is funding his campaign with money from terrorist groups like the muslim brotherhood he wants to represent palestine i want to represent michigan maybe that'll work i mean it tells you where the campaign's going which is all fear-mongering islamophobia stuff yeah but like the whole the way he talked about 9-11 at the time was like it's like hey mike rogers and then what happened um do you have any do you have an apology to all the men and women uh in this country who lost loved ones um in the iraq war and and in afghanistan and in all the years that we have fucked up the middle east in the world by complete like by just doing the wrong thing reacting the wrong way after 9-11 yeah did those wars go well mike yeah how did that go like have you been how how was your time on the on the intel committee how was your time like did you have any time on the intel committee did you have any time on the intel committee did you do you like the patriot act was that did that go well too do you think people are surveillance state yeah it seems like republicans are a little worried about these days yeah ted cruz did something similar so ted cruz also hopped in his time machine went back to 2002 did some post 9-11 fear-mongering um john let me tell me if you can figure out what the two democrats name checked by cruz in this clip have in common let's watch when mandami says he wants to seize the means of production he means it when abdul abdul al-sayed says he has a quote obligation to comply with sharia law he means it very subtle to uh link to zoron and abdul with nothing in common uh also john ted cruz on the anniversary of charlie kirk's assassination says nothing in response to two calls to shoot democrats i feel like that tells you everything you know to need to know about his sincerity as a human being and also the republican party's commitment to uh rooting out political violence yeah you could tell me about that well that the first one i thought they were maybe even three in the longer clip but like you can tell that maybe he doesn't hear the first couple he definitely hears the last one and because there's like almost a pause and he just decides like well i can't call that i i couldn't say don't say that because uh that would be showing some kind of modicum of courage yeah decency right um yeah i don't i mean look the mom donnie stuff is crazy and and just blatantly uh islamophobia and racism because mom donnie's not running in the midterms he's not on the ticket anywhere so bringing him up over and over again is just a way to rev up the base it's just fox news brain i mean we have fox on in our office they've been talking about um some 9-11 families not wanting zoron to go to ground zero to go to the commemoration event um obviously those families can feel however they want but they're also putting on just like hardcore right-wing republican who are just being islamophobic uh disgraces and by the way zora mamdani is a shia muslim so bin laden would call him an infidel and want to kill him too just for the record but those facts don't make sure that distinction matters yeah they're gonna listen to me on this one okay let's just talk big picture on the race so i like we were saying like this is what the rest of the race is going to be it's just gonna be naked islamophobia um republicans think this stuff is effective i don't know abdul is trying to counter it by showing other sides of his personality like we've talked about the goofy like blues clues video i asked him about that he's talking about sports a lot of it is like guilt by association stuff with hassan piker but really like those guilt by association attacks are just islamophobia it's like basically they're saying like two muslims are too much if jd vance really cared about hassan piker's views on israel then he would also denounce and cut ties with tucker carlson but he doesn't give a shit uh and this is just politics i think ultimately where abdul is on this is he thinks we need to be able to agree disagreeably on foreign policy including israel um he disagreed with some of the stuff hassan said in the past but he's not going to cut ties with the guy like who is a friend for that he's going to tell him i disagree and i think what's what's hard here is a lot of democrats are following republicans down this path of only focusing on guilt by association and there's just no other conversation about this race because obviously hassan said some stupid shit he apologized but abdul didn't say it and meanwhile like we have this really dynamic exciting candidate that is inspiring people and yet the the conversation online and in the media just gets wrapped around the axle on this one issue over and over and over again and you can tell it's just driving abdul crazy because he's like i want to talk about health care and grocery prices and all the shit that i hear about on the campaign trail not this stuff yeah i mean a few things about this stipulated i think if abdul had to do it over again it would not have had hassan come to michigan and campaign right like i think that there is a difference between and i still believe we've had hassan pecker on the show and even politicians who go on hassan's stream like i will still defend that right um because you're reaching an audience whatever else like the campaigning made it tougher right now that said um the guilt by association that they're trying to do is guilt by association with someone who has apologized for comments he said were a joke about 9 11. um and someone who you know they're like oh it's abdul's best friend and his running mate and stuff like that it's like no abdul's had a million people campaign with them and uh hassan was there like twice right and that's it i also don't think people normal people give a shit about this i really don't i do think that i mean and i'm i'm curious what abdul has told you or like what their polling shows whatever like i think his to the extent he has a challenge and he does have a challenge it is um do uh do you think that abdul has a challenge and he does have a challenge and people think that he is too extreme or too progressive or too liberal abdul right like do they think his positions are too far to the left do they think he is too uh is is out of the mainstream and my view on this is like watching that event that he did if he could if he could meet everyone in michigan everyone who sees him campaign everyone who gets contact by the campaign contact by abdul like has that kind of experience i think he'll be fine and i think people are going to come away with the view that like yeah he's progressive in all the right ways and uh like like his slogans right money in your pocket money out of politics medicare for all very popular and um and so my my concern i think his probably the campaign's concern their challenge is can you're not gonna be able to reach everyone in a big state like michigan and for the people who are just tuning in at the end and are gonna vote which image of abdul are they gonna get are they gonna get uh they're gonna see him as this extreme out-of-step god with a funny name um or are they gonna see the abdul that that we all see and so that i i imagine that's probably their big challenge yeah i mean just on the israel stuff like i think the vast majority of voters don't vote based on foreign policy it's economic issues it's rage at the establishment now that doesn't mean there aren't real concerns within uh parts of the michigan jewish community about hasad piker past comments etc so actually i called um andy levin to talk about all this he's a former member of congress um he's from the levin family which is like a deep local history in michigan he's also jewish he was a president of his synagogue um he tangled with apac back in the day because he was too progressive his view was that this is a tempest in a teapot um there was this you know in the gaggle abdul did he was asked about a letter from 400 jewish democrats who now support mike rogers but andy levin was saying that he thinks a lot of them are actually republicans or supported mit romney in 2012 because obama was too you know dangerous on israel or whatever so you know we'll see he said to me ultimately 1.3 percent of michiganders are jewish if there's high turnout that's like 1.8 percent of the electorate but he also thinks that when you combine muslim and arab american voters that's like three to four percent of the electorate so politically speaking um it could offset but also andy's like in my slack i have tons of jewish voters who are just really pumped about the guy so you know maybe abdul doesn't get 70 but he gets 40 or 50 or 60 something like that pot save america is brought to you by joe lee if you struggle with chronic skin conditions like dryness 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of the filtered shower heads affect the water flow and make it just you know make it so it's hard to get the shampoo out of your hair that is not the case with joe lee the water pressure is excellent and best of all you will notice a difference in your skin and your hair the joe lee shower head is free of charge and you can get it for free for 60 days by going to joeleeskinco.com crooked that's joeleeskinco.com crooked joe lee is also available on amazon and costco both online and in-store your sausage mcmuffin with egg didn't change your receipt did the sausage mcmuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just five dollars only at mcdonald's for a limited time price and participation may vary promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing i'm galen druke and i'm claire malone we're back this time with our friends at crooked media for a new show called still counting yeah numbers are hard it takes her easy and frankly numbers have only gotten harder what does the data actually say how do we reconcile that with the other things that we're seeing in american politics and around the world and how do we use that data to understand or maybe even dare to predict the future of american politics new episodes every wednesday starting saturday at 10 a.m. and we'll see you next time on crooked media september 9th subscribe to still counting on youtube.com slash at still counting podcast or wherever you get your podcasts um i think the bigger problem is what you're talking about which is this effort to make abdul radical um when you talk to his team that you know like the traditional dscc strategy would be abdul hangs back make rogers the main character his association with donald trump is way more harmful than abdul's association with anyone else and just roll with that but the challenge they are having is abdul is too interesting and too different of a story politically for that to work because the media doesn't give a fuck about mike rogers because he just hides in florida all the time so they're like trying to get the establishment on board while letting abdul be himself and not play into this lie that he's a you know super radical because he's not but in some markets right now they're getting outspent four to one with all the outside money and they're worried about the future of abdul and they're worried about the future of abdul about you know elon musk cutting a hundred million dollar check at any time and dumping even more ads on their head so they're just like you know that's the challenge right now yeah this is why i um and i think he's a an excellent reporter and i agree with him a lot but when jonathan martin has been saying um recently like oh why is abdul making this about himself why doesn't democrats just make him like you said hang back and make it all about rogers and you know the call is going to come in from the dscc to like knock it off and just do less and all that kind of stuff it's like i get that if abdul is uh troy jackson or um or or bill smith but yeah right maybe even not troy jackson because people don't know who troy jackson is because he just jumped in but someone like that right um he doesn't have an option of hanging back he just doesn't and he's got to do a whole bunch of reassurance for voters that he is an acceptable alternative to the guy they want to vote against who is mike rogers because he's too tied to trump so you have to do that and i think that's a really good point you just cannot make it all about rogers when all this money is going to be spent making abdul into this monster like he's got to push back on that and he's got to push back on it by just revealing his actual personality yes yes it's funny when i asked that question about kind of the 2018 campaign between now he was like look in 2018 i was 32 i'd never run for office uh before i had no business running so i decided like go big or go home and then i went home he's like a funny line in the but he was like look i you know i ran thinking like okay these are the things that a politician should be it's like the serious guy the doctor the nerd he's like i am all these things but like i'm also like this is me too and this is my personality and i'm just trying to be myself and like the corniest shit ever in campaigns is like let obama be obama or let trump be trump but i do think there's an element of truth there that the kind of more layered version of abdul we're seeing that includes being the broed out you know lacrosse captain or whatever is more true to and i think they also think that that kind of message or like the cringy cheesy shit the love island video um the the blues clues video is a way to get attention and then offset this claim that he's too radical um i also you know i asked andy levin about the concern that a lot of you know the folks should listen to still counting our amazing new uh polling and data show with nate silver and claire malone and galen druke you knew them uh it's 5 38 now they're still counting get it on your podcast feed because they talked about the kind of um concerns about abdul's candidacy in a really interesting and compelling way but andy levin wanted to kind of push me on why the traditional approach of moderation is wrong and that progressives uh are how the way to go in this cycle because he was just pointing out that progressives have been winning up and down the ballot in michigan primaries it's where all of the energy is it's where you know the only way you will turn out more people and be authentic to yourself if you're abdul and he also thinks that this like kind of traditional measurement of extreme versus moderate moderate it's kind of ridiculous in a moment where like democracy is hanging by a thread and we're in a trade war with canada that is really hurting michigan and diesel's over six dollars so you know maybe he's right maybe he's wrong he's like my hopium comes from being a union organizer where you're always going against the boss you should never win but what we did there is you know we rank all our supporters from one to five like one is a yes firm yes five is a no and then you count the ones and you subtract ten and you're like oh my god i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry and that's your real level of support and he's like that's how i'm approaching every poll going forward um because i'm as skeptical and concerned as you are but we just got out hustling yeah and it's also this is all about how you define progressive and um no one is just a progressive on everything or not or like voters um are more open to a more progressive position on health care they just are they are less open to a progressive positions on crime also just the truth and you could go through every issue like that and so um the challenge is to andy levin's question like first of all you can't uh completely just reinvent yourself as someone new in a general election you have your past positions right and running away from all those positions is uh arguably more damaging um than uh keeping them and explaining why you feel the way you do right so that's like number one and um then number two like the everlasting challenge for democrats is all of the energy and excitement in terms of what kind of candidates and like how they inspire and how they talk about politics is on the left and i might be more in more agreement with a lot of center-left politicians on a host of issues um some are more progressive but like their challenge is they're not if you just give the stump speech and read the stage directions and are boring um it could work it has worked in a ton of places right but like i don't know if you're trying to capture voters in a primary like you've just got to be you've got to have something to say real about the problems that people are facing and not just sound like you're reading it from a fucking poll and for people who are like really concerned about money in politics and really concerned about health care and haven't seen like affordable care act passed and they're still having trouble with costs health care costs they want to hear something what you're going to do about that and like that's i think that's that's why you're seeing all this energy yeah listen i you know i i don't know if this progressive case is the right one or if it means he's more likely to win but just to articulate it more uh i think you said it well like voters have never hated the establishment more they have never had less trust in their government so if you sell them the same old shit the same old talking points they're not going to believe you if you at least come off as a fighter if you at least come off like you care and you understand the issues and you're not a 150 years old they like that um one thing i didn't get to ask abdul about john was kind of how his medicare for all position has evolved um you dug into this in some depth you just like give voters kind of a sense of how he's gotten seemingly more flexible on this yeah so the big challenge with medicare for all is it pulls well and then uh and you know progressives will say it pulls well it's great everyone you know what's what's the problem from the centrists and all that and as we all saw who we have to live we have to live through 20 fucking primary debates about this where everyone litigated the medicare for all uh positions in the presidential primary in 2020 um once you tell people that it means getting rid of private insurance um the support goes down once you tell people the cost and that you cannot pay for medicare for all a real single payer system by just raising taxes on wealthy um support goes down and you know the medicare for all supporters will say well yes uh maybe middle class folks will have to pay a little bit higher taxes but you're paying so much less in premiums and deductibles that it all works out sure absolutely but these are the attacks that that the right right medicare for all you're explaining and um one thing in the democratic primary in 2020 that candidates like uh pete budaj did is they tried to split the difference and basically uh pete's plan was medicare for all who want it meaning um everyone can enroll in medicare tomorrow after the plan passes um but if you really really like your private health insurance you can keep your private health insurance uh and you do not have to go into medicare for all uh now even bernie's plan right on medicare for all plan did eliminate private insurance uh completely but even that plan did it over a set of years right so it wasn't all at once because if you eliminate private insurance tomorrow after a plan passed bad things would happen i won't get six of the economy yeah right it would just it's it's a it's a rough transition to do it right away so even bernie knew that it was like a four-year window whatever it was so abdul um during the course of this primaries he he basically his plan is more like pete's plan was in the 2020 primary i think it's going to be a little bit more of a change in that is a great thing because i think it also sends a signal for 2028 in the primary that we are not going to do another primary in 2028 where if you don't have bernie's exact medicare for all plan that you are you know an apostate and you like and like you you shouldn't be listened to and you're just a neolib shill like right i think if the goal is yes we want every single american to have insurance and every single american uh not to go bankrupt and to pay just only what they can uh to see if they can afford it and i think that's a great thing because i think that's a great thing a doctor and when they get sick then there's a whole bunch of different ways to get there and abdul has one way and he's showing flexibility and i think that is great and he's if he wins the election donald trump is going to be president for two more years at least right and then even then with a democrat in 2028 we'll still have to build support for medicare for all so we should not attack him for a lack of purity between now and then we got to build support for this um the other thing i wanted to ask him about but didn't get a chance to was artificial intelligence but someone in the audience who's been in the audience for a long time who's been in the audience for a long time and the audience asked about it and he gave a very thoughtful answer that i'm gonna we're actually going to put into the episode because uh it was just worth hearing it was nice hearing someone who is young and thoughtful and again it was like the example of his political skill because he was able to explain the hugging face attack with open ai in a way that was really short and sweet and had people in the audience gasping because they had never heard it before but um it wasn't too confusing for them the question of ai is the existential question of our time and it's not the technology per se it's the incentives driving the technology which are exceedingly dangerous because right now it's all being driven by a few billionaires out in silicon valley ai should not be used to do certain things like take your job or provide you health care or deny your health care or fire a weapon we need an international treaty that governs the use of compute so that we understand how these things are being used if you're going to build a data center the following things have to be true number one all union labor number two that you cannot touch our water number three that you cannot raise our electricity rates number four that you need to improve our electricity reliability not just keep it where it is number five there needs to be a very clearly defined community benefits agreement that's negotiated in good faith in public not behind an nda until we get that terms of engagement at the federal level i think that's going to be a very clear and clear agreement there needs to be state and local moratoria on data center construction we need regulation we needed it yesterday so the best we might be able to get is tomorrow but we need regulation we need it now when i heard him give that answer and this goes back to what you were saying a couple minutes ago about like why people like progressives and younger people and anti-establishment candidates because um so i talked to i interviewed steph moulton um uh right before that primary and he was on on ai because marky was like i don't know whatever apps are on my phone right and so then i like and i dug in with seth on well what would you do with the regulations be and look i don't want to criticize him too much for this because it was a short interview and we couldn't go on forever and we could have talked for an hour about it but he like he didn't give much on like the details of how to safeguard it what to do all this it was like pretty top line and i was like yeah okay well i thought you're supposed to be like the younger i know more about this kind of stuff guy maybe he does again but we didn't get it in the interview abdul who is supposed to be the like you know oh he's a crazy progressive and he just has slogans like medicare for all he gave one of the most thoughtful answers about ai that i have heard and he didn't just say like ban it done paused he was like or like ban data centers forever he talked about all the dangers all the problems out there and then he was like we would build data centers if these conditions are met um ai it's not the technology it's the people controlling the technology i thought i thought it was just great and he he sounded thoughtful he sounded thoughtful and he sounded thoughtful and he sounded thoughtful he didn't sounded too too extreme it was just you could tell he studied the issues and care about it yeah someone smarter than me could tell me if it was bad policy or a bad answer substantively but it was clear that he had thought deeply about it and he had something to say and it wasn't just kind of whatever you know the latest polling memo said was the most uh potent attack against the data center industry or whatever it was like a real plan um so look going forward on the campaign i try to ask his team like what's it look like you know from now until election day they don't know really like i think they changed the location of the town hall in detroit like a couple days before right so they're just kind of flying by the seat of their pants they said they're just going to outwork rogers um that will probably mean tons of town halls but it also means there's also a diminishing return to events at this point in the campaign because you get your supporters and you don't get undecideds so they're trying to figure out like media places to go on to reach different voters but they really i think just need money and they need the progressives and the establishment to just get them out of the system and get on board with this campaign and go all in um because like we don't just have an opportunity to like hold a seat in michigan here we have an opportunity to elect someone who is young and exciting and a great communicator and is brilliant like literal road scholar with big ideas who cares deeply about the issues and i think we should just everyone just be excited about that stop letting fox news kind of drive the conversation about this election that is a that is the republican president of the united states that's going to be the president of the united states that's going to be the president of the united states that's going to be the president propaganda wing of the party fuck them let's all like let's be a little more hopeful optimistic here uh about what the future could look like and again like i don't want to like tell people what to do but if you're still doubting abdul or you're not sure about the race or you're sort of rolling your eyes about all this or you were you're on the other side of the primary like just watch an event watch the event that's that that you went to uh last night and see what you think and like i feel pretty confident that people who listen to this show and a lot of other people will find it maybe surprising compelling all of the above um and yeah it's i'm i'm just wondering about the money thing i'm sure they i'm sure they're going to get outspent and need money listen if you watch him and you and you don't and his interviews on foreign policy or israel or about hasan piker are a bridge too far for you that's totally fine don't endorse don't support him that's okay i'm just like what i want from people is to do what you said which is watch a full event like let's let this election be about something more about what's going on in the world and what's going on in the world and what's going on in the than just a controversy that fox news is doing everything they can to keep in the news because they think it's politically potent let's talk about the things that we really care about in the bigger picture in this election okay so with that uh here's my conversation with michigan senate candidate abdul al-sayyed pod save america is brought to you by neutrophil fall is a natural time to get back into a routine maybe you're getting back to the gym eating a little healthier eating more consistent with the things that make you feel your best if your hair could use some attention this fall is a great time to rethink how you're supporting it luckily there's a neutrophil neutrophil is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand and it's the number one hair growth supplement brand personally used by dermatologists and me i use it i like it it helps because hair health isn't one size fits all neutrophil offers different formulas for both men and women at any age or stage of life and now neutrophil women's formula has been upgraded to its most 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sausage mcmuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just five dollars only at mcdonald's for a limited time price and participation may vary promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing i'm nate silver i'm galen druke and i'm claire malone we're back this time with our friends at crooked media for a new show called still counting yeah numbers are takes are easy and frankly numbers have only gotten harder what does the data actually say how do we reconcile that with the other things that we're seeing in american politics and around the world and how do we use that data to understand or maybe even dare to predict the future of american politics new episodes every wednesday starting september 9th subscribe to still counting on youtube.com slash at still counting podcast or wherever you get your podcasts uh abdul great to see you great to see you thanks for coming to detroit it's great to be here i mean you're in detroit and mike rogers in dallas who would have thought so it's 8 20 it's probably your 13th hour of a very long day yeah that's actually that tracks we're at the sprints part that's also at the end of a marathon of a campaign that's right so the primary is a marathon and then you're like you won okay go sprint five miles go as fast as you can yeah it's going to be exponentially worse so you just did a town hall meeting here in detroit you got asked about food inspections like listeria outbreaks doge and you're like oh my god i'm gonna go sprint five miles whether democrats are going to actually fight for stuff artificial intelligence uh and public safety and then the work you did to keep wayne county prison open during covid they needed a press avail and it was very different it's like israel you know twitch streamers etc uh like those town hall questions are they representative of what you're hearing at town hall events it felt um very different than that kind of national media narrative that is very well put because when i travel to state and you know we don't just stick around here in detroit we're not we go all over the states a big state you can be in detroit you can be in escanaba and people literally use the same words in asking the same question and it's almost always about something having to do with affordability something having to do with government not working for them something having to do with the existential dread of a data center or ai or health care those are all the issues you get and then you know you go on to some media platform hoping to communicate about the issues of the day and you get some question about a twitch streamer in california it's not to say that people make made media in california are doing anything wrong but that is to say that they are not the subject of a race for senate here in michigan well that was the thing that was to drive obama crazy because when you are campaigning you're having like daily focus groups at all times and you have like this visceral sense of what voters actually care about and then you do the media scrum and it's just so divorced from it it could be frustrating you know maybe it's just because i host famously hosted a podcast and sure did and a lot of what i tried to talk about on the podcast were the issues of the moment having to do with this issue of health of course that was the subject of the podcast but i actually believe that the media is important i believe that the work that you all do that the press does that cnn ms now do maybe fox news sometimes that it serves a critical role in our democracy and what frustrates me is that the media is not the subject of the discussion but it's the subject of the conversation and i think that's why i feel like i'm doing all this stuff and i think that maybe like i'm more romantic about how this is supposed to work but i'm like guys do the job and you wonder why a lot of these traditional media outlets are hemorrhaging viewers or readers is because people don't see themselves reflected in the conversation that's being had and so in some respects i remember this moment where there's a crossover between a very famous political uh uh reporter and the super bowl i was like oh wait it's because the medium with which we consume politics has become the medium in which we consume sport which means that the political conversation has been moved out of a way of actually informing people about what's happening in our civics into coverage for people who have the time and space to think about politics like it's a sport but here's the problem in politics winners and losers really matter it's not that team versus this team or this issue of the day that keeps you clicking when people like mike rogers or donald trump win like the people lose and if you're not actually talking about it at that level what's the point of doing this and i just i kind of want the media to be better yeah no i i hear you um your opponent was in dallas texas tonight speaking at like this trumpet palooza thing um he said a bunch of stuff i mean it wasn't a very long speech he he seems like he went there for like five minutes maybe um well the more important reason he went there happened behind closed doors to talk to daddy trump uh he said you want to represent palestine he said i want to represent michigan um you know he he said you sanitized extremism he called you a con man he said i'm a lawman but i mean i'm waiting to hear what the lawman has to say about i guess when ted cruz was speaking about you someone in the audience screamed shoot him or kill him something to that effect like what do you think it says about our politics the republican party um that that kind of thing is happening in such a public venue and by the way ted cruz is kind of like bordering about it right and he's not like condemning it from stage you know it kind of goes back to that point we just talked about that this is real life and we are real people and all of us want to get home safely and when you think about politics as being more about beating the other guy it's easy to cross that line rather than thinking about politics about actually delivering for people and you know if ted cruz was out there or mike rogers was out there or donald trump was out there having a conversation about like here's the very serious things that we need to do to actually try to bring down the price of groceries for people or try to bring down the price of gas for people or trying to make sure that people can see a doctor without losing their livelihood on top of possibly losing their life i think you'd have a very different conversation but that's not how they do politics it's like this winner take all culture war through politics and it's very easy once you start to demonize somebody to the level at which you literally can't do anything about it you literally can't do anything about it you literally call them evil which is what jd vance called me what two weeks ago that you then get from there to a permission structure that allows you to call for violence against somebody right and politics democracy is supposed to be the process by which we solve our disagreements peacefully and it's been very clear they've been running against democracy for a very long time and this becomes a logical outcome oh and this also happened on the day the anniversary of charlie kirk getting assassinated which was a horrible thing that everyone condemned left and right and should continue to condemn but if someone's saying shoot them or kill them from state you know when you're on stage you should condemn it in real time um you and i were talking on september 10th tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks um you and i are both old enough to remember how terrifying that day was how you know the country was gripped by fear for not just days and weeks but years afterwards um but you had to experience that period as a guy named abdul al-sayed um and all the islamophobia and suspicion that went along with it um when i think about that day in some ways it feels like a lifetime ago but then i look at our political debates and the way that republicans are talking about you and fear-mongering about you and your religion um and it makes me wonder if we've really moved on at all from the kind of post 9-11 politics of fear and i'm just wondering like what that period of time was like for you and and how you think about it i remember i was a junior in high school sitting in my chemistry classroom and i remember watching the second plane hit the towers and thinking about what happened you know the victims of the terrorist attack that day were the 3 000 people who lost their lives the first responders whose lives were irreparably harmed the families who have a hole in their families that's been there for 25 years now the attack on our country the attack on the ideals of our country but there were huge ripple effects that happened and one of the questions our country i think constantly has to ask is who are we and who do we want to be and in the aftermath of tragedies like this terrorist attacks attacks on our homeland we get to decide how we show up and you know for me obviously i went from being a brown kid with a funny name to being a very particular kind of brown kid with a very particular kind of funny name and i remember a kind of um a set of words that i'd never heard before being hurled at me literally every time i'd ever step on a playing field i was just what came with it and i also know that my classmates my teammates whether it was football wrestling or lacrosse they voted me captain of the football team wrestling team lacrosse team and they saw past the attempt by a few people to weaponize that attack to try to make america smaller and by and large we have seen in the past 25 years an attempt by a few people who want to gain power to constantly define out of the american norm certain groups of people and i think what made you know the the the political rise and presidency of president obama who was the president of my 20s so meaningful and powerful to a lot of folks was that he was the image of an america big enough for everybody and we find ourselves in a moment like that now but you're reflecting on 25 years right but we've been having this debate for 250 years you know who gets to be included yeah and a lot of folks ask me well what does it mean to be you i've only ever been me i i don't i don't know how to be anybody else i've never lived outside of this experience set but being me has also allowed me to see how people engage and interact with me and yeah there are the mike rogers and jd vance and the donald trump's of the world who see in me an attempt or an opportunity to define america as smaller than but i also get to interact with rooms full of people who are open-minded and big-hearted and are less interested in how you pray than what you pray for and are excited about the idea of an america that is bigger more inclusive more empowering that does the things that america always should have done and i hope that in this race is less about me and my identity and more about america and our identity and there's something exciting about the idea that michiganders can prove donald trump wrong that they can prove jd vance wrong that they can go back improve the folks who wanted to persist in a jim crow era or perpetrated in eras of slavery or destroyed native people they can prove all of them wrong again and that's the story of this place so you know yeah we're talking about 9-11 on the 25th anniversary because it's important for us to memorialize the people who were lost on that day but it's also important for us to memorialize that they didn't tear us apart they didn't take away that idea of an america that's big enough for everybody and america decided to be that place that elected a guy like barack obama that demonstrated how big it can be um and i think here in michigan michiganders are gonna prove that out too you mentioned sort of um questions of identity and who you are and you know who you always have been um when i think of you i think of my really smart doctor friend the guy i would call if i was trying to figure out who i was and i would call him and i would call him and i would call him and i would figure out like what is this new pandemic that i'm hearing about or hey man what like help me understand this wonky health care policy but then you know a lot of the clips and the ads i see out of your campaign there's like a like a love island spoof uh you just you've been calling mike rogers a beta you just challenged him to an oklahoma drill um and it's a little you know it's more bro than nerd and i'm just curious like what's the image or message or story you're trying to tell about yourself like tell me about the two sides and kind of what you want voters to know about you and come away with so you know the thing about politics is it always collapses people right and i ran once before in 2018 and i had never run before i was 32 years old there were all these open questions about well you know i had the same identity then too and i realized i'd like kind of flatten my personality in that race because i was like well this is how a politician is right and this time around i was like you know what i'm just going to be who i am i was authentically the kid in you know ap classes and also i just met your calculus teacher you met my calculus teacher we interviewed her authentically also the kid who too often you know would be scrapping at recess i was both those kids and part of it goes back to the fact that like you know i never walked in a classroom where i was quote-unquote normal right and if there was a bully in that classroom you better believe that bully was coming for me so i learned pretty early that if you let a bully take your lunch you're not gonna eat lunch i like to eat so at some point i was like okay i you know i know what to do with bullies and my whole life like i i am the kind of person that if you're somebody who is struggling and don't have what you need i will go to the ends of earth to try to provide those things and if you're a bully who's taking those things away i will pull the fuck out of you because at the end of the day like i don't want a world where people like that get to decide who gets and who doesn't get so what you're seeing out of me is yeah like i write policy books i wrote the book on medicare for all i'm proud of that book i like to sit down and research questions and think about health policy and i i enjoy studying and i also know that we live in a time where the capacity to actually get good policy sits at the edge of defeating a set of bullies who've tried to domineer our politics away from that and right now we need folks who are willing both to think critically about big problems that we have and also willing to step up to the bully and the thing about bullies is they don't respond to reason the reason they bully you is not because they've made a logical calculation about how best to engage in the world is because they're usually broken people and their approach to being broken is to try to take other people and the only way you take on bullies is to take on bullies so yeah like they want to hit me i'm gonna hit them right back they want to pretend like somehow uh people should fear how strong they are i'm going to show them what strength actually looks like so that we can get to a world where that's not what what runs this i mean there's going to be an after trump and i'm excited about that so while we got trump in in in in our presidency while we've got the mini wannabe we're going to try to get to a world where they're not going to be like oh we're going to be like oh you gotta stand up to them and too often i think as democrats it's like you know it's always i remember the kids in my uh advanced classes anytime there'd be this bullying they just kind of be like oh what are we gonna do i'm like stand up fight back so right now is the time to stand up and fight back i also would imagine like what look i believe you that this is who you are having known you for like a decade now but also i wonder if there is political value here right in and then they see you in a blues clues video and you're like that guy kind of looks like a goofball right this doesn't look like a radical um a lot of young men in particular don't like the democratic party because they don't think it's masculine um we can talk about all the ways that you know masculinity can be defined in bad ways it can be toxic in our culture but it is like a thing you see in polling and then you know that trump's demeanor and the way he is persona and the way um and i'm just wondering you know when you talk about lifting and football and that kind of stuff like do you think it is appealing to young men is there do you think that helps you break through you know i played sports my whole life uh it was a huge part of my childhood like chances are if you met me when i was eight nine ten i would be outside playing some sport with all the neighborhood kids um and so you know i spent a lot of my time in a lot of those locker rooms uh listening to those conversations with young men and i'm just wondering you know when you talk about lifting and being had and there's this game that people play around masculinity where they try to make it very hierarchical and i was always taught that any strength you have over somebody should be used to uplift that somebody the version of masculinity they like to present is one in which the only way you ever punch is down and the you're always kissing up i was always taught that you're going to punch you punch up and that you protect down and i think it's important for people to realize you could be strong and you can be masculine and not be an asshole so if the adjective we always hear in front of the word masculinity is toxic what does like benevolent masculinity look like what does it look like to actually be strong and use that that effort to try to make yourself better in whatever way as a disciplining feature but also a disciplining feature that is about how you promote others how you become an an integrator in your community how you empower folks uh and how you demonstrate that ability to discipline yourself they want a masculinity it's about trying to achieve power over other people i've always taught that it was about achieving discipline over yourself and i think there's a way forward here which is not trying to pretend to be them but to show an alternative to what that is because it doesn't feel good to be an asshole it doesn't feel good to show up and just like tell people off or you always feel bad about it if you do it yeah you know none of these people feel whole it's a cycle right and then you're always watching out for somebody else to do it to you so what does it look like to come out and be like yes out of your masculinity you're going to be a positive force in society you're going to uplift people you're going to fight for more justice more rights right and yeah when it comes to standing up to bullies stand up flex but understand what you're doing it for it's not about the power differential it's not about the power matchup it's about trying to make a world that's better for everybody and i think we we have to be able to embrace that uh and embrace it in a way that is consistent with our values yeah uh speaking of kind of crossover appeal uh former fox news host tucker carlson was talking about your opponent mike rogers uh recently and he said quote i wouldn't vote for mike rogers at gunpoint um what'd you make of that and is that an endorsement of you are we uh but by unlikely i mean no um i'm just imagining all the ops being like wait wait so there's a possibility wait a minute talk to her he's here this week um uh but look i i mean i think what you get in tucker's call us into somebody who's seen up close a lot of the corruption inside maga and what i think he sees in mike rogers is what all of us see in mike rogers somebody whose only interest is power and the money he can make off of power and so when he says that it's because he knew mike rogers back when mike rogers was in congress and he was supporting things like tpp and nafta and now pretends like he's somehow somehow uh the guy who wants to stand up for workers or against free trade the mike rogers he knew was the mike rogers who took us all to all those wars in iraq extended the war in afghanistan who never saw a war he didn't like and now mike rogers pretending he's against war Donald Trump does war, in which case he's for war again. - Now it's great, now we're loving Iran. And he understands that Mike Rogers is the guy who's never seen a corporate contribution he didn't like. So at least say what you will about Tucker. There are a lot of things that Tucker and I are going to disagree with, but he can see the corruption and the cowardice in the man. And it's just so off-putting when you actually have to look it in the eye. Yeah. There were a couple of people in the crowd tonight who worked with you when you were in charge of public health. As you know, like faith in public health and institutions took a huge hit. It took a significant hit during COVID. But then if you look at polling, it kind of fell off a cliff when Robert F. Kennedy took over at HHS. And a lot of it is because Democrats no longer trust, you know, the CDC or Kennedy to do their job. How do you think that the federal government can rebuild that trust and better communicate about it? How do you think that the federal government can rebuild that trust and better communicate about public health, knowing that often, if you're talking about a novel coronavirus, right, like you're not going to know all the facts, right? It's going to be an iterative process. You know, Tommy, I think the foundational issue is that people had lost public trust in public health and healthcare well before COVID. And it's because there's a lot of amazing science out there, but it always sits behind a paywall. And a lot of people couldn't scale that paywall. And so when you have a charlatan who comes in and says, Well, I have this other alternative, and they're just trying to make money off you. It's not that far of a leap to go from, they make things I need, but they make them too expensive, so I don't trust them, to I don't even need the things that they make. I remember talking to a gentleman in the midst of the pandemic about the vaccine. He said, you know, it's great. I'm gonna take the vaccine. I trust you. But how come y'all out here trying to get me to take a vaccine that didn't exist a year ago for a disease that didn't exist a year ago that I don't even have? I've been diabetic my whole life. And insulin, been around for 100 years. How come y'all out here trying to give me free insulin? It's like, good point. So one of the big reasons as a public health official, I'm so passionate about Medicare for all, is because if we want people to trust health and healthcare, it can't feel like they're getting their pocket picked every day. And if we want to restore trust, the things that are out there need to be available for people without having to worry about falling into debt, without having to worry. And so I'm so passionate about choosing between seeing a doctor and paying your rent next month.