AOC’s Explosive Anti-Trump Speech Tears Into the ‘Big Lie,’ Wealth & Power in Detroit — Midterms

[0:02] And I remember back then when UAW rolled out their demands for the stand-up strike and [0:07] everyone said it was impossible, unreasonable, naive, and then you all got it done. [0:17] I also want to thank my sister Rashida Tlaib. You all are so lucky to have her fighting for [0:29] you in Congress. Every day in Washington she is throwing down for Detroit and Michigan overall, [0:38] and I'm especially happy to be here with my dear friend and the next United States Senator from the [0:45] great state of Michigan, Dr. Abdul El Sayed. We know why we're here. We are here because in November [1:03] Democrats have to win a majority in Congress. We have to win a majority in the House and we have to [1:14] win a majority in the Senate. And we need a firewall against an administration that is hell bent on [1:25] tearing down in fours of this country just a few nights ago in Trump's prime time address. And for [1:49] those of you who wisely tuned it out, Donald Trump spent most of his speech rehashing the same big old [2:01] tired lie that he actually quote unquote won the 2020 election. And we know he will stop at nothing to [2:14] stay in power. And we know that it has nothing to do with true or false. They will do everything they can [2:24] to try to overturn our democracy in November. And if we do not take back the House and the Senate, [2:32] we're going to make it a whole lot easier for him and his cronies to do just that. So Michigan, [2:39] we have no time to waste. The question before us is how do we win a durable majority? How do we get out of this [2:54] pattern that we seem to have been stuck in for years? This state knows it well. Six elections started off, [3:05] six elections in a row, starting in 1992. Democratic presidential candidates won here in Michigan. [3:14] In fact, it wasn't even particularly close in most of those contests. But then in 2016, something shifted, [3:23] not just here in Michigan, but across the country, not just with Democrats, but also Republicans. And to [3:33] many political watchers, it seemed that the laws of political nature were totally upended. But it [3:41] happened in all directions. And that's also part of what Bernie's campaign spoke to 10 years ago as well. [3:50] And that's also what Trump's victory in the fall in this state represented this oscillation in response [4:00] to the failure of our political system to address the needs of working people. These earthquakes and [4:09] aftershocks. Two years after 2016, we had another aftershock across the country. And as a part of that, [4:21] I went from being a waitress to winning a primary against a 20-year Democratic incumbent who was meant [4:31] to be the next speaker of the House. So I get it, Michigan, because my frustrations, precisely because [4:48] the stakes of Republican leadership are so high, precisely because of their corruption, their [4:57] discrimination, the gutting of voting rights, I understood the stakes of cleaning up my own backyard [5:06] back here at home. That we had to look at our contributions and why people like my family [5:14] and my neighborhood felt so failed by the party in charge of championing the working class and saying, [5:24] how can we be better? In fact, we have a responsibility to be. And all of us have been trying to get a handle [5:34] on what all of that means ever since. And we do know some of the many contributing causes and factors. [5:43] Like, yes, one of the causes, deep causes, have been bad trade deals that hollowed out states [5:51] like Michigan. Another cause was the record income inequality and the great recession spurred on by [6:03] unchecked greed on Wall Street. And yes, yet another cause was the suite of shameful and quiet bigotries [6:15] waiting in the shadows in pockets of our country. Racism, sexism, fear of our neighbor that seemed to [6:25] gnash their teeth the strongest the closer we get to uniting across our differences. All of these things [6:34] are true. And yet there's more because it was also due to a political system that had over decades and [6:45] across parties become totally enmeshed in a financial and electoral politics that stopped serving working [6:56] people. Our entire electoral system has been consumed by big money. And thanks to this Republican [7:07] administration, Donald Trump and this corrupt Supreme Court, it is now worse than ever before. [7:15] So instead of putting voters first year after year with little exception, Washington now elevates the [7:27] desires of lobbyists and powerful corporations at the expense of the rest of us. And what does that mean [7:35] in practice? Real wages are falling behind. The prices of everything from groceries to houses are skyrocketing. [7:45] Our water, food and air are being poisoned to pad the profits of major corporations. [7:53] And the accountability for all of this, for hurting everyday Americans, has been far too little, [8:01] if there is any at all. Which brings us to right now, Detroit. Things, there are things happening in [8:10] this country that people everywhere are shocked by. A government of, by, and for the oligarchs. [8:22] Masked ICE paramilitary agents shooting Americans in the street with no further questions. [8:30] Residents and administrations so corrupt that they don't even bother hiding their self-dealing anymore. [8:39] Members of Congress and Trump insiders getting themselves rich on insider trading and online [8:47] betting while you can't even make your rent. A genocide in Gaza committed with American bombs and [8:57] financed by our American dollars while our kids here at home have to ration their inhalers because [9:03] politicians tell us that health care is too expensive. And now money is flooding our political [9:16] system more than ever before to make sure that none of this ever changes. Because that's always been [9:26] their reliable playbook. Special interests, the people making us sick, are dumping, just dump millions [9:35] of dollars for their candidate, flood our airways with ads and our mailboxes with glossy postcards a couple [9:43] weeks before an election and they just think that people will go their way. But when the stakes are so [9:50] high, when more people than ever are living so close to the bone, eventually we have to ask ourselves, [10:01] is the answer to our problems to turn to the same playbook over and over again. A playbook that says in [10:13] order to win, Democrats must rely on the same dark money, 50 million and counting, from the same people [10:23] that backed 35 election deniers to Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election. A playbook that says in [10:33] order to win, we need to show deference to Trump by thanking his same ice agency that has shot Renee [10:41] Good, Alex Pretty, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and Johann Sebastian Duran Guerrero. A playbook that says in [10:52] order to win, we must be defenders of the same status quo that is drowning us and tells us the aspiration to [11:01] change our government and the ambition to even try is foolish. No, it's not foolish, Michigan. It is the [11:12] responsible and right thing to do. Michiganders, Democrats, Republicans and independents believe that [11:28] good leadership swings for the fences. Good leadership gets big money out of our system. [11:41] It takes on the corruption that blocks common sense solutions that lift working people. And by the way, [11:51] it knows that in order to do that, it helps not to take their money in the first place. [11:57] I want to dismiss this idea as naive. But I want to tell you something. The last time Democrats won [12:16] in the House won our largest majority since Watergate in 2018, 185 Democratic candidates of all backgrounds, [12:28] rural and urban, progressive and moderate, ran by not taking a dime in corporate money. [12:37] It's not naive. It's how we win Detroit. It's not just how you win. It's how you win a general election. [12:53] We can't be in cahoots with the same money oppressing us. It's not naive Detroit. It's what we need. And it, [13:09] most importantly, is what you deserve. You deserve a government that answers to you. And yes, compared [13:20] to how things work today, admittedly, a government that listens to you more than it listens to big money [13:28] is revolutionary. To take on big companies, to take on the big companies scamming you, [13:39] lowering your bills and putting more money in your pocket is revolutionary. To fight corporate greed [13:47] everywhere we find it. To make health care a guaranteed right in the richest nation on earth. [13:58] You deserve a politics that treats the disease and not just the symptoms of what brought us Donald Trump. [14:07] That doesn't negotiate with or placate corruption, but one that defeats it once and for all. [14:16] You deserve it because you matter. But we all know that it will not come as a matter of course. [14:26] It won't come by waiting patiently, nor by making the same decisions that we have always made. [14:35] This is something that we have to choose, Michigan. It is something that we have to [14:42] elect to do. And right now, there is a very clear choice before us. We can choose [14:53] 50 million dollars and counting, in dark money, trying to buy the state of Michigan. Or we can choose [15:04] Dr. Abdul El Sayed. But the choice is up to us right now. Michigan, Michigan, you can choose a different future. [15:30] It's waiting in your mailbox right now. And it will be waiting for you and your friends at the polling booth [15:37] on August 4th on August 4th. Because as much as we may be appalled at what is happening, ultimately, [15:45] our democracy is our responsibility. It is our choice. And if we want a different politics, [15:56] we have got to elect different politicians. And I came here to deliver one simple message, [16:05] that Abdul El Sayed represents the politics of the future. And if we want to not only win a Senate [16:19] majority, but win a Senate majority that means something new for us, that does something new for [16:27] us. If we want to pass the legislation that we need, and if we want to build a coalition big enough to [16:34] actually change this country, then we have got to elect Dr. Abdul El Sayed to the United States Senate. [16:44] Abdul is a son of Detroit. And that means something. Because we also know that his integrity didn't just [16:55] start, did not begin with Abdul himself. It began with his family and in the workers who built this city. [17:03] It's in his parents and in the parents who kept their families together. Or rather, it's in the parents [17:11] here in Detroit who kept their families together through bankruptcy and disinvestment. In the neighbors [17:17] who kept showing up for one another when powerful people had written Detroit off. Abdul doesn't just [17:25] bring those values to Detroit, he carries those values with him day in and day out. And you all knew him [17:32] before the rest of the country learned his name. You know that when this city was coming out of [17:40] bankruptcy, when the consultants and the creditors lined their pockets to pick this whole place clean, [17:48] Abdul came home to rebuild its health department as a public health official. And you know that when [18:02] kids who were struggling couldn't see the blackboard, he wasted no time and got them glasses. [18:08] Abdul is a man of integrity and discipline. Make no mistake about it. He is a man of faith. A man devoted [18:25] to his family and to his beautiful daughters. Abdul is a good man. It is why he earned the endorsement [18:35] of the UAW, an institution that knows Michigan workers. Because the UAW looked at all the candidates in this race [18:46] and chose him. Because they have fought alongside him and they know, they know him. And I want to close [18:55] with this Michigan. Because this moment right now is bigger than ideology or party. It is one of country. [19:06] I want to tell you what they're whispering about Michiganders out in Washington. Because I've heard it [19:13] myself. They're saying a state like yours and a people like you can't elect an American like Abdul. [19:30] Because when we talk about electability and I ask, what is it? Do we really think that Michigan [19:38] doesn't want to guarantee health care to every American? I don't think that's right. I believe [19:47] that Michigan wants to establish health care as a right to every person in this state. Michigan wants [19:55] to strengthen our unions in every state in America. Michigan wants to establish a government that is [20:04] finally no longer for sale. And those are all what Abdul believes. So when you strip away the euphemisms [20:12] and concerns at these highfalutin cocktail parties, it's not about what he believes. It's about who he is. [20:23] And it's about their assumptions about what they think Michigan is. And we know they're wrong. [20:38] Not only that, but in a moment like now, we do not get better by accepting the logic of this [20:48] administration. We do not get better by shrinking our idea of what America is and what we're capable of. [20:58] We don't do it. We turn this ship around by showing how big we actually are [21:05] as a country. We turn this ship around by rising to our aspirations and our greatest ideals. [21:14] We will never win the heart of this country by shrinking from who we are. [21:20] And Abdul El-Sayed is America. We all are America. And so when they ask you what the politics of the future [21:31] looks like, you tell them this. It looks like a doctor who answers to people and not big donors. [21:39] It looks like Detroit. It looks like an absolute and unwavering commitment to healing this country. [21:49] And when we win Michigan, when we send Abdul to the Senate and take back that House majority [21:58] and fight like hell for the Senate in November. And when we give Mike Rogers the boot for one last [22:05] time and we tell Republicans that your money is no good here. We make them answer for a trillion [22:14] dollars in cuts to our healthcare, to our Medicare, to our Medicaid, to our ACA. We tell them that the [22:23] answer to them cutting our healthcare is Michigan sending a public health official to the United States [22:28] Senate. You all have one of the foremost labor leaders in America here in Michigan, right here. [22:39] And what Sean has accomplished in his time leading one of the most powerful unions in America is [22:47] incredible. The stand up strike of 2023 improved the lives of auto workers and showed the rest of us [22:56] what organized labor can do when workers are united in the fight for dignity. Thank you, Sean. And I [23:08] remember back then when UAW rolled out their demands for the stand up strike and everyone said it was [23:15] impossible, unreasonable, naive, and then you all got it done. I also want to thank my sister Rashida Tlaib. [23:31] You all are so lucky to have her fighting for you in Congress. Every day in Washington she is throwing [23:40] down for Detroit and Michigan overall. And I'm especially happy to be here with my dear friend [23:48] and the next United States Senator from the great state of Michigan, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. [23:55] We know why we're here. We're here because in November Democrats have to win a majority in Congress. [24:15] We have to win a majority in the House and we have to win a majority in the Senate. And we need a [24:25] fire wall against an administration that is hell bent on tearing down in force of this country 200 years [24:38] to bail just a few nights ago in Trump's prime time address. And for those of you who wisely tuned it out, [25:00] Donald Trump spent most of his speech rehashing the same big old tired lie that he actually quote unquote [25:10] won the 2020 election. We know he will stop at nothing to stay in power. And we know that it has [25:23] nothing to do with true or false. They will do everything they can to try to overturn our democracy [25:33] in November. And if we do not take back the House and the Senate, we're going to make it a whole lot [25:39] easier for him and his cronies to do just that. So Michigan, we have no time to waste. The question [25:49] before us is how do we win a durable majority? How do we get out of this pattern that we seem to have [26:02] been stuck in for years? This state knows it well. Six elections started off six elections in a row [26:12] starting in 1992. Democratic presidential candidates won here in Michigan. In fact, [26:19] it wasn't even particularly close in most of those contests. But then in 2016, something shifted, [26:28] not just here in Michigan, but across the country, not just with Democrats, but also Republicans. And to [26:38] many political watchers, it seemed that the laws of political nature were totally upended. But it [26:46] happened in all directions. And that's also part of what Bernie's campaign spoke to 10 years ago as [26:54] well. And that's also what Trump's victory in the fall in this state represented this oscillation in [27:04] response to the failure of our political system to address the needs of working people. These earthquakes [27:13] and aftershocks. Two years after 2016, we had another aftershock across the country. And in, [27:24] as a part of that, I went from being a waitress to winning a primary against a 20-year Democratic [27:32] incumbent, who was meant to be the next Speaker of the House. I get it, Michigan, because my frustrations, [27:51] precisely because the stakes of Republican leadership are so high, precisely because [27:59] of their corruption, their discrimination, the gutting of voting rights. I understood the stakes of [28:08] cleaning up my own backyard back here at home. That we had to look at our contributions and why [28:18] people like my family and my neighborhood felt so failed by the party in charge of championing the [28:26] working class. And saying, how can we be better? In fact, we have a responsibility to be. And all of [28:37] us have been trying to get a handle on what all of that means ever since. And we do know some of the [28:45] many contributing causes and factors. Like, yes, one of the causes, deep causes, have been bad trade deals [28:54] that hollowed out states like Michigan. Another cause was the record income inequality and the great [29:06] recession spurred on by unchecked greed on Wall Street. And yes, yet another cause was the suite of [29:18] shameful and quiet bigotries waiting in the shadows in pockets of our country. Racism, sexism, fear of our [29:28] neighbor that seemed to gnash their teeth the strongest, the closer we get to uniting across our differences. [29:38] All of these things are true. And yet there's more because it was also due to a political system [29:48] that had over decades and across parties become totally enmeshed in a financial and electoral politics [29:58] that stopped serving working people. Our entire electoral system has been consumed by big money. [30:10] And thanks to this Republican administration, Donald Trump and this corrupt Supreme Court, [30:17] it is now worse than ever before. So instead of putting voters first year after year with little [30:28] exception, Washington now elevates the desires of lobbyists and powerful corporations at the expense [30:37] of the rest of us. And what does that mean in practice? Real wages are falling behind. The prices of [30:46] everything from groceries to houses are skyrocketing. Our water, food and air are being poisoned to pad the [30:55] profits of major corporations. And the accountability for all of this, for hurting everyday Americans, [31:04] has been far too little, if there is any at all. Which brings us to right now, Detroit. Things, [31:13] there are things happening in this country that people everywhere are shocked by. A government of, [31:21] by and for the oligarchs. Masked ICE paramilitary agents shooting Americans in the street with no further [31:34] questions. A president and administration so corrupt that they don't even bother hiding their self-dealing [31:43] anymore. Members of Congress and Trump insiders getting themselves rich on insider trading and online [31:52] betting while you can't even make your rent. A genocide in Gaza committed with American bombs and financed [32:03] by our American dollars while our kids here at home have to ration their inhalers because politicians [32:09] tell us that health care is too expensive. And now big money is flooding our political system more than ever [32:22] before to make sure that none of this ever changes. Because that's always been their reliable playbook. [32:34] Special interests, the people making us sick are dumping, just dump millions of dollars for their [32:41] candidate, flood our airways with ads and our mailboxes with glossy postcards a couple weeks before an [32:48] election and they just think that people will go their way. But when the stakes are [32:54] so high when more people than ever are living so close to the bone eventually we have to ask ourselves [33:07] is the answer to our problems to turn to the same playbook over and over again. A playbook that says in [33:18] order to win Democrats must rely on the same dark money 50 million and counting from the same people [33:28] that backed 35 election deniers to Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election. A playbook that says in [33:39] order to win we need to show deference to Trump by thanking his same ice agency that has shot Renee Good, Alex [33:47] pretty Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero. A playbook as in order to win we must be [33:59] defenders of the same status quo that is drowning us and tells us the aspiration to change our government [34:07] and the ambition to even try is foolish. No, it's not foolish Michigan. It is the responsible and right [34:19] thing to do. Michiganders, Democrats, Republicans and independents believe that good leadership swings [34:36] for the fences. Leadership gets big money out of our system. It takes on the corruption that blocks [34:50] common sense solutions that lift working people. And by the way it knows that in order to do that [34:59] it helps not to take their money in the first place. Want to dismiss this idea as naive. But I want to tell [35:17] you something. The last time Democrats won in the house won our largest majority since Watergate in 2018 [35:27] 185 Democratic candidates of all backgrounds, rural and urban, progressive and moderate, ran [35:38] by not taking a dime in corporate money. It's not naive. It's how you win Detroit. It's how you win a general [35:55] election. We can't be in cahoots with the same money that is oppressing us. It's not naive Detroit. It's [36:12] what we need and it most importantly is what you deserve. You deserve a government that answers [36:22] to you. And yes, compared to how things work today, admittedly, a government that listens to you more than [36:32] it listens to big money is revolutionary. To take on big companies, to take on the big companies scamming [36:43] you, lowering your bills, and putting more money in your pocket is revolutionary. To fight corporate greed [36:51] everywhere we find it. To make health care a guaranteed right in the richest nation on earth. [36:58] You deserve a politics that treats the disease and not just the symptoms of what brought us Donald [37:10] Trump. That doesn't negotiate with or placate corruption, but one that defeats it once and for [37:20] all. You deserve it because you matter. But we all know that it will not come as a matter of course. [37:30] It won't come by waiting patiently, nor by making the same decisions that we have always made. [37:39] This is something that we have to choose, Michigan. It is something that we have to elect to do. [37:48] And right now, there is a very clear choice before us. We can choose 50 million dollars and counting, [37:59] in dark money, trying to buy the state of Michigan. Or we can choose Dr. Abdul El Saeed. But the choice is [38:19] up to us right now. Michigan, Michigan. You can choose a different future. It's waiting in your mailbox [38:38] right now. And it will be waiting for you and your friends at the polling booth on August 4th. Because as [38:44] much as we may be appalled at what is happening, ultimately, our democracy is our responsibility. [38:55] It is our choice. And if we want a different politics, we have got to elect different politicians. [39:07] And I came here to deliver one simple message. That Abdul El Saeed represents the politics of the future. [39:16] And if we want to not only win a Senate majority, but win a Senate majority, that means something new [39:29] for us. That does something new for us. If we want to pass the legislation that we need, [39:36] and if we want to build a coalition big enough to actually change this country, then we have got to [39:42] elect Dr. Abdul El Saeed to the United States Senate. Abdul is a son of Detroit. And that means something. [39:56] Because we also know that his integrity didn't just start, did not begin with Abdul himself. It began with his [40:05] family and in the workers who built this city. It's in his parents and in the parents who kept their [40:12] families together. Or rather, it's in the parents here in Detroit who kept their families together [40:18] through bankruptcy and disinvestment. In the neighbors who kept showing up for one another [40:24] when powerful people had written Detroit off. Abdul doesn't just bring those values to Detroit, [40:31] he carries those values with him day in and day out. And you all knew him before the rest of the [40:39] country learned his name. You know that when this city was coming out of bankruptcy, when the consultants [40:47] and the creditors lined their pockets to pick this whole place clean, Abdul came home to rebuild its [40:56] health department as a public health official. And you know that when kids who were struggling [41:08] couldn't see the blackboard, he wasted no time and got them glasses. [41:15] Detroit, Abdul is a man of integrity and discipline. Make no mistake about it. [41:25] He is a man of faith, a man devoted to his family and to his beautiful daughters. Abdul is a good man. [41:37] It is why he earned the endorsement of the UAW, an institution that knows Michigan workers. [41:47] Because the UAW looked at all the candidates in this race and chose him because they have fought [41:55] alongside him and they know, they know him. And I want to close with this Michigan because this moment [42:03] right now is bigger than ideology or party. It is one of country. I want to tell you what they're [42:13] whispering about Michiganders out in Washington because I've heard it myself. They're saying a state [42:22] like yours and a people like you can't elect an American like Abdul. Because when we talk about [42:37] electability and I ask, what is it? Do we really think that Michigan doesn't want to guarantee health [42:45] care to every American? I don't think that's right. I believe that Michigan wants to establish health [42:54] care as a right to every person in this state. Michigan wants to strengthen our unions in every [43:03] state in America. Michigan wants to establish a government that is finally no longer for sale. [43:11] And those are all what Abdul believes. So when you strip away the euphemisms and concerns [43:19] at these highfalutin cocktail parties, it's not about what he believes. It's about who he is. [43:27] And it's about their assumptions about what they think Michigan is. And we know they're wrong. [43:38] Not only that, but in a moment like now, we do not get better by accepting the logic of this [43:53] administration. We do not get better by shrinking our idea of what America is and what we're capable of. [44:03] We don't do it. We turn the ship around by showing how big we actually are as a country. [44:11] We turn the ship around by rising to our aspirations and our greatest ideals. [44:19] We will never win the heart of this country by shrinking from who we are. [44:25] And Abdul El-Sayed is America. We all are America. And so when they ask you what the politics of the [44:36] future looks like, you tell them this. It looks like a doctor who answers to people and not big donors. [44:47] It looks like Detroit. It looks like an absolute and unwavering commitment to healing this country. [44:55] And when we win Michigan, when we send Abdul to the Senate and take back that House majority [45:04] and fight like hell for the Senate in November, and when we give Mike Rogers the boot for one last time, [45:11] and we tell Republicans that your money is no good here, and we make them answer for a trillion dollars [45:19] in cuts to our healthcare, to our Medicare, to our Medicaid, to our ACA. We tell them that the answer [45:28] to them cutting our healthcare is Michigan sending a public health official to the United States Senate. [45:34] You all have one of the foremost labor leaders in America here in Michigan, right here. [45:42] And what Sean has accomplished in his time leading one of the most powerful unions in America is incredible. [45:52] The stand-up strike of 2023 improved the lives of auto workers and showed the rest of us what organized labor can do [46:03] when workers are united in the fight for dignity. Thank you, Sean. [46:09] And I remember back then when UAW rolled out their demands for the stand-up strike and everyone said it was impossible, [46:21] unreasonable, naive, and then you all got it done. I also want to thank my sister Rashida Tlaib. [46:36] You all are so lucky to have her fighting for you in Congress. Every day in Washington, [46:43] she is throwing down for Detroit and Michigan overall. And I'm especially happy to be here [46:51] with my dear friend and the next United States Senator from the great state of Michigan, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. [47:07] We know why we're here. We are here because in November, Democrats have to win a majority in Congress. [47:19] We have to win a majority in the House. And we have to win a majority in the Senate. And we need a [47:30] firewall against an administration that is hell-bent on tearing down. It took this country [47:40] to just a few nights ago in Trump's primetime address. And for those of you who wisely tuned it out, [48:05] Donald Trump spent most of his speech rehashing the same big old tired lie that he actually quote unquote [48:15] won the 2020 election. Stop at nothing to stay in power. And we know that it has nothing to do [48:28] with true or false. They will do everything they can to try to overturn our democracy in November. [48:39] And if we do not take back the House and the Senate, we're going to make it a whole lot easier for him [48:45] and his cronies to do just that. So Michigan, we have no time to waste. The question before us [48:55] is how do we win a durable majority? How do we get out of this pattern that we seem to have been stuck in [49:08] for years? This state knows it well. Six elections started off six elections in a row, starting in 1992, [49:19] Democratic presidential candidates won here in Michigan. In fact, it wasn't even particularly [49:26] close in most of those contests. But then in 2016, something shifted, not just here in Michigan, [49:34] but across the country, not just with Democrats, but also Republicans. And to many political watchers, [49:44] it seemed that the laws of political nature were totally upended. But it happened in all directions. [49:53] And that's also part of what Bernie's campaign spoke to 10 years ago as well. And that's also [50:02] what Trump's victory in the fall in this state represented. This oscillation in response to the [50:10] failure of our political system to address the needs of working people. These earthquakes and aftershocks. [50:21] Two years after 2016, we had another aftershock across the country. And in as a part of that, [50:31] I went from being a waitress to winning a primary against a 20-year Democratic incumbent [50:38] who was meant to be the next Speaker of the House. I get it, Michigan, because my frustrations, [50:56] precisely because the stakes of Republican leadership are so high, precisely because [51:04] of their corruption, their discrimination, the gutting of voting rights. I understood the stakes of [51:13] cleaning up my own backyard back here at home. That we had to look at our contributions and why [51:22] people like my family and my neighborhood felt so failed by the party in charge of championing the [51:31] working class. And saying, how can we be better? In fact, we have a responsibility to be. And all of us have [51:42] been trying to get a handle on what all of that means ever since. And we do know some of the many [51:50] contributing causes and factors. Like, yes, one of the causes, deep causes, have been bad trade deals that [52:00] hollowed out states like Michigan. Another cause was the record income inequality and the Great [52:11] recession spurred on by unchecked greed on Wall Street. And yes, yet another cause was the suite of [52:23] shameful and quiet bigotries waiting in the shadows in pockets of our country. Racism, sexism, fear of our [52:33] neighbor that seemed to gnash their teeth the strongest the closer we get to uniting across our differences. [52:41] All of these things are true. And yet there's more. Because it was also due to a political system [52:53] that had over decades and across parties become totally enmeshed in a financial and electoral politics [53:03] that stopped serving working people. Our entire electoral system has been consumed by big money. [53:14] And thanks to this Republican administration, Donald Trump and this corrupt Supreme Court, [53:22] it is now worse than ever before. So instead of putting voters first year after year, with little [53:33] exception, Washington now elevates the desires of lobbyists and powerful corporations at the expense [53:42] of the rest of the rest of us. And what does that mean in practice? Real wages are falling behind. [53:50] The prices of everything from groceries to houses are skyrocketing. Our water, food and air are being [53:58] poisoned to pad the profits of major corporations. And the accountability for all of this, for hurting [54:07] everyday Americans, has been far too little, if there is any at all. Which brings us to right now, Detroit. [54:18] There are things happening in this country that people everywhere are shocked by. A government of, [54:25] by and for the oligarchs. Masked ICE paramilitary agents shooting Americans in the street with no further questions. [54:40] A president and administration so corrupt that they don't even bother hiding their self-dealing anymore. [54:49] Members of Congress and Trump insiders getting themselves rich on insider trading and online betting [54:57] while you can't even make your rent. A genocide in Gaza committed with American bombs and financed [55:08] by our American dollars while our kids here at home have to ration their inhalers because politicians tell [55:15] us that health care is too expensive. And now big money is flooding our political system more than ever [55:27] before to make sure that none of this ever changes. Because that's always been their reliable playbook. [55:39] Special interests. The people making us sick are dumping, just dump millions of dollars for their [55:46] candidate, flood our airways with ads and our mailboxes with glossy postcards a couple weeks before an [55:53] election and they just think that people will go their way. But when the stakes are so high, [56:01] when more people than ever are living so close to the bone, eventually we have to ask ourselves, [56:11] is the answer to our problems to turn to the same playbook over and over again? A playbook that says in [56:23] order to win, Democrats must rely on the same dark money, 50 million and counting from the same people [56:33] that backed 35 election deniers to Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election. A playbook that says [56:43] in order to win, we need to show deference to Trump by thanking his same ice agency that has shot Renee [56:51] good Alex Preddy, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and Johann Sebastian Duran Guerrero. A playbook as in order to win, we must [57:04] be defenders of the same status quo that is drowning us and tells us the aspiration to change our government [57:12] and the ambition to even try is foolish. No, it's not foolish, Michigan. It is the responsible and right [57:24] thing to do. I believe Michiganders, Democrats, Republicans and Independents believe that good [57:39] leadership swings for the fences. Leadership gets big money out of our system. It takes on the corruption [57:54] that blocks common sense solutions that lift working people. And by the way, it knows that in order to do [58:03] that, it helps not to take their money in the first place. Want to dismiss this idea as naive. [58:20] But I want to tell you something. The last time Democrats won in the House, won our largest majority [58:29] since Watergate in 2018, 185 Democratic candidates of all backgrounds, rural and urban, progressive, [58:41] and moderate, ran by not taking a dime in corporate money. It's not naive. It's how we win Detroit. It's not just how you win a primary. It's how you win a general election. We keep in cahoots with [59:06] the sick money is oppressing us. It's not naive Detroit. It's what we need and it most importantly is what you deserve. [59:22] You deserve a government that answers to you. And yes, compared to how things work today, admittedly, [59:34] a government that listens to you more than it listens to big money is revolutionary. To take on [59:44] big companies, to take on the big companies scamming you, lowering your bills, and putting more money in [59:52] your pocket is revolutionary. To fight corporate greed everywhere we find it. To make healthcare a [1:00:00] guaranteed right in the richest nation on earth. You deserve a politics that treats the disease and not [1:00:12] just the symptoms of what brought us Donald Trump. That doesn't negotiate with or placate corruption, but [1:00:21] one that defeats it once and for all. You deserve it because you matter. But we all know that it will not [1:00:32] come as a matter of course. It won't come by waiting patiently nor by making the same decisions that we have [1:00:43] always made. This is something that we have to choose, Michigan. It is something that we have to elect [1:00:53] to do. And right now, there is a very clear choice before us. We can choose $50 million and counting [1:01:05] in dark money, trying to buy the state of Michigan. Or we can choose Dr. Abdul El Saeed. But the choice is up [1:01:25] right now. Michigan, Michigan. You can choose a different future. It's waiting in your mailbox right [1:01:43] now. And it will be waiting for you and your friends at the polling booth on August 4th. Because as much as [1:01:50] we may be appalled at what is happening, ultimately, our democracy is our responsibility. It is our choice. [1:02:03] And if we want a different politics, we have got to elect different politicians. And I came here to [1:02:13] deliver one simple message. That Abdul El Saeed represents the politics of the future. And if we want [1:02:26] to not only win a Senate majority, but win a Senate majority, that means something new for us. That [1:02:35] does something new for us. If we want to pass the legislation that we need, and if we want to build [1:02:42] a coalition big enough to actually change this country, then we have got to elect Dr. Abdul El Saeed to the [1:02:49] United States Senate. Abdul is a son of Detroit. And that means something. Because we also know that [1:03:03] his integrity didn't just start, did not begin with Abdul himself. It began with his family and [1:03:11] in the workers who built this city. It's in his parents and in the parents who kept their families [1:03:18] together. Or rather, it's in the parents here in Detroit who kept their families together through [1:03:23] bankruptcy and disinvestment. In the neighbors who kept showing up for one another when powerful people [1:03:30] had written Detroit off. Abdul doesn't just bring those values to Detroit, he carries those values with [1:03:38] him day in and day out. And you all knew him before the rest of the country learned his name. You know [1:03:48] that when this city was coming out of bankruptcy, when the consultants and the creditors lined their [1:03:54] pockets to pick this whole place clean, Abdul came home to rebuild its health department as a public [1:04:03] health official. And you know that when kids who were struggling couldn't see the blackboard, [1:04:15] he wasted no time and got them glasses. [1:04:18] Abdul is a man of integrity and discipline. Make no mistake about it. He is a man of faith. A man devoted [1:04:35] to his family and to his beautiful daughters. Abdul is a good man. It is why he earned the endorsement [1:04:45] of the UAW, an institution that knows Michigan workers. Because the UAW looked at all the candidates in [1:04:56] this race and chose him. Because they have fought alongside him and they know, they know him. And I [1:05:05] want to close with this Michigan. Because this moment right now is bigger than ideology or party. It is one [1:05:14] of country. I want to tell you what they're whispering about Michiganders out in Washington. Because I've heard [1:05:23] it myself. They're saying a state like yours and a people like you can't elect an American like Abdul. [1:05:40] Because when we talk about electability, and I ask, what is it? Do we really think that Michigan [1:05:48] doesn't want to guarantee health care to every American? I don't think that's right. I believe that [1:05:57] Michigan wants to establish health care as a right to every person in this state. Michigan wants to [1:06:06] strengthen our unions in every state in America. Michigan wants to establish a government that is [1:06:14] finally no longer for sale. And those are all what Abdul believes. So when you strip away the euphemisms [1:06:22] and concerns at these highfalutin cocktail parties, it's not about what he believes. It's about who he is. [1:06:31] And it's about their assumptions about what they think Michigan is. And we know they're wrong. [1:06:43] Not only that, but in a moment like now, we do not get better by accepting the logic of this [1:06:58] administration. We do not get better by shrinking our idea of what America is and what we're capable of. [1:07:07] We don't do it. We turn the ship around by showing how big we actually are as a country. We turn the ship [1:07:18] around by rising to our aspirations and our greatest ideals. We will never win the heart of this country [1:07:28] by shrinking from who we are. And Abdul El-Sayed is America. We all are America. And so when they ask you [1:07:40] what the politics of the future looks like, you tell them this, it looks like a doctor who answers to [1:07:47] people and not big donors. It looks like Detroit. It looks like an absolute and unwavering commitment [1:07:58] to healing this country. And when we win Michigan, when we send Abdul to the Senate and take back that [1:08:07] House majority and fight like hell for the Senate in November, and when we give Mike Rogers the boot for [1:08:14] one last time. And we tell Republicans that your money is no good here. And we make them answer for a trillion [1:08:24] dollars in cuts to our health care, to our Medicare, to our Medicaid, to our ACA. We tell them that the [1:08:33] answer to them cutting our health care is Michigan sending a public health official to the United States [1:08:38] Senate. You all have one of the foremost labor leaders in America here in Michigan, right here. [1:08:49] And what Sean has accomplished in his time leading one of the most powerful unions in America is [1:08:57] incredible. The stand up strike of 2023 improved the lives of auto workers and showed the rest of us [1:09:06] what organized labor can do when workers are united in the fight for dignity. Thank you, Sean. And I [1:09:18] remember back then when UAW rolled out their demands for the stand up strike and everyone said it was [1:09:25] impossible, unreasonable, naive, and then you all got it done. I also want to thank my sister Rashida Tlaib. [1:09:38] You all are so lucky to have her fighting for you in Congress. Every day in Washington she is throwing [1:09:50] down for Detroit and Michigan overall. And I'm especially happy to be here with my dear friend [1:09:58] and the next United States Senator from the great state of Michigan, Dr. Abdul El Sayed. [1:10:05] We know why we're here. We are here because in November, Democrats have to win a majority in Congress. [1:10:25] We have to win a majority in the House and we have to win a majority in the Senate. And we need a firewall [1:10:36] against an administration that is hell-bent on tearing down in four years in the country. Two hundred [1:10:46] years. Just a few nights ago in Trump's prime time address. And for those of you who wisely tuned it out, [1:11:10] Donald Trump spent most of his speech rehashing the same big old tired lie that he actually quote unquote [1:11:20] won the 2020 election. And we know he will stop at nothing to stay in power. And we know that it has [1:11:33] nothing to do with true or false. They will do everything they can to try to overturn our democracy [1:11:42] in November. And if we do not take back the House and the Senate, we're going to make it a whole lot [1:11:49] easier for him and his cronies to do just that. So Michigan, we have no time to waste. The question before us [1:12:01] is how do we win a durable majority? How do we get out of this pattern that we seem to have been stuck in [1:12:13] for years? This state knows it well. Six elections started off six elections in a row starting in 1992. [1:12:24] Democratic presidential candidates won here in Michigan. In fact, it wasn't even particularly [1:12:31] close in most of those contests. But then in 2016, something shifted, not just here in Michigan, [1:12:39] but across the country, not just with Democrats, but also Republicans. And to many political watchers, [1:12:49] it seemed that the laws of political nature were totally upended. But it happened in all directions. [1:12:58] And that's also part of what Bernie's campaign spoke to 10 years ago as well. And that's also what [1:13:08] Trump's victory in the fall in this state represented this oscillation in response to the failure of our [1:13:16] political system to address the needs of working people. These earthquakes and aftershocks. Two years [1:13:27] after 2016, we had another aftershock across the country. And in as a part of that, I went from being [1:13:37] a waitress to winning a primary against a 20-year Democratic incumbent who was meant to be the next [1:13:47] Speaker of the House. I get it, Michigan, because my frustrations, precisely because the stakes of [1:14:04] Republican leadership are so high, precisely because of their corruption, their discrimination, [1:14:13] the gutting of voting rights. I understood the stakes of cleaning up my own backyard back here at home. [1:14:23] That we had to look at our contributions and why people like my family and my neighborhood felt so [1:14:32] failed by the party in charge of championing the working class and saying, how can we be better? In fact, [1:14:42] we have a responsibility to be. And all of us have been trying to get a handle on what all of that means [1:14:51] ever since. And we do know some of the many contributing causes and factors. Like, yes, [1:15:00] one of the causes, deep causes, have been bad trade deals that hollowed out states like Michigan. [1:15:10] Another cause was the record income inequality and the great recession spurred on by unchecked greed [1:15:19] on Wall Street. And yes, yet another cause was the suite of shameful and quiet bigotries waiting in [1:15:31] the shadows in pockets of our country. Racism, sexism, fear of our neighbor that seemed to gnash their teeth [1:15:41] the strongest, the closer we get to uniting across our differences. All of these things are true. [1:15:50] And yet there's more because it was also due to a political system that had over decades and across [1:16:00] parties become totally enmeshed in a financial and electoral politics that stopped serving working [1:16:11] people. Our entire electoral system has been consumed by big money. And thanks to this Republican [1:16:22] administration, Donald Trump and this corrupt Supreme Court, it is now worse than ever before. [1:16:34] So instead of putting voters first year after year, with little exception, Washington now elevates the [1:16:42] desires of lobbyists and powerful corporations at the expense of the rest of us. And what does that [1:16:50] mean in practice? Real wages are falling behind. The prices of everything from groceries to houses are [1:16:59] skyrocketing. Our water, food and air are being poisoned to pad the profits of major corporations. [1:17:07] And the accountability for all of this, for hurting everyday Americans, has been far too little, [1:17:16] if there is any at all. Which brings us to right now, Detroit. Things, there are things happening in [1:17:25] this country that people everywhere are shocked by. A government of, by and for the oligarchs. [1:17:34] Masked ICE paramilitary agents shooting Americans in the street with no further questions. A president [1:17:48] and administration so corrupt that they don't even bother hiding their self-dealing anymore. Members [1:17:55] of Congress and Trump insiders getting themselves rich on insider trading and online betting while you [1:18:03] can't even make your rent. A genocide in Gaza committed with American bombs and financed by our American [1:18:14] dollars while our kids here at home have to ration their inhalers because politicians tell us that [1:18:20] healthcare is too expensive. And now, big money is flooding our political system more than ever before [1:18:33] to make sure that none of this ever changes. Because that's always been their reliable playbook. [1:18:44] Special interests. The people making us sick are dumping, just dump millions of dollars for their [1:18:52] candidate, flood our airways with ads and our mailboxes with glossy postcards a couple weeks before an [1:18:58] election. And they just think that people will go their way. But when the stakes are so high, [1:19:06] when more people than ever are living so close to the bone, eventually we have to ask ourselves, [1:19:17] is the answer to our problems to turn to the same playbook over and over again? A playbook that says [1:19:28] in order to win, Democrats must rely on the same dark money, 50 million and counting, from the same people [1:19:38] that backed 35 election deniers to Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election. A playbook that [1:19:48] says in order to win, we need to show deference to Trump by thanking his same ice agency that has shot [1:19:56] Rene Good, Alex Preddy, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and Johann Sebastian Duran Guerrero. A playbook that says in order to win, we must be defenders of the same status quo [1:20:11] that is drowning us and tells us the aspiration to change our government and the ambition to even try is foolish. [1:20:20] foolish. No, it's not foolish, Michigan. It is the responsible and right thing to do. [1:20:37] Michiganders, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, believe that good leadership swings [1:20:46] for the fences. Good leadership gets big money out of our system. It takes on the corruption that [1:20:59] blocks common sense solutions that lift working people. And by the way, it knows that in order to [1:21:08] do that, it helps not to take their money in the first place. To dismiss this idea as naive. But I want [1:21:26] to tell you something. The last time Democrats won in the House won our largest majority since Watergate in [1:21:36] 2018, 185 Democratic candidates of all backgrounds, rural and urban, progressive and moderate, ran by not [1:21:49] taking a dime in corporate money. It's not naive. It's how you win, Detroit. It's how you win a general election. [1:22:06] We can't be in cahoots with the same money that is oppressing us. It's not naive, Detroit. It's what we [1:22:23] need. And it most importantly is what you deserve. You deserve a government that answers to you. And yes, [1:22:35] compared to how things work today, admittedly, a government that listens to you more than it listens to [1:22:42] big money is revolutionary. To take on big companies, to take on the big companies scamming you, lowering your bills and [1:22:56] putting more money in your pocket is revolutionary. To fight corporate greed everywhere we find it. [1:23:04] To make healthcare a guaranteed right in the richest nation on earth. You deserve a politics that treats [1:23:16] the disease and not just the symptoms of what brought us Donald Trump. That doesn't negotiate with [1:23:24] or placate corruption, but one that defeats it once and for all. You deserve it because you matter. [1:23:36] But we all know that it will not come as a matter of course. It won't come by waiting patiently, [1:23:45] nor by making the same decisions that we have always made. This is something that we have to choose, [1:23:53] Michigan. It is something that we have to elect to do. And right now, there is a very clear choice before [1:24:04] us. We can choose $50 million and counting in dark money trying to buy the state of Michigan. Or we can [1:24:19] choose Dr. Abdul El Sayed. But the choice is up to us right now. Michigan, Michigan, you can choose a different future. [1:24:46] It's waiting in your mailbox right now. And it will be waiting for you and your friends at the polling [1:24:52] booth on August 4th. Because as much as we may be appalled at what is happening, ultimately, our democracy [1:25:02] is our responsibility. It is our choice. And if we want a different politics, we have got to elect [1:25:13] different politicians. And I came here to deliver one simple message that Abdul El Sayed represents the [1:25:24] politics of the future. And if we want to not only win a Senate majority, but win a Senate majority, [1:25:37] that means something new for us, that does something new for us. If we want to pass the legislation that [1:25:45] we need, and if we want to build a coalition big enough to actually change this country, then we have [1:25:51] got to elect Dr. Abdul El Sayed to the United States Senate. Abdul is a son of Detroit. And that means [1:26:04] something. Because we also know that his integrity didn't just start, did not begin with Abdul himself. [1:26:14] It began with his family and in the workers who built this city. It's in his parents and in the [1:26:21] parents who kept their families together. Or rather, it's in the parents here in Detroit who kept their [1:26:27] families together through bankruptcy and disinvestment. In the neighbors who kept showing up for one another [1:26:34] when powerful people had written Detroit off, Abdul doesn't just bring those values to Detroit, [1:26:42] he carries those values with him day in and day out. And you all knew him before the rest of the [1:26:50] country learned his name. You know that when this city was coming out of bankruptcy, when the consultants [1:26:57] and the creditors lined their pockets to pick this whole place clean, Abdul came home to rebuild its [1:27:06] health department as a public health official. And you know that when kids who were struggling [1:27:18] couldn't see the blackboard, he wasted no time and got them glasses. [1:27:25] Detroit, Abdul is a man of integrity and discipline. Make no mistake about it. He is a man of faith, [1:27:39] a man devoted to his family and to his beautiful daughters. Abdul is a good man. It is why he earned the [1:27:49] the endorsement of the UAW, an institution that knows Michigan workers. Because the UAW looked at [1:27:59] all the candidates in this race and chose him because they have fought alongside him and they know, [1:28:07] they know him. And I want to close with this, Michigan, because this moment right now is bigger [1:28:15] than ideology or party. It is one of country. I want to tell you what they're whispering about [1:28:25] Michiganders out in Washington, because I've heard it myself. They're saying a state like yours and a [1:28:34] people like you can't elect an American like Abdul. Because when we talk about electability, and I ask, [1:28:49] what is it? Do we really think that Michigan doesn't want to guarantee health care to every American? [1:28:57] I don't think that's right. I believe that Michigan wants to establish health care as a right to every [1:29:05] person in this state. Michigan wants to strengthen our unions in every state in America. Michigan wants [1:29:17] to establish a government that is finally no longer for sale. And those are all what Abdul believes. [1:29:24] So when you strip away the euphemisms and concerns at these highfalutin cocktail parties, [1:29:32] it's not about what he believes. It's about who he is. And it's about their assumptions about what they [1:29:43] think Michigan is. And we know they're wrong. Not only that, but in a moment like now, we do not get [1:30:00] better by accepting the logic of this administration. We do not get better by shrinking our [1:30:09] idea of what America is and what we're capable of. We don't do it. We turn the ship around by showing [1:30:18] how big we actually are as a country. We turn the ship around by rising to our aspirations [1:30:28] and our greatest ideals. We will never win the heart of this country by shrinking from who we are. [1:30:36] And Abdul El Sayed is America. We all are America. And so when they ask you what the politics of the [1:30:46] future looks like, you tell them this. It looks like a doctor who answers to people and not big donors. [1:30:57] It looks like Detroit. It looks like an absolute and unwavering commitment to healing this country. [1:31:06] And when we win Michigan, when we send Abdul to the Senate and take back that House majority, [1:31:14] and fight like hell for the Senate in November, and when we give Mike Rogers the boot for one last time, [1:31:21] and we tell Republicans that your money is no good here, and we make them answer for a trillion dollars [1:31:30] in cuts to our healthcare, to our Medicare, to our Medicaid, to our ACA, [1:31:35] we tell them that the answer to them cutting our healthcare is Michigan sending a public health [1:31:42] official to the United States Senate. You all have one of the foremost labor leaders in America here, [1:31:50] in Michigan, right here. And what Shawn has accomplished in his time leading one of the most [1:31:58] powerful unions in America is incredible. The stand up strike of 2023 improved the lives of [1:32:08] auto workers and show the rest of us what organized labor can do when workers are united in the fight [1:32:16] for dignity. Thank you Shawn. And I remember back then when UAW rolled out their demands for the stand [1:32:26] up strike and everyone said it was impossible, unreasonable, naive, and then you all got it done. [1:32:37] I also want to thank my sister Rashida Tlaib. You all are so lucky to have her fighting for you in [1:32:50] Congress. Every day in Washington she is throwing down for Detroit and Michigan overall, and I'm especially [1:32:59] happy to be here with my dear friend and the next United States Senator from the great state of Michigan, [1:33:07] Dr. Abdul El Sayed. Troy, we know why we're here. We are here because in November, Democrats have to win [1:33:26] a majority in Congress. We have to win a majority in the House and we have to win a majority in the Senate. [1:33:37] And we need a far wall against an administration that is hell bent on tearing down. It took this country [1:34:00] just a few nights ago in Trump's prime time address. And for those of you who wisely tuned it out, [1:34:15] Donald Trump spent most of his speech rehashing the same big old tired lie that he actually quote unquote [1:34:25] won the 2020 election. He will stop at nothing to stay in power. And we know that it has nothing to do [1:34:39] with true or false. They will do everything they can to try to overturn our democracy in November. [1:34:49] And if we do not take back the House and the Senate, we're going to make it a whole lot easier for him [1:34:55] and his cronies to do just that. So Michigan, we have no time to waste. The question before us is how [1:35:08] do we win a durable majority? How do we get out of this pattern that we seem to have been stuck in for [1:35:18] years? This state knows it well. Six elections started off six elections in a row starting in 1992. [1:35:30] Democratic presidential candidates won here in Michigan. In fact, it wasn't even particularly [1:35:36] close in most of those contests. But then in 2016, something shifted, not just here in Michigan, [1:35:45] but across the country, not just with Democrats, but also Republicans. And to many political watchers, [1:35:55] it seemed that the laws of political nature were totally upended. But it happened in all directions. [1:36:03] And that's also part of what Bernie's campaign spoke to 10 years ago as well. And that's also [1:36:12] what Trump's victory in the fall in this state represented this oscillation in response to the [1:36:21] failure of our political system to address the needs of working people. These earthquakes and aftershocks. [1:36:32] Two years after 2016, we had another aftershock across the country. And in as a part of that, [1:36:41] I went from being a waitress to winning a primary against a 20-year Democratic incumbent who was meant [1:36:51] to be the next Speaker of the House. I get it, Michigan, because my frustrations, precisely because [1:37:08] the stakes of Republican leadership are so high, precisely because of their corruption, [1:37:17] their discrimination, the gutting of voting rights. I understood the stakes of cleaning up my own [1:37:25] backyard back here at home. That we had to look at our contributions and why people like my family [1:37:35] and my neighborhood felt so failed by the party in charge of championing the working class and saying, [1:37:44] how can we be better? In fact, we have a responsibility to be. And all of us have been trying to get a [1:37:53] handle on what all of that means ever since. And we do know some of the many contributing causes and [1:38:02] factors. Like, yes, one of the causes, deep causes, have been bad trade deals that hollowed out states [1:38:11] like Michigan. Another cause was the record income inequality and the great recession spurred on by [1:38:23] unchecked greed on Wall Street. And yes, yet another cause was the suite of shameful and quiet bigotries [1:38:36] waiting in the shadows in pockets of our country. Racism, sexism, fear of our neighbor that seemed to [1:38:45] gnash their teeth the strongest, the closer we get to uniting across our differences. All of these things [1:38:54] are true. And yet there's more because it was also due to a political system that had over decades and [1:39:05] across parties become totally enmeshed in a financial and electoral politics that stopped serving working [1:39:16] people. Our entire electoral system has been consumed by big money. And thanks to this Republican [1:39:27] administration, Donald Trump and this corrupt Supreme Court, it is now worse than ever before. [1:39:35] So instead of putting voters first year after year, with little exception, Washington now elevates the [1:39:47] desires of lobbyists and powerful corporations at the expense of the rest of us. And what does that [1:39:55] mean in practice? Real wages are falling behind. The prices of everything from groceries to houses are [1:40:04] skyrocketing. Our water, food and air are being poisoned to pad the profits of major corporations. [1:40:12] And the accountability for all of this, for hurting everyday Americans, has been far too little, [1:40:21] if there is any at all. Which brings us to right now, Detroit. Things, there are things happening in [1:40:30] this country that people everywhere are shocked by. A government of, by and for the oligarchs. [1:40:39] Masked ICE paramilitary agents shooting Americans in the street with no further questions. A president [1:40:53] and administration so corrupt that they don't even bother hiding their self-dealing anymore. Members [1:41:00] of Congress and Trump insiders getting themselves rich on insider trading and online betting while you [1:41:08] can't even make your rent. A genocide in Gaza committed with American bombs and financed by our American [1:41:19] dollars while our kids here at home have to ration their inhalers because politicians tell us that [1:41:25] health care is too expensive. And now, big money is flooding our political system more than ever before [1:41:38] to make sure that none of this ever changes. Because that's always been their reliable playbook. [1:41:49] Special interests, the people making us sick, are dumping, just dump millions of dollars for their [1:41:56] candidate, flood our airways with ads and our mailboxes with glossy postcards a couple weeks before an [1:42:04] election. And they just think that people will go their way. But when the stakes are so high, [1:42:11] when more people than ever are living so close to the bone, eventually we have to ask ourselves, [1:42:22] is the answer to our problems to turn to the same playbook over and over again? A playbook that says [1:42:33] in order to win, Democrats must rely on the same dark money, 50 million and counting, from the same people [1:42:43] that backed 35 election deniers to Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election. A playbook that [1:42:53] says in order to win, we need to show deference to Trump by thanking his same ice agency that has shot [1:43:01] Rene Good, Alex Preddy, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and Johann Sebastian Duran Guerrero. A playbook as in order to win, [1:43:13] we must be defenders of the same status quo that is drowning us and tells us the aspiration to change [1:43:21] our government and the ambition to even try is foolish. No, it's not foolish Michigan. It is the responsible [1:43:33] and right thing to do. [1:43:35] I believe Michiganders, Democrats, Republicans, and independents believe that good leadership [1:43:50] swings for the fences. Good leadership gets big money out of our system. It takes on the corruption [1:44:04] that blocks common sense solutions that lift working people. And by the way, it knows that in order to do [1:44:13] that, it helps not to take their money in the first place. Want to dismiss this idea as naive. But I want [1:44:31] to tell you something. The last time Democrats won in the House, won our largest majority since Watergate [1:44:40] in 2018, 185 Democratic candidates of all backgrounds, rural and urban, progressive and moderate, ran by not [1:44:54] taking a dime in corporate money. It's not naive. It's how we win Detroit. It's not just how you win a [1:45:07] primary. It's how you win a general election. We keep in cahoots with the same money that is oppressing us. [1:45:20] It's not naive Detroit. It's what we need. And it most importantly is what you deserve. You deserve [1:45:35] a government that answers to you. And yes, compared to how things work today, admittedly, [1:45:44] a government that listens to you more than it listens to big money is revolutionary. To take on [1:45:54] big companies, to take on the big companies scamming you, lowering your bills and putting more money in [1:46:02] your pocket is revolutionary. To fight corporate greed everywhere we find it. To make health care a [1:46:10] guaranteed right in the richest nation on earth. You deserve a politics that treats the disease and not [1:46:22] just the symptoms of what brought us Donald Trump. That doesn't negotiate with or placate corruption, [1:46:31] but one that defeats it once and for all. You deserve it because you matter. But we all know that [1:46:42] it will not come as a matter of course. It won't come by waiting patiently, nor by making the same [1:46:51] decisions that we have always made. This is something that we have to choose, Michigan. It is something [1:47:01] that we have to elect to do. And right now, there is a very clear choice before us. We can choose [1:47:11] 50 million dollars and counting, in dark money, trying to buy the state of Michigan. Or we can choose [1:47:24] Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. But the choice is up right now. Michigan, Michigan, you can choose a different [1:47:50] future. It's waiting in your mailbox right now. And it will be waiting for you and your friends at the [1:47:56] polling booth on August 4th. Because as much as we may be appalled at what is happening, ultimately our [1:48:05] democracy is our responsibility. It is our choice. And if we want a different politics, we have got to [1:48:17] elect different politicians. And I came here to deliver one simple message. That Abdul El-Sayed represents the [1:48:29] politics of the future. And if we want to not only win a Senate majority, but win a Senate majority, [1:48:42] that means something new for us. That does something new for us. If we want to pass the legislation that [1:48:50] we need, and if we want to build a coalition big enough to actually change this country, then we have [1:48:56] got to elect Dr. Abdul El-Sayed to the United States Senate. Abdul is a son of Detroit. And that means [1:49:09] something. Because we also know that his integrity didn't just start, did not begin with Abdul himself. [1:49:18] It began with his family and in the workers who built this city. It's in his parents and in the parents who [1:49:27] here in Detroit who kept their families together through bankruptcy and disinvestment. In the neighbors [1:49:37] who kept showing up for one another when powerful people had written Detroit off. Abdul doesn't just [1:49:45] bring those values to Detroit, he carries those values with him day in and day out. And you all knew [1:49:52] him before the rest of the country learned his name. You know that when this city was coming out of [1:50:00] bankruptcy, when the consultants and the creditors lined their pockets to pick this this whole place [1:50:07] clean, Abdul came home to rebuild its health department as a public health official. And you know [1:50:18] that when kids who were struggling couldn't see the blackboard, he wasted no time and got them glasses. [1:50:28] Abdul is a man of integrity and discipline. Make no mistake about it. He is a man of faith, [1:50:44] a man devoted to his family and to his beautiful daughters. Abdul is a good man. It is why he earned [1:50:53] the endorsement of the UAW, an institution that knows Michigan workers. Because the UAW looked at [1:51:04] all that all the candidates in this race and chose him because they have fought alongside him and they [1:51:11] know, they know him. And I want to close with this Michigan because this moment right now is bigger [1:51:21] than ideology or party. It is one of country. I want to tell you what they're whispering about [1:51:29] Michiganders out in Washington because I've heard it myself. They're saying a state like yours [1:51:38] and a people like you can't elect an American like Abdul. Because when we talk about electability [1:51:54] and I ask, what is it? Do we really think that Michigan doesn't want to guarantee health care [1:52:00] to every American? I don't think that's right. I believe that Michigan wants to establish health [1:52:09] care as a right to every person in this state. Michigan wants to strengthen our unions in every state [1:52:19] in America. Michigan wants to establish a government that is finally no longer for sale. And those are [1:52:28] all what Abdul believes. So when you strip away the euphemisms and concerns at these highfalutin cocktail [1:52:36] parties, it's not about what he believes. It's about who he is. And it's about their assumptions about [1:52:47] what they think Michigan is. And we know they're wrong. Not only that, but in a moment like now, [1:53:04] we do not get better by accepting the logic of this administration. We do not get better by shrinking [1:53:13] our idea of what America is and what we're capable of. We don't do it. We turn this ship around by showing [1:53:23] how big we actually are as a country. We turn this ship around by rising to our aspirations [1:53:33] and our greatest ideals. We will never win the heart of this country by shrinking from who we are. [1:53:41] And Abdul El-Sayed is America. We all are America. And so when they ask you what the politics of the [1:53:51] future looks like, you tell them this. It looks like a doctor who answers to people and not big donors. [1:54:02] It looks like Detroit. It looks like an absolute and unwavering commitment to healing this country. [1:54:11] And when we win Michigan, when we send Abdul to the Senate and take back that House majority and fight [1:54:19] like hell for the Senate in November, and when we give Mike Rogers the boot for one last time, and we tell [1:54:28] Republicans that your money is no good here. And we make them answer for a trillion dollars in cuts [1:54:35] to our health care, to our Medicare, to our Medicaid, to our ACA. We tell them that the answer to them [1:54:44] cutting our health care is Michigan sending a public health official to the United States Senate. [1:54:49] You all have one of the foremost labor leaders in America here in Michigan, right here. And what Sean [1:55:00] has accomplished in his time leading one of the most powerful unions in America is incredible. [1:55:08] The stand up strike of 2023 improved the lives of auto workers and showed the rest of us what organized [1:55:17] labor can do when workers are united in the fight for dignity. Thank you, Sean. And I remember back then [1:55:29] when UAW rolled out their demands for the stand-up strike, and everyone said it was impossible, [1:55:36] unreasonable, naive, and then you all got it done. I also want to thank my sister Rashida Tlaib. [1:55:49] You all are so lucky to have her fighting for you in Congress. Every day in Washington, [1:55:59] she is throwing down for Detroit and Michigan overall. And I'm especially happy to be here [1:56:06] with my dear friend and the next United States Senator from the great state of Michigan, Dr. Abdul El [1:56:14] Syed. We know why we're here. We are here because in November, Democrats have to win a majority in Congress. [1:56:34] We have to win a majority in the House. And we have to win a majority in the Senate. And we need a [1:56:45] firewall against an administration that is hell-bent on tearing down in four years, [1:56:53] country, 200 years, just a few nights ago in Trump's primetime address. And for those of you [1:57:14] who wisely tuned it out, Donald Trump spent most of his speech rehashing the same big old tired lie [1:57:28] that he actually quote unquote won the 2020 election. And we know that nothing to stay in power. And we know [1:57:42] that it has nothing to do with true or false. They will do everything they can to try to overturn our [1:57:52] democracy in November. And if we do not take back the House and the Senate, we're going to make it a [1:57:58] whole lot easier for him and his cronies to do just that. So Michigan, we have no time to waste. [1:58:08] The question before us is how do we win a durable majority? How do we get out of this pattern [1:58:21] that we seem to have been stuck in for years? This state knows it well. Six elections started off, [1:58:30] six elections in a row, starting in 1992. Democratic presidential candidates won here in Michigan. [1:58:39] In fact, it wasn't even particularly close in most of those contests. But then in 2016, [1:58:46] something shifted, not just here in Michigan, but across the country, not just with Democrats, [1:58:55] but also Republicans. And to many political watchers, it seemed that the laws of political nature [1:59:03] were totally upended. But it happened in all directions. And that's also part of what Bernie's [1:59:11] campaign spoke to 10 years ago as well. And that's also what Trump's victory in the fall [1:59:19] in this state represented, this oscillation in response to the failure of our political system [1:59:28] to address the needs of working people. These earthquakes and aftershocks. Two years after 2016, [1:59:39] we had another aftershock across the country. And as a part of that, I went from being a waitress [1:59:48] to winning a primary against a 20-year Democratic incumbent who was meant to be the next Speaker of [1:59:58] the House. I get it, Michigan, because my frustrations, precisely because the stakes of Republican leadership [2:00:15] are so high, precisely because of their corruption, their discrimination, the gutting of voting rights, [2:00:25] I understood the stakes of cleaning up my own backyard back here at home. That we had to look [2:00:34] at our contributions and why people like my family and my neighborhood felt so failed by the party in [2:00:44] charge of championing the working class and saying, how can we be better? In fact, we have a responsibility [2:00:54] to be. And all of us have been trying to get a handle on what all of that means ever since. And we do know [2:01:04] some of the many contributing causes and factors. Like, yes, one of the causes, deep causes, have been bad [2:01:14] trade deals that hollowed out states like Michigan. Another cause was the record income inequality [2:01:25] and the Great Recession spurred on by unchecked greed on Wall Street. And yes, yet another cause [2:01:36] was the sweet of shameful and quiet bigotries waiting in the shadows in pockets of our country. Racism, [2:01:45] sexism, fear of our neighbor that seemed to gnash their teeth the strongest the closer we get to uniting [2:01:55] across our differences. All of these things are true. And yet there's more because it was also due to a [2:02:06] political system that had over decades and across parties become totally enmeshed in a financial and [2:02:17] electoral politics that stopped serving working people. Our entire electoral system has been consumed [2:02:29] by big money. And thanks to this Republican administration, Donald Trump and this corrupt Supreme [2:02:36] court, it is now worse than ever before. Though instead of putting voters first year after year, [2:02:48] with little exception, Washington now elevates the desires of lobbyists and powerful corporations [2:02:56] at the expense of the rest of us. And what does that mean in practice? Real wages are falling behind. [2:03:04] The prices of everything from groceries to houses are skyrocketing. Our water, food and air are being [2:03:13] poisoned to pad the profits of major corporations. And the accountability for all of this, for hurting [2:03:23] everyday Americans, has been far too little, if there is any at all. Which brings us to right now, Detroit. [2:03:31] Things, there are things happening in this country that people everywhere are shocked by. A government [2:03:40] of, by and for the oligarchs. Masked ICE paramilitary agents shooting Americans in the street with no [2:03:54] further questions. Presidents and administrations so corrupt that they don't even bother hiding their [2:04:02] self-dealing anymore. Members of Congress and Trump insiders getting themselves rich on insider trading [2:04:11] and online betting while you can't even make your rent. A genocide in Gaza committed with American bombs [2:04:22] and financed by our American dollars while our kids here at home have to ration their inhalers because [2:04:29] politicians tell us that health care is too expensive. And now big money is flooding our political system [2:04:41] more than ever before to make sure that none of this ever changes. Because that's always been their reliable [2:04:53] playbook. Special interests, the people making us sick, are dumping, just dump millions of dollars for [2:05:01] their candidate, flood our airways with ads and our mailboxes with glossy postcards a couple weeks before [2:05:08] an election and they just think that people will go their way. But when the stakes are so high, when more [2:05:17] people than ever are living so close to the bone, eventually we have to ask ourselves, is the answer to [2:05:28] our problems to turn to the same playbook over and over again. A playbook that says in order to win, [2:05:40] Democrats must rely on the same dark money, 50 million and counting, from the same people that backed 35 [2:05:50] election deniers to Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election. A playbook that says in order to win, [2:06:00] we must be defenders of the same status quo that is drowning us and tells us the aspiration to change our [2:06:26] government and the ambition to even try is foolish. No, it's not foolish, Michigan. It is the responsible [2:06:38] and right thing to do. Michiganders, Democrats, Republicans and Independents believe that good leadership [2:06:55] swings for the fences. Good leadership gets big money out of our system. It takes on the corruption, [2:07:09] that blocks common sense solutions that lift working people. And by the way, it knows that in [2:07:17] order to do that, it helps not to take their money in the first place. Want to dismiss this idea as [2:07:34] naive. But I want to tell you something. The last time Democrats won in the House, won our largest majority [2:07:44] since Watergate in 2018. 185 Democratic candidates of all backgrounds, rural and urban, progressive and moderate, [2:07:57] ran by not taking a dime in corporate money. It's not naive. It's how we win Detroit. It's not just how you [2:08:11] win a primary. It's how you win a general election. We can be in cahoots with the same money is oppressing us. It's not naive Detroit. It's what we need. And it most importantly is what you deserve. You deserve a government that answers to you. And yes, compared to how things work today, admittedly, [2:08:33] a government that listens to you more than it listens to you more than it listens to big money is revolutionary. To take on big companies, to take on the big companies scamming you, lowering your bills and putting more money in your pocket is [2:08:53] revolutionary. To fight corporate greed everywhere we find it. To make health care a guaranteed right in the richest nation on earth. You deserve a politics that treats the disease and not just the symptoms of what brought us Donald Trump. [2:09:17] Donald Trump that doesn't negotiate with or placate corruption, but one that defeats it once and for all. You deserve it because you matter. But we all know that it will not come as a matter of course. It won't come by waiting patiently, nor by making sure that it will not come as a matter of course. [2:09:50] It won't come by waiting patiently, nor by making the same decisions that we have always made. This is something that we have to choose, Michigan. It is something that we have to elect to do. And right now, there is a very clear choice before us. [2:10:14] We can choose $50 million and counting in dark money trying to buy the state of Michigan. Or we can choose Dr. Abdul El Sayed. But the choice is up to us right now. Michigan, Michigan, you can choose a different future. It's waiting in your mailbox right now. And it will be waiting for you and your friends at the polling booth on August 4th. [2:11:02] Because as much as we may be appalled at what is happening, ultimately, our democracy is our responsibility. It is our choice. And if we want a different politics, we have got to elect different politicians. [2:11:24] And I came here to deliver one simple message. That Abdul El Sayed represents the politics of the future. [2:11:34] And if we want to not only win a Senate majority, but win a Senate majority that means something new for us, that does something new for us. If we want to pass the legislation that we need, and if we want to build a coalition big enough to actually change this country, then we have got to elect Dr. Abdul El Sayed to the United States Senate. [2:12:05] Abdul is a son of Detroit. And that means something. Because we also know that his integrity didn't just start, did not begin with Abdul himself. It began with his family and the workers who built this city. [2:12:28] It's in his parents and the parents who kept their families together. Or rather, it's in the parents here in Detroit who kept their families together through bankruptcy and disinvestment. [2:12:41] In the neighbors who kept showing up for one another when powerful people had written Detroit off. Abdul doesn't just bring those values to Detroit. He carries those values with him day in and day out. [2:12:55] And you all knew him before the rest of the country learned his name. You know that when this city was coming out of bankruptcy, when the consultants and the creditors lined their pockets to pick this whole place clean, Abdul came home to rebuild its health department as a public health official. [2:13:19] And you know that when kids who were struggling couldn't see the blackboard, he wasted no time and got them glasses. [2:13:32] Detroit Abdul is a man of integrity and discipline. Make no mistake about it. He is a man of faith, a man devoted to his family and to his beautiful daughters. Abdul is a good man. It is why he earned the endorsement of the UAW, an institution that knows Michigan workers. [2:14:05] Because the UAW looked at all the candidates in this race and chose him because they have fought alongside him and they know, they know him. [2:14:18] And I want to close with this, Michigan. Because this moment right now is bigger than ideology or party. It is one of country. I want to tell you what they're whispering about Michiganders out in Washington. [2:14:36] Because I've heard it myself. They're saying a state like yours and a people like you can't elect an American like Abdul. [2:14:50] Because when we talk about electability and I ask, what is it? Do we really think that Michigan doesn't want to guarantee health care to every American? [2:15:06] I don't think that's right. I believe that Michigan wants to establish health care as a right to every person in this state. [2:15:16] Michigan wants to strengthen our unions in every state in America. Michigan wants to establish a government that is finally no longer for sale. [2:15:31] And those are all what Abdul believes. So when you strip away the euphemisms and concerns at these highfalutin cocktail parties, it's not about what he believes. [2:15:44] It's about who he is. And it's about their assumptions about what they think Michigan is. And we know they're wrong. [2:15:58] Not only that, but in a moment like now, we do not get better by accepting the logic of this administration. [2:16:13] We do not get better by shrinking our idea of what America is and what we're capable of. [2:16:22] We don't do it. We turn the ship around by showing how big we actually are as a country. [2:16:31] We turn the ship around by rising to our aspirations and our greatest ideals. [2:16:39] We will never win the heart of this country by shrinking from who we are. And Abdul El-Sayed is America. We all are America. [2:16:52] And so when they ask you what the politics of the future looks like, you tell them this. [2:16:59] It looks like a doctor who answers to people and not big donors. It looks like Detroit. [2:17:08] It looks like an absolute and unwavering commitment to healing this country. [2:17:14] And when we win Michigan, when we send Abdul to the Senate and take back that House majority and fight like hell for the Senate in November. [2:17:26] And when we give Mike Rogers the boot for one last time. And we tell Republicans that your money is no good here. [2:17:36] And we make them answer for a trillion dollars in cuts to our healthcare, to our Medicare, to our Medicaid, to our ACA. [2:17:46] We tell them that the answer to them cutting our healthcare is Michigan sending a public health official to the United States Senate. [2:17:53] You all have one of the foremost labor leaders in America here in Michigan, right here. [2:18:02] And what Sean has accomplished in his time leading one of the most powerful unions in America is incredible. [2:18:14] The stand up strike of 2023 improved the lives of auto workers and showed the rest of us what organized labor can do when workers are united in the fight for dignity. [2:18:28] Thank you Sean. [2:18:29] Thank you Sean. [2:18:33] And I remember back then when UAW rolled out their demands for the stand up strike and everyone said it was impossible, unreasonable, naive, and then you all got it done. [2:18:50] I also want to thank my sister Rashida Tlaib. [2:18:53] You all are so lucky to have her fighting for you in Congress. [2:19:02] Every day in Washington she is throwing down for Detroit and Michigan overall. [2:19:08] And I'm especially happy to be here with my dear friend and the next United States Senator from the great state of Michigan, Dr. Abdul El Sayed. [2:19:20] We're here. [2:19:28] We are here because in November Democrats have to win a majority in Congress. [2:19:39] We have to win a majority in the House and we have to win a majority in the Senate. [2:19:48] And we need a firewall against an administration that is held on tearing down in force of this country 200 years just a few nights ago in Trump's prime time address. [2:20:18] And for those of you who wisely tuned it out, Donald Trump spent most of his speech rehashing the same big old tired lie that he actually quote unquote won the 2020 election. [2:20:38] We know that nothing to stay in power and we know that it has nothing to do with true or false. [2:20:52] They will do everything they can to try to overturn our democracy in November. [2:20:59] And if we do not take back the House and the Senate, we're going to make it a whole lot easier for him and his cronies to do just that. [2:21:09] So Michigan, we have no time to waste. [2:21:12] The question before us is how do we win a durable majority? [2:21:21] How do we get out of this pattern that we seem to have been stuck in for years? [2:21:29] This state knows it well. [2:21:32] It started off six elections in a row starting in 1992. [2:21:39] Democratic presidential candidates won here in Michigan. [2:21:43] In fact, it wasn't even particularly close in most of those contests. [2:21:48] But then in 2016, something shifted, not just here in Michigan, but across the country, not just with Democrats, but also Republicans. [2:22:02] And to many political watchers, it seemed that the laws of political nature were totally upended. [2:22:09] But it happened in all directions. [2:22:12] And that's also part of what Bernie's campaign spoke to 10 years ago as well. [2:22:20] And that's also what Trump's victory in the fall in this state represented. [2:22:26] This oscillation in response to the failure of our political system to address the needs of working people. [2:22:36] These earthquakes and aftershocks. [2:22:40] Two years after 2016, we had another aftershock across the country. [2:22:47] And as a part of that, I went from being a waitress to winning a primary against a 20-year Democratic incumbent who was meant to be the next Speaker of the House. [2:23:09] I get it, Michigan. [2:23:10] Because my frustrations, precisely because the stakes of Republican leadership are so high, [2:23:22] precisely because of their corruption, their discrimination, the gutting of voting rights, [2:23:30] I understood the stakes of cleaning up my own backyard back here at home. [2:23:38] That we had to look at our contributions and why people like my family and my neighborhood [2:23:46] felt so failed by the party in charge of championing the working class. [2:23:54] And saying, how can we be better? [2:23:57] In fact, we have a responsibility to be. [2:24:00] And all of us have been trying to get a handle on what all of that means ever since. [2:24:07] And we do know some of the many contributing causes and factors. [2:24:13] Like, yes, one of the causes, deep causes, have been bad trade deals that hollowed out states like Michigan. [2:24:22] Another cause was the record income inequality and the Great Recession spurred on by unchecked greed on Wall Street. [2:24:35] And yes, yet another cause was the suite of shameful and quiet bigotries waiting in the shadows in pockets of our country. [2:24:48] Racism, sexism, fear of our neighbor that seemed to gnash their teeth the strongest the closer we get to uniting across our differences. [2:25:01] All of these things are true and yet there's more because it was also due to a political system that had over decades and across parties become totally enmeshed in a financial and electoral politics that stopped serving working people. [2:25:26] Our entire electoral system has been consumed by big money. [2:25:34] And thanks to this Republican administration, Donald Trump and this corrupt Supreme Court, it is now worse than ever before. [2:25:43] So instead of putting voters first year after year with little exception, Washington now elevates the desires of lobbyists and powerful corporations at the expense of the rest of us. [2:26:03] And what does that mean in practice? [2:26:06] Real wages are falling behind. [2:26:09] The prices of everything from groceries to houses are skyrocketing. [2:26:16] Our water, food and air are being poisoned to pad the profits of major corporations. [2:26:23] And the accountability for all of this, for hurting everyday Americans, has been far too little if there is any at all. [2:26:32] Which brings us to right now, Detroit. [2:26:36] Things, there are things happening in this country that people everywhere are shocked by. [2:26:44] A government of, by and for the oligarchs. [2:26:48] Masked ICE paramilitary agents shooting Americans in the street with no further questions. [2:27:00] The presidents and administration so corrupt that they don't even bother hiding their self-dealing anymore. [2:27:09] Members of Congress and Trump insiders getting themselves rich on insider trading and online betting while you can't even make your rent. [2:27:19] A genocide in Gaza committed with American bombs and financed by our American dollars while our kids here at home have to ration their inhalers because politicians tell us that healthcare is too expensive. [2:27:37] And now, big money is flooding our political system more than ever before to make sure that none of this ever changes. [2:27:53] Because that's always been their reliable playbook. [2:27:59] Special interests, the people making us sick, are dumping, just dump millions of dollars for their candidate, flood our airways with ads and our mailboxes with glossy postcards a couple weeks before an election. [2:28:14] And they just think that people will go their way. [2:28:18] But when the stakes are so high, when more people than ever are living so close to the bone, eventually we have to ask ourselves, [2:28:31] is the answer to our problems to turn to the same playbook over and over again? [2:28:38] A playbook that says in order to win, Democrats must rely on the same dark money, 50 million and counting, from the same people that backed 35 election deniers to Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election. [2:29:00] A playbook that says in order to win, we need to show deference to Trump by thanking his same ice agency that has shot Renee Good, Alex Preddy, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero. [2:29:17] A playbook that says in order to win, we must be defenders of the same status quo that is drowning us and tells us the aspiration to change our government and the ambition to even try is foolish. [2:29:36] No, it's not foolish, Michigan. [2:29:40] It is the responsible and right thing to do. [2:29:44] Michiganders, Democrats, Republicans and Independents believe that good leadership swings for the fences. [2:30:04] Good leadership gets big money out of our system. [2:30:11] It takes on the corruption that blocks common sense solutions that lift working people. [2:30:18] And by the way, it knows that in order to do that, it helps not to take their money in the first place, to dismiss this idea as naive. [2:30:40] But I want to tell you something. [2:30:43] The last time Democrats won in the House won our largest majority since Watergate in 2018, 185 Democratic candidates of all backgrounds, rural and urban, progressive and moderate, ran by not taking a dime in corporate money. [2:31:06] It's not naive. [2:31:10] It's not naive. [2:31:11] It's how we win Detroit. [2:31:13] It's how you win a general election. [2:31:18] We can't be in cahoots with the same money that is oppressing us. [2:31:30] It's not naive Detroit. [2:31:37] It's what we need. [2:31:38] And it, most importantly, is what you deserve. [2:31:42] You deserve a government that answers to you. [2:31:48] And yes, compared to how things work today, admittedly, a government that listens to you more than it listens to big money is revolutionary. [2:32:04] To take on big companies, to take on the big companies scamming you, lowering your bills and putting more money in your pocket is revolutionary. [2:32:14] To fight corporate greed everywhere we find it. [2:32:19] To make healthcare a guaranteed right in the richest nation on earth. [2:32:24] You deserve a politics that treats the disease and not just the symptoms of what brought us Donald Trump. [2:32:35] That doesn't negotiate with or placate corruption, but one that defeats it once and for all. [2:32:45] You deserve it because you matter. [2:32:49] But we all know that it will not come as a matter of course. [2:32:55] It won't come by waiting patiently, nor by making the same decisions that we have always made. [2:33:03] This is something that we have to choose, Michigan. [2:33:08] It is something that we have to elect to do. [2:33:14] And right now, there is a very clear choice before us. [2:33:19] We can choose $50 million and counting in dark money trying to buy the state of Michigan. [2:33:29] Or we can choose Dr. Abdul El Sayed. [2:33:37] But the choice is up to us right now. [2:33:46] Michigan, Michigan. [2:33:56] You can choose a different future. [2:34:00] It's waiting in your mailbox right now. [2:34:03] And it will be waiting for you and your friends at the polling booth on August 4th. [2:34:07] Because as much as we may be appalled at what is happening, ultimately, our democracy is our responsibility. [2:34:19] It is our choice. [2:34:21] And if we want a different politics, we have got to elect different politicians. [2:34:30] And I came here to deliver one simple message. [2:34:35] That Abdul El Sayed represents the politics of the future. [2:34:41] And if we want to not only win a Senate majority, but win a Senate majority that means something new for us. [2:34:54] That does something new for us. [2:34:58] If we want to pass the legislation that we need. [2:35:01] And if we want to build a coalition big enough to actually change this country. [2:35:06] Then we have got to elect Dr. Abdul El Sayed to the United States Senate. [2:35:11] Abdul is a son of Detroit. [2:35:19] And that means something. [2:35:21] Because we also know that his integrity didn't just start, did not begin with Abdul himself. [2:35:29] It began with his family and in the workers who built this city. [2:35:34] It's in his parents and in the parents who kept their families together. [2:35:39] Or rather, it's in the parents here in Detroit who kept their families together through bankruptcy and disinvestment. [2:35:46] In the neighbors who kept showing up for one another when powerful people had written Detroit off. [2:35:51] Abdul doesn't just bring those values to Detroit. [2:35:56] He carries those values with him day in and day out. [2:36:00] And you all knew him before the rest of the country learned his name. [2:36:06] You know that when this city was coming out of bankruptcy. [2:36:11] When the consultants and the creditors lined their pockets to pick this whole place clean. [2:36:17] Abdul came home to rebuild its health department. [2:36:21] As a public health official. [2:36:24] And you know that when kids who were struggling couldn't see the blackboard. [2:36:35] He wasted no time and got them glasses. [2:36:38] Detroit, Abdul is a man of integrity and discipline. [2:36:48] Make no mistake about it. [2:36:51] He is a man of faith. [2:36:53] A man devoted to his family and to his beautiful daughters. [2:36:58] Abdul is a good man. [2:37:01] It is why he earned the endorsement of the UAW. [2:37:07] An institution that knows Michigan workers. [2:37:10] Because the UAW looked at all the candidates in this race and chose him. [2:37:18] Because they have fought alongside him and they know. [2:37:21] They know him. [2:37:23] And I want to close with this Michigan. [2:37:26] Because this moment right now is bigger than ideology or party. [2:37:33] It is one of country. [2:37:37] I want to tell you what they're whispering. [2:37:39] About Michiganders out in Washington. [2:37:41] Because I've heard it myself. [2:37:44] They're saying a state like yours. [2:37:48] And a people like you. [2:37:50] Can't elect an American like Abdul. [2:37:54] Because when we talk about electability. [2:38:02] And I ask what is it? [2:38:05] Do we really think that Michigan doesn't want to guarantee healthcare to every American? [2:38:10] I don't think that's right. [2:38:15] I believe that Michigan wants to establish healthcare as a right to every person in this state. [2:38:20] Michigan wants to strengthen our unions in every state in America. [2:38:29] Michigan wants to establish a government that is finally no longer for sale. [2:38:35] And those are all what Abdul believes. [2:38:38] So when you strip away the euphemisms and concerns at these highfalutin cocktail parties. [2:38:46] It's not about what he believes. [2:38:49] It's about who he is. [2:38:52] And it's about their assumptions about what they think Michigan is. [2:38:59] And we know they're wrong. [2:39:03] Not only that. [2:39:09] But in a moment like now. [2:39:13] We do not get better by accepting the logic of this administration. [2:39:20] We do not get better by shrinking our idea of what America is and what we're capable of. [2:39:27] We don't do it. [2:39:30] We turn this ship around by showing how big we actually are as a country. [2:39:36] We turn this ship around by rising to our aspirations and our greatest ideals. [2:39:44] We will never win the heart of this country by shrinking from who we are. [2:39:50] And Abdul El Sayed is America. [2:39:53] We all are America. [2:39:57] And so when they ask you what the politics of the future looks like, you tell them this. [2:40:03] It looks like a doctor who answers to people and not big donors. [2:40:09] It looks like Detroit. [2:40:14] It looks like an absolute and unwavering commitment to healing this country. [2:40:21] And when we win Michigan. [2:40:23] When we send Abdul to the Senate. [2:40:25] And take back that House majority. [2:40:29] And fight like hell for the Senate in November. [2:40:32] And when we give Mike Rogers the boot for one last time. [2:40:36] And we tell Republicans that your money is no good here. [2:40:40] We make them answer for a trillion dollars in cuts to our healthcare. [2:40:47] To our Medicare. [2:40:48] To our Medicaid. [2:40:49] To our ACA. [2:40:51] We tell them that the answer to them cutting our healthcare. [2:40:54] Is Michigan sending a public health official to the United States Senate. [2:40:58] You all have one of the foremost labor leaders in America here. [2:41:05] In Michigan. [2:41:06] Right here. [2:41:07] And what Sean has accomplished in his time. [2:41:12] Leading one of the most powerful unions in America. [2:41:16] Is incredible. [2:41:18] Yes it is. [2:41:19] The stand up strike of 2023. [2:41:22] Improved the lives of auto workers. [2:41:24] And showed the rest of us. [2:41:26] What organized labor can do. [2:41:28] When workers are united. [2:41:30] In the fight for dignity. [2:41:32] Thank you Sean. [2:41:33] And I remember back then when UAW rolled out their demands for the stand up strike. [2:41:42] And everyone said it was impossible. [2:41:46] Unreasonable. [2:41:47] Naive. [2:41:48] And then you all got it done. [2:41:51] I also want to thank my sister Rashida Tlaib. [2:41:58] You all are so lucky to have her fighting for you in Congress. [2:42:05] Every day in Washington she is throwing down for Detroit and Michigan overall. [2:42:12] And I'm especially happy to be here with my dear friend. [2:42:17] And the next United States Senator from the great state of Michigan. [2:42:22] Dr. Abdul El Sayed. [2:42:25] We know why we're here. [2:42:33] We are here. [2:42:35] Because in November. [2:42:38] Democrats have to win a majority in Congress. [2:42:44] We have to win a majority in the House. [2:42:48] And we have to win a majority in the Senate. [2:42:52] And we need a firewall against an administration that is hell bent on tearing down. [2:43:01] In Florida it took this country to Huntsville. [2:43:08] Just a few nights ago in Trump's prime time address. [2:43:22] And for those of you who wisely tuned it out. [2:43:27] Donald Trump spent most of his speech rehashing the same big old tired lie that he actually quote unquote won the 2020 election. [2:43:42] And we know he will stop at nothing to stay in power. [2:43:51] And we know that it has nothing to do with true or false. [2:43:56] They will do everything they can to try to overturn our democracy in November. [2:44:03] And if we do not take back the House and the Senate, we're going to make it a whole lot easier for him and his cronies to do just that. [2:44:13] So Michigan, we have no time to waste. [2:44:17] The question before us is how do we win a durable majority? [2:44:26] How do we get out of this pattern that we seem to have been stuck in for years? [2:44:34] This state knows it well. [2:44:37] It started off six elections in a row starting in 1992. [2:44:44] Democratic presidential candidates won here in Michigan. [2:44:47] In fact, it wasn't even particularly close in most of those contests. [2:44:53] But then in 2016 something shifted. [2:44:57] Not just here in Michigan, but across the country. [2:45:01] Not just with Democrats, but also Republicans. [2:45:06] And to many political watchers it seemed that the laws of political nature were totally upended. [2:45:14] But it happened in all directions. [2:45:16] And that's also part of what Bernie's campaign spoke to 10 years ago as well. [2:45:25] And that's also what Trump's victory in the fall in this state represented. [2:45:31] This oscillation in response to the failure of our political system to address the needs of working people. [2:45:41] These earthquakes and aftershocks. [2:45:45] Two years after 2016, we had another aftershock across the country. [2:45:51] And as a part of that, I went from being a waitress to winning a primary against a 20-year Democratic incumbent. [2:46:03] Who was meant to be the next Speaker of the House. [2:46:08] I get it, Michigan. [2:46:15] Because my frustrations. [2:46:19] Precisely because the stakes of Republican leadership are so high. [2:46:27] Precisely because of their corruption, their discrimination, the gutting of voting rights. [2:46:34] I understood the stakes of cleaning up my own backyard back here at home. [2:46:42] That we had to look at our contributions and why people like my family and my neighborhood felt so failed by the party in charge of championing the working class. [2:46:59] And saying, how can we be better? [2:47:01] In fact, we have a responsibility to be. [2:47:05] And all of us have been trying to get a handle on what all of that means ever since. [2:47:12] And we do know some of the many contributing causes and factors. [2:47:18] Like, yes, one of the causes, deep causes, have been bad trade deals that hollowed out states like Michigan. [2:47:27] Another cause was the record income inequality and the Great Recession spurred on by unchecked greed on Wall Street. [2:47:40] And yes, yet another cause was the suite of shameful and quiet bigotries waiting in the shadows in pockets of our country. [2:47:54] Racism, sexism, fear of our neighbor that seemed to gnash their teeth the strongest the closer we get to uniting across our differences. [2:48:07] All of these things are true. [2:48:09] And yet there's more because it was also due to a political system that had over decades and across parties become totally enmeshed in a financial and electoral politics that stopped serving working people. [2:48:32] Our entire electoral system has been consumed by big money. [2:48:40] And thanks to this Republican administration, Donald Trump and this corrupt Supreme Court, it is now worse than ever before. [2:48:54] So instead of putting voters first year after year with little exception, Washington now elevates the desires of lobbyists and powerful corporations at the expense of the rest of us. [2:49:08] And what does that mean in practice? [2:49:12] Real wages are falling behind. [2:49:14] The prices of everything from groceries to houses are skyrocketing. [2:49:19] Our water, food and air are being poisoned to pad the profits of major corporations. [2:49:27] And the accountability for all of this, for hurting everyday Americans, has been far too little if there is any at all. [2:49:37] Which brings us to right now, Detroit. [2:49:41] Things, there are things happening in this country that people everywhere are shocked by. [2:49:49] A government of, by and for the oligarchs. [2:49:54] Masked ICE paramilitary agents shooting Americans in the street with no further questions. [2:50:04] A president and administration so corrupt that they don't even bother hiding their self-dealing anymore. [2:50:14] Members of Congress and Trump insiders getting themselves rich on insider trading and online betting while you can't even make your rent. [2:50:24] A genocide in Gaza committed with American bombs and financed by our American dollars while our kids here at home have to ration their inhalers because politicians tell us that healthcare is too expensive. [2:50:42] And now, big money is flooding our political system more than ever before to make sure that none of this ever changes. [2:50:58] Because that's always been their reliable playbook. [2:51:03] Special interests, the people making us sick, are dumping, just dump millions of dollars for their candidate, flood our airways with ads and our mailboxes with glossy postcards a couple weeks before an election. [2:51:19] And they just think that people will go their way. [2:51:22] But when the stakes are so high, when more people than ever are living so close to the bone, eventually we have to ask ourselves, [2:51:36] is the answer to our problems to turn to the same playbook over and over again? [2:51:44] A playbook that says in order to win, Democrats must rely on the same dark money, 50 million and counting, from the same people that backed 35 election deniers to Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election. [2:52:05] A playbook that says in order to win, we need to show deference to Trump by thanking his same ice agency that has shot Renee Good, Alex Preddy, Lorenzo Salgado Arajo, and Johann Sebastian Durán Guerrero. [2:52:22] A playbook that says in order to win, we must be defenders of the same status quo that is drowning us and tells us the aspiration to change our government [2:52:37] and the ambition to even try is foolish. [2:52:41] No, it's not foolish, Michigan. [2:52:45] It is the responsible and right thing to do. [2:52:49] Michiganders, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents believe that good leadership swings for the fences. [2:53:07] Leadership gets big money out of our system. [2:53:16] It takes on the corruption that blocks common sense solutions that lift working people. [2:53:23] And by the way, it knows that in order to do that, it helps not to take their money in the first place. [2:53:32] Want to dismiss this idea as naive. [2:53:45] But I want to tell you something. [2:53:47] The last time Democrats won in the House won our largest majority since Watergate in 2018, 185 Democratic candidates of all backgrounds, rural and urban, progressive and moderate, ran by not taking a dime in corporate money. [2:54:11] It's not naive. [2:54:12] It's not naive. [2:54:16] It's how we win, Detroit. [2:54:19] It's how you win a general election. [2:54:29] Be in cahoots with the same money that is oppressing us. [2:54:35] It's not naive, Detroit. [2:54:42] It's what we need. [2:54:43] And it, most importantly, is what you deserve. [2:54:48] You deserve a government that answers to you. [2:54:54] And yes, compared to how things work today, admittedly, a government that listens to you more than it listens to big money is revolutionary. [2:55:05] To take on big companies, to take on the big companies scamming you, lowering your bills, and putting more money in your pocket is revolutionary. [2:55:20] To fight corporate greed everywhere we find it. [2:55:23] To make healthcare a guaranteed right in the richest nation on earth. [2:55:33] You deserve a politics that treats the disease and not just the symptoms of what brought us Donald Trump. [2:55:40] That doesn't negotiate with or placate corruption, but one that defeats it once and for all. [2:55:50] You deserve it because you matter. [2:55:55] But we all know that it will not come as a matter of course. [2:56:00] It won't come by waiting patiently. [2:56:04] Nor by making the same decisions that we have always made. [2:56:09] This is something that we have to choose, Michigan. [2:56:14] It is something that we have to elect to do. [2:56:18] And right now, there is a very clear choice before us. [2:56:25] We can choose $50 million and counting in dark money trying to buy the state of Michigan. [2:56:34] Or we can choose Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. [2:56:42] But the choice is up to us right now. [2:56:53] Michigan, you can choose a different future. [2:57:06] It's waiting in your mailbox right now. [2:57:08] And it will be waiting for you and your friends at the polling booth on August 4th. [2:57:13] Because as much as we may be appalled at what is happening, ultimately, our democracy is our responsibility. [2:57:23] It is our choice. [2:57:27] And if we want a different politics, we have got to elect different politicians. [2:57:34] And I came here to deliver one simple message, that Abdul El-Sayed represents the politics of the future. [2:57:46] And if we want to not only win a Senate majority, but win a Senate majority, that means something new for us. [2:57:59] That does something new for us. [2:58:02] If we want to pass the legislation that we need. [2:58:05] And if we want to build a coalition big enough to actually change this country, then we have got to elect Dr. Abdul El-Sayed to the United States Senate. [2:58:15] Abdul is a son of Detroit. [2:58:23] And that means something. [2:58:25] Because we also know that his integrity didn't just start, did not begin with Abdul himself. [2:58:33] It began with his family and in the workers who built this city. [2:58:38] It's in his parents and in the parents who kept their families together. [2:58:44] Or rather, it's in the parents here in Detroit who kept their families together through bankruptcy and disinvestment. [2:58:51] In the neighbors who kept showing up for one another when powerful people had written Detroit off. [2:58:57] Abdul doesn't just bring those values to Detroit. [2:59:01] He carries those values with him day in and day out. [2:59:05] And you all knew him before the rest of the country learned his name. [2:59:11] You know that when this city was coming out of bankruptcy, when the consultants and the creditors lined their pockets to pick this whole place clean, [2:59:22] Abdul came home to rebuild its health department as a public health official. [2:59:28] And you know that when kids who were struggling couldn't see the blackboard, he wasted no time and got them glasses. [2:59:42] Abdul is a man of integrity and discipline. [2:59:53] Make no mistake about it. [2:59:56] He is a man of faith. [2:59:58] A man devoted to his family and to his beautiful daughters. [3:00:03] Abdul is a good man. [3:00:06] It is why he earned the endorsement of the UAW, an institution that knows Michigan workers. [3:00:15] Because the UAW looked at all the candidates in this race and chose him. [3:00:23] Because they have fought alongside him and they know, they know him. [3:00:28] And I want to close with this Michigan. [3:00:31] Because this moment right now is bigger than ideology or party. [3:00:38] It is one of country. [3:00:40] I want to tell you what they're whispering about Michiganders out in Washington. [3:00:46] Because I've heard it myself. [3:00:51] They're saying a state like yours and a people like you can't elect an American like Abdul. [3:00:59] Because when we talk about electability and I ask, what is it? [3:01:10] Do we really think that Michigan doesn't want to guarantee health care to every American? [3:01:16] I don't think that's right. [3:01:20] I believe that Michigan wants to establish health care as a right to every person in this state. [3:01:26] Michigan wants to strengthen our unions in every state in America. [3:01:37] Michigan wants to establish a government that is finally no longer for sale. [3:01:42] And those are all what Abdul believes. [3:01:44] So when you strip away the euphemisms and concerns at these highfalutin cocktail parties, [3:01:52] it's not about what he believes. [3:01:54] It's about who he is. [3:01:57] And it's about their assumptions about what they think Michigan is. [3:02:04] And we know they're wrong. [3:02:08] Not only that, but in a moment like now, we do not get better by accepting the logic of this administration. [3:02:23] We do not get better by shrinking our idea of what America is and what we're capable of. [3:02:32] We don't do it. [3:02:35] We turn this ship around by showing how big we actually are as a country. [3:02:41] We turn this ship around by rising to our aspirations and our greatest ideals. [3:02:49] We will never win the heart of this country by shrinking from who we are. [3:02:55] And Abdul El-Sayed is America. [3:03:00] We all are America. [3:03:02] And so when they ask you what the politics of the future looks like, you tell them this. [3:03:08] It looks like a doctor who answers to people and not big donors. [3:03:14] It looks like Detroit. [3:03:19] It looks like an absolute and unwavering commitment to healing this country. [3:03:24] And when we win Michigan, when we send Abdul to the Senate, and take back that House majority, [3:03:33] and fight like hell for the Senate in November, and when we give Mike Rogers the boot for one last time, [3:03:40] and we tell Republicans that your money's no good here, and we make them answer for a trillion dollars in cuts to our healthcare, [3:03:52] to our Medicare, to our Medicaid, to our ACA. [3:03:56] We tell them that the answer to them cutting our healthcare is Michigan sending a public health official to the United States Senate. [3:04:03] You all have one of the foremost labor leaders in America here in Michigan, right here. [3:04:12] And what Sean has accomplished in his time leading one of the most powerful unions in America is incredible. [3:04:23] The stand-up strike of 2023 improved the lives of autoworkers and showed the rest of us what organized labor can do [3:04:33] when workers are united in the fight for dignity. [3:04:38] Thank you, Sean. [3:04:39] And I remember back then when UAW rolled out their demands for the stand-up strike, [3:04:47] and everyone said it was impossible, unreasonable, naive, and then you all got it done. [3:05:01] I also want to thank my sister Rashida Tlaib. [3:05:04] You all are so lucky to have her fighting for you in Congress. [3:05:10] Every day in Washington she is throwing down for Detroit and Michigan overall, [3:05:17] and I'm especially happy to be here with my dear friend and the next United States Senator from the great state of Michigan, [3:05:26] Dr. Abdul El Sayed. [3:05:30] We know why we're here. [3:05:38] We are here because in November Democrats have to win a majority in Congress. [3:05:50] We have to win a majority in the House, and we have to win a majority in the Senate. [3:05:57] And we need a firewall against an administration that is hell-bent on tearing down in four years. [3:06:08] It took this country two years just a few nights ago in Trump's primetime address. [3:06:27] And for those of you who wisely tuned it out, [3:06:33] Donald Trump spent most of his speech rehashing the same big old tired lie [3:06:43] that he actually quote-unquote won the 2020 election. [3:06:48] Stop at nothing to stay in power. [3:06:56] And we know that it has nothing to do with true or false. [3:07:01] They will do everything they can to try to overturn our democracy in November. [3:07:08] And if we do not take back the House and the Senate, [3:07:12] we're going to make it a whole lot easier for him and his cronies to do just that. [3:07:17] So Michigan, we have no time to waste. [3:07:22] The question before us is how do we win a durable majority? [3:07:30] How do we get out of this pattern that we seem to have been stuck in for years? [3:07:39] This state knows it well. [3:07:42] It started off six elections in a row, starting in 1992. [3:07:49] Democratic presidential candidates won here in Michigan. [3:07:53] In fact, it wasn't even particularly close in most of those contests. [3:07:58] But then in 2016 something shifted. [3:08:02] Not just here in Michigan, but across the country. [3:08:06] Not just with Democrats, but also Republicans. [3:08:11] And to many political watchers it seemed that the laws of political nature were totally upended. [3:08:19] But it happened in all directions. [3:08:21] And that's also part of what Bernie's campaign spoke to ten years ago as well. [3:08:29] And that's also what Trump's victory in the fall in this state represented. [3:08:36] This oscillation in response to the failure of our political system to address the needs of working people. [3:08:46] These earthquakes and aftershocks. [3:08:50] Two years after 2016, we had another aftershock across the country. [3:08:56] And as a part of that, I went from being a waitress to winning a primary against a 20-year Democratic incumbent who was meant to be the next Speaker of the House. [3:09:13] I get it, Michigan. [3:09:20] Because my frustrations, precisely because the stakes of Republican leadership are so high. [3:09:32] Precisely because of their corruption, their discrimination, the gutting of voting rights. [3:09:40] I understood the stakes of cleaning up my own backyard back here at home. [3:09:47] That we had to look at our contributions and why people like my family and my neighborhood felt so failed by the party in charge of championing the working class. [3:10:02] And saying, how can we be better? In fact, we have a responsibility to be. [3:10:10] And all of us have been trying to get a handle on what all of that means ever since. [3:10:17] And we do know some of the many contributing causes and factors. [3:10:23] Like, yes, one of the causes, deep causes, have been bad trade deals that hollowed out states like Michigan. [3:10:32] Another cause was the record income inequality and the Great Recession spurred on by unchecked greed on Wall Street. [3:10:45] And yes, yet another cause was the suite of shameful and quiet bigotries waiting in the shadows in pockets of our country. [3:10:59] Racism, sexism, fear of our neighbor that seemed to gnash their teeth the strongest, the closer we get to uniting across our differences. [3:11:12] All of these things are true. [3:11:14] And yet there's more because it was also due to a political system that had over decades and across parties become totally enmeshed in a financial and electoral politics that stopped serving working people. [3:11:36] Our entire electoral system has been consumed by big money. [3:11:44] And thanks to this Republican administration, Donald Trump and this corrupt Supreme Court, it is now worse than ever before. [3:11:54] So instead of putting voters first year after year with little exception, Washington now elevates the desires of lobbyists and powerful corporations at the expense of the rest of us. [3:12:13] And what does that mean in practice? [3:12:16] Real wages are falling behind. [3:12:19] The prices of everything from groceries to houses are skyrocketing. [3:12:24] Our water, food and air are being poisoned to pad the profits of major corporations. [3:12:32] And the accountability for all of this, for hurting everyday Americans, has been far too little if there is any at all. [3:12:42] Which brings us to right now, Detroit. [3:12:48] There are things happening in this country that people everywhere are shocked by. [3:12:54] A government of, by and for the oligarchs. [3:12:59] Masked ICE paramilitary agents shooting Americans in the street with no further questions. [3:13:10] A president and administration so corrupt that they don't even bother hiding their self-dealing anymore. [3:13:18] Members of Congress and Trump insiders getting themselves rich on insider trading and online betting while you can't even make your rent. [3:13:29] A genocide in Gaza committed with American bombs and financed by our American dollars while our kids here at home have to ration their inhalers because politicians tell us that healthcare is too expensive. [3:13:47] And now, big money is flooding our political system more than ever before to make sure that none of this ever changes. [3:14:02] Because that's always been their reliable playbook. [3:14:08] Special interests, the people making us sick are dumping, just dump millions of dollars for their candidate, flood our airways with ads and our mailboxes with glossy postcards a couple weeks before an election. [3:14:24] And they just think that people will go their way. [3:14:27] But when the stakes are so high, when more people than ever are living so close to the bone, eventually we have to ask ourselves, is the answer to our problems to turn to the same playbook over and over again? [3:14:48] A playbook that says in order to win, Democrats must rely on the same dark money, 50 million and counting, from the same people that backed 35 election deniers to Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election. [3:15:10] A playbook that says in order to win, we need to show deference to Trump by thanking his same ice agency that has shot Renee Good, Alex Preddy, Lorenzo Salgado Arajo, and Johan Sebastian Durán Guerrero. [3:15:26] A playbook that says in order to win, we must be defenders of the same status quo that is drowning us and tells us the aspiration to change our government and the ambition to even try is foolish. [3:15:46] No, it's not foolish, Michigan. [3:15:50] It is the responsible and right thing to do. [3:15:55] We believe Michiganders, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents believe that good leadership swings for the fences. [3:16:14] Good leadership gets big money out of our system. [3:16:21] It takes on the corruption that blocks common sense solutions that lift working people. [3:16:28] And by the way, it knows that in order to do that, it helps not to take their money in the first place. [3:16:37] Want to dismiss this idea as naive. [3:16:51] But I want to tell you something. [3:16:54] The last time Democrats won in the House won our largest majority since Watergate in 2018, 185 Democratic candidates of all backgrounds, rural and urban, progressive and moderate, ran by not taking a dime in corporate money. [3:17:17] It's not naive. [3:17:20] It's not naive. [3:17:21] It's how we win, Detroit. [3:17:23] It's not just how you win a primary. [3:17:27] It's how you win a general election. [3:17:31] We keep in cahoots with the same money oppressing us. [3:17:40] It's not naive, Detroit. [3:17:47] It's what we need. [3:17:48] And it, most importantly, is what you deserve. [3:17:52] You deserve a government that answers to you. [3:17:58] And yes, compared to how things work today, admittedly, a government that listens to you more than it listens to big money is revolutionary. [3:18:10] To take on big companies, to take on the big companies scamming you, lowering your bills and putting more money in your pocket is revolutionary. [3:18:24] To fight corporate greed everywhere we find it. [3:18:28] To make healthcare a guaranteed right in the richest nation on earth. [3:18:34] You deserve a politics that treats the disease and not just the symptoms of what brought us Donald Trump. [3:18:45] That doesn't negotiate with or placate corruption, but one that defeats it once and for all. [3:18:55] You deserve it because you matter. [3:19:00] But we all know that it will not come as a matter of course. [3:19:05] It won't come by waiting patiently. [3:19:09] Nor by making the same decisions that we have always made. [3:19:14] This is something that we have to choose, Michigan. [3:19:19] It is something that we have to elect to do. [3:19:25] And right now, there is a very clear choice before us. [3:19:29] We can choose $50 million and counting in dark money trying to buy the state of Michigan. [3:19:39] Or we can choose Dr. Abdul El Sayed. [3:19:47] But the choice is up to us right now. [3:19:57] Michigan, Michigan. [3:20:08] You can choose a different future. [3:20:10] It's waiting in your mailbox right now. [3:20:14] And it will be waiting for you and your friends at the polling booth on August 4th. [3:20:18] Because as much as we may be appalled at what is happening, ultimately, our democracy is our responsibility. [3:20:29] It is our choice. [3:20:31] And if we want a different politics, we have got to elect different politicians. [3:20:40] And I came here to deliver one simple message. [3:20:45] That Abdul El Sayed represents the politics of the future. [3:20:55] And if we want to not only win a Senate majority, but win a Senate majority that means something new for us. [3:21:05] That does something new for us. [3:21:08] If we want to pass the legislation that we need. [3:21:11] And if we want to build a coalition big enough to actually change this country. [3:21:16] We have got to elect Dr. Abdul El Sayed to the United States Senate. [3:21:25] Abdul is a son of Detroit. [3:21:28] And that means something. [3:21:30] Because we also know that his integrity didn't just start, did not begin with Abdul himself. [3:21:38] It began with his family and in the workers who built this city. [3:21:43] It's in his parents and in the parents who kept their families together. [3:21:49] Or rather, it's in the parents here in Detroit who kept their families together through bankruptcy and disinvestment. [3:21:56] In the neighbors who kept showing up for one another when powerful people had written Detroit off. [3:22:02] Abdul doesn't just bring those values to Detroit. [3:22:06] He carries those values with him day in and day out. [3:22:10] And you all knew him before the rest of the country learned his name. [3:22:16] You know that when this city was coming out of bankruptcy. [3:22:21] When the consultants and the creditors lined their pockets to pick this whole place clean. [3:22:27] Abdul came home to rebuild its health department as a public health official. [3:22:33] And you know that when kids who were struggling couldn't see the blackboard, he wasted no time and got them glasses. [3:22:48] Detroit, Abdul is a man of integrity and discipline. [3:22:58] Make no mistake about it. [3:23:00] He is a man of faith. [3:23:03] A man devoted to his family and to his beautiful daughters. [3:23:08] Abdul is a good man. [3:23:10] It is why he earned the endorsement of the UAW. [3:23:17] An institution that knows Michigan workers. [3:23:20] Because the UAW looked at all the candidates in this race and chose him. [3:23:28] Because they have fought alongside him and they know, they know him. [3:23:33] And I want to close with this, Michigan. [3:23:37] Because this moment right now is bigger than ideology or party. [3:23:43] It is one of country. [3:23:47] I want to tell you what they're whispering about Michiganders out in Washington. [3:23:52] Because I've heard it myself. [3:23:55] They're saying a state like yours and a people like you can't elect an American like Abdul. [3:24:05] Because when we talk about electability, and I ask what is it? [3:24:16] Do we really think that Michigan doesn't want to guarantee healthcare to every American? [3:24:24] I don't think that's right. [3:24:25] I believe that Michigan wants to establish healthcare as a right to every person in this state. [3:24:32] Michigan wants to strengthen our unions in every state in America. [3:24:40] Michigan wants to establish a government that is finally no longer for sale. [3:24:47] And those are all what Abdul believes. [3:24:49] So when you strip away the euphemisms and concerns at these highfalutin cocktail parties, it's not about what he believes. [3:25:00] It's about who he is. [3:25:04] And it's about their assumptions about what they think Michigan is. [3:25:09] And we know they're wrong. [3:25:13] Not only that, but in a moment like now, we do not get better by accepting the logic of this administration. [3:25:29] We do not get better by shrinking our idea of what America is and what we're capable of. [3:25:38] We don't do it. [3:25:39] We turn this ship around by showing how big we actually are as a country. [3:25:47] We turn this ship around by rising to our aspirations and our greatest ideals. [3:25:54] We will never win the heart of this country by shrinking from who we are. [3:26:00] And Abdul El-Sayed is America. [3:26:04] We all are America. [3:26:06] And so when they ask you what the politics of the future looks like, you tell them this. [3:26:14] It looks like a doctor who answers to people and not big donors. [3:26:19] It looks like Detroit. [3:26:24] It looks like an absolute and unwavering commitment to healing this country. [3:26:30] And when we win Michigan, when we send Abdul to the Senate and take back that House majority [3:26:39] and fight like hell for the Senate in November. [3:26:42] And when we give Mike Rogers the boot for one last time. [3:26:46] And we tell Republicans that your money is no good here. [3:26:50] And we make them answer for a trillion dollars in cuts to our healthcare, to our Medicare, to our Medicaid, to our ACA. [3:27:00] We tell them that the answer to them cutting our healthcare is Michigan sending a public health official to the United States Senate. [3:27:09] You all have one of the foremost labor leaders in America here in Michigan, right here. [3:27:17] And what Sean has accomplished in his time leading one of the most powerful unions in America is incredible. [3:27:29] The stand-up strike of 2023 improved the lives of auto workers and showed the rest of us what organized labor can do when workers are united in the fight for dignity. [3:27:43] Thank you, Sean. [3:27:48] And I remember back then when UAW rolled out their demands for the stand-up strike and everyone said it was impossible, unreasonable, naive. [3:27:59] And then you all got it done. [3:28:02] I also want to thank my sister Rashida Tlaib. [3:28:08] You all are so lucky to have her fighting for you in Congress. [3:28:17] Every day in Washington she is throwing down for Detroit and Michigan overall. [3:28:23] And I'm especially happy to be here with my dear friend and the next United States Senator from the great state of Michigan, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. [3:28:35] We know why we're here. [3:28:43] We are here because in November Democrats have to win a majority in Congress. [3:28:54] We have to win a majority in the House and we have to win a majority in the Senate. [3:29:01] And we need a firewall against an administration that is held on tearing down in four years, country 200 just a few nights ago in Trump's prime time address. [3:29:32] And for those of you who wisely tuned it out, Donald Trump spent most of his speech rehashing the same big old tired lie that he actually quote unquote won the 2020 election. [3:29:53] And we know stop at nothing to stay in power. [3:30:02] And we know that it has nothing to do with true or false. [3:30:06] They will do everything they can to try to overturn our democracy in November. [3:30:13] And if we do not take back the House and the Senate, we're going to make it a whole lot easier for him and his cronies to do just that. [3:30:22] So Michigan, we have no time to waste. [3:30:27] The question before us is how do we win a durable majority? [3:30:35] How do we get out of this pattern that we seem to have been stuck in for years? [3:30:43] This state knows it well. [3:30:47] Six elections started off six elections in a row starting in 1992. [3:30:54] Democratic presidential candidates won here in Michigan. [3:30:58] In fact, it wasn't even particularly close in most of those contests. [3:31:03] But then in 2016, something shifted, not just here in Michigan, but across the country, not just with Democrats, but also Republicans. [3:31:17] And to many political watchers, it seemed that the laws of political nature were totally upended. [3:31:24] But it happened in all directions. [3:31:27] And that's also part of what Bernie's campaign spoke to 10 years ago as well. [3:31:34] And that's also what Trump's victory in the fall in this state represented, this oscillation in response to the failure of our political system to address the needs of working people. [3:31:50] These earthquakes and aftershocks. [3:31:55] Two years after 2016, we had another aftershock across the country. [3:32:02] And as a part of that, I went from being a waitress to winning a primary against a 20-year Democratic incumbent who was meant to be the next Speaker of the House. [3:32:19] So I get it, Michigan, because my frustrations, precisely because the stakes of Republican leadership are so high, precisely because of their corruption, their discrimination, the gutting of voting rights. [3:32:44] I understood the stakes of cleaning up my own backyard back here at home, that we had to look at our contributions and why people like my family and my neighborhood felt so failed by the party in charge of championing the working class. [3:33:07] And saying, how can we be better? In fact, we have a responsibility to be. [3:33:16] And all of us have been trying to get a handle on what all of that means ever since. [3:33:22] And we do know some of the many contributing causes and factors. [3:33:29] Like, yes, one of the causes, deep causes, have been bad trade deals that hollowed out states like Michigan. [3:33:37] Another cause was the record income inequality and the Great Recession spurred on by unchecked greed on Wall Street. [3:33:50] And yes, yet another cause was the suite of shameful and quiet bigotries waiting in the shadows in pockets of our country. [3:34:04] Racism, racism, sexism, fear of our neighbor that seemed to gnash their teeth the strongest, the closer we get to uniting across our differences. [3:34:17] All of these things are true. [3:34:19] And yet there's more because it was also due to a political system that had over decades and across parties become totally enmeshed in a financial and electoral politics that stopped serving working people. [3:34:41] Our entire electoral system has been consumed by big money. [3:34:49] And thanks to this Republican administration, Donald Trump and this corrupt Supreme Court, it is now worse than ever before. [3:34:59] So instead of putting voters first year after year with little exception, Washington now elevates the desires of lobbyists and powerful corporations at the expense of the rest of us. [3:35:18] And what does that mean in practice? [3:35:21] Real wages are falling behind. [3:35:24] The prices of everything from groceries to houses are skyrocketing. [3:35:29] Our water, food and air are being poisoned to pad the profits of major corporations. [3:35:38] And the accountability for all of this, for hurting everyday Americans, has been far too little if there is any at all. [3:35:47] Which brings us to right now, Detroit. [3:35:51] Things, there are things happening in this country that people everywhere are shocked by. [3:35:58] A government of, by and for the oligarchs. [3:36:03] Masked ICE paramilitary agents shooting Americans in the street with no further questions. [3:36:14] The presidents and administration so corrupt that they don't even bother hiding their self-dealing anymore. [3:36:24] Members of Congress and Trump insiders getting themselves rich on insider trading and online betting while you can't even make your rent. [3:36:34] A genocide in Gaza committed with American bombs and financed by our American dollars while our kids here at home have to ration their inhalers because politicians tell us that healthcare is too expensive. [3:36:52] And now money is flooding our political system more than ever before to make sure that none of this ever changes. [3:37:07] Because that's always been their reliable playbook. [3:37:13] Special interests, the people making us sick are dumping, just dump millions of dollars for their candidate, flood our airways with ads and our mailboxes with glossy postcards a couple weeks before an election. [3:37:29] And they just think that people will go their way. [3:37:32] But when the stakes are so high, when more people than ever are living so close to the bone, eventually we have to ask ourselves, is the answer to our problems to turn to the same playbook over and over again? [3:37:54] A playbook that says in order to win, Democrats must rely on the same dark money, 50 million and counting, from the same people that backed 35 election deniers to Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election. [3:38:15] A playbook that says in order to win, we need to show deference to Trump by thanking his same ice agency that has shot Renee Good, Alex Preddy, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero. [3:38:32] A playbook says in order to win, we must be defenders of the same status quo that is drowning us and tells us the aspiration to change our government and the ambition to even try is foolish. [3:38:50] No, it's not foolish, Michigan. [3:38:55] It is the responsible and right thing to do. [3:38:59] Michiganders, Democrats, Republicans and Independents believe that good leadership swings for the fences. [3:39:18] Good leadership gets big money out of our system. [3:39:26] It takes on the corruption that blocks common sense solutions that lift working people. [3:39:33] And by the way, it knows that in order to do that, it helps not to take their money in the first place. [3:39:42] Want to dismiss this idea as naive. [3:39:55] But I want to tell you something. [3:39:58] The last time Democrats won in the House, won our largest majority since Watergate in 2018. [3:40:07] 185 Democratic candidates of all backgrounds, rural and urban, progressive and moderate, ran by not taking a dime in corporate money. [3:40:22] It's not naive. [3:40:26] It's how we win Detroit. [3:40:28] It's not just how you win a primary. [3:40:32] It's how you win a general election. [3:40:36] Be in cahoots with the same money is oppressing us. [3:40:45] It's not naive Detroit. [3:40:52] It's what we need. [3:40:53] And it, most importantly, is what you deserve. [3:40:57] You deserve a government that answers to you. [3:41:03] And yes, compared to how things work today, admittedly, a government that listens to you more than it listens to big money is revolutionary. [3:41:14] To take on big companies, to take on the big companies scamming you, lowering your bills, and putting more money in your pocket is revolutionary. [3:41:30] To fight corporate greed everywhere we find it. [3:41:33] To make healthcare a guaranteed right in the richest nation on earth. [3:41:43] You deserve a politics that treats the disease and not just the symptoms of what brought us Donald Trump. [3:41:50] That doesn't negotiate with or placate corruption, but one that defeats it once. [3:41:59] That doesn't negotiate with two red goals of most museums for mostwarts. [3:42:09] That's a huge mess!!