Extended Interview: Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed

[0:00] So, I have some questions for you that are pretty close to identical to questions that [0:05] I asked your opponent, and we're going to start with some of those. Why are you running for U.S. [0:11] Senate? It shouldn't be as hard. It shouldn't be as hard in the richest most powerful country [0:14] in the world to afford a tank of gas or your groceries or to pay your rent or your mortgage. [0:19] It shouldn't be as hard to see a doctor, and it doesn't have to be. It's a choice we make about [0:23] what kind of politics we have. Right now, we've watched politicians get bought off by big [0:28] corporations, and those corporations have their way in Washington, D.C., and it means they do two [0:33] things. They suppress our wages, they raise our prices, and we end up bearing the brunt of it. [0:39] I'm a doctor who rebuilt health departments, put glasses on kids, took on corporate polluters, [0:44] eliminated medical debt. I know I'm not supposed to run for office. I got 11-letter first names, [0:47] got sounds that come out of parts of people's throats most people don't know they have, [0:51] but I also know it just shouldn't be this hard, and so we built this campaign the old-fashioned way, [0:54] going everywhere, talking to everyone, and I believe in that kind of politics, and if we're going to [0:58] actually get our democracy back, it's going to be that kind of politics. Democracy is a process, [1:03] not an outcome, and it's about working the process. Out of that range of issues and ideas, [1:10] what is the most important issue that you hear about from Michigan voters in this campaign? Pick one. [1:16] Had you asked me five years ago, I said health care. It still is really, really high on people's [1:21] minds. I think right now we are barreling total world where the most important issue I hear about [1:26] every day is AI. It is foundationally going to change our economy and change our economy at a [1:32] time scale that we cannot adapt to, and if that happens, or if AI slips human control, or it's taken [1:39] by some terrorist group who wants to create a bioweapon, or it ends up in an arms race where we end up, [1:44] you know, winning but then losing half of what it meant to win in the first place, which is preserving [1:48] humanity, all of these outcomes are really, really quite scary. I hear it in so many different ways. [1:53] Yeah. Tell me about that. Do you, I mean, this has been a very important elite level conversation [1:58] over the last couple of years, but are you hearing about it on the trail? [2:01] It comes in two different ways. One is students saying, so I just took $60,000 in loans, [2:09] and the job that I was supposed to have on the back end doesn't exist anymore, or might not exist [2:12] in 10 years. Or it's folks in rural communities who say, we're trying to put a data center in my [2:18] backyard. I already can't afford my utilities, and I'm worried about what it's going to mean for our [2:22] water. These are, these are issues that people are deathly afraid of, and it shows up in just [2:27] all kinds of ways. But I also think that, you know, it goes back to the healthcare question too. [2:32] You know, they promised us that AI was going to cure cancer. I haven't seen a cure for cancer yet, [2:36] but now it's being used in this arms race around prior authorization, this arms race between hospitals [2:42] and insurance companies to figure out who can bill more or pay less for healthcare that's getting [2:46] whittled away. We forgot what the point was, which is to provide people care, not to make money for a few [2:51] large corporations. It all kind of really goes back to the same issue, which is why I want to get [2:55] money out of politics to put money in pockets. So that's Medicare for all. Conveniently, this was [2:59] also one of the questions that I had from Mike Rogers, which was what should Congress do about the [3:04] risks of AI? I think there's a couple of things. Number one, we need a cabinet level agency that is [3:10] going to invest in and focus on regulating the inside of the AI industry, kind of like an FDA or an SEC [3:20] for AI. We need to also make sure that there are no AI or AI no-go's, meaning AI shouldn't fire a [3:26] weapon, shouldn't fire you, shouldn't be able to deny you healthcare. When it comes to the corporations [3:30] themselves, I think they need to be divested from traditional big tech. They need to be reborn, [3:36] rebuilt as public interest corporations. And I think we need democratic- [3:40] Nationalized? [3:41] Not nationalized, but democratically appointed leadership at 50% of the board. So you're talking [3:48] about sort of a public-private- [3:49] Right. And is that about democratic control? Is it about sharing wealth? What's the goal? [3:54] In part, it's going to be democratic control and part sharing wealth. The other thing I think [3:57] that needs to happen is that you need 50% of their value held in what could kind of be called a [4:03] sovereign wealth fund. And the point here is this. Number one, you need to make sure that the risks [4:09] that we are barreling toward are thought through at the board governance level, that we're not just [4:15] inadvertently following this micro-scale incentive to create technologies that could kill us all. [4:22] And that if the CEOs are right, that this is going to potentially take 50% of the white-collar jobs in [4:28] the order of five to 10 years, that part of the value that might be created isn't just held by a few [4:35] billionaires in San Francisco, but instead is held in part in the wealth of the federal government to be [4:42] able to reinvest in, A, the capacity for job creation, but B, the capacity to make sure that [4:46] folks who are pushed out of the economy aren't left destitute. And then the last thing I'll say is that [4:51] we need a terms of engagement for data centers. This really is where the rubber hits the road for a lot [4:55] of folks. And those terms of engagement are the following. Number one, you need community benefits [5:00] agreements that are negotiated in good faith transparently with local communities, with the ability [5:04] for the local community to say, we don't want this here. Two, if you're going to put a project in a local [5:09] community, it cannot raise utility rates. Three, it has to make sure that it improves reliability. [5:14] Some of that revenue that's created goes to improve reliability. Four, we cannot touch our waterways [5:19] at all. And five, all union labor. And I think that terms of engagement needs to exist at the federal [5:24] level. And until then, we need local and state moratoriums. What about the frontier where companies [5:30] are pushing forward? Would you limit that? We need a full-on pause. Full-on pause. Full-on pause. [5:33] Okay. And what happens then, the instant question, what happens if we pause and China doesn't? [5:40] See, I just don't think that that's, I don't take that as seriously as a lot of people do. Here's why. [5:47] A lot of the frontier research is just spoofing our models. China's research. China's research. And [5:52] it'd be like, you know, you're pulling a skier on a boat and you speed up the boat and you're like, [5:58] the skier is still so close. We got to speed up. The skier is still so close. Well, it's because you're [6:02] pulling the skier. And I think that's in part what's happening, right? And they've been very, [6:06] very good at just mocking our technology. So I think if we slow down, I think we will find that [6:12] a lot of what China is doing is more about the dispersion of this technology than it is on frontier [6:17] research. And at the same time, I think we need an international treaty. I think we need to be [6:22] working with the Chinese. Because eventually, the water skier can still swim and catch up. [6:26] I mean, that's where the analogy falls apart. Just running with the metaphor. [6:30] But eventually, yes, they are going to be able to hop on a jet ski and catch up. But the point [6:34] that I'm making here is that I think all of us are interested in the preservation of humanity, [6:38] right? Because, you know, in China, they're humans, too. And we're humans, too. And [6:41] creating robots that get to this point of recursive self-improvement, kind of like that [6:46] horror point in Fantasia, where you've got the mops with the buckets that are self-creating. [6:50] None of us want to get there. And none of us want to see what happens when you open Pandora's box. [6:55] And all of a sudden, AI has far exceeded our control. So I think we all have an incentive to [7:00] get this right. But to understand that we are going to have to figure out how to work together, [7:04] similarly to what we've done when it came to other potentially humanity-risking [7:10] technological endeavors, like nuclear power, to be able to contain the potential threat and work [7:15] together to make sure that we are focused more on protecting humanity than just simply what the [7:20] micro scale incentives might look like. Set aside AI. Pick one economic issue that you think should [7:27] be the priority for the next Congress. Monopolies and oligopolies. We live in corporatism. We don't [7:33] live in capitalism. I'm a capitalist. Capitalism is about the leveraging of supply and demand to allocate [7:39] capital. It's about free entry and exit into the market. If you read Adam Smith, he'll tell you that [7:44] there's no market without morals. He'll tell you that the biggest risk to capitalism was never government [7:47] regulation. It was always monopoly and oligopoly. And I think when you think about the most lucrative [7:53] sectors of the economy, they are dominated by a few very, very powerful corporations now. [7:57] When you get a monopoly or oligopoly, it has two clear powers in the economy. The first is the ability [8:03] to, in effect, raise prices on you, which is why we can't afford so much of what we can't afford. [8:08] And it has the power to suppress wages. They act as what economists call monopsonists, meaning that they [8:13] can suppress the effort for us to trade our labor on a market to make a good living. And so you're [8:19] watching as our ability to get paid for the work we do is stagnating while the prices we pay goes up. [8:26] We solved this problem like over 100 years ago. And that was because we created the Federal Trade [8:32] Commission. We empowered it to break up monopolies and oligopolies. And we've basically walked away [8:39] from that. And we've allowed a lot of these huge corporations to be able to accrue power. [8:43] Just give me an example, because just one thing that has tended to happen in these debates [8:49] is that anti-monopolists will identify a company and they'll say, look at Walmart, you know, [8:54] it's cornered the market on everything. And then next thing you know, Amazon comes along and Walmart [8:59] doesn't look so powerful. Or in Silicon Valley, Facebook looks dominant and then five years pass and [9:05] you have companies like Anthropic and OpenAI as dominant players. So what's an example of a [9:12] monopoly that, you know, holds power over an extended period of time in our era? [9:17] I'll give you one example. DTE, our local utility, they have raised our rates faster than in 46 other [9:25] states over the past 20 years. They buy off almost every politician in our state so that they all look [9:31] the other way and they just make money hand over fist and that comes out of our back pockets. And rather [9:36] than invest that money in improving our reliability, I lose power two or three times a year for three [9:40] or four days at a time. That's one example. Similarly, everybody out there watching probably [9:45] has a phone in their pocket or their purse. That phone is probably made by one of two companies, [9:49] Samsung or Apple. You think about the carriers on those phones, probably AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile. [9:55] That's just one example. Similarly, you talked about Amazon versus Walmart. Yeah, you traded one [10:00] oligopolist for another. And it's actually a perfect example. The reason that other one comes along is [10:04] because that one has no incentive to actually compete. And so they start to ossify. They don't [10:09] really change their business practices. And you get another one that's able to build a more powerful [10:12] monopoly on top of it. But either way, you don't have many players in the game. It's not like people [10:17] are choosing, do I go to Walmart or Amazon or another place? But there are advantages of scale [10:21] where prices, bigness drives down prices for a lot of people. Walmart drove down prices. Amazon drove down [10:28] prices, right? Until they start driving them up, right? Until Amazon basically becomes the marketplace, [10:34] can compete with any product on its marketplace, can undercut their price and then raise their price [10:39] because now they're the monopolist. That's just not how the system has worked. I mean, unfortunately, [10:43] this is just a truth of economics, that when you have a monopoly, you are able to charge whatever price [10:50] you want to charge. Americans right now are not complaining because things are too cheap. We're all [10:54] complaining because things aren't too expensive. And I think that's a big part of it. The other thing, [10:58] you know, I think we need is a union. I think unions are one of the most important antidotes to [11:02] monopsony, right? The ability of a few employers to set the price for what they're going to pay in [11:08] employment. Unions empower you to then stand up and say, listen, we're going to collectivize our labor, [11:13] and we're going to make sure that if you are going to suppress our wages, we are going to push back. [11:16] It's about leveraging exactly those same economies of scale against the corporations that have managed to [11:21] to lower our overall wages. Could you describe your opponent in the most fair-minded terms possible? [11:31] I think he's a man who at one point said he wanted to serve publicly and then started playing the game [11:38] and got addicted. I think, you know, for him, I'm not sure that quite passes. I'm trying to be fair-minded. [11:45] Look, I think at some point, like, I think early on his career, he really got into public service for [11:49] the right reasons. I think at some point you start to play the game and you start to take the rules of the [11:53] game as fixed. And the rules of our game and politics are about taking corporate money to do [11:59] corporate bidding and then make money on the back end off the same corporations you were regulating. [12:03] And I think he played that game. It worked out really well for him. He made 14 million bucks and [12:08] moved to Florida, bought a mansion and two yachts. And he's watching Donald Trump play that game and [12:13] make billions. So he's like, I better get in while the getting's good. I mean, look, I don't, I think, [12:17] I think he's somebody who has never asked why things are the way they are. Okay. I think he's somebody who, [12:24] for him, it's just like, I guess, I guess this was, I'll just say this was a challenging, [12:27] a challenging question for both of you and leave it at that. Let's go into your biography. Tell me [12:32] how your family came to the U.S. My dad went to make cars and, you know, he was the eldest son of [12:38] the smartest person I ever met who never got to go to school, my grandmother. She was the 9th to 14, [12:44] raised her six of eight kids to whom she gave birth, who died before the first birthday. My dad was her [12:49] eldest, so he watched his two siblings pass before he turned five. And he was a great student. [12:55] And he, you know, I remember him telling me the first time he saw [12:59] a full page spread in a magazine of a Corvette. And he was like, I want to make that. And that's [13:05] what he did. How old was he when he came to the U.S.? [13:08] I think, well, let's say he came in 1978. So he's in early 20s, came to do a PhD at this university [13:16] at Wayne State, and became an automotive engineer, worked at GM at the tech center, [13:23] helped the design, 96 Corvette. And for the car lovers out there, that was also the engine that was [13:29] put in the 96 Impala, which is the fastest boat you ever saw. And met and married my mom. She came to [13:35] the United States. They realized that after creating the one thing that they ever created, [13:40] which was me, they had deep creative differences and got divorced and both remarried. I was raised [13:45] by my dad and my stepmom, Jackie. She is a daughter of the American Revolution from Gratiot County, [13:50] in the middle of the state. She is the daughter of Jan and Judy Johnson, with siblings Jeff and Jenny [13:55] Johnson. You get the picture here. I should have been Jabdul, but, you know, I missed that boat. And, you know, [14:02] I grew up with my dad and my stepmom and two siblings. I've also got two other half siblings [14:07] on my mom's side. What was it like growing up as a child of immigrants in Michigan? Pretty great. I [14:14] mean, I moved around a lot. So I spent some of my childhood years in Missouri, some of my childhood [14:18] years in Florida, but was back by the fifth grade. And, you know, people talk about code switching, [14:25] right, trying to figure out, like, where you fit. I was raised in this family where my dad is an [14:29] Egyptian immigrant. My stepmom's a daughter of the American Revolution, really understanding these [14:34] differences in perspective and culture, but also coming to understand how to sort of explain the [14:40] least common denominator of things. You know, in a given summer, my folks would ship me out to Egypt, [14:44] where I'd be the only one of the family who went. It's been like four months there with my [14:48] tata, my grandmother, my grandfather, my aunts and uncles, my cousins. And then I'd come back at the [14:53] very end of the summer to a cottage on a lake in the middle of Michigan, Montcalm County. And the crazy [14:58] thing about it is, you know, whether it was my tata Suad or my grandma, Judy, one of the things you [15:04] come to appreciate is these two women could not have imagined the lives that one another lead. But [15:08] I got to live part of them with both. And I remember explaining one grandmother to the other [15:12] grandmother. But the thing about it is when your grandmother makes your favorite meal, [15:16] kisses you on a forehead, tells you it's going to be just fine, it feels the same. And those are the, [15:22] I think, the least common denominators of what make us human. And so in a lot of ways, I've never been [15:26] able to take for granted that I was normal in any room I walked into, not one, not even my own house. [15:31] And that's a gift, because you get really good at having to explain yourself and having to understand [15:35] how people understand you. And I really appreciate that. If you're elected, you'll be the first Muslim [15:42] senator. And, you know, there's a lot of people, Muslim, Christian, otherwise, who are raised in a [15:48] religion, and it doesn't stick. Why did faith stick for you? I think anybody of faith has on again, [15:55] off again, relationships with one's own faith. Faith is a choice one makes every day, right? And [16:01] in my younger years, I certainly rebelled. And it was something that that kind of came back to me [16:09] in college. And I was sort of out from from underneath my family and trying to make sense [16:16] of the world. And I think the thing about faith is that it reminds you you're small in the eyes [16:21] of God, right? And when you realize that you are small relative to everything else around you, [16:27] you even need faith for this, but like, staring at the ocean does this, staring at a mountain does [16:30] this, thinking about how you fit within the cosmos does this. And when you appreciate how small you [16:35] are, and the fact that, you know, on average, you know, you and I are right around the same age, [16:39] we're about halfway done, right? You start to think about like, what, what is it that I mean here? And how [16:48] does one's life make meaning? And you start to realize that the things that matter the most in [16:53] the world are the ways that you relate to the people around you. And you know, like I said, [16:57] I've never really quite fit in anywhere. But I've always sought to find that least common denominator [17:03] to ask, you know, what does it mean to have the things that I had, not a front row seat to what my [17:07] life should have been. I was, you know, born in the United States of America, I got to go to amazing [17:12] public schools, got to get go to get a medical education, I got to go to Oxford on a scholarship. [17:17] Those are opportunities my cousins couldn't have imagined. Crazy thing about it, though, [17:20] is I can go 15 minutes from where I grew up. And there were kids growing up in this city, [17:26] whose opportunity sets looked a lot more like my cousins than mine. And you start to think, [17:30] okay, what is my responsibility to my fellow humans around understanding that I am small and [17:37] insignificant in the broader eyes. And it's also a discipline, it's a it's a way of orienting your [17:42] life. I know you're a devout Catholic. And it's, it's those rituals that you can touch to that help to [17:48] provide a certain subtext of meaning a baseline almost in the song of your life. And it's always [17:52] been really meaningful. Tell me tell me something about how that faith shapes your politics. And [17:57] tell me something that is like Catholicism or Judaism specific to Islam. You know, there is this [18:06] notion of speak the truth, even if it be against yourself. And I try to be like radically honest. [18:13] You know, for me, I've always tried to find the incoherence of a thing that to try and see it and [18:18] look at it. And I think I bring that to my politics every single day. What are the inconsistencies that [18:24] we hide from in our politics? Where are the places where we're not quite consistent with what we say we [18:29] want to do? Let's talk about those things. And that honesty, I think is really, really important. [18:34] There's also just a command to justice. There's this saying of the Prophet peace be upon him, he said, [18:39] I was commanded to be charitable with my neighbor so much that I thought that when I died, [18:48] my neighbor would inherit my wealth. And that notion of just charity, I know it's shared by [18:54] so many of the great faiths. But that that sort of notion of like the responsibility that you have [19:00] to the person next to you, with whom you share the space, and the responsibility to be honest and [19:05] direct, even if you're speaking against yourself. Those are things that I take really seriously and I try [19:09] to bring to my politics. And at the same time, you know, as a person of faith, you know that the [19:14] beauty of this place is that you and I love our country. And despite the fact that your faith might [19:20] be different than mine, there's a lot that we share and a few things that we don't. It's amazing to me [19:25] that in this country, neither your faith nor mine, nor somebody else's gets to dictate how we live our [19:31] lives. That's an amazing thing. I mean, you know, my family immigrated from a place where you don't have [19:38] the freedom of your speech. And as a kid growing up as a Muslim, especially somebody who experienced [19:44] 9-11 as a junior in high school, where I had to become a lot more aware of what my faith identity [19:50] meant for me. It's an amazing thing that in this country, we have the freedom of our religion. And [19:56] nobody gets to read their faith into the law to the exclusion of anybody else, whether you're a person [20:00] of faith or person with no faith at all. And that's a civic, that's a civic faith, a civic religion, [20:06] that in this country, as we practice our politics, we have to cling onto. That is, again, [20:12] that lowest common denominator of what makes us all American. Let's talk about ideas of justice in [20:17] politics. You ran for office in 2018, right, for the first time. You were endorsed by Bernie Sanders [20:23] in that race. I know you like to say, I'm a capitalist. You've said it already in this interview. [20:28] Were you ever a socialist? No, I'm not a, I'm too much of a scientist to actually believe in any sort of [20:34] ideology. Like at the end of the day, any of these things are really about like process, [20:39] even as a capitalist, right? Like I'm not a capital C capitalist. I'm a capitalist who understands that [20:43] like a really good way to get the most value is to enable people to have the basic means. And then [20:49] if they've got a great idea and the wherewithal to work, they can create really, really cool things [20:55] with that. You see it work every single day. And so like, I just don't do ideology. I'm like a person [21:00] of faith and everyone else brings evidence. And so there are things that seem to me to be quite [21:04] obvious. So like Roth, as the point, right, the idea that you should have guaranteed health care [21:09] in the country, anybody who tells you that's anti-capitalist is not really understanding [21:13] how capitalism works. It'd be like saying, you know, if you want to go play football, right, [21:17] there are some players who are faster, some players who are bigger, some players who are stronger, [21:21] but you know, not everybody needs pads. No, I'm so sorry. I don't care how big, strong, fast you are. [21:24] Everybody gets a basic set of pads and a good helmet, and then you get to go play, right? And to me, [21:29] health care, child care, good infrastructure, good schools, those things to me are like giving a player [21:34] pads so that they can go and play and at least understand that they're not going to get like [21:38] catastrophically injured, God willing, in playing the game. [21:41] So what do you think about the Democratic Socialists of America, which is a group that [21:46] you've been associated with, again, despite being a proud capitalist, right? Do you think [21:51] that they're generally right about things? Do you think that they're too ideological? [21:56] Again, I don't really think about them as a group, you know? [21:59] Never. You've never, you only see people, not groups. [22:02] No, I'm just saying like, as an organization, I understand why you might want to ask me about [22:06] my association with a group that everybody wants to fit me into. [22:09] I'm not asking about your association. I'm asking, what do you think about them as a force [22:14] in your party's politics? Do you think that they're a force for good? [22:16] I think they're right about some things, and I think they're not right about some things. [22:19] Give me one thing you think they're wrong about. [22:21] I think some of the like, so I'm running for US Senate. [22:24] I've heard. [22:25] And like, to run for US Senate and say you want to abolish the Senate seems kind of inconsistent, [22:28] don't you think? So like, obviously, there's a number of things. [22:32] You've got to tear down the master's house with the master's tools. [22:34] It's also the socialist thing that I just don't agree with. Like, [22:38] I think Medicare for all is a really great way to guarantee everybody health care. Also, [22:42] it's actually very highly capitalist, if you think about it. You're just saying- [22:45] So what is a socialist idea in health care that you would disagree with? [22:50] Well, it's not necessarily that I would disagree with it. I just don't think it would [22:54] work here is like, you know, we get compared to the UK, right? Medicare for all gets compared to [22:58] the UK is not single payer. It's single provider, right? It's like every hospital is government run. [23:04] That's not what I'm advocating for. I'm just saying that health insurance in the year of our [23:08] Lord 2026 doesn't have to be a product. You can just give it to everybody. And then from there, [23:14] people can decide where to use their health insurance that they get from the government. [23:16] It's actually not a government takeover of health care. It actually is the freeing up of [23:21] a market in health care because right now, our health care market gets squeezed by the [23:26] negotiation between the health insurance industry and providers. So what happens now is that the [23:32] rate that gets set is not transparent, which by the way, is in complete violation of the principles [23:38] of capitalism. So we don't have capitalist health care at all. And the best way to allow every doctor [23:43] or every provider to be like, hey, let me put up my shingle and see if I can compete is to make sure [23:47] that we hold the insurance part so that everybody gets to participate in that market and go and [23:52] decide and shop around their health insurance wherever they want to go. If you want to see [23:56] a flourishing of the health care system, pass Medicare for All and watch how many different [23:59] kinds of providers are able then to compete. But right now, we're seeing less and less competition [24:03] because if you're a private practitioner, you own your own business in health care, [24:07] you're not getting the same reimbursements as the big guys. [24:10] Before we go deeper into Medicare for All, I asked about your disagreements with the DSA. [24:17] I want to ask about your disagreements with the former president of the United States. [24:20] President Obama, he's endorsed you. He's campaigning for you, I think, this week in Michigan. [24:26] In the past, you have been pretty critical of, let's say, the Obama-era Democratic Party. [24:32] Give me that critique. What was wrong with the Democrats under Obama? [24:36] I think there are things that we could have done more of. I think there are things like, [24:43] you know, the ACA was amazing policy. I mean, I'm so grateful I got to do what I did in the era [24:49] post-ACA rather than before ACA. I would have loved to see us go further when it comes to like [24:54] a public option, right? You think about, you know, there's a lot on immigration that I critiqued, [25:00] right? War and drones. And I was clear about my critiques. Now, you know, people want to argue [25:07] that somehow because you can critique an era or critique a president that somehow you deeply [25:12] disagree with him. I don't. I mean, President Obama did what he did. And in doing that, [25:16] enabled me to do what I'm doing. I get to do what I do because President Obama did what he did. [25:21] And my part is to say, look, where I had fair critiques, all right, you take the baton and try [25:25] and try and build further. But I also understand I'm building on the edifice he built. And also, [25:31] he was doing it at a different time than the one that I'm doing it in. And so it's impossible to [25:35] disaggregate what I'm hoping to get done in the United States Senate from the leadership that he showed [25:39] in the times in which he showed it. And then there are some things he did that were masterful. [25:43] You think about the JCPOA. We're at war with Iran because Donald Trump, with the lack of general [25:49] nuanced wisdom and intellectual capacity that he has, decided to tear up that agreement only to [25:54] take us to war that everybody could have told you was going to be almost impossible to pull out of [25:59] because, of course, the Strait of Hormuz. And here we are paying more in gas, more in groceries, [26:03] and paying our taxes, losing the lives of our servicemen and women over a war we never had to fight. [26:10] Your critique of the Obama era, I think, was shared by a lot of people in Joe Biden's White House. [26:17] And if you look back at especially the first year or so of the Biden administration, [26:21] there was a sense that they were going to go bigger and do more than Obama did. [26:25] They did a bigger stimulus. They had lots of new spending on new programs. [26:29] They had a more liberal immigration policy in certain ways. Donald Trump won in 2024, [26:35] after the Biden presidency. Was it Democratic policy or Democratic politicians that lost? [26:43] I'm going to say it's Democratic politics. Let me explain why. I think we have, in this era, [26:51] failed to understand the nature of public communication. And part of that is you look at [26:58] the Inflation Reduction Act. It's a basket of really important policy that nobody fully understands or can [27:06] capture. And part of what you're doing as a politician is you're asking the public to empower [27:13] you with the means to achieve a certain policy end. And then ideally you achieve it, take it back to the [27:18] public and say, here's what we did. Now I want your support to do this other thing. The problem with [27:22] the way that we've often done politics as Democrats is we do these big omnibus bills that we don't really [27:26] communicate about. And so it's a lot. And in the minds of the public, it's so little, but it's so much. [27:33] And so I think that's part and parcel of where our failure is. The other part is, and I've been very [27:39] clear about this, is the corruption of our aims because of the power of corporations in our politics. [27:46] I think in the 1980s, when you saw Reaganism defeat unions, Democrats went to corporations to [27:55] support their campaigns as well. So when you have Republicans funded by corporations and Democrats [27:58] funded by corporations, at the end of the day, corporations win. And so if you can't talk about what [28:03] you want to do for the working people against the very people who are disempowering working people, [28:07] you've got to find something else to talk about. And so we ended up talking about all kinds of other [28:11] issues that opened up these cultural wars. But politics isn't about cultural war. Politics is about [28:15] the allocation of scarce resources. And so there's a reason I and a lot of us don't take corporate [28:21] money because we believe that the responsibility that we have is to fight for working people and you can't [28:26] serve two masters. Isn't there a simpler explanation though? You mentioned the Inflation Reduction Act [28:32] under Joe Biden and you're suggesting it wasn't adequately explained. But the reality was that [28:38] inflation itself rose under Joe Biden to heights not seen since I think the early 1980s. And that was [28:47] seen as a consequence of Biden's policy or on the culture war and cultural issues. If we want to call [28:53] immigration a cultural issue, the Biden administration, despite saying that they intended to secure the [28:59] border and everything else, presided over one of the largest waves of illegal unauthorized immigration [29:05] in recent American history, where those those weren't just failures of communication, right? Those [29:10] were failures of policy, no question. When it came to the when it came to the southern border, that was a [29:15] failure of policy, no question about that. Okay, when it comes to inflation, I think that's a much more [29:19] complicated picture, right? A lot of what kicked off the inflationary cycle is policies under Donald Trump, [29:24] of course, because of a containment, a failure to contain a pandemic that could have been far better [29:29] managed. And, you know, you look at the the lag time between that, right? That level of inflation [29:35] is unacceptable. You look at what Donald Trump is doing now, though, he's like inflicting unforced errors [29:40] in a tariff war and a war in Iran. There's another piece of it this, though, is also, you know, [29:45] there's a hypocrisy when it comes to democratic values and democratic policymaking, particularly when [29:49] it comes to foreign policy, the mismanagement of Gaza, the funding of a genocide. I think these [29:54] things under the Biden administration became a glaring, blaring red light around being able to [30:02] say, well, if you were for human rights and you're for international law, you cannot be subsidizing a [30:07] genocide with our tax dollars. So I think you take that whole basket and people look at that and you [30:11] say, well, there's a lot of failure there, but we can and must do better. Now, look, the problem with [30:18] our political system, of course, is that you normally have one of two options. Donald Trump, in so many [30:25] ways, created so many of the circumstances that Joe Biden was trying to clean up, and in so many [30:30] ways has made them worse. And you look at where we are now, you look at, you know, the bond market [30:36] going topsy-turvy, you look at the fact that he thinks that AI should just, we should just let it [30:41] rip and we're on the cusp of recursive self-improvement that could be disastrous. You look at the big, [30:45] ugly bill and the fact that he's pulling health care from the poorest folks to give a tax cut to the [30:48] richest people, all that is extremely inflationary. You look at the war in Iran, you look at the tariff [30:53] and you see a failure of leadership, not because the guy is trying, but because the guy has basically [30:59] given up on actually trying. But in running against the Republican Party, in running against Donald [31:04] Trump, right, you have your own policy agenda. And it's reasonable for voters to look at what happened [31:10] under the Biden administration and ask, are we going to repeat the same story? So let's, let's just [31:16] take two, we'll take two issues and start with Medicare for All, your favorite issue. Heard it many [31:22] times in campaign rallies in the last couple of days. Medicare for All is a very expensive program. [31:29] How do you pay for it without either? American healthcare is very expensive. So Ross, let's just [31:35] step back. You're a smart guy, right? American healthcare is insanely expensive. When they're [31:40] flattering me, yeah. 19 cents on the dollar for every dollar spent in our economy. It's attributable to a [31:45] third, a third of all bankruptcies attributable to healthcare. We carry $225 billion in medical debt. [31:52] This system is not working. And the idea that the frame of reference on healthcare ought to be Joe [31:58] Biden's policies, who famously did very little on healthcare, seems to me to be a little bit [32:03] inconsistent. The frame of reference on healthcare ought to be the healthcare system we have right now, [32:07] which is about to be made a whole lot worse because you're about to find a whole lot of [32:11] people kicked off their Medicaid. And when that happens, what's going to happen is this, [32:14] adverse selection. You're going to see a death spiral in the insurance industry. We already saw our [32:19] premiums go up 15% last year. They're going to go up even more than that now. Why? Because when [32:23] you kick enough people off of Medicaid, the hospitals have to figure out where they get that money. [32:28] What are they going to do? They're going to pass that cost onto insured patients. Those insurance [32:32] companies are going to pass that cost back into the form of premiums. You're going to see premiums go up [32:36] and more people are going to get priced out of healthcare because of it, which is going to kick [32:39] off this absurd spiral. So things are going to get a lot worse. Medicare for all is about recognizing [32:43] that in this moment, we don't actually need to continue to allow these health insurance companies [32:49] to dictate what happens in our healthcare. We can guarantee it for everybody. We can take 20% off [32:53] the top of all of the costs of healthcare by addressing all of the bloat, all of the $10 million [32:59] salaries for health insurance CEOs and address the problem and guarantee everybody healthcare in the [33:04] process. But the centers of cost in American healthcare are not just the insurance companies. [33:09] And the insurance companies themselves play a very unpopular but real role in disciplining healthcare [33:15] spending, saying they won't cover certain things. Centers of costs also include things that are [33:19] popular. People love hospitals. They love their doctors. American doctors are very well paid by [33:25] international standards. American hospitals make a lot of money. Medicare for all basically says, [33:31] we're going to take this very expensive system and we're going to push a lot more money into it. [33:38] And we promise your standard of care won't change, right? I just think that ends up being a very [33:43] expensive proposition. And I just want you to tell me how you're going to pay for it. [33:48] So, as you know, I want to tax billionaires their wealth. As you know, a tax billionaire is about 8%, [33:54] right? We as a society agree that it's probably better to have an economy that provides everybody [33:58] basic healthcare than one where a billionaire can make an extra billion dollars. You're returning, [34:03] what, $4.6, $5 trillion back to the economy. You can use that to subsidize a lot of the cost of [34:08] healthcare. Now, if you have the choice between paying an insurance company a premium to have [34:15] to pay a deductible on the back end of that or being able to pay FICA a touch more for healthcare [34:21] you won't lose when you lose your job or turn 65 or get married or get divorced, that is ultimately [34:27] going to be less expensive. Which do you choose? I think the American public would rather have that [34:32] durable healthcare that costs less. The other thing I'll tell you is this. And do you think that [34:35] that argument- The other thing I'll tell you this, you talked about the disciplining of the costs. [34:39] Health insurance does not discipline the cost. We created all of these out-of-pocket costs, [34:44] this effort to push more of that cost back onto everyday people in the form of a deductible and [34:49] a copay because famously the insurance companies don't actually want to press down. And so what's [34:55] happened is that you actually don't have any payer big enough to negotiate back down. So what would [35:00] happen? Pass the Medicare for all. Medicare becomes the payer for most. I'm not, I don't want to take [35:05] away anybody's private health insurance, but everybody's covered. It's like, it's like public [35:08] school, right? Everybody can go to public school even if you want to pay for a private option. And [35:13] it now has the power. It will immediately take up the cost. So Medicare reimbursements have to go up [35:17] substantially than from where they are right now because you have to pay for the cost of the system [35:20] as it is. But over time, Medicare can reduce the speed at which prices are going up. And that's something [35:26] that no other payer can do in our current system. So if you actually want to address the rising prices, [35:32] you don't create a system that allows any insurance company to just tell you that you're insured when [35:39] there's nothing sure about it except you're going to end up paying more. What you do is you actually [35:43] cover everybody and you create an incentive to stop the speed at which the prices are increasing. [35:47] But all of this is happening against a backdrop where the US population, like every developed world [35:53] population is aging. We have fewer younger taxpayers paying into the system. And existing programs, [36:00] Medicare- Notwithstanding all of your efforts- Notwithstanding, you have children too. We've [36:04] both tried to address it. But Medicare and Social Security, as they exist, programs that you obviously [36:11] definitionally support are themselves likely to run out of money at a certain point. I just think in the [36:17] story you tell, what happens is even if you find a source of taxable income from the wealthy and plow [36:24] it into the system, that money ends up propping up the existing system. And you do, to go beyond [36:30] it, to do what you want to do, you are in a zone of middle class tax increases that are- [36:35] Here's my question to you. This is actually the real issue. [36:38] You can't ask me questions. [36:39] Well, it's a conversation. You told me we're going to have a conversation. [36:42] I did. That's right. [36:43] How expensive is having kids? You have five of them. How expensive is it? [36:48] I don't know if my employers are watching the show. It's considerably expensive. [36:51] It's very expensive, right? Does your partner work? [36:55] She does, yes. [36:55] Yeah. And so that means that you probably had to pay $2,000 per kid for child care. [37:00] Think about the albatross that that sits on our economy. Think about the premium [37:04] that you have to pay for health care for all of your kids. And I'm just going to say, [37:08] I'm about to walk in to a room full of very young people who are looking at the future and saying, [37:12] there is no possible way I could possibly have a kid. So if the issue in our country is stagnation when [37:18] it comes to the capacity to have children, the question we really ought to ask ourselves is, [37:22] how do you make it easier to have kids? So Ross, how do you make it easier to have kids? Maybe we [37:26] should stop making it so expensive to have kids, which means that if the only argument that we have [37:32] about America is we can't possibly do anything to make it easier to have kids, we are going to have [37:36] a race to the bottom. And I get it. A lot of people are just saying, well, we're going to ban abortion [37:40] and we're going to tell people it's a good thing to have kids. Yeah, that doesn't really quite work. [37:43] What tends to happen to ban abortions, people just get abortions. They're just not safe. [37:46] But my point is this. You need to be invested in the means of making it easier to have children. [37:53] That means you have to address the rising cost of having kids. So if your argument is that [37:57] we can't have childcare, we can't have healthcare, we can't subsidize housing, we can't do these [38:02] things, do not be surprised when all of a sudden we age past the point at which we are viable. [38:07] I'm trying to address that problem and I've got my solutions for it. Our party that wants to tell me [38:12] that they're pronatalist. Their solution is let's cut taxes for the billionaires and let's go to wars. [38:17] We have no business fighting and somehow if we rub two sticks together, we're going to get people [38:22] to want to have kids. It's not serious. So I'm just trying to be serious about what the problem is. [38:27] And I think the problem is we have made it too expensive. And if we cannot make it cheaper, [38:31] do not be surprised when people don't have kids. Immigration. You mentioned that you support [38:38] abolishing ICE. You have also said just now that the Biden administration border policy was a failure. [38:47] I think this is one example of a larger reality where you have a lot of Democratic politicians [38:53] right now telling voters that yes, mistakes were made in the Biden presidency, but don't worry, [39:01] this time we're going to secure the border even while we're getting rid of the agency that does [39:07] interior enforcement. Why should voters trust the Democratic Party with immigration policy, [39:12] even if they dislike ICE or dislike Donald Trump after what happened under Biden? [39:18] Well, take a look what we have now. Do we like what we have now? Do we like the idea that ICE is [39:24] running around shooting people in the face or the back of the head, shooting at the cars where there [39:27] are five-year-old children? Is that working? So I rather think of this as being iterative. You and I both [39:32] well know that the agency that enforces the border is not ICE. That is Customs and Border Protection. [39:38] So I think we can secure the border. We can invest in that ability to keep it secure. And we can go [39:45] back to a time when we had something more like INS that was able to enforce immigration policy without [39:50] shooting people in the face. Why didn't the Biden administration enforce the border? What was the [39:55] problem? I think the politics of it at the time were complicated. I think you had- Complicated by what? [40:00] I mean complicated by a lot of advocacy, right? And I think we've learned the lesson. And I also think that it's [40:06] important for us to realize that the idea that politicians don't learn from what comes before [40:13] them because it was done by a different party is kind of ridiculous, right? There are things that [40:18] some Republicans have gotten right. It's just that they also get a lot of things wrong. So learn from [40:24] the things that they get right and fix the things that they got wrong. So do you think the Trump [40:28] administration has gotten border enforcement right? I think there are ways to do border enforcement [40:33] that borrow from the broader goals without doing it in contraposition to a lot of our [40:41] our highest ideals around human rights. You can humanely enforce the border. I think the problem [40:45] with the Trump administration is that most of what they do is inhumane, whether it's ICE [40:50] enforcement, whether it's the border. But your party- I watched the 2020 primary. Your party decided that [40:59] border enforcement in general was inhumane. And we got that wrong. Okay. One more social cultural issues [41:06] question. We talked earlier about your faith, about Islam. A lot of Muslims have, like a lot of Christians, [41:15] have traditional- traditionalist conservative positions on issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, [41:22] transgenderism. I've had Michigan Democrats tell me that Donald Trump made inroads with Muslim [41:28] American voters in this state on those issues. Do you feel any tension between your faith and being [41:35] part of and a champion of a very socially liberal and culturally liberal party? See, this is the irony [41:41] of the Trump line of attack on me, which is like, he's both, he's both an Islamist and a socialist. I'm [41:47] like, well, you know, I'm a constitutionalist. And under the constitution, I think rights are rights, [41:52] are rights, are rights, are rights. The minute you assent to government taking anybody's rights, [41:56] whether you use them or you don't, you are assenting to government taking everybody's rights. [42:01] And I believe in rights. And even though somebody might use rights that you don't understand, you [42:07] never mean to use yourself, you still got to show up and fight for those rights. And that's the thing [42:13] about this moment. I think it is a responsibility for us to stand up against the risk of government [42:19] making incursions on any of our rights to build the kind of continuum, the kind of coalition where any of [42:26] us and all of us who have our rights at risk are standing up and fighting for all of our rights. [42:31] And I think this is an important responsibility. So I, in conversations with folks in the Muslim [42:36] community, conversations with folks in the LGBTQ community, the point I always make is to say, [42:40] listen, I don't care whether or not you will ever use a right that you were fighting for, [42:44] understand that the failure to show up and fight for that right is a failure to show up and fight for [42:48] your own. So whether people are trying to take your right, to put your face on the ground 35 times a day [42:53] in a mosque or 34 times a day in a mosque or people are taking away your right to love who you love, [42:59] I think we all got to come together and say, no, no, no, we are not going to allow government to take [43:03] rights because that's what the constitution protects. Is there any area where as a religious [43:10] Muslim in a party that has a lot of secular voters, you think secular liberalism gets something wrong? [43:18] As a matter of civic life, I stand for folks' rights under the constitution. I live my life a [43:25] particular way, but I love that I get the choice of doing that and that other people get the choice [43:30] of doing what they choose to do. And I think that's the beauty of this country. And that's exactly it. [43:36] So no, so that's a no. You don't think there's anywhere where cultural liberalism goes wrong? [43:41] No, but see, this is the problem that I think this is where you and I have slippage. You keep [43:45] talking about cultural liberalism and I'm talking about constitutional rights. Culture is about choices [43:49] that people ought to make. Constitutional rights are about the ability to make those choices. I will always [43:54] fight for the ability to make choices, to live who you are. But I think at the end of the day, [44:01] the question of culture and the question of politics are separate. And this is actually I [44:05] think where the Republicans tend to get it wrong and they don't understand. The fact that one can [44:09] show up and fight for a right that one may never ever use is exactly what the constitution is supposed [44:14] to protect in the first place, right? Because I don't need people to understand why I pray the way I [44:18] pray. I just need people to decide that if they try to take away my right to do it, that that's wrong under the [44:24] constitution. Similarly, I don't need anybody to understand. What about, since this is a flashpoint [44:30] in these debates, what about the rights of parents to control over their children's education? Because [44:37] a lot of places where there's tension between Islam and Muslim voters and what I'm calling cultural [44:45] liberalism are around issues like what is taught in school? What happens with transgender kids on sports [44:50] teams and so on, right? Like these are places where rights are in conflict, right? Do you, what do [44:57] you think happens there? I don't know that that's actually true. I think we manufacture these social [45:01] issues because here's the thing about it. Ross, you have an iPhone in your pocket probably. Or is it [45:04] an iPhone or a Samsung? You have a phone in your pocket, right? You can get access to everything and [45:09] anything in the whole world, all the world's information in your pocket. The notion somehow that you are [45:14] going to prevent your child from being exposed to something that you may find disagreeable and that that is [45:21] going to be because of school is so profoundly outdated. Because of course, you have all the [45:26] information and they have all the information. So here's the thing about it. I think it's really [45:30] important for us to recognize that the free flow of information is actually a beautiful thing. It's [45:35] really important. And the most important thing you can do is not try to protect a person from seeing a [45:40] thing. It's about trying to make sure that as you coach your kid through the world, that you are engaging [45:45] with them and saying, here's what I believe. Here's what you may see in the world. You get to make your [45:51] choices about who you're going to be in the world. But that's going to require us to make do with the [45:56] fact that the internet is a real thing. And this debate about, quote unquote, what's taught in a [46:00] classroom, I think has been made into a cultural flashpoint because a lot of the folks who want [46:06] to make this a topic of conversation don't want to be talking about the real issues that we face in [46:11] our lives. I mean, I'm just going to say, a lot of the cultural war issues that get fought right now [46:15] are about trying to distract us from the fact that we can't afford our gas, can't afford our groceries, [46:19] can't see a doctor, are worried about whether or not our kids are going to have a good life. [46:23] And instead, we're out here talking about who gets to play what sport, which should be the question [46:27] of the people who govern sports. I'm not running to govern sports. My interest is in making sure [46:32] that people have the ability to live a good life, that they can have the health care that they need, [46:36] that they can breathe clean air, drink clean water, that they've got good schools that are well-funded [46:41] in the first place. All right, let's talk about an issue where there's a lot of agreement [46:46] between more secular progressives and Muslim American voters. And that is the critique of [46:52] Israel, Israeli policy, you alluded to the Gaza war already, and America's relationship to Israel. [46:57] In your view, what's wrong with America's relationship with Israel? [47:01] Number one, we have been told that we are pursuing a two-state solution, only to aid, [47:06] arm, and abet the very people who are trying to foreclose on the possibility of a second state. [47:10] So it's incoherent on its own terms. Number two, I don't know about you, but I don't pay my taxes [47:14] to buy another country a bomb or a tank. That's Israel, that's Egypt, that's Saudi Arabia, [47:20] that's Pakistan. My interest is making sure that our kids get good schools, [47:24] that we have functional roads, that we're paying for things like health care and child care, [47:28] and we're spending billions to do the worst things. Three, the state of Israel did a genocide. [47:34] I don't think that's disagreeable. You don't look at anybody who actually studies this stuff, [47:38] and they'll say it's a genocide. The human rights community in Israel says that it was a genocide. [47:44] And so the notion that our money was spent to do a genocide by a foreign government, [47:49] and that we cannot continue to have a conversation about this, to me, is deeply problematic. [47:55] Finally, we are actively fighting a war that we have no business fighting. This has been the goal [48:00] of one person in our civics for a very long time, not even our civics, in international civics, [48:05] and that is the prime minister of the state of Israel. And we're told that Israel is our ally, [48:10] but I'm just so sorry, but if you're walking with a friend, and you see a bear, and you're like, [48:14] maybe we should just steer clear of the bear, and your friend's like, no, we ought to poke the bear. [48:17] I don't know if that person is really your friend. And so I just think that we've got to really [48:22] rethink the nature of this relationship based on a position of principles, just simply based on a [48:27] position of principles. Now, I understand that we have a bipartisan consensus that Israel is an ally. [48:32] I understand that most politicians aren't willing to say anything otherwise, but that may have a lot [48:36] more to do with the nature of political spending, which is why I want to get back to money out of [48:40] politics. When I ran to my primary, one organization spent more than any other organization to beat me. [48:46] That is AIPAC, who is focused on making sure that politicians do not say what I just said. [48:51] Let's go back to that list of countries that you had earlier, not just Israel, but Egypt, [48:56] Saudi Arabia, and others. I think there's a lot of people, including Jews, including Zionists, [49:04] people who support Israel in various ways, who look at Israel's war with Gaza and say, [49:10] if it wasn't genocide, at least there were war crimes. It was a bad thing. There's a lot of people [49:15] who disagree with the U.S. decision to go to war in Iran. But some of those people look at the [49:21] progressive left, which you are a champion, and say, there's a zeal about Israel that isn't there [49:30] when you talk about the crimes of other countries in the Middle East. Just to take Saudi Arabia. [49:34] Ross. [49:34] Saudi Arabia, just let me finish the question. Saudi Arabia is, unlike Israel, a dictatorship, [49:40] not a democracy. Saudi Arabia is ruthless and cruel in all kinds of ways. Saudi Arabia killed a lot of [49:48] people in Yemen to very little attention from left-wing politics in the U.S. Saudi Arabia, [49:55] as far as we can tell, may have also supported the decision to go to war with Iran. I'm sure you're [49:59] going to tell me that you oppose all that, you know, you don't love our alliance with Saudi Arabia, [50:04] but we're sitting here and, you know, there's a crowd gathering outside that's going to cheer for you. [50:10] I'm skeptical that if you went outside and just talked about Saudi Arabia instead of Israel, [50:15] that you would get a kind of hyped-up, enthusiastic reaction. Why do you think [50:21] Israel stands out as a place of anger and critique in a way that other countries in the Middle East do [50:28] not? The scale of spending? Just the scale of U.S. spending? The scale of U.S. spending, the scale of [50:35] those war crimes and the impact on our politics. There is not a, I don't know. You don't think [50:41] Saudi Arabia has a big impact on our politics? As big as, as big as AIPAC. Is there any, I'm just [50:47] going to tell you, in my own election, right, they spent, I, overall spending 70 million in the primary [50:51] alone, okay, 33 of which was spent by AIPAC. So can you point to any other spending impact? I would say that Saudi, [50:59] Saudi, well, part of it, part of it. Wait, wait, wait, Ross, Ross, you're a smart man. Do you really think [51:04] that there is any entity on behalf of the Saudi government that is as strong as AIPAC is on [51:09] behalf of the Israeli government? Come on. I think that the, first of all, there is not, um, basically [51:17] half the world's Jewish population lives in the U.S. Half lives in Israel. Half of Saudi Arabia, [51:23] you know, like Saudi Arabia is, let me put it this way. You brought up Saudi Arabia. I did bring up [51:29] Saudi Arabia. You just don't like the example you brought up. No, no, I do like the example I brought [51:33] up. Saudi Arabia has exercised lots and lots of influence over U.S. foreign policy in all kinds of [51:38] ways. All kinds of debates, all kinds of debates around 9-11. Do you really think, and the Saudi, [51:43] and the Saudi rule in 9-11. But there is not, there is neither, I'm saying there is not, it's, I agree with [51:48] you, there is neither sort of, there is a very powerful Saudi lobby in Washington, D.C. It's not a big organized [51:54] force in U.S. elections, but in part because there isn't a big anti-Saudi lobby or movement [52:01] operating on the, on the political left, don't you think? I'm not, I'm not, I'm not going to defend [52:05] Saudi Arabia. I'm not going to defend Egypt. Like, I, I really, like, yeah, I am, I am principled in my [52:10] opposition. But when one organization spends 33 million dollars in one election on behalf of the [52:18] interests of the foreign policy of a foreign government, yeah, there's going to be a big response [52:24] there. And I just, I just look, I just, I want to be clear about this. But this is a, there's a dynamic [52:29] interaction. The spending, the spending is also a reflection of the fact. But here's the, here's [52:33] the other challenge. You have an outsized critique of Israel that, right? So you think it's the [52:37] outsized critique that created, I think, the policies? Like, they created AIPAC that creates [52:42] the response? I think the response. That's an interesting chicken and egg, uh, interpretation. A lot [52:46] of politics is a chicken and an egg debate. I know, and, and the question of what comes first [52:50] really dictates the way you see things. But I, you know, I don't ever get the question of, [52:54] does Palestine have the right to exist? I don't ever get the question of, does Israel have a right to [52:58] do a genocide? I don't ever get the question of, does Israel have the right to our tax dollars? [53:01] Does Palestine have the right to exist? Yes. Does Israel have the right to exist? [53:06] Yes. If there is a shared understanding. Wait, you said, let me just, let me just, let me just [53:11] understand. I believe, and this is the, this is the problem with this debate. We start from where we [53:15] sit rather than start from principles. You're a principled guy. Okay. I've heard you do this on your [53:19] podcast. I don't know how many times I believe in equal rights to peace, dignity and self-determination [53:24] for Palestinians and Jewish Israelis alike. If the Palestinian people decide, and the Israeli [53:29] people decide that they want two states for two people and they decide that on equal terms, [53:33] I'm for it. If they decide that they want one state shared in a different way, I'm for that. [53:37] If they decide that they want 23 states or land for all, I'm for that. I want to start with the [53:44] process. Like remember talking about democracy, democracy is not an outcome. It's a process. [53:48] I'm very process oriented. I think that the process ought to start with the, the, the notion that [53:54] there is a self-determination among Palestinians, which has never been respected. And our public [54:00] policy has never respected that. Okay. So if we want to talk about the right of Israel to exist, [54:05] it has to exist alongside a Palestine that is the consensus of both of these communities. [54:12] But that is, that is the argument, that is the argument for the two state solution. [54:16] No, that's, that's actually not the argument for the two state solution. Two state solution assumes [54:20] that both Palestinians and Israelis want independent states. Except for that's not de facto how it's [54:27] operating. It's operating right now as a salve to tell us that what Israel is doing, [54:32] right, is somehow consistent because we keep saying we're for a two state solution. Okay, [54:36] but why not not, why not just say I'm for a two state solution and a better and real one? Because [54:40] I don't know that the Palestinian people have had a voice to say that they want a, a state. I don't know, [54:44] because we've never actually allowed for equal rights of peace, dignity, and self-determination. [54:48] I start with the process in mind. Okay. And right now, don't you think, let me finish the point. [54:53] Too often when this question is asked, we start with the currently existing state of Israel that is [54:57] existing in contraposition to the possibility of a state of Palestine. We have to start on that [55:01] premise. And then from there we say, okay, where do we carve out a Palestinian state? That's not equal [55:05] rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination. So again, I want to be clear about this equal [55:09] rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination. Now, anytime I say that, people like to interpret that as being [55:14] in anti-position to any one community, it's not. It's in recognizing that these two communities [55:19] should have equal rights. And our public policy, both de jure and de facto, has run roughshod over [55:25] the possibility of any sort of Palestinian self-determination. And we run over that, [55:30] right, in the notion that we say, oh, well, how come you won't agree to this thing that we all keep [55:34] telling ourselves we're for, despite the fact that we are operating in complete contraposition to it? [55:39] It's not serious. I think one reason people ask you that, and they've asked you that a lot, right, [55:47] is that they are looking for a recognition from you that there is no world where Israelis don't want [55:59] a Jewish state. So there's no reason for you, like, you're saying, you know, if Israelis want this [56:06] and Palestinians want this, then that's what will happen. Why not just say, so do we know Israelis [56:11] want a Jewish state, and therefore there should be a Jewish state and a Palestinian state, and just say [56:17] that? I actually don't think that, I don't know that that's true. Okay. I think the question right [56:21] now is, how do you empower two communities with equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination [56:27] to have the conversation amongst themselves to see where that lays out? But the problem is, [56:32] that process has never been dignified. You know, the challenge with this conversation really, [56:37] right, is that we have not dignified the self-determination needs of Palestinians. [56:42] And here's the big question, ultimately, is it really comes down to where should we put our tax [56:46] dollars and how? My focus is always going to be on Michigan. And right now, the same money that's [56:51] being spent over there should be money that's spent over here. I want to be clear. When it comes to the [56:56] well-being of the Jewish community here, I am lockstep in standing with Jewish safety. I grew up in a [57:02] predominantly Jewish community. I'm really grateful for that. And it's not about the disagreements with [57:07] any one community and their need for self-determination. It's an asking, how do we allow these two [57:13] communities to come together in a conversation to talk about how best to navigate their mutual draws [57:22] and claims to a land? And I don't think we've done that. And too often, when you take the currently [57:28] existing state of Israel and you take its claims as being the most important, what you are by [57:34] definition doing is saying that the claims to self-determination are not equal. And ultimately, [57:39] our responsibility is to stand up for international law. Our responsibility is to hold every country [57:45] accountable to the same set of ideals. Right now, we're aiding, arming, and abetting a government [57:50] that has been dead set on foreclosing on the possibility of Palestinian self-determination. [57:55] We subsidized the genocide with our tax dollars that should be spent here. I want our tax dollars [58:00] spent here. One more foreign policy question then. You want to end the war with Iran. Yes. [58:07] You want the Senate to use their war powers to end the war with Iran. What do you do if Iran doesn't [58:15] want to end the war? If the U.S. says the war is over, we're pulling out, and Iran says, great, now we're [58:20] in charge of the Strait of Hormuz forever and ever, world without end, amen. What does the U.S. do? [58:24] Well, how did we get to the JCPOA? You know, we pretend like the only thing we have is our sabers, [58:30] and we rattle them or we use them. That's Donald Trump's logic. We got to the JCPOA because there [58:36] are other needs that Iran has. Iran does not want to be a pariah. There's a lot of power that we can [58:41] inflict that is not just war, because right now the war doesn't seem to be ending, and all that's [58:47] happening is escalating, and that war is spreading. So I think we need to end the war, and I think we need to [58:53] get back to the negotiating table to get to the kind of space where we can get to where we have [58:58] a pathway like we had at the end of the Obama administration. Let's bring it back to Michigan [59:04] politics, but connected to the foreign policy discussion we've just had. One of the big [59:10] questions around your campaign is about Jewish Democrats and whether they will vote for you, [59:17] and there are Jewish Democrats out there who would say, what I was looking for from Syed was [59:26] reassurance that at the end of the day, whatever happens with the peace process or anything else, [59:32] he will support the existence of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. Do you think [59:38] that you are saying enough to reassure those voters that you are on their side? [59:43] Well, let me broaden that conversation out. Wherever our disagreements are when it comes to Israel, [59:48] there are a lot more of things that we agree on here. The right to pray as you choose to pray, [59:53] safety for religious minorities, the right to choose. These are things we all agree on. The [1:00:00] sanctity of our democracy here at home. There is so much more that we agree on than we disagree on. [1:00:05] When it comes to standing up for Jewish Americans, I will be right there. I understand what it's like to [1:00:10] fear what happens at my place of worship. So I'm hoping that the things that bring us together are [1:00:15] bigger than the things that that draw us apart. And I'll say this, again, I do not reject the idea [1:00:21] that we should have equal rights to peace, dignity and self-determination. I just reject the idea that [1:00:26] we are anywhere near that in our current conversation. And I want us to get to a point, this is my hope, [1:00:32] that a Jewish child growing up in the homeland and a Palestinian child growing up in the homeland can look [1:00:35] forward and say, my life is not going to be at risk because of violence. That's what I'm trying to build [1:00:42] toward. I don't think we are anywhere near there right now. Because if there is not [1:00:47] a clear opportunity for the Palestinian people to have their right to peace, dignity and self-determination [1:00:52] alongside the Jewish people's right to peace, dignity and self-determination, I fear that we're [1:00:56] just going to end up right back in a circle of violence. I'm sorry. I'm going to push you one more [1:01:03] time on this. Ross, even then you heard the other journalists. The world is filled with nations [1:01:10] that have historic ethnic identities, that are not just sort of state systems, but are nations for [1:01:19] peoples. And I don't think it's hard to say there should be a Japanese nation for the Japanese people. [1:01:27] There should be an Egyptian nation for the Egyptian people. I feel like that should be something that [1:01:33] should be easy to say. What do you make of the Palestinian people? I think the Palestinian people [1:01:37] deserve to have a homeland. Where? Where? In, I mean, I would say generally, historically, [1:01:44] I would support a version of the two-state solution, which creates problems because yes, [1:01:48] there's Gaza and there's the West Bank and they're separated. It's not the ideal landscape for a state. [1:01:53] Only on Gaza and the West Bank? I think that that, I think that. They should have no other [1:01:56] self-determination except for Gaza and the West Bank? I think that that. And the small pieces of it [1:01:59] that have been like now annihilated and the parts that are being encroached upon by settlers? I think that [1:02:05] there was a very plausible scenario that would have gotten the Palestinian people- [1:02:10] Every version of this conversation goes back to some time in history where it could have been. [1:02:15] I don't want to go back sometime in history. I want to go into the future. And look, [1:02:18] the hard part is this. This is exactly my point. You proved my point perfectly. I want equal rights [1:02:23] to peace, dignity, and self-determination for Palestinians and Jewish Israelis alike. And the [1:02:28] problem with saying, yeah, we're going to just take as fixed the idea of the state as it is, [1:02:34] implies that you are just taking whatever's carved left. And there is no actual real opportunity for [1:02:40] self-determination for the Palestinian people. It's like, hey, listen, after I eat, then you can [1:02:43] have my seconds. I just don't think that's fair. I think if we're serious about this, we're going to [1:02:48] have to bring people together and ask, how do we navigate the shared understanding of this space? [1:02:54] You made the point perfectly for me, is that when I ask you, what about Palestinian self-determination? [1:02:59] You're like, I guess we could carve a state out there, maybe. It's not serious. So I'm just saying, [1:03:03] look, right now, I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying. I think that it is more serious [1:03:08] I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying. than a theory of purely hypothetical negotiated future [1:03:16] that ignores the realities of borders that have existed for decades. So yes, I think it is more [1:03:22] realistic and probably delivers more for the Palestinian people right now. But you are getting [1:03:27] me to deliver opinions. And I'm going to stop and ask you. I'm going to ask you. Do we need to, [1:03:31] let me just finish the point. Do we need to get from where we are to where we're headed? Yes. [1:03:34] Are we headed to where we want to go? No. So what I'm trying to do is say, look, [1:03:39] we're in order for us to get to where we need to go, we're going to have to figure out how to have [1:03:43] a conversation that dignifies equal rights to peace, dignity and self-determination. And right now, [1:03:47] our foreign policy does not do that. And I would like us to get to a point where it does. [1:03:52] Last question. Same as one we asked your opponent. This is a very fraught, high stakes Senate race. [1:03:58] Lots and lots of money has been spent in it. What's the biggest thing that you think is [1:04:03] different in U.S. politics if you win? The ability to run a campaign and win against big money [1:04:11] by engaging with people, having a conversation about who we are and who we want to be. I take [1:04:16] the idea that you can persuade people really seriously. I go everywhere. I talk to everybody. [1:04:20] I go on Fox News. I go talk to, you know, you name the podcast. Talk to me. I'm talking to you, [1:04:25] right? Even though I have misgivings about the people who run your whole station, all of CBS. [1:04:31] But I'm talking to you because I want to have a conversation with the broader public. [1:04:34] I think if we can have a conversation together, our politics can shift. But right now, [1:04:37] that's not how we do politics. Right now, we allow a few corporations to pay huge amounts of money. [1:04:42] By the time this is done, right, all of the outside spending will have reached a third of a [1:04:46] billion dollars just to beat me in a campaign. Why? Well, because I'm willing to tell you what I think, [1:04:52] because I'm willing not to play that game. I don't take money from corporations. I want to stand up [1:04:56] to them. I want to fight for working people. So that's what changes. It's the ability to actually [1:05:01] have a voice in the United States Senate that says, look, whether it's corporate money and dark money [1:05:06] going to Republicans or Democrats, that's the problem. I think we need to have a conversation [1:05:10] about who we are and who we want to be. That's the kind of political movement that we're building [1:05:14] here in Michigan. And God willing, that's the kind of political movement we will have because that's [1:05:19] what our framers intended us to be. Government of, by and for the people, not of, by and for [1:05:23] corporations, billionaires and special interests.