Episode Transcript
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It's zero surprise to anybody that's awake and aware right now
that a convicted felon presidentof the United States shut down
the government for nefarious reasons and is weaponizing every
part of the government that he can against half of the American
citizens. This is stunning.
And to talk about the these developments, I have our
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favorite senator, Oklahoma native Boston, proud
Massachusetts proud Senator Elizabeth Warren.
How's my Okie girl doing today personally?
You know, the Okies are hanging in there, but I got to say, this
is a hard time for our country. But we're in the fight.
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And you know, sometimes they're righteous fights, and that's
what you got to stand up and do.I agree.
I want to put something up that the Trump regime put on the HUD
website. Kylie popped this up.
So this is a government agency funded by taxpayers and they put
up the radical left are going toshut down the government and
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inflict massive pain on the American people unless they get
their 1.5 trillion wish of demands.
The Trump administration wants to keep the government open for
the American people. 1st. Of all, let's just talk about
how it's all a lie, but let's talk about how stunning it is
that his language and his administration are constantly
attacking and riling up a civil war type issue between the right
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and the left instead of having the government work for all of.
US. Yep, you know that and that he
uses everything that your tax dollars pay for that agency and
pay for that website and the idea that he they use it, it.
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There have been government shutdowns before with Democrats
in charge, with Republicans in charge.
And the websites say things likeduring the government shutdown,
so and so will not be accessiblehere.
But they want to turn it into another, you know, Fox News
banner. And that is not only maybe a
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violation of the law under the Hatch Act, but it's just
fundamentally wrong. You know, that the president and
the government, whoever is in political power, is supposed to
be there for all of us. And that's what's going on right
now. So if you can, let's back up for
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just a minute about what's happening.
This is all about budgets. Every year for a zillion years
now, the Republicans and the Democrats come together no
matter who's in the majority. And by a super majority vote in
the Senate, it takes 60 votes inthe Senate, they pass a funding
budget for the next year of Congress.
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And our years run until September 30th.
So yesterday was the last day ofthe year.
And by that time you got to passa new budget.
All that works. Sometimes we get things we like,
sometimes we don't. It's better to be in the
majority. But even then, you got to make
concessions to the other side. In July of this year, the
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Republicans all on their own said, we know what that budget
is, but here's the deal. We are going to roll back
healthcare for 15,000,000 Americans.
We're just going to cut them outof our healthcare rolls.
And we are going to drive up thecost of health insurance for
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pretty much everybody in the country that has private
insurance or insurance through their employer.
And why were they doing that? Because they wanted to find a
trillion dollars that they couldgive away to billionaires and
billionaire corporations in tax goodies.
OK, so that's the deal. Democrats all voted no.
We yelled as loud as we could, but they passed it with 50
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votes. They had the power and so they
passed it. Now we come around to the budget
and what Democrats are saying is, all right, you guys want to
do the budget. We're all for that.
We want to do a budget, but we want to talk about those
healthcare cuts you stuck in after the last time we did a
budget. We want to talk about taking
away healthcare from seniors whoare in nursing homes, taking
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away healthcare from Mamas with little babies, taking away
healthcare from people with disabilities who need a
wheelchair. We want you to roll back those
cuts. That's what it's going to take
to get this budget done. And the Republicans under the
would be king, Donald Trump saidwe won't even talk to you, get
out of the room. We won't even talk to you and
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said we would rather shut down the government than make
healthcare affordable and accessible for Americans.
I just don't understand people like that.
Well, let's think about the breathtaking hypocrisy that the
majority of the people in this administration identify as
Christian nationalists. And the central character of
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Christianity, Jesus, was radically empathetic to the poor
and the sick. And yet this administration
constantly attacks the working class and the poor and then
tells you the 1% you should be worried about are these
immigrants who are good hard working.
Actually, the majority of them religious people of the same
fate that they are, or trans people which are less than 1%.
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Meanwhile, these downright diabolical billionaires, when
they're not kissing Trump's ass,are taking corporate welfare
subsidies from the American taxpayer.
And it is just unbelievable, thewhiplash in the hypocrisy from
the party of family values, fromthe party of Christianity.
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And then when it comes time for them to show us what their faith
means to them, when it comes time for them to show the
American people that they are empathetic or care about every
American, instead they demean the poor.
And then they try to blame people like you and Bernie
Sanders who have never had to change your political positions.
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You always stand for the workingclass people.
And now they're trying to make it illegal.
They're trying to be the thoughtpolice and say that we can't
call them fascists when what they're doing is fascist shit.
And so I think it's a time for us to never obey in advance,
Senator, never obey in advance and call them exactly what they
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are. And I want to play this clip and
I want you to discuss the way that this president, this this
felon spoke to all of these generals yesterday at Quantico.
Play the clip, Kylie. Important mission and I told
Pete we should use some of thesedangerous cities as training
grounds for our military National Guard, but military,
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because we're going into Chicagoversion.
That's a big city with an incompetent governor.
Stupid, Governor stupid. They threw him out of his family
business. He was so stupid.
I know the family. He becomes governor.
He's got money, not money that he made, but he ran for governor
one and now he criticizes us allthe time.
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Last week they had 11 people murdered, 44 people shot.
The week before that they had five people murdered, 28 people
shot. Every weekend they lose 5-6.
If they lose 5, they're considering it a great week.
They shouldn't lose any. The reason we created these
initial robots was to solve a pretty basic problem.
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So, Senator, he's priming the public and the military at the
same time that we're going to beagainst each other.
And this, if anybody is a student of history, this is what
fascists do. This is what autocrats do.
What is your take on how dangerous and disrespectful that
is to not only American citizensbut also to these career serving
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patriots that have served in ourarmed forces?
Boy, you hit the 2 words dangerous and disrespectful.
You know, all three of my brothers served in the military.
One of them was career military.My oldest brother, Don Reed, six
years off and on in Vietnam. My brothers served proudly, but
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my brothers weren't trained and my brothers didn't sign up to go
after fellow Americans in our cities.
That's that's not what they did.My brothers were willing to put
their lives on the line because they wanted to defend our
country from foreign adversaries.
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And for this president to turn that around and say no, he wants
to be able to use the military for political purposes.
He's used them before as political props.
He wants to be able to use our military and he wants them to
use as a training ground our cities.
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It's it is fundamentally wrong. And it's exactly as you said.
Watch what he does. He kind of puts it out there and
then pulls it back a little bit and then puts it out a little
further and tries to get the American people to adjust to the
idea that we're going to see armed soldiers walking our
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streets. That's not, that's not what we
do in a democracy. And I, I often think where is
the moment when you just stand up and say we can't do this
anymore. What this man is trying to do to
our democracy And, and I want tosay here with the help of
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spineless Republicans in the Senate and in the House, is to
take away the very foundation ofour Constitution.
And for the rest of this, it's time to stand up and be counted.
It's time to say no, no more of this.
I am a proud American and I'm willing to fight for what I
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believe in. When I listen to comments from
leadership, I think the leadership said this week
they're hopeful Republicans willcome to the table on the budget
bill. And I look at that and I think,
are we still hopeful they're these Republicans are going to
do the right thing because they haven't done the right thing
yet. They have done nothing but
capitulate to this man and enable this illegal behavior.
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So do you have hope that they are going to somehow turn around
and start being fiscally responsible and do what's best
for the American people? So.
So I'm going to say this slightly differently.
It is easy to say Trump is all powerful and he's just going to
do what he's going to do. But wait a minute, that is not
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100% true. You may remember last March and
April when we were talking aboutthe tariffs and what all he was
doing with the tariffs. And all of a sudden stock market
dropped, the bond market droppedin boom.
Donald Trump put it in reverse and backed up.
He announced that he's going into Chicago.
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When did he announce that? Six weeks ago, Two months ago.
He's been threatening to. And he's gotten a lot of
pushback from the governor. He's gotten a lot of pushback
from the people of Illinois. He's got a lot of pushback
around the country. And at least I can say as of
this moment, he has not done that.
He said, yay, Jimmy Kimmel is off the air, right?
And then enough people push back.
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And Jimmy Kimmel had his best night ever.
So I want to start with a sense it's not about hope.
It's a sense of our power. When we push back, when we say,
whoa, that is not OK with us, it's not easy.
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But Donald Trump starts to move back.
The Republicans in the Senate start to move back.
And that's why what's happening right now is so important.
Why Donald Trump is threatening to hurt as many people as he can
if this this back and forth overhealthcare doesn't stop.
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Because what the Republicans absolutely do not want to do is
have the American people, all ofthem here, that right now we're
having a head to head in Washington.
Because the Republicans would rather shut down government then
give access to healthcare to the15,000,000 people that they're
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trying to push out of the systemand keep healthcare affordable
for 10s of 1,000,000 more. You know life after 65 can be
amazing with Arizona blue. Get the benefits that matter
most with our $0.00 premium Medicare Advantage.
The Democrats are not asking fora long list of things what we're
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what I've been asking for any new money for healthcare and
good Lord knows our healthcare system is broken.
There's a lot we need to do in our healthcare system.
Anyone who's lived in pre approval hell or try to get an
appointment with a General practitioner understands where
the healthcare system is broken.We're not asking for more money.
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We're just saying don't kick 15,000,000 people off their
healthcare. These are people who need that
healthcare. That's that's what the fight is
about right now. And the Republicans want to talk
about anything else Because if enough people hear this and
fight back, Donald Trump and theRepublicans will back up.
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They backed up before, but it takes pushing back.
It takes showing that you got some fight in you and that you
think that this is a righteous fight.
Fighting for people's healthcare, fighting for seniors
in nursing homes, fighting for brand new babies, fighting for
people with disabilities. You bet that's a righteous
fight. And that is the fight we are in
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right now. We just need a lot of people in
it with us and I just want to close with the.
Elephant in the room, and I should probably say the donkey
in the room. The there is there.
It feels like there's a disconnect between democratic
leadership in the Beltway and the base.
And we of course have built a community here as as long as
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well with other pro democracy podcasters.
And the base feels like everybody's ready to take this
fight. But the leader in the Senate has
been not that inspiring and not that organized.
And we are craving just very black and white leadership.
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Absolutely, positively, no, we're not voting with this
fascist regime. They're trying to be the thought
police. They're doing fascist stuff.
They're saying you can't call them what they are.
We're going to call them what they are.
We're not going to obey in advance and I feel like we could
all organize and put pressure oncentrist Republican senators and
people in industry. Industry Titans ABC after round
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and found out senator. To the turn of.
Billions of dollars and it showed that we have power.
And so I feel like right now, inthis moment, this moment,
Senator, we need massive leadership.
So if you will take that to the leaders of the Senate, because
the base is literally plucking their hair out by the root right
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now because we're ready to organize, we're ready to fight,
but the the leadership is not trickling down.
And so I just want to get your take on that and a word to the
base and not just the base independents and maybe triple
Trumpers that were like. Oh shit.
I. Didn't realize he was going to
do all of this. What is your message?
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Because we're we're there's a vacuum here and it needs to be
filled. And I'm afraid it's going to get
filled with grifters and nefarious people on the right if
Democrats don't step in and fillit.
All hands on deck. Now is the moment we are in the
fight. The fight is to save healthcare
for 15,000,000 Americans. The fight is to be able to save
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your insurance. The fight is to be able to save
our democracy. We have no kings in this country
and we are not going to let Donald Trump, helped by a bunch
of spineless Republicans in Congress, take over our
government and decide that it works only for Donald Trump's
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friends, Donald Trump's donors, and a handful of billionaires.
We are in this fight. Healthcare is the tip on the
spear right now because we are fighting for our grandmas.
We are fighting for our babies. We are fighting for our
neighbors and our friends. We are fighting for our own
families. We are in this fight to say to
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the Republicans, Donald Trump isnot a king.
Americans want access to affordable healthcare, and you
cannot take it away so that you can give a trillion dollars to a
handful of billionaires. We will call you out and we will
fight you, but we need everybodyin this fight.
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That's what gives us real power.We're signed up.
We're fired up and ready to go. Senator Warren, thank you so
much for always having moral clarity and for always fighting
for the people that are voiceless and exploited by
corporations and by government. It just means a lot to have
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somebody on here that has just and has always had such moral
clarity. Keep fighting the good fight.
Good luck at work today. Yeah, hang on there.
I I appreciate all that you do. Keep it up.
Thank you, Senator. We'll see you soon.