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November 21, 2024 28 mins
Former Trump White House Special Assistant Michelle Moons Dawi joins to discuss the momentum behind Trump's Cabinet picks and the resounding support from communities across America. Michelle shares insights from her campaign efforts in Michigan, particularly the Middle Eastern and Chaldean communities, and their strong support for Trump. She also dives into the day-to-day experiences inside the White House, the challenges of navigating bureaucracy, and her thoughts on tackling complex issues like homelessness and mental health.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, guys, welcome to the Buck brief first time on
the show. Michelle Moons Dowie is with us. She formerly
worked in the Trump White House, a special assistant to
President Trump at the time.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Maybe again in the future.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
A lot of things coming together right now about who's
gonna be doing what. Let's start with this, Michelle, Welcome.
How do you think the picks are coming together so far?
Any surprises? What are the highlights this Trump cabinet? What
are your feelings about it as somebody who's seen the
inner workings of the White House with this president now
just going into two point zero.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah, well, thanks for having me. It is an exciting
time and they are coming rapid fire, so it's fun
every day watching them come in. I think he's got
some amazing picks, a lot of surprises along the way.
You've got a mix of different realms coming in. So,

(00:55):
for example, the Pete Heggsath pick, I don't think anyone
had him on the list, and that's not the people
that we were talking about, but there it was. And
some others have been surprises too, But I would say
just very solid. It's emblematic of really the resounding mandate
that the American people had for us on election Day,

(01:18):
which was they wanted change, They wanted the economy to
get back to what we had under Trump. They wanted
more peace. And that's something that's a pitch. We made,
my husband and I a in Michigan as we we
had gone up there and just on our own campaign
for Trump and registered in under three weeks over a

(01:42):
thousand people and convinced a bunch more to vote for
Trump within the midle Eastern community up there, which.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Is very talk to me about this. This is a
big This was a big thing, right because there were
there were concerns from the Kamala campaign that there were
concerns obviously about the Muslim American community specifically in Michigan,
I think more broadly across the United States and how
they were going to vote in this election cycle. Some

(02:08):
even said that this is why she didn't go with
Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania as her running mate. They've never
confirmed that, but it certainly seemed to add up based
on the analysis. What were people telling you when you
were on the ground before this monumental election, registering people,
particularly people of Middle Eastern descent. They're voting this election

(02:28):
what were their feelings like, what were you picking up
from them? What was the media narrative accurate? Basically that
they were very dissatisfied with Kamala and why.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yeah, so they were I would say, a predominant word
that we would hear is hate. The hated Kamala Harris.
There was a move for people to push towards Jill
Stein as a third party candidate. We were really making
the case that they should vote Trump, that he brought
more peace, that under his presidency previous, that he was

(03:01):
not starting new wars, we had more peace and we
had more prosperity. And those were two major issues. A
third issue was parental rights, very big in this community. Now,
I don't want to conflate it because I had friends
in conservative media not understanding why this group was so
supportive of Trump. Now you've got a more Muslim Middle

(03:24):
Eastern American community, and then the Kaldean community, which is
more which is more Christian. And so in one of
the areas where we were doing tabling for registering people
out front of a couple of grocery stores, a New
York Post reporter came by and he actually wrote about
our efforts and the words he used were blown away

(03:47):
at the response that we were getting at these tables.
So a couple of things. One from the Kaldean community
very enthusiastic for Trump. That there were two aspects of
what he was blown away about. One, we didn't have
to convince them to register, and so they were coming
up to us. There were times where there were lines
people were in line to register to vote for Trump.

(04:08):
We had a Trump cutout, life sized cutout that they
would take pictures with families. We even sent someone down
There was a woman that came by and said, my
one hundred and two year old mother's dying wish is
to vote for Donald Trump, to see him back in
the White House, and she prays for him every day.
So we sent someone down there to register her and
her friend who pray for President Trump every day. And

(04:30):
they didn't want any sort of publicity out of it.
They just they sent us videos just for our own
awareness showing them praying for him. And so really the
enthusiasm was amazing. Now you had a slightly different approach
in the Muslim community, Muslim Middle Eastern American communities, and

(04:55):
again these are all American citizens that we were registering
to vote were already registered, but they some of them
needed to be convinced a little more. But they didn't
have to be convinced not to want Harris. They hated
Harris and so really part of it is they looked

(05:18):
at the unrest in the least that has been going on,
that she couldn't stop it, and it's funny. There was
something that she tried to make a point of. I
think it was during the debate where she said, I
went over three days this is not the least, this
is with Ukraine. But she said, I went over there
three days before the war broke out and was, you know, negotiating,

(05:39):
and then came back and we go I'm watching her
argument and going, well, so you weren't a very good
negotiator because war broke out with you at the home.
So it just goes to show you that she can't
solve these problems and the wars will just continue on,
whereas Trump will work to stop the wars in the

(06:03):
Middle East and other places abroad. So that was something
that they were really receptive to that I would say
that was their number one issue, is just wanting more peace.
It wasn't that you had to promise them anything in
particular other than look, we had more peace under Trump,
So you can throw away your vote on a third
party candidate, but we encourage you. Plus Trump brings prosperity

(06:29):
was another major issue for them, and the parental rights
very big. You know, we've seen news stories where Muslims
and Christian parents are marching side by side out of
school outside of schools because of the curriculum and the
fact that the schools have not let people pull their
own children out of certain classes. And so you've seen

(06:52):
that in our country, you know, outside of schools that
they're side by side. So on certain issues, you know,
you really see that at what Trump promises and what
he has delivered in the previous forty five administration was
these main three things.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
I could just get you to move a little to
your left so you're in the center of the yet
a little more little there we go, perfect, wonderful, Thank you.
So we're gonna go, We're gonna come back here. I want
you to tell us what it's like inside the White House.
Just give us a day to day because I think
a lot of people are curious, like, how will all
these different pieces that are being put in place by Trump.

(07:33):
All these individuals, some very big names, some big egos,
Like how does all that interplay work? I think people
are curious to see how that goes. But from our
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(07:54):
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(08:14):
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was it like, I mean, you know, you were in
the White House before, you'll maybe be in again.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
Who knows.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
We don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but it
might be some stuff going on. Tell me, you know,
the day to day of it, you know, is it
Is it something that you would say, It's like people
would expect from watching the West Wing, Like what, how
would you describe it?

Speaker 2 (08:52):
I mean, I don't know that I would compare it
to any particular TV show, but it is let's just say,
as what we call a staff, a specialist to the president.
That's you usually have like two titles in that realm,
but you are basically considered on twenty four to seven.

(09:12):
It could be a twelve hour day. You know, you
could have a normal day, but it is hard, charging
all the time and working hard for the president. There's
a lot to get done. And I will say that
I ended pretty much every day. I would come home
and tell my husband I love my job because you
are having because you're having an effect tangibly on the

(09:36):
leadership of this country. So obviously President Trump leading the charge,
but you've got so many people within the administration working
on these policies. And I will say before I had
never worked in government before whatsoever, and I had my
own suspicions of the bureaucracy of government. I will say

(09:59):
on the brocracy end, it's probably worse than even I thought.
It was just the slow workings of things. But that
Trump is a change maker and he was able to
empower people to make things happen. So we were able
to push certain things. On the same token, there are
certain policies that I will tell you run through both

(10:24):
sides of the aisle. There's a like there's a Missing
and Murdered Women executive Order that we worked on, and
that's something that I've seen worked on by multiple administrations
of both sides of the isle. There are things that
cross the isle. But we were working I went to
LA at one point and we were trying to work

(10:44):
on homelessness and tackle that issue. And it was that
Trump would empower our teams to work with people who
were not just other Republicans. I mean that was to
going into LA that was a very very deep blue area.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
What's the best thing, I mean, like if you could
actually get Gavin Newsom, Sorry, I just I did think
I think this is interesting if you get Gavin Newsom
to actually listen to reason on handling. You know, he
he had this whole you've probably seen this clip. It's
become kind of famous now where he talked about like
tackling the homelessness crisis in his Gavin Newsom way like
three buttons down on his stress shirt, you know, a

(11:22):
lot of just got his tan from Malibu. He's like,
we're going to tackle the homeless crisis. And then sure enough,
it's got nothing but worse. Like since that was a
big initiative of his, the homelessness crisis has only gotten
worse every single year, like without fail. The numbers are staggering.
What would you tell him to actually do to turn
that at least in the other direction? Right, it would

(11:42):
take a long time to fix. It'll probably never be
entirely fixed. But how do you make improvements there?

Speaker 2 (11:49):
Well, it's a lot to tackle in a couple of minutes.
But I will say that they were taking large, large
dollar amounts to do things like they set up these
like shipping containers as sort of little mini apartments, and
they were spending as I recall it, somewhere around half

(12:09):
a million dollars for these things, and I'm going they
didn't have a good sense. And this is where the
doj Elon Musk group is just really exciting. As part
of the new administration is that, you know, government tends
to take something that shouldn't cost that much if it

(12:31):
were done by private industry and makes it cost exponentially more.
So there are things that can be done. And frankly,
we toured on one shelter that is being run by
by charitable organizations. It's not government run, and they in

(12:54):
many ways were able to show care for people and
they had to run a tight ship in the middle
of skid Row. I mean, we toured skid Row as
part of our time there. So really it's there's definitely
a sense of needing to deal with the mental health situation,

(13:15):
you know, since there has been a move away from
dealing with mental health in a a tactful way, a
lot of these people either from drugs or just mental
health issues or out on the streets. In addition to

(13:36):
veteran homelessness is almost its own nuanced issue because a
lot of veterans are very proud that they served, they
serve their country. They don't want to take handouts and
so you have to deal with that community even differently.
So not to not get into all the details, but
it's a nuanced issue for the different segments of the

(13:59):
homeless population, right.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
No, it's definitely a complicated issue. And it's something that
I experienced and saw in New York for many years,
and so I get worse. It's just remarkable to Gavin
Newsom to spend as much money as they spend as
much time talking about it and for to just keep
getting worse. Clearly, whatever they're doing is not working, but
they will keep doing it and keep yeah well and
keep it right. They don't even know. I mean, I

(14:23):
think it was San Francisco that was building the million
dollar outdoor toilet you know or you know or like
public public toilet. It was a million dollars. It was
basically a glorified quart to part.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah, they had them on skit like right around skid row.
It was a self cleaning unit. Yes, I believe these
ones were about half a million dollars, so they self clean.
They had to place people monitors outside of these toilets

(14:53):
because and they have a little sign up for people,
because they had a problem with people murdering people in
side of the toilets.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
And using it for drugs, all the things street street work,
and oh yeah, so they.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
Had someone and they were using like the calm lifers
from people who have been in prison, you know, as
the person taking you know, giving them something to do
and by taking names on the thing and letting people
in and out of this half a million dollar toilet
on the street.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah, we're going to come back in here. I want
to ask you you you work, and you know the
domestic policy side, the immigration deportation thing you gave me
talk about that a little bit, like how how that
comes together and what that looks like. All right, we'll
get to that in a second.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
Here.

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these deportations?

Speaker 2 (16:36):
You think?

Speaker 1 (16:37):
Are they really going to be able to go through
with this? They'll be able to They're they're going forward.
What does that look like?

Speaker 2 (16:44):
I think it's it's a matter of prioritizing, right. So
we've got a lot of people that we you know,
a lot of people who are known criminals from other countries,
and I think you start there to make sure that
you protect people like we just got the result of

(17:04):
the Lake and Riley trial and the devastation that that's
brought to a family. And let me tell you back
in my journalism days, I was at the forefront of
reporting on the Angel parents. There's one woman, Sabina Dirdan,
who had kind of given up telling your story to
reporters because no one would tell it. And I said,
tell me your story. I promise you I will print it,

(17:26):
I will put it out. And I did and since
then she in twenty sixteen spoke on the floor of
the Republican Convention. It became such an issue that was
at the forefront that there are Americans that are losing
family members when those family members should still be around.
And people say, oh, well, there's crime here in the

(17:47):
US already. It's not just it illegal aliens. The reality
is you're talking about people that shouldn't be here in
the first place. So if those people commit crimes while
they're already here, when they're not supposed to be, all
the more that person should still be here. Sabina lost

(18:08):
her only son at the hands of an illegal alien,
and so many more, so many more. I've told the
stories when I was a journalist, and you just watch
these people and they nothing can ever change that, nothing
can bring their family member back, no amount of justice.
And then the reality is because of the way our

(18:29):
justice system in particular. I am actually from California originally,
so I understand you know, you mentioned Gavin Newsom and
all that. I really I understand the state and they
will use prosecutorial discretion in that state to charge certain
people illegal aliens with lower crimes in order to make

(18:53):
sure that they're not triggering a point at which they
would be deported for those So that does happen in
places like California, and we need to put an end
to things like that. We need to be able to
deport people who have committed crimes abroad already and made
it here. We're seeing and you know, people get down
to saying, oh, you're you're you're targeting one people from

(19:17):
one country another. It's not. It's people from all over
the world. And we need to get a control over it.
And this is part of that. So Tom Hollman, who
was a great choice to help be part of that
to head that up, he I believe, will take it
on and you know, we're going to have to see

(19:38):
how it all plays out. I'm sure it's going to
be demon demonized by.

Speaker 1 (19:44):
The corporate media, but every deportation is going to be
a grandma who's just been you know, volunteering at the
local poppy shelter for the last twenty years, and you know,
has a big, beautiful family and just wants to live
the American dream. Every single even the MS thirteen gang
members with like tattoos on their faces and all over

(20:04):
their bodies, who have like killed people, they're actually going
to be magically transformed into Grandma's who just want to
love puppies and stay in America and live the American dream.
I can tell you. I mean, I know you worked
in medias. You know that is going to happen for sure.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
Yeah. Yeah. Let me tell you about one border patrol
agent that I used to talk to. His family was
originally from Ecuador, and his father came legally started a
cab company. He was a border patrol agent, and he goes,
my sister can't even get here right now through the
legal system. It's so backed up, he said. But I
sit there every day and I watch people come over

(20:38):
the border, and he's like, to the point where we
at some levels, this is his description, we're doing the
work of the smugglers. We're picking these people up and
bringing them further into the country. For the smugglers, and
it was so demoralizing that he went, I think I'm
going to have to switch back to just you know,
working at just ports of because it's like, I can't

(21:01):
do this every day where I'm watching. And that's why
you saw a massive support from the Border Patrol Union,
I mean from the Border Patrol Union for President Trump
because he backs them up and he empowers them to
do their job. Their job is tough. Let me tell you,
I've been on that border. I've been there at night

(21:22):
that day. I've been on the official on the official
tours of the border and the non official tours of
the border, and they have a tough job. They're getting
down in the mud. They are exposed to different.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
Things, and well, I also think it's deeply control on it.
It's deeply demoralizing for them. When people think of border
patrol in this sort of old I would say, nineties,
early two thousands context of single adult males overwhelmingly from
Mexico running across the border and making in the United
States and does border patrol catch them or not. That's

(21:56):
not the day to day reality at all, and hasn't
been for years now because of these very I know
you know this, but just for our audience, they will
walk up. I've seen this. I'm sure you've seen it too,
in a group of twenty fifty one hundred people and
they wave border patrol down and they say, I'm here
to claim asylum. Where is my you know, bring me
my sandwich and my Coca cola. And it's just like that.

(22:18):
I mean there's no there's no light flight, yeah, and
my airplane flight. But I mean they're they're they're walking,
they're trying to find border patrol. Those are people wh
understand they're like, where's border patrol because they're like my
cab and Uber eat service. And then we ask border
patrol to deal with that problem and then also make
sure that you know, cartels aren't smuggling huge amounts of
drugs killing huge amounts of Americans, which of course they're doing.

(22:40):
So yeah, I mean, it's it's an absolute disaster, and
I think it's the single honestly trafficking.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
I mean, really fuck the human trafficking is one of
the worst parts. And it's been highlighted now and it's
coming to light how many of these children that so
many people said, oh, the children, the children, the separation
but these children have been low under the Biden administration,
these unaccompanied alien children, that is the formal term. I

(23:05):
know that you are familiar with the formal terms, and
we don't know where they are. And frankly, there is
a lot of human trafficking going on that that issue
has been highlighted overall the Sound of Freedom Movement movie
and all of that. But these are children that are
just missing, just gone. So and frankly, a lot of

(23:28):
those children were often are oftentimes used at the border
by people who are not family members to cross saying
that they're a family unit.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
Yeah, they're props.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
I know, it's one of the kids and comes across.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
There's different rules, there's different rules for family units. So
they recycle, that's what they call it. That's what the
border patrol calls it. They recycle these kids. And so
a kid comes across, and they'll actually bring the kid
back on the other side. The kid'll come across again.
I mean, they're they're using children as effectively props for that.
Adults can can scan the immigration system. And the thing is,
you know this, I know this. DHS under Biden they

(24:03):
knew this too. I mean, everyone knows this, but they
just pretend, meaning the Democrats in charge for the last
four years, that they don't know that this is what's
going on and that the whole system isn't being scammed.
So that's why people say it's not an open border.
Look at all the resources there. No, it is an
open border. I mean you can cut if you know anything.
And I mean if you can just like find a smuggler,
not even a smuggler, a cartel member or coyote whatever

(24:25):
to talk to, You'll find a way to get in
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(25:10):
appreciate you being with us here on the show. Any
closing thoughts about what your expectations are for Trump two
point zero? You're gonna be you the husband going to
be hitting some big inauguration parties. You know what are
you seeing?

Speaker 2 (25:23):
We'll see about that. We have two small children. Would
love to do that. We'll just see where it leads.
Would love to see. Uh. My husband in particular, make
it somewhere in there because he is a Middle East expert,
which is why he was so able to talk to
these people in Michigan and and show them why Trump

(25:45):
is the candidate for them. You know, we stood up that,
we stood up a pack just in order to be
able to do that work, the Conservative American Middle Eastern
Pack so is C A M E p A C
dot com, KAMPAC dot com. And took donations where we could,
but we spent thousands of our own money and time

(26:06):
away from work for my husband to be able to
accomplish that and make sure that Trump got elected. Now
we saw a resounding victory and that was awesome. But
I was not going to stand by and see what
I saw happen in twenty twenty, where you know, I
a story for another day. But I was back in

(26:28):
the White House after being on maternity leave, and I
was trying to convince Alisa Fara how important the messaging
on COVID was and got you know a little into
that subject. And let me tell you, it did there
were certain people that were just not dealing with it,

(26:49):
and the President was doing his best. And I will
say that unfortunately I ended up going over to well
fortunately because it was a good experience, but over at
SBA with Jovita Caranza at the time, and we were
able to really get out there and talk to a
lot of small business owners and what they were going

(27:10):
through and message that. But I really see this time
around more very people, very loyal to the president. I
see people that are change makers, and I'm really excited
to see on January one where we go. He's building
a great team. I think we have more surprises to come.

(27:32):
If anything's thus far is an indicator. But you know,
I look at people like Carolyn Lovett, the first the
youngest Press secretary ever and she has been right there
with him the whole way a long time on this campaign,
really making sure that that messaging gets out and being

(27:57):
strong in it. And so I'm excited to see people
like this. You know, Stephen Miller's back from the prior administration.
I've heard rumors of other people, but you know, RFK
Junior at hh S.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
There's a lot, a lot of stuff, a lot of
stuff to be excited excited about. Michelle moons Don We
appreciate you being with us. Thank you so much for
joining for the podcast.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
Thanks so much,
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