Speaker 1: I am a weird duck in that I really am
a reformed maga gangbanger. I mean, it's like I left
my family, so I really do feel obligated to try
to help them, knowing that I don't succeed with most,
but I feel like it's my responsibility to try to help.
Speaker 2: But it's tough.
Speaker 3: I like the way you just put that maga gangbanger
because Trump is a thug right now, Yeah, acting like
a thug. I haven't talked to a number of my
friends and they're like, dude, he's coming hard with the
thug life. I mean, it's just this boy's just like,
I don't give a shit. Y'all can't stop me.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: It is he's untouchable, Michael. He thinks he's untouchable.
Speaker 3: Right now, and so that for me is probably the
most frustrating part of this, because there are a lot
of ways to touch him, yeah, and no one seems
to want to do that. And I don't understand why
we don't do more, uh in that in that space.
Speaker 1: Well, his all his nominees got through, and Michael, and
I think you said this to me in December.
Speaker 2: Hell, they probably would have approved Matt Gates.
Speaker 4: Yes, they would have. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3: I don't even understand what that.
Speaker 2: Allees got through.
Speaker 1: I've heard from Freedom Caucus guys that they will fight
Trump in March on budget and debt ceiling stuff, but
I don't know how that will.
Speaker 4: No, they won't. I don't think they will.
Speaker 3: I think what they're going to offshore that fight to
the Democrats. And this is where the Democrats go. You
know what I've got. I had your appointment, y'all. Let
me know when y'all work that out, because y'all got
the majority, unitary government.
Speaker 4: This is my link.
Speaker 3: This morning, the new numbers come out for inflation, and
Donald Trump is like Joe Biden, inflation is I'm.
Speaker 4: Like, no, baby, this is on your watch. This is
on you.
Speaker 3: Boom stop it. This is you trust me, because if
the afflation, if the numbers were good, he'd be out
of go and see I got elected and the world
is ah, and It's like, no, that's not that's not
how it is. So this is on you, Donald Trump.
This is your inflation as of January twenty.
Speaker 4: You own all this shit. It's all you. Period.
Speaker 1: And Michael, we've always had a failure of imagination with Trump.
Speaker 2: Like twenty years ago, you and I never would have thought.
Speaker 1: A presidential candidate loses an election and then doesn't concede
that happened, and then tries to overthrow an election that happened.
Speaker 2: We've never imagined the worst about Trump.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to sound like a goof, but
I'm not convinced. I'm not convinced he won't try to
run again. And Michael, if he doesn't, I know he
will wait until the very last second.
Speaker 2: So everybody better buckle up and imagine the worst.
Speaker 3: There's already I forget who the asshole in the House is,
but there's always already a member who's proposed an amendment
to the Constitution to allow him to run.
Speaker 4: I'm like, no, what are you doing? What?
Speaker 2: How?
Speaker 3: How the hell does this party embrace such such putinesque leadership.
I don't under we are the party we were the
party of Reagan. I do not understand. Ronald Reagan called
out the evil Empire, he defeated communism and Soviet regimes,
he tore down the wall, he and Bush together, What okay?
Speaker 2: Now this party.
Speaker 3: Comes to this point where they look at that, they
look at Victor Orban and say yeah, we want to
do that. Ship here they look at Putin go more
of that. We we hate NATO, now we don't. We
don't align with with the free world. We we want
to hang out with basically folks who are the.
Speaker 1: Taliban because they because these elected Republicans now line up
with their base, and as you and I talked about,
the base embraces authoritarianism. They want a strong man. Especially
in my old place of the House. These House Republicans
reflect the base. Michael, disagree with me. But even ten
fifteen years ago, I'll bet you eighty percent, eighty five
percent of the Republican caucus was anti Russia.
Speaker 2: But I'll bet you now it's fifty to fifty. I
mean what percentage of them.
Speaker 3: I would think, No, I would think right now, I
would think this prop this caucus is probably seventy thirty.
Speaker 2: Pro pro Russia.
Speaker 4: Pro Russia.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not pro Ukraine. Oh yeah, No, I think I
think for Voladimir Zelenski. Dude, you on your own, you
gonna you're gonna have. That's why in the number of
international forms that I've been to.
Speaker 4: In the last year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd look at the the audience, I go, Okay,
is there any someone here in Europe. Which country is
prepared to leave NATO? Which country is prepared to stand
for or be a part of the resistance to the
expansion of authoritarianism. Y'all can't afford to bow down and
let this shit run over you. The way is happening
here in the United States. You cannot allow more Victor
or Bond's on your continent. You just can't, because Eastern
Europe will be the first to fall. Poland is next.
You don't believe me, Trust me, it's happening. China is
posed to move on Taiwan. They are ready to do that.
You don't believe me. Why because the goldposts have been
put in place for them to cross. They've been put
in place by Republicans who have turned a blind eye, adopted.
Speaker 4: I don't give a shit attitude.
Speaker 3: These things connected to global freedom, global marketplaces. We're down
the party, Joe that's advocating not just a terif for
one country, but on every country imaginable.
Speaker 1: Michael, when you helped send me to Congress, it was
an overwhelmingly free trade party.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's completely flipped.
Speaker 4: Completely in literally fifteen years.
Speaker 3: We've gone from the election in twenty ten to the
elections that just took place in twenty four we've watched
a one hundred and eighty degree shift in what it
means to be a.
Speaker 4: Free trade Republican.
Speaker 3: That person doesn't exist in the House anymore, and to
the extent that they do, they don't have the reinforcement
of other members to help them in that space. So
you've got the dismantling of programs like USAAD. You've got
dismantling of institutions like the FBI, Justice Department, Department of
Healthy looks like they will actually, finally, after forty plus
years of making.
Speaker 4: The case, get rid of the Department of Education. So, Joe,
here's my question that these motherfuckers in Congress seemingly don't
have an answer for what happens next.
Speaker 3: Where the Department of Education no longer exists.
Speaker 4: Is it just block grants? Now? How do we.
Speaker 3: Educate what happens to public school education in this country
when the poorest states in the Union, who are used
to getting money from states like California and New York
that they like to shit on, right, but are ignorant
to the fact, Sarah Huckabee, that you don't contribute to
the account to the educational.
Speaker 4: You are a recipient of the largesse of states like
Maryland and New York, in California and Washington who contribute
far more to educating your children than you do. So
what do you do when our check no longer comes?
Speaker 3: What happens when the state of California go, oh, we
don't have to contribute to the federal to the federal
Department of Education. Were keeping that shit here in California.
We're to make money into the federal bucket.
Speaker 2: And Michael, let's be clear about something.
Speaker 1: None of this has anything to do with the debt,
because we're talking peanuts in the federal budget.
Speaker 2: Peanuts.
Speaker 1: A second point I'd make is he cannot get rid
of the Department of Education on his own period. That
was created by a law Congress, Congress Creer, So he
can't get rid of it. But Michael, what they'll do
is they'll do what they're doing with USAID again, which
is less than way, less than one percent of the budget.
They'll just try to kill it and decimate it. Michael,
he wants to get rid of FEMA. So natural disaster
in Mississippi. Mississippi, you pay for it. Alabama tornadoes, you
pay for it.
Speaker 4: Fuck you, fuck you.
Speaker 2: You pay for it, Idaho, you pay for it. Hey, Michael, you.
Speaker 1: Know the beautiful thing about him is, here's the beautiful
thing about Trump.
Speaker 2: He's forcing us, like now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to fucking decide what kind of country we want to.
Speaker 4: Be amen.
Speaker 2: A national laws or not? Man, you decide decide?
Speaker 4: There it is, there it is.
Speaker 2: That's good.
Speaker 4: No, I do I do.
Speaker 2: For the record, Steele and I are not drinking.
Speaker 4: This is a short drinking folks. I have to be honest.
Speaker 3: I you know, I joke about drinking because my dad
was an alcoholic.
Speaker 4: So I get it. So don't you know a lot
of people go, oh, you you shouldn't look. Trust me.
I grew up with it.
Speaker 3: I understand, and so that's how I internalize it and
deal with it.
Speaker 4: And I like a good drink every now and then.
But no, I'm not literally drinking. Am There are days?
Speaker 3: There are days when my wife looks at me, why
is the barlight on?
Speaker 4: I'm like it just started that way today, Michael, Michael,
you put your finger Joe on a very important piece.
Speaker 3: And I really appreciate that because when I go back
and I look at the places I visited in twenty
twenty four the states I spent time in and the
conversations we would have, that's what it really kind of
boiled down to. I would say to the audience, and
folks who listen to my podcasts have heard me say this.
We are right now where we are because this is
where you want us to be.
Speaker 4: Yes, this is where you want us to be. Boo,
I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: You know, a majority, I don't care if it's a
of a percent or you know, ninety voted for this. Y'all.
Y'all pretend it was about the price of gas and
eggs and what was happening in Gaza in Michigan, for example.
Y'all just put your head in the sand and said, oh, no,
we're with Trump. I'm like, but you know he's with Yahoo,
who wants to exterminate.
Speaker 4: The Palestinians. So okay, so what are you telling me? Y'all?
Can't pretend this bullshit away.
Speaker 3: You can't sit here now and act like, oh, you
didn't know, you didn't know. You knew exactly what you wanted,
and that's why we're here where we are. So I
appreciate very much what you're saying, Joe, because this is
a moment where we have to confront ourselves.
Speaker 1: It's like, Michael, it's like again, it's the beauty of
Trump because he's so bad and so dishonest and so
corrupt and so lawless. He's going to force us real
quickly to decide what we want to be. And I
think that because we've been building to this for a while.
All politicians lie, all fudge, many are corrupt, blah blah blah.
But Trump's just all of that on steroids. So we
can't avoid it. Democracy. Do we want to keep it right?
Separation of powers? Do we want to keep it? We
We're going to have.
Speaker 4: To decide we are.
Speaker 3: And and to the point that we were making a
little bit earlier, we have a group of friends that
are trying to.
Speaker 4: Help Crystal crystallize that decision.
Speaker 3: And then we're going to be gathering next next weekend
here in Washington, d C. Principles first talk a little
bit about that. What what does that? What does that
look like?
Speaker 1: It's, uh, we alluded to it before, Michael. It's it's
people like you and me. It's people who feel like
they still feel republican right because the Party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan,
they still feel Republican. Many of them are still many
of them have left, many of them are conservative independent,
and they feel in exile right now because this party.
There ain't no home for them in this party. They
don't identify as Democrats, so they're like, they're all huddle
up over here in this apartment building I'm looking at
outside the window, and they're trying to figure out how,
in exile we can go at what this thing is
because it's the antithesis, MAGA of everything we believe in, freedom, democracy,
free trade, America that's shining city on the hill.
Speaker 2: Damn it. We still believe in these things.
Speaker 1: So how can we from that little apartment building throw
rocks at what MAGA is and maybe maybe Michael one
day down the road help get people out of that
apartment building who once believed in those things elected again.
It's kind of that notion that we're in exile and
we're trying to help Democrats, but go after MAGA because
they're the antithesis of what people like you and me believe.
Speaker 3: Our buddy Heath Mayo is the driving force, or has
been the driving force behind this, along with some others
and putting this together. I remember this started a few
years ago and they were in their first planning and
they were hoping to get two hundred and fifty people
to show up. About seven and fifty showed up that
first year. This year is looking to be a larger contingent.
So that tells me that there is an energy in
this space for center right, center left, Democrats, Republicans, independent
voters who were just fed up with this bullshit, who,
to your point a little a moment ago, are confronting
the moment we're in and are making an affirmative to
this decision to stand with the country. However that may
manifest itself, whether it is fighting purely in the democracy space,
trying to move and shake in the political space, either
as a candidate or as an organizer, or someone who's
just trying to, you know, like you do, have the
conversation in their community with their family members to help
put a.
Speaker 5: Light bulb, turn a light bulb on. So these things
are happening, folks, and it's refreshing, it is exciting, but
it is also sometimes met with frustration because what we're
talking is incremental movement. It's not Maga's moving like this.
Speaker 4: It's just and we're in a space, Joe.
Speaker 6: You and I were like, okay, we've.
Speaker 3: Moved from here to there. You know, it's frustrating, but
that's how it probably was in eighteen fifty four.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know what, Michael, one other point I'll make,
and you and I were probably raised the same. I
don't talk about myself. You don't talk about yourself. We
laugh about it and joke about it. This hasn't been
easy for guys like you and I. No, I mean
we were part of that party for our whole life,
and we were on the outs. This isn't easy. This
is difficult. You and I put up with shit and
threats and hate. We've lost friends and followers. We are
able to laugh at times, but this, Michael, this isn't
easy for people like not easy.
Speaker 4: Look, Joe, next year, next November, I will celebrate fifty
years as a Republican.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, Michael, still.
Speaker 7: Years in this party and do the shit I've seen,
Oh my god, and had to go through the resistance to.
Speaker 4: My leadership, the resistance to me as a black man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and yet for me, a lot of people go, well,
you know, why did you stay? Why would you? You know,
these guys are racist or this and another thing. And
it really for me was what my mama said to
me in the summer of twenty of nineteen seventy six, Jeez,
don't be a Democrat because I'm a Democrat. Go out
and figure out for yourself where you belong, Yeah, what
what you believe in?
Speaker 4: And I did. I took her to heart and made
that journey.
Speaker 3: Research learned about the history of each party, recognizing that
this party was where African Americans began their political journey
in this country, where we would find political residents and voice,
where we would be elected for the first time as
members of Congress, as governors, as senators, because we were
you know, the first black members of Congress were Republicans,
the first black Senator was Republican, and so we had
that space.
Speaker 4: But even in.
Speaker 3: Those moments, they had to deal with the resistance to reconstruction.
They had to deal with a party capitulating and allowing
the segregationists to reclaim the South and to reclaim in
some measure a part of their freedom right. When we
watched when they sat in the House of Congress and
watched the blind eyed a political approach to the South
re emerging and the then president, becoming Johnson, having become
president on the assassination, upon the assassination of Lincoln, began
to roll back some of those gains and to soft
pedal them.
Speaker 6: And so I could identify, as weird as it is,
I could identify with those brothers, and they did not
give up.
Speaker 3: On this idea of the Republican Party being the party
where their freedom would ultimately rest and would be saved
for them and.
Speaker 4: For future generations.
Speaker 3: And that if you just take those moments, Joe, and
you leapfrog them to the nineteen fifties and the nineteen sixties,
where it was Republicans who help hold together the pieces
that Johnson needed to sign legislation.
Speaker 5: Right right, leveling up civil rights for black men and women.
Speaker 3: So that's you know, I look at that fifty years
and I go, shit, it's been a bit.
Speaker 4: But principally underneath it, I align.
Speaker 3: With a guy from Illinois who's running for Congress, who
believes the Constitution means something, and he calls the RNC
said hey, dude, i'm running, I need some help.
Speaker 4: I need some help.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, yes, I'm let's do that, because we
need those voices that appreciate the value of this constitution
and why it's so damn important.
Speaker 4: Now you know why Joe Walsh Folks was important in
twenty ten.
Speaker 1: And now you know why Michael Steele was important because
he's some brought the establishment Republicans and the Tea Party Republicans.
Speaker 4: Together.
Speaker 2: Yeah it was.
Speaker 4: Not, it was not. It was it was a mama
and a daddy who really wanted to divorce. And you're like,
but but no, you can't.
Speaker 3: But yeah, man, I mean that's what this moment has
come down to for me, which is why you know
when I see an Adam kinsinger List Cheney, God bless her,
you know you and so many others who do break
away and go no, because this Constitution means something. These
principles that we aligned ourselves with politically under the umbrella
of this party still mean something. The party may be
for shit, yeah right, but the principles that once articulated
Speaker 4: Still do mean something.