00:00Thanks very much for joining me. Last night, Tuesday night, progressives won a major victory in the state of Minnesota.
00:09Peggy Flanagan won the Democratic nomination for Senate with a blowout. She won by some 20 points.
00:15A week earlier, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination from Michigan for the U.S. Senate. And what
00:24is very interesting to me, I want you all to know this, if you combine those two campaigns, Michigan and
00:31Minnesota, billionaire-funded super PACs spent over $80 million trying to defeat El-Sayed and Peggy.
00:42Over $80 million. And they lost. We were able to win despite all of that massive spending. So what does
00:50it tell you? It tells you that not just in Michigan and in Minnesota, but all over this country.
00:57And I want everybody to remember that we have been winning elections, primary elections, general elections, for the last year.
01:05We won in New York City with Mamdani. We won congressional seats in New York State.
01:10We won in New Jersey, in Colorado, in Ohio, in Montana, in Pennsylvania, Arizona, California, and in the last week
01:20in Michigan, in Minnesota. So what's going on? What is going on? And I think the answer is not complicated.
01:27Working people all over this country are looking around them, and they understand, increasingly, that the economy is totally rigged.
01:38Sixty percent of our people live in paycheck to paycheck.
01:41In America, people are struggling. In America, people are struggling to put food on the table, pay for rent or
01:46mortgage, pay for health care, put aside a few bucks for a dignified, secure retirement, worried about their ability to
01:55send their kids to college, worried, in fact, that their kids may very well have a lower standard of living
02:00than they do, while the billionaire class has never ever had it so good.
02:07You know, I remember when we were all in school, we studied the Gilded Age. Remember the Gilded Age? The
02:12time of Rockefeller and Carnegie and J.P. Morgan and Jay Gould and all those guys at the end of
02:17the 19th century?
02:19And everyone said, wow, how unequal society was Gilded Age. Right now, inequality is much worse than it was in
02:29the Gilded Age.
02:29You got one guy, Mr. Musk, owning more wealth than the bottom half of American households, top 1%, owning more
02:37wealth than the bottom 93%.
02:39And the American people see that. And what they also understand is the reason the government is not acting to
02:45protect their interest is that many of the people in Congress are owned by the billionaire class and corporate interest
02:54as a result of a corrupt campaign finance system.
02:58And again, one of the extraordinary things about Michigan and Minnesota is that people saw the tens and tens of
03:04millions of dollars of TV ads and all that stuff.
03:06And they said, wait a second, if billionaires are trying to defeat people like El Saeed and Flanagan, maybe I'm
03:12going to stand with them.
03:15So, where are we right now? We're at a moment in history where we have the most dangerous president in
03:23the history of the United States of America.
03:25A guy who happens not to believe in democracy, happens to be an authoritarian, doesn't believe in the Constitution or
03:33the rule of law.
03:34A president who is a kleptocrat. He's made some $2 billion in personal wealth since he's been president in this
03:41term.
03:43Somebody who is a narcissist, who if he had his way, I think would name half the buildings in the
03:49country after himself.
03:51Somebody who lies all of the time.
03:54Somebody who campaigned on keeping us out of endless wars and then got us into this terrible war in Iran,
04:01which has killed thousands of innocent people and disrupted the economies in America and all over the world.
04:10So we've got to keep our eye on doing everything that we can to stop Trump's authoritarianism and his disastrous
04:19policies.
04:20But on the other hand, we have got to fight for an agenda that works for working families.
04:27It's not good enough to say, oh, Trump is terrible. Yeah, most people know that.
04:31Poll numbers are plummeting. Many of his own supporters are catching on.
04:34We need an agenda that says that in the richest country in the history of the world, you know what?
04:41We can create an economy that works for all of our people, not just the people on top.
04:46It is not radical. It is not far left. It is not extreme to say that health care is a
04:54human right.
04:56It's what exists in every other major country on Earth.
05:00And we've got to take on the insurance companies. We've got to take on the drug companies.
05:04And we've got to move to a Medicare for all single-payer system.
05:08It's not a radical idea to say that a $7.25 an hour minimum wage is insane, that we've got
05:17to raise the federal minimum wage to a living minimum wage, at least $20 an hour.
05:24It is not insane to say that instead of putting $1.1 trillion into a bloated military, we should be
05:33investing billions of dollars to build the millions of units of low-income and affordable housing that we need.
05:39It is not a radical idea to say that at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, the billionaire
05:46class has got to stop paying their fair share of taxes.
05:49Not a radical idea to understand that Donald Trump is crazy when he thinks that climate change is a hoax,
05:57given what's happening all over the world right now.
06:00That we can create millions of good-paying jobs, transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency
06:06and sustainable energy.
06:08And it's certainly not a radical idea to say that if we're going to preserve democracy, we cannot maintain a
06:15corrupt campaign finance system under Citizens United, which allows billionaires to try to buy elections.
06:22So, bottom line here, as progressives, we've got a two-fold task in front of us.
06:27Number one, we've got to lead the effort against the Trump administration and all of their horrific policies.
06:35Number two, as progressives, we've got to take on the democratic establishment and fight for a democratic party, which is
06:42a party of working people, of young people, of people of color, and not just a top-down party dominated
06:49by wealthy campaign contributors.
06:51So that's what we've got to do.
06:52And the good news is we are making significant progress.
06:57But we've got to keep fighting.
06:59The general election is going to be in early November, and our job is to make sure that our people
07:05win all across the country, that Democrats gain control of the House, gain control of the Senate, and that we
07:13elect as many progressives as we possibly can.
07:15A lot of work to be done.
07:16Look forward to going forward with you.
07:18Thank you all very much for what you're doing.
07:20Take care.
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