Michigan’s Crock of Crap

No BS Newshour Episode #429

Michigan’s Crock of Crap

 

(0:04) Glenn Beck wants to know who is funding El-Sayed’s campaign.

So I mansplained it to him.

 

(17:25) GM taken for a ride.

That shiny million dollar art piece in its new world HQ isn’t bronze.  It’s spray paint.

 

(23:57) Michigan Primary postmortem with Jason Roe.

 

(47:29) Martha Reeves- Now & Then

 

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TRANSCRIPT:

Charlie, how are you? I’m great, brother. How you doing? I love it. I saw an old clip from Edward R Murrow the other day.

I don’t know what I was watching and he had that smoke, just kind of making rings up off of the table. And I went, where are those journalistic anymore? Where are those people? Uh, and here you are. So welcome.

Do you remember that bit from Saturday night live? Uh, Martin short when he’s on 60 minutes, getting grilled. He’s got the glass. Yeah, I miss those days.

Anyway, uh, Charlie, thanks for everything that you do. I really appreciate it. I think you’re, you’re fabulous and you’re exactly what America needs in, in journalism.

Uh, tell me about what you are finding, uh, with Al Saeed’s campaign donors. Okay. Let me, uh, preface it by why I’m looking okay.

Because he fashions himself as the small donor King, the, uh, grassroots swell. He’s the number one guy on act blue, you know, in Michigan, uh, small donations from around the country. 80% of his money is from act blue and 70, 75%, um, of the actual money is coming from out of state.

So I can’t go out of state. So I’ll look in state. Is this true? Cause he’s the guy that wants to get money out of politics.

Okay. You want to get money out of politics? Where’s your money coming from? So we just, you know, we go into the, uh, FEC database. We download it.

We put it on a spreadsheet. We run it. We have AI check it.

Then we double check AI and then we double check each other. So we’ve got 120 donors average age, about 75 in Michigan. And altogether in the last decade or so 120 people have made three quarters of a million donations.

Okay. So we pick one and we go out to the countryside and there’s an old lady and her house is burned down. She’s living in a trailer, no internet, no computer, no running water.

And I was going to bring her the printout, but her donations were 15,000 over five years, totaling 150 grand. And I told her I would have brought you the printout, but I ran out of paper. Did you madam? In fact, donate 15,000 times the tune of $150,000 with no house.

And she donates and she says, act blue is the bank. I go to egg blue, but nothing, nothing of that size. She was shocked.

So to wrap it in a bow for you, you want to keep dark money out of politics. Everybody knows, everybody knows. Act blues corrupt.

We need to look at it. And I, I challenged Abdul. Listen, man, if you want to get money out of politics, return all the act blue money because it’s elder abuse.

You’re stealing act blue. It’s almost obvious. I’m just going to say it.

You’re stealing old people’s identity and you’re running money from unknown sources through their names. And it’s got to stop again. One more time.

Abdul out raised Haley. I’m rounding off $15 million for their, you know, their general fund, their campaign fund. She raised 11.

So forget special interests in the super packs. He outraised her. What’s the source of the money.

Let’s go come clean. Explain as I’ve done chalkboards on act blue, um, years ago. And so we’ve got to look into that.

This is so dirty. This whole system is just so corrupt. Um, explain for anybody who doesn’t know what act blue is, what it is and why you can say with such authority, it’s corrupt.

It’s a clearing house. You want to donate to blue causes. You can go on to act blue.

It allows you to make a, nobody can make a donation in your name and you can’t just give money and allow act blue to donate to a specific individual in your name, you have to do it. You took, you took act blue to exercise the trade, so to speak. Act blue allows you to, uh, re up every month.

You can schedule a contribution to somebody every month when it gets closer to elections, you can do it every week. So when, when this lady, let’s say she gives $5 to Abdul El-Sayed, why is it the next day she’s given five more times and then two days later, three more times. And then four days later, she’s from another address, the apartment she lived in for a while when her house burned down.

So I asked her, show me how you make a donation on your phone. She can’t, you know, it’s, it’s lovely. It’s she’s 88 years old.

Um, and she’s doing this with the phone. Like it’s a transistor radio. Like the batteries are bad.

Oh, this thing, this thing. And she couldn’t exercise the trade. So there it’s impossible for her to have sat there.

What is, I forgot the number Glenn, but three to eight times a day, every single day, every day of the year for five straight years, it’s impossible. So who’s triggering these trades. You have her name.

And I said to her, I said, uh, Ms. Waffle, do you ever remember making a 50 cent donation? And she goes, that’s silly. And I said, well, here’s the printout. You made a 50 cent donation.

She gets, it’s impossible to do. So again, act blue money comes in supposed to be you. They exercise the donation for you, but it’s starting to look like they’ve got your name and mega dollars are coming in.

And you have no idea that this donation is being, uh, made in your name, which is tantamount to, um, identity theft. And it’s usually very elderly people. How, how common is this story in Michigan? Uh, I did one six months ago.

It was, uh, uh, you know, liberal woman, older black woman, retired 77. She made $83,000 in donations. And I said, did you make $83,000 in donations, ma’am? And she, Ms. Ms. Appling, she says, what $2 and 50 cents, maybe $83,000.

I don’t know about that shit. It was like, just, just mind boggling. And now that we’re in the general, I am going to knock on 120 doors.

Good $16 million, $16 million. These people donate it. So when you look at the results yesterday, um, I mean, it is really close.

What does that tell you? The national media is silly. You know, you’re reading more into it. That’s there.

Oh my God. The socialists are taking over. Did that look like a groundswell to you? A 1% difference.

That’s that’s no groundswell. So if you’re really looking in the, the general, where are the independence? And as you know, come on, Glenn, you talk about it all the time. There aren’t really independence.

You, you lean one way or the other. So where are like somebody that wants to shift over from, from MAGA? They’re not shifting over. Uh, El Sayed’s got the far left.

The votes are likely to come from Stevenson’s Stevens group. So if there’s 10,000, 15,000 people to be peeled off, I think it’s coming from the democratic side. So, uh, it’s just not, it’s not as wild as people want to make it out to me.

Can you give me any indication at all there? Cause because the, the, um, Arab and black communities have been at odds for a while. I don’t even know what the beef is, but they’re not, they’re not, you know, necessarily cut from the same cloth. They don’t, they don’t march to the same tune.

Um, and it appears as though it is some of the black community that has, uh, actually, um, swayed some of these elections away from the socialist and away from the Islamists. Do you see that in Michigan? Uh, yeah. Like, first of all, the social democratic socialism you’re talking about, that’s a top down thing.

It’s it’s white educated people who have archeology degrees. It didn’t pan out for them. They’re looking at it like they’re birthright.

They won’t say it, but they’ve been jumped over. It must, it’s not them. It must be something in the system.

That’s where science steps coming. If you go like working class up, he doesn’t do so well, does he? And you’re absolutely right. This is Detroit, baby.

This is Michigan. So in these CNN panels, they talk about a black Brown coalition. That’s just the people that went to the Ivy league.

There’s no black Brown coalition out here. Blacks don’t like Arabs. Arabs don’t like blacks say what you will about white people.

You know, it’s every, there’s no black and Brown prison gang. You know what I’m saying? So every group’s got its lived history and no, I mean, they’re not going for a fancy pants. Let me, let me put this one to you.

Syed’s only had two jobs too, except, you know, taking away. I go to university, get big checks to talk. He’s had two jobs.

One was the Detroit health director. And once was the Wayne County health director of which Detroit is the biggest city. He failed miserably, you know, black people here know them.

They don’t trust them. And yeah, he got wiped out by me. He absolutely got wiped out.

So I don’t know if they go up, go ahead. You, you say he’s a paper doctor. He is a paper dog.

He doesn’t treat patients. He’s done it never has. He never took, um, he never took his board exams.

So never had a practice. Didn’t have a residency. So, you know, it’s an, he’s an egghead doctor.

And he said, I went into it. I, he figured it was better for him to get into the bureaucracy and fix it from there than to actually serve people. So when he was in Detroit, infant mortality went through the roof.

Uh, the, uh, life expectancy in Detroit, in Detroit, Wayne County has collapsed. It’s fallen since COVID by two whole years. So tell me where the success is.

He was in charge of Wayne County, 60%, 60% of the vote went for Haley and Wayne County. Yeah, that’s Wayne County. Again, Wayne County is about 1.7 million people.

Detroit’s about 650,000. So yeah, you know, he got hammered in Detroit for sure. Are they going to show up for the general? I don’t know.

Uh, it’s great to talk to you, Charlie. Just keep up the good work, man. Keep it up.

Keep it up. We don’t, I don’t want to go yet. I’ve got other things to do.

I got to do, and I don’t get a smoke. Go smoke. Where are you right now? Thanks.

Pardon me? Where are you right now? Where am I? Yeah, I’m in the mountain West. I’m in, uh, I’m at my ranch up in, uh, in Idaho, Idaho, where we just shoot people at hamburger places. What you said? I’m a hoe.

All right. I’m leaving. Go smoke.

Check what tobacco is in your cigarette. Uh, we’ll talk to you again. Thanks, Charlie.

Live from downtown Detroit. It’s the no bullshit news hour with my main man, Charlie and Karen. Just a break.

You just double or bullshit double bullshit. Hit me. No BS.

News hour presents what’s bullshit in the news. You want to know what’s bullshit? I’ll tell you what’s bullshit. I think general motors has been tanking for a ride.

General motors is quite possibly the victim of the largest art heist in Detroit’s history. Embarrassed executives have been silent about the alleged fraud till we got wind of it. Now they’ve got some explaining to do to us shareholders.

I’m going to tell you what’s bullshit. Okay. Add issue.

The massive sculpture hanging in the atrium of GM’s new world headquarters in the downtown Hudson building. Nicknamed sunlit straw. The untitled steel and bronze behemoth was created in 1970 by Harry Bertoia, the postmodern Monet of Motown.

I think the sculpture is something like 27 feet and it originally hung in Flint’s Genesee Valley mall until 1980 when it was moved into the basement of Northland mall for temporary storage. Time went by and the piece went forgotten until the city of Southfield discovered it during the demolition of the Northland mall. It all goes back to Southfield and this mall, everything.

Now the piece was covered in crud and corrosion and some of the steel bits were broken off. The city sent the piece to Flatlanders, a Michigan company that specializes in art rehabilitation. As glowing newspaper accounts told it last fall, sunlit straw was in the midst of a meticulous restoration when GM stepped in and purchased the piece from the city of Southfield for a cool million dollars and that’s when the alleged dirt got done.

Instead of gently cleaning the massive steel mobile with toothpicks, soft cloths and distilled water, the owner had it spray painted. That’s according to his former workers. It’s really hard to stomach, said Randy Gilson, a former employee at Flatlanders who chronicled the desecration in a sworn affidavit.

It’s in my bag here. He told me it’s like putting a crayon on the Mona Lisa and now it’s pretty much worthless. And his buddy, Matt McKean, another former Flatlander employee who has an art degree from Adrian college and his senior thesis, he wrote about Pretoria, imagine that.

He also signed a sworn affidavit with accompanying photographs of paint cans and broken bits of steel bar. The owner didn’t have the manpower. So he told me that the owner said, fuck it.

It’ll be hanging 11 floors up. Let’s just spray paint it. McKean said to me, it was quite convincing too.

I feel bad about it, but I’ve got kids to feed and shit to do. Now it was so convincing. In fact, that GM’s phalanx of executives and art experts didn’t notice the bronze patina may have been counterfeit.

They didn’t notice. They didn’t notice it during its restoration. And they didn’t notice it when they unzipped the side of the skyscrapers wall to hoist the whale into place.

Now when reached by telephone, Ken Thompson, founder and owner of Flatlanders flat out denied the forgery accusations. Who you talking to? Thompson wanted to know. I wouldn’t believe a word.

Those guys say Randy and Matt have an ax to grind. They both owe me money. I’ve turned them over to a collection agency.

And if I don’t get that, I’m going to take them to court. And that’s all very interesting. I said, but what about spray paint? GM was on board with everything I did.

Said Thompson. They had a hundred executives come through. No one said a word.

Have you checked with Celia Bertoia? So I checked with Celia Bertoia, director of the Harry Bertoia foundation and inquired about the claims that her father’s legacy had been graffitied. I can’t talk about that. Bertoia said, cryptically, you’ll have to call GM.

It was a strange reply considering the June email she sent to McKean, which read the owners were glad to know, although not glad about the whole thing. Bertoia wrote at this time, they’re not ready to take any action as it would involve a lot of expense and be somewhat humiliating. Perhaps in this case, what the public doesn’t know won’t hurt them.

Well, now, you know, public, a spokesman for General Motors confirmed that the company is aware that the Bertoia masterpiece has been mangled and manhandled. The company is considering its next steps. Now, when informed of this, Ken Thompson, the conservator of Flatlanders had an epiphany.

Yeah, it was sprayed. Thompson said on second thought, but was it spray painted? No, it was a high gloss amber lacquer. It was so rusted that we had to basically disguise the rust.

Nobody had a problem with it. It didn’t do anything to harm its value. I mean, what’s the big deal here? It’s ridiculous.

What a metaphor. Oh, OK, you want to you guys, you want to see it? Yeah. Yeah.

Roll that text, James, New World headquarters. OK, you’ve been in it. No, you’re not allowed to be in it because you’re the public.

What? Yeah. OK, they just found a long lost 27 foot genius piece of artwork at the bottom of the Northland Mall. Harry Bertoia, you ever heard of him? No.

OK, Jim paid a million dollars for it and to restore it. We restored it. Guess how they restored it.

Oh, with spray paint. Oh, I can’t believe it. Oh, my God.

I tried calling Jim. I can’t get through. So I thought we’d come to corporate headquarters here in downtown Detroit.

Spray painting a work of genius is a possible film here. Bertoia, I know you would have to have like a contact. Unfortunately, it’s not a public space, so no public.

Correct. But we paid for it. Anyway, can we leave these? These are an affidavit.

Tell them what those are. Yeah. So we were supposed to restore that sculpture to the specifications of the Bertoia Foundation, but instead we spray painted it.

So we just wanted to let Jim know that it might be worthless. I wouldn’t be able to pass that information along. We are just security for the building.

Oh, well, this has nothing to do with you then. OK, see you. We actually don’t allow failure.

And we’ll be out there if you can send security. Well, thank you very much. Tell me, Randy, really, why’d you do it? We were forced to.

I mean, we were instructed by our boss. One of my kids to eat. That’s what I had to do.

Why are you coming out now? Guilt. When I saw it installed and saw the crap that they did, it’s too much. We contacted the Bertoia Foundation to try and get something done.

They contacted GM. GM said, oh, we’re not going to do anything because of the embarrassment. We’ve got a little email with Mr. Toya herself saying what the public doesn’t know won’t hurt them.

So let that be what it may. Now, I talked to your former boss and I don’t know. This is either the greatest art heist in Detroit history or the worst breakup I’ve ever heard, because he told me you guys don’t want money.

So this is your way of getting back at him for him asking for his money to pay back. Yeah, I mean, that’s silly. He was an employer.

He’s never denied spray painting it. He’s never denied it on the voicemail that I have. Hey, Randy, it’s Ken.

It’d be nice if you talked to me instead of sticking a two bit reporter on me with some bullshit story. What do you call me? Two bit reporter. Accurate.

You know, I’m a shareholder. One share of General Motors. So if I paid a million dollars collectively for an artwork that’s worthless, isn’t GM on the hook to recoup my money? As a stockholder, absolutely.

They should be. Got me thinking. Honestly, what? Everywhere you go, fine works of art defaced.

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C-U-R-E, Cure.com. Now, what are we doing now? We doing politics? Yeah. I mean, all of a sudden, Jason Rowe, political hitman, former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party. From coast to coast, this man works politics, helping us put it in perspective.

Put put on the Harry Carey glasses over there on the cover. I was I was up late. My friends call him my Rachel Maddow.

You’re transitioning. Yeah, Rachel Maddow. Yeah, I did.

My daughter and I were up till two just discussing El Sayed, Israel, everything. And yeah, we were watching the live stream of you on WDIV. She was making fun of us.

Oh, he’s my daughter said she looks like Mama. She didn’t. I’m just fucking.

OK, so it was just called. Go ahead. Breaking news.

Go on. Associated Press. Yeah, let’s get the breaking news.

Yeah, I remember. God, he’s really fucking up today. There we go.

Yeah. Jason Rowe, what’s the breaking news? Associated Press has called the race for Abdul El Sayed. And Haley Stevens put out a statement that she called and conceded.

OK, so basically, by the way, Gretchen Whitmer just finally endorsed the entire Democratic ticket for the first time. She’s endorsed Jocelyn Benson. Think about that.

She’s the vice chairman of the Democratic Governors Association and never fucking endorsed Benson this entire race and then does it with this blanket. I endorse all the candidates. Yeah, it’s up to that.

I oh, I’m not going to say who it was, but, you know, white woman of a certain age, certain education, certain, you know. Profession. I fucking hate Gretchen Whitmer’s guts now.

I was like, why? And it’s just a litany of stuff, isn’t it? It’s like laughing at people. We’re going to ram data centers down their throat, turning your back on yourself on line five, vetoing those bills. All those bills.

Exactly. And I’m and I’m like, I hate hate and guts is a little strong for me. But I’m like, I tried to tell you, like I voted for Whitmer the first time.

You know, I try to tell you this is a phony like I still give a shit about people in the nursing home. We’re never going to get that answer ever. OK, so now we got so I had one by about what? Fourteen thousand.

Fourteen thousand votes are still a few to be counted yet. And it was a pretty big turnout for a primary. One point five million Democratic voters.

So what is that about? Four hundred and fifty thousand more than Republican turnout. So the Republicans still had a million to. Yeah, they did.

And, you know, there’s going to be people that read in. I mean, there’s an enthusiasm gap. There’s no doubt.

But there wasn’t really anything to turn out for on the Republican side. Yeah. If you wanted to do your civic duty, you went and voted.

The Democrats had something to turn out for. There was a civil war going on in their party. There’s an exciting new candidate, Abdul Sayed, that motivated a lot of people that probably weren’t normal primary voters.

And I think there’s a fight going on for the soul of the Democratic Party right now and nowhere in the country is that manifesting itself more than what we just witnessed in the Senate primary here. What do you make about the razor thin margin here is is is there a groundswell like, OK, so it is the nominee now. How might this translate? OK, because Haley Stevens has been set up to be viewed as the establishment candidate, et cetera, et cetera.

If it was that close and as I always say, I don’t I don’t think there’s any such thing as a real independent. You lean one way or the other. Who has a better chance of siphoning off the other side? Like this, I had to have more of a chance of getting the MAGA vote.

Or does Rogers, Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee have more chance of pulling some Haley Stevens’s people? I definitely I think Rogers has an opportunity, not so much the primary voters, because those are going to be your most partisan Democrats or Republicans. I think it’s going to be those moderate Democrats in the general election that probably sat out this or maybe they voted for Stevens. I think I think Rogers has a shot at them.

I think there’s some constituency groups like the Jewish community, which historically has been very democratic. It’s not a not a nice place to be if you’re a Jewish Democrat in the Democratic Party. I mean.

You just heard last week, Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is Jewish, who said that she does not feel safe going to the Michigan Democratic Party convention because of the chaos at their convention a couple months ago. There is an anti-Semitism problem within the Democratic Party and I think Abdul El-Sayed is the avatar for that anti-Semitism problem. So I think there’s going to be a lot of voters from the Jewish community, a lot of donors nationally in the next election.

I also think, and I think it’s borne out in what happened in this primary, when you get up into the northern part of the state, El-Sayed underperformed. I’m not going to call these people xenophobes, but we live in metro Detroit and so this is a very diverse part of the state. It ain’t so diverse up north and so I think someone like Abdul El-Sayed, who is Muslim, might be a little too exotic for some of those voters up there.

I think Roger is a more traditional Republican, 14 years in Congress, chairman of the Intel Committee, is probably going to feel like a safe Republican that they can support. It’s also interesting, I mean, he’s hanging out at pool parties with a lot of fucking hubris in that campaign. I mean, that dude spent the last week acting like he won the damn nomination and already predicting victory over Rogers.

To squeak it out like that should humble him a little bit. I don’t think he has a ton of humility in him. I’ve said to a lot of people over the last few weeks, this bro-y, testosterone-fueled image that he’s cultivated, which Democrats have been trying to do since the 24 election and fell on their face with Graham Platner in Maine, embracing a guy who should have never been embraced.

It might play well in the Democratic primary, but this is the United States Senate and I still think voters expect senators to be statesmen, to be adults, to have a certain level of decorum, and I don’t think this confrontational, bro-y, hip version of a candidate for U.S. Senate is going to play well in a general election, especially with somebody with the credentials that Mike Rogers has. He does have credentials, but he’s been Casper the friendly ghost. You haven’t seen him anywhere.

I know his people will say, oh, no, no, you haven’t, but you didn’t have to. He just rope-a-doped. This was a time to hold their coats and not get in the way, and they did what they needed to do.

They shredded each other and they got 90 days to figure out a way to unify. Now, they can unify around their hatred of Donald Trump, but I think we’re going to hear a lot more about Abdul El-Sayed in the general election than we did in the primary, and a lot, a lot more, because some of these Democrats weren’t going to trot that stuff out in a Democratic primary, but you can guarantee the Republicans in the form of the Senate Leadership Fund and the National Republican Senatorial Committee are probably sitting on tweets and podcasts and things that he’s said and done, so I think he’s, the next few weeks, you’re going to see what we call an op-o-dump of all the shit about him and try to define him very early for the general electorate. See, and the thing, like, you know, Mike Rogers is well-vetted publicly because he ran for Senate against Sloch, and so I don’t think you see an 11th hour op-o-dump on him.

No, no. And listen, I mean, I do think politics have changed. I don’t think attack ads worked, work like they once did, and I think people are kind of, have moved past it.

I mean, that’s why we keep nominating deeply flawed people for public life that 10 years ago we wouldn’t even have considered. You know, these would have been disqualifying things said, behaviors, whatever. So I don’t think attack ads just unto themselves, but, you know, what I firmly believe is with Al-Sayed on the ticket, with Jocelyn Benson as the nominee for governor, with Ellie Savitt, the, you know, George Soros-backed prosecutor for attorney general, with Garland Gilchrist, the socialist-aligned candidate for secretary of state, compared to a very normal, very qualified ticket on the Republican side, John James, Mike Rogers, Doug Lloyd, and Anthony Forlini, the contrast between the two statewide slates in Michigan has got to be as stark as anything we’ve ever seen, and I think they’ve nominated the most progressive slate of Democrats in our history and probably the most progressive slate in the country.

And this state is still purple, but it leans red. I mean, it was only in the last couple years that Democrats have reasserted themselves, but for a long time we controlled just about everything in this state. Well, the Democrats have one really good thing going for them is people dislike Donald Trump.

So this, this isn’t, it’s not Sayed versus Rogers, it’s Sayed versus Trump. Yeah. Can I ask a question regarding that? Because last time, Rogers was on the ballot, with Trump on the ballot and lost.

So how does he make that up with him being off the ballot? Because you don’t have, do you have those excited Trump voters who will go out to vote for a senator? There’s still some factors to keep in mind. That’s a good question. Thank you.

There’s some factors to keep in mind with two years ago. Mike had a primary, Alyssa Slotkin didn’t, and Sandy Pensler didn’t drop out until a month before the primary, and Mike was broke. He got an influx of money from Washington after Labor Day.

So he had about two months to run a campaign. Slotkin had been running her campaign for 18 months. She was up on TV a year and a half before the general election doing bio ads.

She outspent Mike 52 million to 13 million. That is a four to one spending advantage. You level up that money.

He lost by 19,000 votes, three tenths of one percentage point. You even give him one more month or 10 million more dollars, you probably have a different outcome in that race. I also think what was happening in Dearborn, Dearborn Heights and Hamtramck is unique.

You saw Muslim voters, Arab voters voting for Trump and him winning in those areas, things that we hadn’t seen before. That stuff doesn’t necessarily translate to legislative candidates. So he’s running for the U.S. Senate.

Would we see something similar to that? Because I live in an area with a lot of Jewish Democrats, a lot of independent Jewish people, and so much was made in the primary of all this AIPAC money. He attacked her for that. Do they sit out and not vote if they’re Democrats and they’re very pro-Israel or do they cross? I think they cross because I think the hostility to Israel and frankly towards Jews in America is so bad that I don’t know how as a one, you stay in that party.

I mean, that’s one question. But Abdul El-Sayed, I mean, this guy has his rhetoric has been pretty heated. He’s run around with people like Hassan Piker who’s on the 25th anniversary year of 9-11.

That will come into play. Now, it’s also going to be kind of a wash because you end up there’s about one hundred thousand Jewish Americans that vote and there’s about one hundred thousand Arab Americans that vote. So that’s going to be a kind of a wash.

I can just jump over that point. Thanks for making it. It is a wash.

Like it’s Dearborn is about automobiles. Dearborn went for Trump. It’s you know, it’s like some change, man, in my pocket.

I need some change. But there’s some cultural stuff, too, in the Middle Eastern world. You know, they like strongmen.

You know, I mean, look at, you know, when they’re allowed to vote democratically, they tend to choose. But even when they live in dictatorships, you spend any time with anyone that lives in the Middle East. They kind of believe they need a strongman, even if they don’t like him to govern them.

And Trump was a strongman. I also think Kamala Harris left a vacuum there when the publisher of the Arab American Times, Osama Sablani, came out and said, you know, Trump and Harris both suck. We’re sitting out.

There was a vacuum. I think he’s, you know, one of the most influential. Sounds like they did great news.

But Trump, what did Trump do right after that? Went to the community, went to a Lebanese bakery. You know, he pushed in and said, I want your vote. And it was a sign of respect.

And I think it was reciprocated. Kamala Harris, I think, kind of phoned it in when it came to the Arab community and everything else. OK, it’s going to be interesting.

Let’s look at. OK, how about the Michigan 10th Congressional District? Mike Bouchard, son of the sheriff and Eric Chung, son of immigrants. Chung lost.

It’s what’s the woman’s name? No kidding. Christina Heinz. Christina Heinz got the Democrat nomination.

Interesting. So what do you make of that, then? Listen, it’s a swing. Yeah, it’s a swing seat.

It’s bounced back and forth. But I think culturally it’s much more conservative than what the performance is. You know, people are very nervous about it for Republicans holding.

It’s the John James seat. It was a competitive seat. The first time he ran in it, he outspent his opponent seven million to one million and only won by six tenths of a percentage point.

He did win by a couple percentage points in the next election. So people are nervous about it. I’m not as nervous.

I think that is a far more conservative seat than its reputation. But that is going to end up being probably a 40 million dollar race in the 10th District. Put that in perspective.

Is that a lot for a congressional race? I mean, that’s a huge amount of money. Tom Barrett in Michigan seven, he’s running for reelection in both of his races in twenty twenty two against Alyssa Slotkin and against her to tell in twenty twenty four, both times 40 million dollars that put him in the top three most expensive races in the country. That’s 60 percent the Lansing media market, which is very cheap.

The 10th District is 100 percent in the Detroit media market, which is very expensive. And that’s going to drive up the cost to all the super PACs and to the candidate campaigns. And OK, forget about coattails that, you know, Syed and Benson, we’ll get to that as it gets closer.

So full disclosure, you work politically with Tom Barrett up there in the seventh. And so he had a walk in in William Lawrence. William Lawrence of the Democratic side, which is kind of surprising because Tom was running against and there goes all my research that I did all on my own.

The the Biden’s ambassador to Ukraine. OK, wherever this woman went, bombs started falling. OK, beat her, beat the guy that was carrying the nuclear football, Matt Mosdam.

And who’s who’s William Lawrence? We thought William Lawrence was going to win this a year ago. You got two carpetbaggers that Washington recruited. Bring who you mentioned, who’s never lived in the seventh congressional district.

She’s from Grand Rapids. She has not lived in the state in 30 years. She moves to Lansing and six months later announces for Congress.

She was the the the dream candidate for the Dems. They thought they had their person. Then Alyssa Slotkin, who held this seat for six years, recruits Matt Mazda Mazda to come in.

He lives in Ann Arbor. He doesn’t even live in the damn district. And then she endorsed him a couple of weeks out.

So that puts Slotkin at odds with the Democratic establishment. Brink had most of the endorsements, but they’re both carpetbaggers with zero history in the seventh district. Now, William Lawrence is an earnest person, a good man.

He grew up in East Lansing. He’s a born and raised guy from the community. He’s a professional, progressive grassroots organizer.

He knows every progressive activist in the region. He’s been doing this for a long time. And we thought that this is a guy that knows where the bodies are buried, knows how to organize, knows how to mobilize voters.

And he ran a really sophisticated operation. He and Al Sayed cross-endorsed each other. And when we were looking at exit polling last night, he was taking about 80 percent of the Al Sayed vote.

And so we were pretty sure he was going to come through. And he won pretty handily. He got over 40 percent of the vote.

Slotkin’s candidate, and I’m a little bit tired of she’s, you know, a presidential candidate, my ass. She’s most overrated politician in America. Her candidate came in third.

Coattails. Yeah, coattails. Okay.

Oh, so people try to run away from the tag democratic socialist, right? You know, Al Sayed, I’m a capitalist. Who knows what’s wrong with capitalism? Which, ah, nice turn. Bullshit.

Well, that’s what I, that’s what I am. Like, you know, what we’re seeing today when my nephew calls me and he’s young professional, he’s good. He’s like, socialism’s on its way.

And I’m like, they’ll probably, you’ll be the first one in the, in the cattle car on the way to the Gulag. And he goes, oh, propaganda. I go, no, it’s just the joke, dude.

But give up your career, give up finance because or go buy a fucking history book. Yeah. Show me where socialism worked.

Well, you know, people try this one, Google it with some sophistication. I mean, basically do some research. Where are the two truly socialistic societies in the world? There’s only two Cuba, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea.

So, you know, that’s intelligent to run away from it, even though that’s where we’re, that’s a calculated decision to abandon the, the, the title that socialist, because he doesn’t want to dig out from under that. So he’s saying something and you can get away with that shit in a congressional seat. You can’t in a statewide and you can’t for us Senate.

And I think that’s why he made that decision to not let that label stick to him. But guess what? The DSA, they got their operatives out there backing him. He’s campaigning with, he’s endorsed by socialists.

There’s a reason he just made a decision. I’m not going to call myself a socialist because that’s not helpful in my campaign bullshit on his capitalism, though. He’s behaved capitalistically, which most, uh, hypocritical rich socialists do.

You know, I don’t know. He made $700,000 last year and you won’t tell us how podcasting is a good part. Yeah, sure.

Okay. So that’s interesting. So how much do you make? He’s making 700 podcasts.

There’s no way. Mark, you’re getting fucked over here. And I look, man, he’s got 3 million.

He’s got 3 million. No, you don’t. Look, I’ve been doing this 30 years.

I’ve been around the country. I had a discovery show. You know, you don’t get 3 million like that.

Something’s going on with bots and algorithms and who, who fanned that fire? I just, it does know who’s the most famous socialist in the country. Bernie Sanders, this fucking guy’s worth millions and has three homes. Does that sound very socialist to you? Let me give you a little backdrop with Bernie here, which is, yeah, I was drawn to the light of Bernie 16 entry.

Let’s listen to this guy. Right. But then we got Bernie nomics during Biden because Bernie was the chairman of the Senate budget committee.

Okay. Now it’s time to make some real changes. Some structural changes didn’t do it.

We printed money and gave it out, which caused rampant inflation. Oh, like this doesn’t like places like Cuba have done. Yes, it doesn’t work.

So if you, I don’t want to blow up the system. The system works. It’s just corrupt.

You know, you, you got to take the corporations out of it. Remember when we undid the banking laws, glass Stiegel, and then we had world financial collapse, the big three pushing for NAFTA. So they make profit and our buildings can burn down.

Yeah. Uh, nobody in Wall Street went to prison for anything. The healthcare industry, the insurance industry, it’s a mess.

There’s more people underinsured since Obamacare than before Obamacare. So you want to double down on that? That’s not a real answer to anything. Obamacare was a failure.

It was supposed to save taxpayers money. Yes. Uh, that’s why we had subsidies that fortunately expired at the end of the year.

Um, but, uh, you know, more layers of government and the private sector are not the solution, but we do need more transparency. Um, and we need politicians that just don’t do the bidding of the corporations. And that’s been the big problem in both parties.

And you know, like the insurance companies, all you do is, uh, jack up premiums and, uh, jack up deductibles and deny people coverage when they need it and you pocket it. So anyway, so the old, this one is in, uh, the 13th congressional. The only guy is actually calling himself a democratic socialist.

Donovan McKinney beats Sri Tanaharan. A lot closer than, than people thought it would be. You thought Sri was going to get blown out? Well, you know, the problem is before Sri has faced multiple black Democrats in a black Democrat congressional seat and they’ve split the black vote and Sri, a very wealthy man has outspent all of them combined and survived.

And he’s had pretty significant funding from AIPAC, uh, as well. Um, but this was a race in which it was one black candidate, Donovan McKinney, who’s a state legislator. Um, and so, you know, on the numbers, you’d think that Donovan should have won by a pretty good margin.

And when numbers are coming in last night, he started out with a pretty healthy lead, but that got very close. And the last time, I mean, I know he has declared the winner. Last time I looked at the numbers, he had about a three point lead.

Yeah. Well, I mean, in that district is a zombie. It’s got East side of Detroit, the gross points and down river.

So you may, it’s not always just about, you know, Donovan McKinney is now for all intents and purposes, a Congressman and will be, unless he does something stupid. Yeah. It’s he’s the Congressman for the gross points, a democratic socialist.

Do you think, I don’t know if it’s so much, you know, the black vote and splitting it. It could, I think it was more because of the Beagles trees. Beagles.

Hey, I’ll tell you what, man, I’ll tell you right now, people that care about animal rights vote based on animal rights. And when they find out that you torture animals, they don’t forget that. Or the fact that he couldn’t name any of the cities he represented when he talked to them.

Don’t forget about that. Or that he’s spending taxpayer money on billboards and TV ads. Yeah.

Yeah. There’s all that. Oh man, these guys are given about a 1.4, 1.5 million dollar budget per year for all of their governmental responsibilities.

That’s office. That’s staff. That’s travel.

That’s, you know, communications with your district. And this dude has barely any staff and has put all of that money. Majority of that majority of his budget is spent on advertising him in his district.

Shree working for you. What’s going on, brother? Walks in late to the show. Yeah, it’s going to be interesting, man.

It’s just all about people going to get off their ass and vote. Yeah, that’s what it is at this point. All right.

So I just want to go out with this. One of my all time favorite politicians, Martha Reeves in the news. She’s singing again.

Uh, this one’s at a, what a, uh, it’s at the worst ever women’s professional baseball league, which I mean, didn’t they have one during world war two? Yeah. Okay. So it’s a reboot, I suppose.

I remember Madonna in the movie Rosie O’Donnell. Yeah. The good thing is, is now a, because she messed this anthem up.

We know that there’s a professional baseball league. Cause I had no idea. Yeah, it did its job.

Yeah, here it is. Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming. Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight.

O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming. And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Oh, say does that star spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

And she knew the words. Now here’s what upsets me again. I’ve already been here and done that.

In fact, she was on my old program when I was working for the Detroit news called hold the onions. Uh, Monica Conyers was on her way to prison. Uh, Martha’s running for reelection.

And I asked her, are you angry or upset that the synagogue officials didn’t bribe you to, to which she got all really pissed off. And I, her body man, you know, her security, I like to call him slick Rick. Cause he had gold teeth and a tattoo on his face and he’s starting to walk into the set.

And I look up, I go, what? You know, my name. Cause I want him to jump over the table. You know what I mean? Like the TV, good TV, but also at this time, Michael Jackson had died.

So I invited Martha in between the book and the show. If she, we could do a couple of classics, a couple of Michael tunes and playing the Casio in the background is Steve Fishman. Probably the most prominent defense.

It’s criminal defense attorney in the Midwest, huge liberal. Yeah. And he used to play in a Motown band.

And I always said to Steve, man, dude, you were such a great lawyer. You’d probably win more cases if your clients were actually innocent. So here’s Martha.

Oh, geez. A decade ago. This, this is credited with ending her political career.

Is this to be, this is the last, this is taking us out. I have them both. This is the, this is the first one.

We’ll jump at the end of it. It’s not that long. It’s worth it.

Which, which song is this? I’ll be there. I’ll be there. Okay.

Let’s let’s hear it. Just call my name. Don’t you know, baby.

Yeah, I’ll be there. I’ll be there. I’ll be there.

I couldn’t believe what was happening. I pulled this shit off. Here it comes.

I think the end one was like, she just jumped up. I’m sure she wasn’t lip syncing back in the day. Thank you.

All right. Well, I know you got a tea time. I got a tea time.

Republicans, bro. All right. Thanks for being here, man.

God bless America. Vote and vote often. Bye.