Abdul El-Sayed’s Progressive Policy Prescription | The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart

How long has this process been for you? Believe it or not, we kicked off in April of 2025. Oh, for God's sakes. Let me get a pen. Hold on. Let me start doing the calculations here. I'm 14 days left. What does the final run-up feel like? Do you feel present in this? Are you just sort of a buoy in an ocean being dragged through? What's the feeling? I mean, honestly, the day-to-day is just you're constantly being moved from one thing to another, but you're constantly being greeted, mainly by people who are really excited about what they are part of. And I'll be honest with you, my family immigrated from a place where there is no democracy.

There's no chance to run for office. Did you come from Egypt? Yeah, my family immigrated from Egypt. And there is no democracy. There's no running for office. And I ran before in 2018. And when it was all over, I realized I really love this work, but it's not the kind of work you can just do. And for eight years, I didn't get the opportunity to do it. I was working in public health, doing other work that I loved. But, you know, I've been doing this for 18 months. And right now with 14 days left, I'm just so grateful to have been able to do this. And I want to do it the best I can for the next 14 days.

And at its best, what you're doing is you're having a conversation about who we are and who we want to be and what that means. future we want to build. And it's a, it's a real, it's a real privilege and a moment of a lot of gratitude, honestly. And I don't know how it's all going to end up on election day, but I'm honored that, you know, this many people have been so inspired by what we're doing and how we're doing it. And I try to live in that, right. Just a, just a space of gratitude for the, for the ability to do it. Cause I don't take it for granted action and of history. I get to be born in the United States. I get to participate in democracy at all. I get to participate in democracy in the greatest country in the history of the world. Like I'm just really grateful. So, um, you know, as tiring as it gets and as. Are you resigning, sir? That sounds like, no, you're ready to rock this thing.

You know, you are, but like, you know, there's a moment when you're, when you think about it, like a race, like you see the checkered flag and you're racing as hard as you can and, and you don't know how it's all going to end up. And you're focused, of course, on, on talking to every last person. But the thing about democracy is like, we focus on the competition of the thing, but it's a competition. It really is about trying to reach to people and talk about what they need in their lives and what you can do to deliver that. Like, that's a real privilege. And, you know, I trained in medicine and the thing I love about, about medicine, you know, in the moments, people will give you the worst information about, about their life on the, on the worst day of their life, because they think you can help. And you're out there with armed with the information you have and knowledge and your empathy and your ear and the ability to like be that person who people trust with that to try to do something about it, that's a gift. And politics is the same way when you let it be. And so I just take this as the same kind of work on a larger platform and at a larger scale. And so at its best, you're really locking in on the challenges people face and what we can

do to solve them together. And that's what I try to stay locked in on. So what are you, you know, as you go here, what have been the best environments? Because I'm always curious, You know, there's a wide array of events that people do when they're campaigning, and then there's also, obviously, the more kind of conflict-oriented interactions that you have with people that might disagree with you or with the candidate that you're running against.

So now you're literally doing town halls with people in Michigan and people are like, what about these agentics that are going into hugging face and doing, yeah, no, I can imagine. It's terrifying. No, you'd be in the middle of Michigan. People are like, hey, recursive self-improvement, go. And you're like, okay. Yeah. How long is it going to be before it's recursive and then it can self-improve and then the hugging face is going to, yeah, it's terrifying. Like I don't want my face hugged. Like I want my face caressed, but not hugged. Now, how do you make changes? You know, is the process of running for office, is it the kind of thing that you have to make adjustments then to the policy prescriptions that you're making?

Like, how does this all come together? Because, you know, I imagine the schedule is so busy and so much of it is reactive to whatever they think the moments are. How are you able to take those stories and then turn them into what look like affirmative policy choices that you could make? Because I imagine that changes the more you hear. Well, it changes how you talk about it. But a lot of times, I mean, this is the thing, right? It's like, this is why the parallel of the medicine works so well. People will tell you, oh, I've got this pain. And you're like, oh, okay. Based on my knowledge of anatomy and physiology and pathophysiology, what might be causing that pain?

and you have sort of a differential diagnosis. And then there's, you know, exams that you do to try to figure out which of the diagnoses or which of several it is. So you're triaging it as a political candidate, you're kind of triaging a society of what's the most urgent care needed. Exactly. And then the policy prescription though is like, how do you, you know, how do you treat appendicitis? Well, there's a treatment for appendicitis. It's appendectomy, right? And you want to be able to demonstrate to somebody, Hey, look, like I, this is the manifestation of this particular societal illness that you are feeling. Here is the solution set based on an understanding of public policy that we think can address it. Now, the hard part about it is like, you know, there is no one set decision. We have to go and work that decision through the political process. And the tough part about it is like, this is where the analogy crumbles. It's like, there are like, like a set of like Wario doctors out there, namely MAGA.

You're going to go, you're going to go. Mario Kart on this? You're going, you're running for Senate and you're going Mario Kart on me? All right. But you, but you, you know what I'm talking about, right? You're like, of course. Exactly. So, I mean, but this is the, this is the thing about it is that I think too often we don't campaign like, like most campaigns because I, I, you know, I've done the work of listening. I've been out there for 18 months. I mean, in the early days, we were really listening before we had proposed, you know, all of the specifics around all of our policy solutions. As you put it together. And so you hear it and then you sort of map it to the policy. And then from there, you're talking about the policy that you need to pass. But the thing about me, I think most people have probably interacted with our campaign at some point on something, TikTok reels, you saw me on getting a colonoscopy on CNN or something. Wait, did you really get a colonoscopy on CNN or is that a joke? It's more like a political colonoscopy on CNN. Oh, okay. Fair enough. All right. There we go. A metaphor. It's a metaphor. A metaphorical colonoscopy. All right.

But the thing is, I just say the same thing because I don't take money from corporations. I'm not out here trying to triangulate between what my donors and what my, what my, um, voters think I'm, I'm here for voters. I want to work for working people. And so maybe it makes it easier for me because at the end of the day, I don't have to worry about like, uh, is this thing that I said going to piss off some donor over there, some special interest, like, you know, special interest, they are dead set to make sure to beat me. They've spent a historic, uh, amount of money to do so. But in my case, I'm like, look, the only thing I got is I'm going to tell you what I think.

I'm going to say it everywhere. I'm going to say it the best I can. And, you know, God willing, people support me. And if they don't, that's okay. But I'd rather not be in the United States Senate out here without the ability to actually solve the problem because I've lied through my teeth all the way up. yo these guys i i wish this thing exploded i wish this was the thing that everybody talked about about news ground news it compares coverage on stories across news outlets uh compares them across international coverage we're not getting the information that the world is necessarily getting. We live in a bit of a kind of a, I don't know what you would call it. I guess you would say bubble would be the way you call it. So it helps you differentiate how the world is seeing the events in this country, how we are seeing it, how we're seeing the events in the world. It's remarkable. It compares how each outlet frames the same story and allows you to get the context to help you understand your own thoughts, your own conclusions about the information that is being fed to you, and it is being fed to you purposefully.

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as folks in public health talk about it to try to understand why the system is so broken and how to fix it? And then the other thing about it is, you know, my whole life, all of my mentors had told me I'm going to run for office. I'm like, that's some crazy bullshit. Did they really? I mean, so my college graduation, I was like, I was the valedictorian in my class at Michigan and I got to give the student commencement speech, which was a real. All right. There's no, now there's no need to go valedictorian. No need to go valedictorian on me. That's hurtful. That's just hurtful. But look, I'll tell you this. I'm a child of immigrants, okay? So I'm here feeling pretty good about myself. And my parents make it very clear. They're like, we're not going to hear you. We're going to hear Bill Clinton, who is the actual speaker. Oh, Bill Clinton was the speaker

at your graduation? Yes. So I give my speech. President Clinton gives his speech. He like praises me in his speech with real honor. Gets my dad to clap for me for the first time. I didn't even see it he was in the audience my parents told me like my my uh siblings told me about it afterwards but after the speech president clinton comes up to me he's like son you know why you go to medical school which is not a question people ask you when you go to medical school i'm like uh brown and muslims what we do um but also i love people i love science i want to serve and he said that's great but you got a gift for communicating and maybe someday you run for office i was like really nice of you say i've got an 11 letter first name got sounds that come out of parts of people's throats most people don't know they have people like me don't get to run for office and it's funny because he thought about it for a second and then he chuckled and walked away this was 2007 right 2008 president barack hussein obama right runs and wins is that was was obama's victory a clarion call for you was it oh wait a second if if that name can make it because it's clearly something you had a little bit of an interest in was that was that the moment

that you thought it becomes a possibility honestly it was 2004 watching him give that dnc speech really though we're we're not we're not blue we're not red we're purple yeah and but it was it was also just like i'd never seen politics look like him or sound like him and implicitly look like me at all right and he just i mean i was i was doing dishes i literally i like stopped when he started to give that speech and i was like watching you know how you have the tv on i was doing dishes in my parents' house. And I just stopped. Like suds are falling from my hands. I'm just watching this man give this speech. And then when he won in 2008, when he ran, right, the way he ran when he won in 2008, I still didn't expect that I was ever going to run for office. You know, at that point I was on my way to Oxford to do a PhD.

I was in medical school when he, um, so you validate tournaments and then you're on your way to Oxford to do a PHA. You're annoying me now. Now I'm annoyed. Listen, man, look, look, look, I'm just, I'm just a Brown kid who's a child of immigrants with a gigantic chip on my shoulder who, who, who had to prove it. I just, I just, I studied way too much in my life. Um, but, uh, yeah, look, I mean, and I'm really grateful. Like I, I, I'm grateful that he was a president of my twenties, but I still didn't think it was the right thing for me. I wanted to be a physician scientist. I thought I was going to be a neurosurgeon. My dad still annoying me, annoyingly reminds me, he's like, Hey, you could have been a surgeon. I'm like, I could have been a surgeon. Oh, wow. Are you surprised Abdul? Cause it's, you know, the way you describe the mechanism of like the immigrant experience and why, cause I hear this a lot in first generation, second generation immigrant families. And my parents had that experience, uh, that the expectation was this isn't about you. This is about the sacrifice that we made to get you here and you will not squander that opportunity, young man. You know, there's a real pressure

that is put on those children of, you know, first generation, second generation to not squander the sacrifice to get to this place of opportunity. I think that's part of it. And I'll crystallize it for you. Like in the mechanism day to day, I love playing sports, right? Um, played football, wrestle, play lacrosse. Like, but my dad's rule is no, a no play. You know, if you don't get straight A's, like if you get a single B, you don't play. You sit. Wow. Yeah. You will not play. I'll pull you from the team. I would not have played. Yeah. I really enjoyed playing. So like for me, I was like, all right. Um, but the other part of it was this, like in my,

It's the reason I'm running now. And so a lot of folks will look at me and they say, oh, well, that guy's got like a chip on his shoulder and doesn't back down. Like I don't back down because I also know that like, what are you going to take from me? Honestly, like I had a better life than most of my cousins anyway. What do you want to take from me? You know, like I don't have to be a United States Senator, but I do not want to be a United States Senator who plays this game to get to where everybody thinks you actually have some power only to be hamstrung to do the thing with power that you were supposed to do in the first place. So I'm going to tell you what I think. And if I don't win this seat, okay, but I'm not going to lie to you. And I'm not going to tell you that I I'm okay with a certain series of bipartisan consensus that have been manufactured by a few folks with a lot of money. I'm not okay with that. And when you see that, the, you know,

go and kill other kids when we should be spending on schools and health care for our own kids? It doesn't make any sense.

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Terms and conditions may apply. your opponent mike rogers holds a special place of disdain in in my life you and me both uh well i'll i'll tell you why and it goes along with this it's this paper patriotism of guys that claim the mantle of i love the troops i respect the never forget the heroes of 9-11 this guy mike Rogers was a real pain in our ass in 2010. We were trying to get the Zadroga Act, which was for 9-11 first responders and their healthcare through Congress. And he was a particularly obstinate, oh, that's just a New York problem. He voted against it all while talking about how much he respects and the heroes of 9-11 and I'm a patriot and all that. And it was all bullshit and i cannot tell you he holds a special place along with like senator mike lee the same kind of bullshit of never forget the heroes of 9-11 and this country was attacked we got to stand up and we're the patriots and we're the patriotic party and he stood in the way of these uh individuals that he called heroes getting the health care that they needed based on the selfless heroism that they displayed down and I love. So I, and I apologize for the rant on that, but man, does that hold a special contemptuous place in my heart for individuals like that,

truly. And John, I got it. I got to credit you for your incredible activism in standing for folks. Oh, no credit to me. Believe me, it was all these other guys, but I'm telling you, there are a lot of folks, but you helped lead the fight. He was a, he was a problem in that fight. I mean, this is who he is though. He, he lacks the moral ability to hold himself accountable for his own positions. And so he can both lie to you and say that he is a real patriot and he would never, ever, ever fail our first responders. And then literally look at a first responder who had part of a limb amputated because of his heroism on 9-11 and tell them that I'm actually going to actively vote against your health care because it's a New York problem.

No, that's John. The individual you're talking about, his name is John Feel, and he runs a foundation for first responders in New York. And he was the guy who's, you know, kind of heroic efforts push this thing through to its limits. So, yeah, I am very familiar with your opponent. And boy, do I hope that. And it's interesting to me because so much of the campaign, if we're being honest, you know, you're talking a lot about your background and how it informed your desire for public service. they're talking about your background and how it informs your dual loyalties to america how so it's i find it such an interesting uh dichotomy that as you tell your personal story it really forms what your desire for public service is and right now it's being utilized We'll talk about, you know, you were at a town hall and this young Tommy, we'll call him, I believe his name was Tommy, asked you to disavow the Muslim Brotherhood. Now, this guy, Tommy, apparently turned out to be a Republican operative who worked for Josh Hawley, Senator Josh Hawley.

But what does it say that your opponent is not interested in what part of your immigrant story drove you to service, but it's the part of your immigrant story that makes you worthy of suspicion? It's that I have, my family has an immigrant story in the first place. And. he's going to use that to distract people from the actual issues in this race. Because the actual issues in this race are that the guy who called him up and asked him to run, Donald Trump, took us to a war we had no business fighting. And now you're paying for it both in your taxes and at the pump and at the grocery store. There's a tariff war with Canada because he's got a vanity campaign against the prime minister of Canada. And so now we're getting tariffed through our teeth, $5,600 what we're paying in Michigan on average.

And people should know, Michigan and Canada, I mean, when you cross the border from Michigan to Canada, it's not like an international trip. It's like going from, you know, New York to New Jersey. Like, it's like crossing a state border. It's exactly, I mean, Detroit is the only place in the country you can go south to go to Canada. That's how intertwined we are. And, you know, and now we're paying for it. And he, I mean, he has the audacity. This is a crazy thing. He has this ad that Debbie Stabenow ran in the early 2000s. standing in front of Windsor on the Detroit River talking about how much more expensive prescription drug prices are here than there, except for he voted four times against prescription drug reimportation. I'm like, my guy, you did that. That was your policy. And so he is just, I mean, it's like the hypocrisy of the thing. He doesn't want to talk about how hard it is to see a doctor. He doesn't want to talk about air and water. He doesn't want to talk about any of these things. So instead he just points to me and my name. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are in on the act. They're doing all of this because they don't want to actually talk about their policies and they think they've got red meat. The thing they don't get is that I don't back down and I don't,

I'm not afraid of who I am. I know exactly who I am. And for years I wrestled with the idea of whether or not I could even do this because of my name. And at some point, here's the thing about I was raised by my dad and my step-mom, Jackie, okay. Daughter of the American revolution from the middle of state. Jackie? Jackie, right? And you know, grandparents are, are, are Jan and Judy Johnson. Jackie L. Syed. Jackie L. Syed, right? And the irony of it is this, my, I have a little brother whose name is Osama. Long story, right? So my parents named me, they gave me 11 letter first name. They were like, we're going to do a lot, something a lot easier. And so 1992 rolls around and they're like, we're going to name him Sam with O on the front and A on the back.

And then that asshole in Saudi Arabia went and ruined it for him. But here's the funny thing. My brother, Osama El-Sayed, okay? Osama, he literally is a blood descendant of Abigail Adams. Oh, that's wild. But that's America, right? Like that is America. And there are small-minded people who want to make America small like them. America has always been big, particularly in Michigan. Michigan, people don't realize this is a microcosm of America. You got Detroit, you got Dearborn, you got Grand Rapids. And then you've got places like Cairo or places like Iron Mountain or places like Escanaba. Now, I'm not familiar with any of those.

Iron Mountain, where's that? They're tiny little towns I was just in the last three days where we had like, by the way, 500 or 600 people in every one of those rooms. And the thing about it is that Michiganders are this rare combination of being gritty and earnest. Right. We expect the best and give the best, but we're willing to work. We just don't like being exploited by people. A little overly nice. for my taste i've i've when i've been up there uh the the niceness almost starts to feel like sarcasm after a while you're like wait sometimes sometimes sometimes sarcasm yeah oh all right i knew it i knew it a midwest nice but look i but this is the thing about it like people are good people and i've been a guy named abdul in michigan almost my whole life and i know that michiganders are a lot bigger than what jd vance and donald trump and mike rogers want to make them out to be and so they're going to keep pointing to my name and my faith and we're going to keep pointing to your gas prices, the price at the grocery store, the ability to see a doctor. And I think we're going to win that exchange. And I think we're going to win that exchange because Michiganders are sick and tired of being told that they're too small. And our vision of Michigan is a big

Michigan where people reach across divides. And we're going to keep believing and betting on that Michigan. And I feel pretty good about what we can accomplish if we do bet on that. Let me ask you, if you're reflecting on the challenge to close this thing out, is do you have more difficulty right now convincing those that may cast suspicion at someone named Abdul El-Sayed from, let's say, the Republican side or maybe even from the Democratic side, if we're being honest? Or do you think you have more of a challenge of firing up those in Detroit or in traditional Democratic constituencies that might not come out in the same numbers because they're concerned about either your rhetoric with Israel or that you haven't done enough to win over the black vote?

Like where, where would you say are the biggest challenges then for you as you close down these final two weeks? Can I try to reframe the question? Please. And I've seen you do this. I've seen you reframe questions and now I'm going to look like a chump. No, you're going to look great. I think in politics, you know, you're asking two questions, one that's obvious and one that's less obvious. Yes. The first one is, what do you say you're going to fight for? What are you about? I want money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all. But the second question is the one where most politicians trip up.

It's how do I know you're going to fight for it? And what we're doing here to answer your question, both questions, which is the harder part, what we're doing here is just demonstrating that you can throw as much money from big tech and big pharma and big AI and the utilities and the insurance companies and AIPAC at me as you want. But I am going to stand pat on my positions because it's what I believe. And I think whether you're somebody who's trying to decide, you know, what's this Abdul Al-Sayed guy about? Can I trust somebody named Abdul Al-Sayed? Well, I see him taking it on the chin, not for what he stands for, but just for who he is.

And I see him standing strong. But there are legitimate, so, but that gets me to my point. There are legitimate possible concerns in the black community and in the Jewish community that have nothing to do with your name, things you've said, other things that you will have to convince them that they have no need to fear your candidacy. So it's not all I don't want to. And this is just to push back and say, I don't want to give you the easy way out. No, but the other side of it is, yeah, this is a binary choice. Well, it's a three part choice. You just stay home. OK. Okay. Or do you support this guy named Abdul Al-Sayed? Or do you support the guy who is a sock puppet to Trump? And two out of those three choices bias for Trump. But you don't want to be the lesser of two evils. You want to be the affirmative choice. I want to be the affirmative choice. But for a lot of people, the only way I prove to you what I'm about in the long term is to show you what I've done, which I've tried to do, and to show you after six years of my service what I've done. I can't do that yet. The six years of my service comes next. But I also can remind you what Donald Trump is actively doing and what Mike Rogers has done for 14

years while he was in Congress. And you talked about some of it. That's just part of what his record has been. And so the question I'm answering always is, what are you going to fight for and how do I know you're going to fight for it? And I think if you recognize that in this moment, you are paying way too much for gas and groceries because of Donald Trump, you are paying way too much to see a doctor or to have your prescription drugs because of the choices of Donald Trump and his party. Do you think Abdul is going to credibly fight against those things? I'm showing you every day that I will. And I think that is about making an affirmative choice. And I think that choice is both why we're getting such huge crowds and enthusiasm in communities that they say that Democrats shouldn't even waste their time with, but we go to and we speak in and we take questions in.

And also why I'm hearing every single day from both black and Jewish Michiganders and from Michiganders who are part of the party who say, I cannot wait because I know who you're going to be in office because you're showing me who you are right now because you're not backing down. You're not triangulating. You're not telling me what you think I want to hear. You are standing up and fighting for the things that we need and deserve. And that's the best I can do. When you go into a room, and maybe it's a skeptical room, and I don't know if you've had that experience. Have you had the experience where you've walked into a room?

Of course. What is that? Have you been able to turn that skepticism around? What have been kind of the fulcrums and levers that allow you to do that? And what does that feel like as that coalesces? You know, there's this thing that too often people in my party do, which is like they show up and pander. They use the words. And I've, I've been pandered to, I'm, you know, I'm a Muslim. Well, every politician is. Every, every politician, you know, but, but this is the thing I actually don't do. Like I've, I've, I've gone into rooms and we had this, um, this town hall. You're like, you're like Bill Burr when he goes into a room, if that just starts ripping the crowd apart.

That's no, it's, I'm not trying to rip the crowd apart, but like, you know, it was a room full of very skeptical Jewish Michiganders. Okay. And in, in my, in like right near my hometown, I grew up in a, in a heavily Jewish community. I'm really grateful for that. I mean, Judaism and the Jewish people, incredible contributions to Michigan, to America. Judaism is a beautiful faith. Beautiful. I mean, you know, the holidays can be a little bit of a drag sometimes. Well, that's on you to decide. But like, I've enjoyed what I've been able to participate in. And what I knew, it was a very icy room. Right.

But when the question around my commitment to Jewish safety, which is sacrosanct, because the commitment to Jewish safety is a commitment to safety for any of us. It's the ability to practice your faith as you choose. And as somebody who's a Muslim, who's being attacked for my faith, like I don't want anybody attacked for their faith. I'm Jewish and they're mad at me. Fair, I mean. So you can imagine. I can imagine. And so, you know, I'm in that room and I told folks, I'm like, look, I'm going to tell you straight up what I believe. And you are straight up going to disagree with me. But I want you to know something.

Where I agree with you, I'm going to be honest, specific, and direct. And where I disagree with you, I'm going to be honest, specific, and direct. because in the end, I don't want anything but honesty and directness. I want you to understand where I stand and I want you to decide where you stand relative to me. And I'll tell you this, if the issues of preserving our democracy or standing up for reproductive rights or standing up for LGBTQ rights or standing up against tyranny or standing up to Donald Trump and these insane tariffs in this ridiculous war, if those issues are bigger, then you know what you're getting.

Somebody who is going to stand up and fight back. If the issue of Israel is bigger, then you know what you're getting. I am going to tell you what I think. I'm not afraid of what I believe, but the choice has to be yours. What I think people are used to is a politician coming behind closed doors and being like, hey, yeah, yeah, well, you know, let me tell you what I think you want to hear. I just say that to them, but you guys, here's what the truth is. Yeah, but I don't want you to ever think because what that means then is that even where you disagree with me, you knew I had the courage to tell you what I thought.

So when it comes down to the issues that you agree with me on, you're going to be like, well, he has the courage to step up and fight. That's the best I can offer. Really, that's the best I can offer. And this is the problem. You know how many times I've been in a room, like it's in iftar, okay? And it's during Ramadan. Iftar is the meal that happens after the fast. The break fast after Ramadan, right? And so you'll have very well-meaning politicians who come in and say, you know, I fasted in solidarity with you. I'm like, solidarity? There's food right here. I don't need your solidarity. It's not like I'm starving, okay?

Like, we've got good food. It's delicious food. It's probably the best meal you've got to have all week. I don't need your solidarity when it's here in this space and we're about to eat delicious food. I need your solidarity when people are coming for folks to try to take away their religious liberties or people who look like. me or pray like me are getting bombed by our tax dollars. That's when I need your solidarity, right? Don't you tell me that you're in solidarity with me when it's easy. I need solidarity when it's hard. And what I'm trying to prove out is, look, I am going to tell you what I believe and I'm going to stand pat. So on the vast majority of issues on which we agree, you know where I stand and you know I'm going to go fight for him because I had the courage to tell you where I disagreed with you. And that's the thing too few politicians do. So it goes back to that point that I'm making. There's two questions that everybody's asking about a politician. Number One, what do you say you're going to fight for?

And two, how do you know you're going to fight for it? Hey, everybody. It's the fall. You know that. You've seen the leaves are turning and there's a little bit of nip in the air. But for me, the fall is a particularly consequential period of time. And I'm going to tell you why. In the springtime, it is the robin redbreast that signifies renewal, and it signifies a return to the earth for so many creatures. And for me, the signal of fall, more than Halloween, is the putting on of my fall bombas. This fall, I cannot urge this enough. Get the best socks that are out there, and that is bombas. They'll get you through.

They've got merino wool socks for the cold nights. They've got sports socks for sweat so that you're not bringing stinky dogs into the house. Suede moccasins for, I'm going to say, canoeing. I don't really know why you would wear suede moccasins. You probably can't wear them for that many activities, but they've got them because they've got everything. Because fall is the time of year where you treat your feet. Head over to Bombas.com slash weekly and use code weekly for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash weekly code weekly at checkout. It's very interesting to me that and look, this is also a part and product of the aggregator system of the Internet, and it's looking for these moments.

But a lot of the stuff I see on you. you know, in my general travails as I'm flipping through things is, will you disavow Hassan Pike or will you disavow the Muslim Brotherhood? Will you, judging you by a variety of things that are kind of associative and not affirmative in terms of what you said, is that the experience that you've also been having or am I getting a much more skewed vision of what you're experiencing?

If you want to make me talk about foreign policy, I will, but I'm going to talk about it with respect to where our tax dollars are going and where they should be going. Right. And, and, and if, you know, the hard part about it is there is this sort of assumed thing. I mean, let's just step back. we've got these these bipartisan consensus in politics and then you've got public we do right but like but here's the thing this is what makes it so weird the broad public generally agrees that the government should be giving us or guaranteeing us health care right both parties don't so why is the difference uh pharma money insurance money hospital money same same issue with foreign policy so i think one of the biggest issues though is if you really want to look you know, on a macro level at what these forces at play are, I think we have to look at the Supreme Court decisions.

There's been three areas where they've made decisions on money and politics. They've made decisions on, you know, executive power, and they've made decisions on defining corruption, a variety of decisions in all three of those areas that I think have made our democracy really much more vulnerable than it needs to be because it allows for all the influences. that you're talking about. You're exactly right.

And said all that. How important is that healing process within? Because the Democrats are going to be going through a type of kind of civil war tug, you know, tug of war back and forth as to, you know, what direction they're going to go in. Because right now they're, you know, sort of rudderless and relying on individuals. What is that process like? And when you go through this bruising primary season, how do you put that back together again?

And how do you guys move forward in a more united? Was that a difficult process? And I know she hasn't really been out there that much. You haven't campaigned together. What are the residual? downstream effects of that. Well, she's been out there campaigning for us, which I really appreciate it. And we're in the point of the campaign now where everyone's kind of fanning out and hitting as many people as they can. But it's a recognition that whatever differences we have, and there are real differences, the risk of Trump and Trumpism are so much worse. Mike Rogers is going to be a check on that. And it's a recognition that, all right, we had a good scrimmage to decide who the starting team is going to be. And now let's go shoot up on Friday night because this is where we need to go.

Now, look, we're going to have an internal party discussion, of course, about who we are and who we want to be. And my hope is that we come out of this election season saying, hey, when we stick to principle and we're clear on our principle, when we step aside from corporate and special interest money, when we can speak directly to the issues of working people, the power of a union and the need to provide health care, we can win elections. We can win elections anywhere. And what we're proving in Michigan is that actually, you know, if you look at the polling, I do better among Republicans than any other statewide candidate running right now.

Why? Because say what you will about me. You might not agree with me on everything, but you know I'm not about off and you know I'm telling you what I think. And I think it's just really important for us to be recognizing that actually the difference in our politics isn't red and blue, right? The difference in our politics is people who are locked out versus the people doing the locking out. And I always want to be on the side of the folks who are locked out. And I think Democrats need to be the people who are always on the side of the people who are being locked out against the people locking them out.

Well, I very much appreciate you being here and taking the time. You know, we all see it looks like it's going to be quite close. I imagine. I don't know if you guys have internal. I mean, I don't even know what polling does anymore. It seems like, you know, I remember in the primary it looked, you know, the polls were saying it's Syed in a blowout and then it was really, really close. So I don't know if you're having a fear of that also happening in the general or if you have internal numbers that line up differently. But how are you feeling about it going into these final two weeks? We feel strong only because we're seeing support in pockets we didn't expect and a lot of support in pockets we do expect.

We're going to fight for every vote. You know, I don't trust any polls. There is no resting on laurels. We are going to burn through the last 14 days. And in the end, we're going to look up and see what happened. But Michiganders are good people. They deserve a lot better than they've gotten. They deserve way better than being exploited by a billionaire from New York or a millionaire from Florida. And we're building a campaign that has been true to our ideals. I'm proud of the campaign we've run. We're going to keep running and fighting for every single vote to the end. That's what I trust in.

I don't trust in polls. Well, Godspeed, sir. Godspeed. Thank you. And I really appreciate you being here and taking the time to talk to us. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan. a Michigander. Thank you. Appreciate you, John. Thank you. Folks, you know, this company, Admit Mobile, I don't want to keep you in suspense in any of those things. They got themselves maybe the ad spokesman of the century, Ryan Reynolds, but apparently they need a little extra push and they're bringing in, And I guess, you know, it's like anything. You got to sub in. One guy can't do all of it.

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Yeah. And I think it reminds me of when we had Mikey Sherrill on and there was like that terrible ad that was running in New Jersey that was just like, she literally was giving an example of something she would not do. And they clipped it and we're like, she wants to do that. No, I thought, can I tell you, because I'm in New Jersey, like, and I was selling all the ads, I was like, oh, she's not going to win. Like, yeah, those ads made me really nervous. And the fact that she blew them out was a real shock. Yeah. Let's hope for that again, just one year ago but but it's it's funny because beyond that idea of like the skewing of the national media and media in general looking for like only conflict points yeah or only things that can travel virally but compare that to when he describes his immigrant story and you start to see the reason he is why he is was the pressure of recognized sacrifice getting to this country and the opportunity that was going to be presented him and him not wanting to fuck that up and squander it versus how his immigrant background is used by the other side as a mode of suspicion and i thought he gave a great answer on that early in the campaign where he was like i think a lot of

people can put trust in somebody that looks like me because i think a lot of people are used to having doctors that look like me yeah right depending on your hmo sure that's right if you have insurance yeah yes you have that emergency room is a different experience yes uh but you also see like he's a prickly dude well i mean holy shit what he's dealing with yes while doing research for this episode there was a lot of moments where i literally said to myself oh my god just the things that have been thrown at him yes but i fucking love his bite back i really do gotta because it is beyond the pale i do wonder you know how effective it is because they wouldn't do it if it wasn't in some ways look they don't have much to run on but unless they thought it was somewhat persuasive that the appeal to the unknown dark man isn't it like they must think well it's got to be worth something absolutely it's how Trump and Vance got elected to be honest and it's not a dog whistle it's like a loud fucking whistle right they are whistling and it's what was so interesting to me is when you talked about the difference between what What?

They ask him, people that live in Michigan in the town halls, and then what they ask him right afterwards from the reporters that are there. I mean, maybe it's just the media that I get or from where I'm sitting, but they seem a lot more interested in asking him to, you know, disavow Hassan Piker, disavow. That's all I see. Then they actually feel about asking anyone else. By the way, that is, if anybody's wondering, that is, that is ice. Yeah, coming for me. And they're and they're coming or no, we know it's not ice because I know siren. Yes. Just like a weird, you know, you know, no siren, no name tag.

Right. Just a Camry, an unmarked Camry that drives up and four guys in masks come out. By the way, they always say that, you know, when they say we had to shoot the guy we were looking for because he tried to get away from us. And you're like, right, because to the person in the car, four random people with guns just ran up on me with no identification or no anything else. So I'm getting the fuck out of there. Yeah, you could use a little signage, buddy. Yeah, it'll be it'll be really interesting. I'm I'm in a little bit of a dark hole about the election. In the sense that will there be any price to pay for the Republican Party in general for acquiescing to the abject recklessness and, you know, megalomaniacal instincts of this guy?

that's more interested in building ballrooms and monuments than making measured decisions and getting us into a reckless war and just throwing out impulsive tariffs that drive costs. Like, will there be any, is there anything that can happen? I have an anecdote about this, actually. Jillian, thank God. I am going to sound like the New York Times. I was literally in a diner. Is this a trend? I was in a diner that is technically in the middle of this country, okay? All right. Whether it's blue or red, I won't say. I assume you were there fact finding. You were not there on your own volition. I was on a fact-finding mission.

Is it New America? It's New America. I was in New America. And as I'm sitting down at my table, a man who's like in his 60s or 70s, he's getting up with his wife. And what I hear him say in a drawl, which I don't think I have the confidence to perform, but I'll say what he said. I'll do it for you. Tell me what to say. He said, I don't like anything Trump's doing and none of them stand up to him. So I can't vote for the party anymore. That is all I heard this man say. And I said, I was like, we can go. I don't know. I heard exactly what I wanted to hear. It confirmed. Have you ever had one of those moments like where you're sitting on the beach and it's like 645 at night and the sun is just setting and it's that perfect moment.

And then all of a sudden, a dolphin swims by, and you're like, did somebody cue that? This is the simulation. That sounds like they were in there, and then they go, couple number one, get up, say your line. Cue the dolphin. Move past. Yeah, I heard exactly what I needed, so I can sleep easy at night. From your mouth to God's ears. I hope at some level that there's not a one of them that deserves to be reelected because of their passivity in the face of recklessness. 100%. I think they're nervous. I really do. I have this sense that they're slightly nervous. Yeah. Like Trump going to Kansas, like they're just, there's something about that I'm feeling optimistic.

I hope so. I, you know, I've just because as we talked earlier, I think the national media is so disconnected from the reality of things that all they care about is the horse race and creating narratives around blue wave and not blue wave and tsunami and the polling is always so fucked. and so wrong that I just really have no sense. I know the country is hurting, but I also like, my anecdote is, I can't even remember where I was, but it was, I saw a commercial from Texas that is just a woman going, James Tallarico wants to make it illegal for you to object to transgender mutilations on children.

He wants you to go to jail if you don't agree with him. I can't vote for that. And you're just like, what the fuck is happening? Now I got to switch. Brittany, let's hope the listeners have some questions that pull us out of this morass. John, for the first question, there's an intro. Oh boy. Is it musical? Is it a draw? Will Jillian perform it? Hopefully not. John, as an up-and-coming musician, does it scare you that AI-generated music can already replace you? Was that, did I just dance to AI-generated music? You know what's sad? I can never take that back. I just, my body just moved to the dulcet tones of AI-generated music.

I apologize to our listeners, to our audience. I found it pleasant and agreeable. It somehow seeped into the synapses in my brain. It triggered dopamine. I was moving. Many of you can't see it, even if you're watching this on YouTube. My hips weren't lying. They were. And I, I feel right now only shame. I feel only shame. The good news is I'm shitty enough as a drummer that you don't need AI to replace me. I can be, I can be replaced by a child. No, I can be replaced by a child who's three months into their percussion career. So no worries there. I've listened to music and I'm like, I really like this.

And then I'll be like, oh yeah, this is AI. It just sounded like a regular jingle music. Like, listen, if the worst thing that happens to us is all our jingles are replaced, I think we'll consider ourselves lucky. But I don't think that's where it's going. Questions kind of gave it away for me. Yeah, I can't pronounce questions yet. Yeah, that's right. Didn't quite sound. Once they, I'm telling you. Once they unlock that. Once I started going to Taco Bell and the little box went, hello, what can I help you? Oh, boy. All right. And by the way, won't answer you. No. They've decided, I think wisely, let's not even create interactive prompts because people are just going to fuck with it.

So I do a lot of like, you seem like you're having a good day. No small talk at Taco Bell. Philanthropic on the flip side is like, if you're mean to Claude, we're banning you. Yeah, no. When you do that, the machine, the AI immediately goes to like, do you want sauces? Will you be paying with the app? Exactly. Always the first question. What else do they want? We touched a bit upon this, but John, Trump says, quote, the polls are fake. So are we in for another utterly disappointing election night? Well, that's whether Trump believes him to be fake or not is not even the question. Could we be in for another disappointing?

I think there is not anyone alive who has not felt the gut punch, the stomach dropping feeling of the floor going out from underneath you and the lack of equilibrium that you feel when the results, when you are shocked. by what you believe your good fellow Americans want to happen in this country like that to me is the greatest feeling of disequilibrium is a sense that oh these people around me want something I find not just a policy disagreement but actually dystopian like They actually want to create fear and disorder in communities of immigrants that are just really, like, that have been here 20, 25 years, just trying to get to work.

Like, that's the part that I find I have trouble reconciling. Can't wait. No! But isn't the issue on elections? It's for me, it's, it's almost never about like, oh, this is going to have policy just, you know, disagreements that I'm probably not going to be on board with. It's the feeling that those around you, that that's what they wanted. That there was a majority of people that said like, oh no, that grabbing by the pussy guy. Like that's, that's for me. Yeah. I mean, I think that's why 2016 was so destabilizing for me was I literally felt like I had been lied to my whole life. Just about who we are, that kind of thing.

Can I tell you the moment for me when Hillary Clinton said in the debate with Trump, America is great because America is good. And you're like, is that why are we? And then America was like, no, we're not. Yeah, no, actually, we're not. You know nothing of my work. Right. And you're just like, eh, it's a tautology that doesn't quite ring true. But the fact that we did it again, like that we decided, or some people decided upon doing it again, is really kind of where I... And did it again, knowing that now those dystopian goals were explicit. Yeah. Yeah. And after January 6th, like, I'll just never understand the people that thought that that was permissible.

That's that's a great point. I mean, there were so many red lines that you felt like, well, there's just no way. So I think that to me is I think, Jillian, the perfect word there was destabilizing. Yeah. And you're being told this by like Steve Kornacki. I figure if I can't trust a guy whose sleeves are rolled up to here, I mean, why would anyone roll their sleeves up to here if they weren't going to tell us the truth? I mean, I could understand somebody lying with a sleeve over the wrist, but here? With the truth forearm fully exposed unacceptable more and more disheveled all right last one john do you think trump yells fake news because he can't yell fuck you here's the thing about trump he can yell fuck you and he's done it and he does it all the time like i don't think i think he just depending on you know he has a variety of responses like a sort of magic eight ball to things he doesn't agree with and fuck you is one of the responses and fake news is one of the other magic eight ball responses and he uses them all and it's all part of his kind of deep-seated core belief that he can shape the reality that we all live in and unfortunately he's had more success doing that than we've had

convincing him otherwise and that's on us i mean that going back to your point that like if after january 6 he's like oh that's fucking nothing i'll i'll come back from that and we let it happen well who's shaping the reality who's who's warping reality who's distorting it him or us. Like you're not delusional when you're the president of the United States. That's exactly right. So who's living in the distorted reality? Those of us who believe that those things are disqualifying or those of us who go, nah, that's not even a speed bump on my path to total domination. Oh, man. Oh, this is fucking terrible. We're having a terrible broke my whatever happened to the fun oh the question get out for a week please god if there's the people of france are burning down the fucking country because their schools are crumbling we live in an utter political dystopian uh reality and everybody's like yeah i don't know like come on both sides let's let's demonstrate that we recognize the the the position the urgency of now the urgency of the moment yeah fuck yeah fuck yeah all right uh well thank you guys for yeah all right i'm gonna get out of it i'll get out of it it's this is gonna be a two week two weeks it's gonna be over so quick churchill used to

call it the black dog i'll be visited by the black dog over these next two weeks which is uh also a taylor swift song is black dog really a taylor swift song sure is it about depression it is but that's a secret oh that's it's it's a whole thing it's layers to it i really gotta you know what i've got to delve back into the collection and start and start looking that's why i'm here britney that is so it's one of the small reasons why you're here you're here