Trump's 'Puppet' Torched as El-Sayed Vows to “Kick His Ass” Again, MAGA Is In Meltdown

0:04We are lucky today because we are joined by Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. He is a physician and former public health official who is the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, and he joins us on IHIP News. Dr. El-Sayed, how are you today? I am doing great. I got to get some sleep over the weekend. Looking forward to the next 85 days where we go on, take on Mike Rogers and defeat Trumpism because that's the work right now. Well, there's been a lot of talk about associations in this campaign. You associate with this person, but I want to fixate on who Mike Rogers associates with. And if you'll pop this up, Kylie, Mike Rogers refuses to distance himself from sexist, racist, anti-Semitic members of his campaign.

0:50U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers' newly announced student outreach team includes a member who complained about women in politics and another who defended a leaked young republicans group chat filled with praise for hitler gas chamber jokes racial slurs and rape comments i mean this is just absolutely disqualifying and damning and his campaign has laughed this off and weirdly blamed democrats for his associations yeah i mean that's in keeping with uh what mike rogers is he likes to play this good old boy shtick that he's just a down-home guy. But if you actually dig past some of that act that he does, you start to realize that he associates with some of the worst people.

1:40And not only that, but there's a thing in his character that is about bending to power. That's what he does. He was 14 years in Congress, took over a million dollars in campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, and then did their bidding. He voted to raise prescription drug prices 19 times. That's more than one time a year while he was in Congress, helped to architect the legislation that kicked off the opioid epidemic, has not said a thing about it, defends his work, and then goes and makes$14 million after his time in Congress trading on his relationships. He spent, I don't know how long, in national news on CNN decrying the rise of Donald Trump And then, of course, went 15 minutes from where he's from in Florida to Mar-a-Lago to lick all the boots that Donald Trump has to beg him for his endorsement.

2:28So you think about what this man's character is. It's made out of like the thinnest reeds. And it's not surprising to me that he can't even stand up to his own campaign staffers who are out here apologizing for the worst things in their party. And Mike Rogers, he'll obviously be a rubber stamp for Trump in the Senate. And here is a video of him debasing himself in front of Trump on the campaign trail. Let's play the clip. President, thanks for gracing your presence here at the General Motors facility and bringing jobs back. Yeah, you bet. Imagine if, Mr. President, you have a senator that cares about much about manufacturing, especially in Michigan, than you do.

3:09That's a change we absolutely need. And when I get back there, Mr. President, I promise you this. I will work with you to protect our families, protect our freedoms, protect our factories, protect our finances. And when I get back there, Mr. President, if you haven't gotten it done, we're going to pass the SAVE Act. Save America. I just, you know, just on a personal note, do these people not feel shame as they stand there and pathologically lie to good working people? Is shame just completely gone in the Republican Party? Unfortunately, that shame has been replaced by a need to placate one man's larger than life, fragile ego.

3:50That's exactly what they do. One by one, he brings them up, they kiss his ass, and tell him how amazing he is, even though behind closed doors, they'll all tell you that they think the man is insane, they think he's fragile, they think he's small, and they hate him. Except for when he's up on stage with them, they venerate him as dear leader. It's just sad to watch because this is the thing is that he spent years on cnn talking about how terrible donald trump was until of course donald trump was in power and then he decided that uh he was going to lick his boots every single opportunity he got but that's the that's the tenor of the man that's who he is uh he is a six foot boot licker who will do whatever it takes to be close to power because it makes his little heart feel good.

4:37And when you think about this capitulation to Trump, when we know that how Trump thinks about women, we know how he thinks about his marriage. We know what Melania thinks about their marriage because in her$40 million joke of a documentary, she made sure that the audience knew that she didn't share a bed with her husband. She said goodnight and they filmed her going one way and he went another way. And for him, Mike Rogers, to stand there and talk about the SAVE Act, he's wanting to basically disenfranchise women from voting. Because now if we make a list of all the people that Republicans have a problem with, now they've had to add women because it's basically just a few white men that this party services.

5:22And I guess they forgot the Mike Pence lesson. But how dangerous is this for Michiganders? How dangerous is it to have a senator walk up there and tell this criminal president that is grifting and stealing and tearing down guardrails that he will help him pass the SAVE Act? It's extremely dangerous if you believe that our government ought to be of the people, by the people and for the people, that everybody ought to have the right to vote. I mean, in this past election, this primary election we just came through in August, the Department of Justice sent election observers. You know, what do you think they were observing for, right?

5:59Donald Trump has made it clear that he's deathly afraid of losing the midterms. And this is a man who will try to get his outcome by hook or crook. He's already done it before. And he's looking for people who are going to buy the big lie and tell the big lie right alongside him. And that's exactly what Mike Rogers has leaned into. I mean, believe it or not, he lost to Senator Slotkin by a thin margin, but he lost. And he's out here saying that he actually really won, except for it makes no sense because Donald Trump won in that same election. So Trump wins, Rogers loses, but Rogers is saying that somehow the election was inappropriately decided.

6:37So they decided it for Trump, but didn't decide it for Rogers as if anybody cares about Rogers enough to try and rig an election against him. Nobody cares about you, Mike Rogers. And your unwillingness to recognize that you got your ass kicked in an election when Donald Trump was on the ballot is exactly why we're going to kick your ass even worse. I mean, this is a guy, I mean, really, it's just like, it is so sad to watch because I think at some point, probably in like 1996, he was a serious person and he has failed to be serious ever since. You know, it's fascinating, Abdul, because there's so many people that at some point were probably right-wingers, but they weren't nut jobs.

7:15Like the sitting vice president right now, he said Trump is America's Hitler. He's an opioid for the masses. You see Marco Rubio, who used to be, I mean, far too right wing for me, but a respected senator. And now Trump humiliates little Marco every single chance he can get. Ted Cruz, Trump called Ted Cruz, your wife's ugly, your dad killed JFK. Ted Cruz will literally sit and go hard in the paint for Trump, humiliate himself on TV. And then Mike Rogers said this, but there's some through line. All of these men have, and they associate with criminals and they associate with depraved people. And at the same time they do that, they like to say people like you, because your name's Abdul El-Sayed.

7:58Doesn't sound, you know, super European, if you will. They want to say you're the boogeyman. But I want to flip the script and I start playing offense on this, because let's pop this up. Let's look at who's funding Mike Rogers. Report, billionaire accused in Florida, prostitution sting donates 12K to boost Mike Rogers' Senate campaign. Rogers also takes hundreds of thousands from pro-Israel PACs and AIPAC has signaled that they are planning to invest tens of millions, AIPAC has, into his candidacy for the general election. He also takes money from pharmaceutical banking, oil and gas PACs. So basically, he has a billionaire that is accused in a prostitution sting.

8:41But the way I see it, Abdul, is the real prostitute here is Mike Rogers. He takes all of this money from all of these pimps, these packs, and they're going to want something in return. And his exchange is, well, look, my opponent's Muslim, or look, my opponent's name is Abdul or whatever they're calling, you know, your government name, which I think is longer than Abdul. And they try to scare everybody with that. And I believe when he ran against Alyssa Slotkin, who's a centrist Democrat. They tried to say she was a socialist and all of this stuff too, because all they have is fear mongering. What do you make of this?

9:18All of this sexual depravity and everybody covering up for the Epstein class and then whoring themselves out to pharmaceutical, to AIPAC, to banking, to oil and gas. I mean, these guys are just bought and paid for beta males. It's really jaw dropping. You said it. I mean, look, if you're, if you're bereft of any real ideas about governing, what do you do? You find rich people for whom you can bend and do their service. I mean, this is basically a waiter for corporations. They make an order and he's out here being like, Roger. So they want to put a data center in your backyard. Roger. They want to raise your prescription drug prices.

9:57Roger. They want to gut social security and Medicare. Roger. That's what he's going to say and do because he understands that he has nothing more than a waiter. His job is to serve up government for them. When I say I want to get money out of politics, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Corporations should not be able to buy Mike Rogers, shouldn't be able to buy any politician. And a guy like Mike Rogers shouldn't be able to hand himself over to be used by the corporations in the first place. And in our primary, it became a big issue as well. The very same people who are now buying off Mike Rogers were trying to make sure I lost in the primary.

10:37But also tells you, right, what it means to fight against this. They've rigged the system so much that a group like AIPAC can drop a record amount of money to beat me in a primary and then turn around and drop the same amount or more to try and beat me in a general election. So I've been clear, you know, Jen, and we talked about this the last time you and I got to share a conversation, it's not enough just to win a Senate seat. And I don't want anybody out there thinking, oh, well, if Abdul wins, that's it. No, no, no. We're running to change legislation to protect our government from the likes of this kind of a system where anybody can decide that they can do whatever bidding a corporation tells them to do, which, of course, always means that we lose and they win.

11:17I want you to think about APAC funding. Who loses? You do. The$3.3 billion at baseline, the$22 billion that we sent to subsidize genocide, that is money that you pay into our tax coffers thinking that it's going to fund your kid's school or build your kid's road. And instead, it gets sent abroad to destroy somebody else's school, to destroy their lives, to destroy their roads, to do genocide, apartheid, and war. You think about Big Pharma. What do they want? They want a reliable vote in Mike Rogers, who's already voted to raise your prescription drug prices 19 times and is looking forward to doing it every year at least once for his six years in the U.S.

11:53Senate. You think about DTE, our local utility. These are the folks making huge amounts of money off of data centers that they want to place in your backyard. What do you think that Mike Rogers is taking their money to do to offer you on a silver platter so that you can get your back pocket picked? And in the end, after he's done with his time in the Senate, he can go and make money trading off those same relationships. It is all a grift. Mike Rogers is the chief among the grifters. And Donald Trump is somebody who's realized that you just take the grift into office and profit to the tune of$2.2 billion.

12:24If that's the vision people want for our politics, Mike Rogers is the choice. But if you want somebody who's going to stand up against money in politics so we can keep money in your pocket and pass Medicare for all, I know that Michiganders are thinking very differently in this moment about what they want in their politics. so mike rogers can't stop talking about how you're muslim so i want to dig deeper into his faith okay i'm an atheist and i've fallen prey to ambient islamophobia in the post 9 11 world but as i see it my secular brain sees it now the only people i see that want to subjugate women are maga men and the whole you know trad wife movement of influencers that they have and mike rogers in my opinion, is a complete Christian hypocrite.

13:08Let's pop this up. Rogers Campaign Faith Coalition has two ties to a church upended by child sex crimes. Now, Abdul, if your mosque, the Amman, was tied to child sex crimes, wouldn't this be a top story on Fox, CNN, and MSNBC above the fold right now? Absolutely, and justifiably so. You know, the role that people try to take here is to point at something that they think makes them look quote-unquote normal and makes somebody else look different to absolve themselves of what they're actually doing. They're going to point to my name, they're going to point to my faith, and they're going to be like, look, but he's Muslim though.

13:58And here's the thing I'll tell you is that it just doesn't work anymore. Because I've been up and down the state, right? I do this the old fashioned way. I've been to 110 cities and counting 500 public events. People aren't as interested in how I pray. They're interested in what I pray for. And I pray for the same things that almost all of us pray or hope for. We want to look our kids in the eye and know that they're gonna live a better life than we do. We wanna be able to afford the basic things. We wanna be able to delight our kids by just taking them out to a movie or to a meal or signing up for a rec league to play their favorite sport.

14:28Like those are the things that we're all wanting for. And those are becoming harder and harder to do. I went to, took my family to the zoo yesterday. It was like$132,$132 to take my kids. There are two of them and my wife to a zoo. And that's just getting further and further out of hand because of the policies of somebody like him. And he's going to hide behind this, this, this simulacrum of faith, which clearly, you know, if you followed the teachings of Jesus Christ, it was about upending the system against the richest and most powerful in the ways that they used their power and their money to subjugate other people.

15:07Like that was the essential teaching. And for a Muslim guy, I spent a lot of time in church, for which I'm really grateful. And, you know, as you listen to that teaching, it is about how you build a society for folks who have been locked out rather than how you join the ranks of the people locking them out. And so, you know, however you come to faith or no faith at all, we've got to decide that in our America, the ideals, right, that animate us are ideals that we share around building the kind of America that all of us get to share together to empower all of us rather than to allow the richest, the billionaires, the corporations, the special interests to siphon money out of our pocket so they can make a second billion, even if the average person can't figure out how to make their first hundred thousand you know i think people like you and the mayor of new york are such a threat with your faith because you are dismantling decades of propaganda that has been very successful in pushing nefarious agendas and the propaganda is that all muslims are blank or all muslims are blank and when you see american Muslims like you all who fight for universal human rights, who stand up for the marginalized, who have a brand of politics that leaves no one behind.

16:24It's really terrifying because all of a sudden the propaganda, aka the lies, aren't going to work so well anymore. But sticking with Mike Rogers, because I really want to, this is a terrible candidate. I mean, this guy is awful. This guy is absolutely horrible. Mike Rogers previously distanced himself from Trump's lies about the 2020 election, but now he's embracing them. Let's play the clip. Four thousand people walked into the poll, they voted for Donald Trump, and they turned around and left. They didn't vote for one other Republican on the ticket. If we'd have gotten 9 ,000 of those folks, we would have won.

17:03That works out to about 232 votes per county. That's how short we've gone. And it did so happen that at 5.30 in the morning we were winning, a van in Detroit showed up with ballots. We ended up losing that thing by about 17 ,000 votes. Okay, so this is the same chicken shit stuff that Trump and that Kraken lawyer and Rudy Giuliani and Fox News. They can say all the shit they want to to crowds or on TV, but when you go into court, you find out the same way Fox News did, you can't lie to a judge. And Fox News had to pay a billion dollars. And these people just lie and lie. And they're such sore losers.

17:46And they want to rig the system even more than it's already rigged. And I think that whatever the results are in your race, short of him winning, he's going to claim voter fraud. And I think we're going to have a lot of this moving forward. How are you positioning yourself if you win and then he starts all this crap? Look, this is clearly a guy who his ego can't handle losing. Look, I ran in 2018. I lost my race fair and square. And you know what I did? I said, I've got to help the nominee win that race. I rolled up my sleeves, campaigned for Governor Whitmer, and it sucked. Losing sucks. but it's part of what happens in life.

18:28Now, Mike Rogers can't imagine that he might ever lose. Him and Donald Trump are united in that fragility of ego that they have. They got to make up a bunch of excuses for why they actually lost. You actually lost, Mike. People didn't want you. People didn't want to vote for you. They voted for Trump and decided specifically not to vote for you. That must sting, but it really sucks coming in this election. Here's the thing. We've got to win by such a margin that it is too big for them to attempt to rig. So for everybody out there who's worried about what Donald Trump is going to do in these critical midterms, you've got to make sure that you put in all of your effort, not just to make a plan to vote, but also to make sure that you've reached out to everybody you know.

19:07We need to win by such a margin that we send Mike Rogers back to Florida never to come back again, that he might make excuses, but sorry, bro, like seven points, you just got smoked. That's what we're planning to do. And that's about continuing the movement that we built brick by brick beginning last April. having conversations about who we are, who we want to be, about what it takes to get money out of politics, put money in pockets, pass Medicare for all. And so, yeah, we know what they're going to do. We know how they're going to operate. We know that the Trump administration is setting up for something.

19:37But if enough of us go out to the polls, we decide that we will not be denied our voice in our politics, that we all step up and fight back. All this talk of the quote unquote SAVE Act, all this talk of quote unquote rigged elections is over. You beat them bad enough, They're just beaten. That's just how it is. And it is about not just defining that we are going to be a part of our elections, but but winning by such a fashion that we have a mandate to be able to both investigate Trump and Trumpism and set the stage for 2028 where we get a president where we can finally do the work it takes to get money out of politics, put money in your pocket, pass Medicare for all.

20:14OK, so I wish I was done with my laundry list of how big of a piece of crap Mike Rogers is, but I haven't even come close. So to recap where we are thus far, we have him putting the student outreach. We have Nazi sympathizers. We have a billionaire that's involved in some prostitution sting donating to him. We have the racist attacks on you. We have that he's a complete Christian hypocrite with his faith coalition with child sex crimes, always with MAGA, always leads to some sort of child sex crime, it seems, sadly. But this is before we even get to. He is a huge war hawk. I mean, big time, big time, Lindsey Graham style, you know, scorched earth war hawk.

21:01So Trump's war in Iran is nearing six months. and Mike Rogers has been one of its biggest cheerleaders. Imagine cheerleading this. Okay, pop this up. Two of the American rights top causes in the last decade has been denouncing the deep state and opposing endless wars. There are few Congress members who defended and still defends all of these evils more vigorously than Mike Rogers. He was the most loyal House member for the CIA and NSA domestic spying. He was and remains one of the most enthusiastic proponents of the Patriot Act. And as Trump said of Lindsey Graham, Rogers never met a war he didn't like, supported the Iraq war, Obama's war in Libya, regime change in Syria, the Iran war, et cetera, et cetera.

21:49That's from Glenn Greenwald. He goes on to say, I know Republicans will vote for him anyway, given the fear mongering of El-Sayed as a mix of Al-Qaeda and Stalin. But it's worth noting that despite years of Trump's rhetoric, all these Bush-Cheney neocon pro-war and deep state champions are not just still around, but are in charge of the party. Abdul. You said it. He said it. I mean, look, I just want us to step back. We're in a moment right now where this administration has pursued an illegal, unjustifiable war at the behest of a foreign government and its leader that has been raging on now for the better part of five months with no end in sight.

22:37We have taught the Ayatollahs that they have a chokehold on the world's energy supply. We have destroyed people's lives and livelihoods, and we're paying nearly$5 a gallon in gas, which Mike Rogers said would be just fine. If you think that this is what America First was supposed to be, if you think that this was the vision of Trumpism you voted for, if you think that this is making you richer, if you think this is making you better able to afford your groceries or your gas, then you got Mike Rogers. But when diesel gets up to$5 a gallon, guess where you pay that? You pay that at the cashiers in the grocery store because all that stuff had to get there somewhere on a truck that runs on diesel.

23:22If you're sick and tired of having to pay$5 gas, that's because of the Strait of Hormuz, an area you never had to think about before he started this stupid war. If you're worried about the cost of your health care, guess what? Medical supplies have to come from somewhere too. If you're worried about being able to afford a home, this is not helping you. None of this is helping you. In fact, the second biggest thing he's got on his plate right now, Donald Trump, after this disastrous war is that he's rebuilding his house and you can't afford yours. Mike Rogers is going to be a rubber stamp on that policy.

23:57If anything, he's going to take up the mantle that Lindsey Graham left. He's going to be the chief war hawk in the U.S. Senate. He's going to be the guy pushing for more war that raises your prices for gas and groceries. If that's what we want in Michigan, a state where too many of us have had to suffer the consequences of war, both in our pocketbook or worse, more directly, when you think about the lives lost to service members, heroic people who put their lives on the line, if we want to push back against Trumpism, this is that race. I don't take money from weapons manufacturers. I don't take money from AIPAC.

24:34If anything, AIPAC has called me the single most dangerous candidate for the US-Israel relationship because they know that I am dead set against sending our money to buy bombs and tanks elsewhere. There could not be a bigger contrast. I am truly America first. I want our tax dollars spent on kids' schools and fixing our roads and our infrastructure, not dropping bombs on other people, their schools and their roads and infrastructure. Contrast couldn't be bigger. All right. Let's listen to Mike Rogers' tone-deaf response about high gas prices. Play the clip. Nervous, though, about these stubbornly high gas prices?

25:08It has to be hurting people in Michigan. Well, listen, high prices of anything hurt people here in Michigan, because as I've said, we're working past family. But if you look about it, listen, Iran is about keeping their nuclear program, stopping their ballistic missile program so they can't hurt others. I think most Americans are there. We all want this to come to a quick end, I think, including the president of the United States. The president's also taking really direct actions to try to bring those prices down, and I support those actions to bring those prices down. It's just completely clueless.

25:41I mean, it's just completely toned up. This is what I'm so sick of. We know that the straight was open beforehand. We know that Benjamin Netanyahu has asked every president, can we bomb Iran? Can we bomb Iran? And they're like, no, no, no, no, no. We know that Donald Trump and people like Mike Rogers are just dumb enough and just have this weird kink where they like for these like dangerous, powerful men to need something from them. And they're happy to deliver it. And nothing about what we have done in Iran helps the American people. Obama had a nuclear agreement in the works that was working.

26:21And all of this is just to try to fix these men that are so broken. Now they're pulling the levers of government. And I firmly believe if we all said, okay, you know, Donald Trump, you're great. You're a great golfer. You know, you're six foot four, low body fat, incredible looking. It still wouldn't fix him. He would be completely broken. And the Mike Rogers will be completely as a completely broken man, because he has whored himself out his entire adult life. I'd rather earn my money on my back, just honestly saying what I am than be a Mike Rogers, you know, and just because it's so embarrassing.

27:04I mean, these people are just prostitutes and they just whore out themselves. And in turn, they whore out the American public. And for Mike Rogers, you said he made 14 million, but gas price is no big deal for him. He probably doesn't fly commercial. He doesn't have to deal with this shit. I mean, these politicians that are just so out of touch, but lie to working class voters and tell them they are America first. I think it's just such an insidious evil lie to the electorate. And Jen, you know, when he's talking, it's not him talking, right? Just imagine one of those sock puppets, right? He's got a whole bunch of folks right inside him that are moving his mouth for him.