On the Ground in Michigan with Abdul El-Sayed

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15:32Jon Favreau:It was great to get out here and you know, it's fun to watch these guys on YouTube and see the events. But like, I think being there in person just kind of like gives you a different sense and, and being there in a period of, you can see the campaign going from primary to general election mode in that step up in size and intensity and kind of watching Abdul guy go from a guy who was a little bit known in Michigan political circles to totally losing his anonymity. It is just it is gone now. It is not quite the AOC experience, because for her, like winning the primary was winning the general. So she's a national figure right away.

16:09Jon Favreau:But Abdul is close. And also, you know, unfortunately for him, it's backed by 70 million dollars in attack ads that were kind of part of that process um yeah watch seeing him deal with that was really interesting i've been wondering about that because and he like he ran for statewide office before but that was just a totally different level of like fame uh and people knowing who he is uh i watched the preparing for this i watched uh the event um that you went to and i watched his speech and his and all the questions and listen to all the questions, too. He's it's just I'm sure you will talk about this and felt this as well.

16:49But man, is it different watching an event and watching the speech versus like what you see and hear from the Internet and the media about the race? Yes. Yes.

17:00Jon Favreau:I think, look, we are a dual fans. He's been a friend for a long time. Both of us have donated to the campaign. So we are biased. but um i came away just being like okay this guy is so talented he's a talented communicator he's a great speaker and he just kind of he seems like a fighter which i think that's the thing we've all been talking about that voters want for this moment but john the thing that he has done that i think every campaign consultant would dream of is he has landed on a clear succinct message which is money out of politics money in your pockets and medicare for all to the point where when we were interviewing voters about why they liked Abdul, they were repeating it back to us.

17:37And that is the dream. He starts the event by saying that. And then everyone repeats it back to him. Like it's a whole like I also think for everyone's like, well, he's got to I mean, and we've done this analysis to on this show, like he's got to talk about this and he's got to link Mike Rogers to Trump and he's got to be talking about economic stuff and not Gaza and Israel the whole time and like he was so on message during that event including the questions he was getting it is like i i would encourage anyone who is doubtful about the race and doesn't isn't sure like just just watch an event um because he and the comfort that he has and the confidence which i think is so huge in a candidate like this is not someone who seems like he i mean first of all you know he's memorized his stump but he is you can tell it's just it feels conversational It feels relevant to people.

18:30He's not like talking down to folks. He's not like doing like, here's my line on this. And I actually think he even comes off better in person or at these events than he does sometimes like on social media or the interviews. Oh, definitely.

18:44Jon Favreau:The goofiness and the sense of humor comes through. So, you know, you've written a million stump speeches, but like politicians don't need your stump speech to be a thing you read verbatim every day. In fact, that's bad. What Abdul did very well last night was kind of like work topical things into his remarks and make it new and newsy, but in the frame. So we talked about the Trump kind of$5 ,000 dividend proposal from Dallas. And he's like, hey, you're paying like on average 5 ,600 for Trump's vanity trade war with Canada. You know, he's having a pissing contest with the prime minister of Canada, you pay for it.

19:13Jon Favreau:And then he comes back and tries to bribe you for a vote for a little less back. And then he talked about how this was the third time you've been offered a check. He said, remember the Doge dividend, Elon Musk got the Doge dividend, the rest of us are still paying for it. And then he mentioned like the lettuce and the listeria outbreak. And he said, you're paying for it on the toilet too so it's like this funny thing you talked about the the michigan western michigan game um the tour is called the it shouldn't be this hard tour yeah and he talked about this football game that ended where everyone thinks that western michigan got robbed and he was like man you can imagine western people at western being like it shouldn't be this hard that's funny it's really funny um the jokes were funny he also look again we i asked him about it at the interview but he's browing out hard on the stump there he threatened uh he challenged mike rogers to a no pads Oklahoma drill so but even I noticed that and like even when he did that it didn't come off as like hey dude like it was it was jokey yeah it was joke you know like toned it down a little bit yeah you can tell even the um I'd heard him do that cheerleader riff like Mike Rogers is a cheerleader but the way he did it was like tongue-in-cheek and he you know it didn't sound like a politician's riff where you're like and now applaud right like I just thought he was I thought it was comfortable.

20:24Yeah.

20:24Jon Favreau:And so Abdul's opponent, Mike Rogers, he was not in Michigan this week. He was in Dallas, Texas for the Trumpet balooza, where he was given a full six minutes and 48 seconds to speak. So the guy left the state, a swing state in the middle of a campaign to go do that. Rogers delivered kind of a classic paint by numbers bio speech about his story and himself. John, this line made me laugh really hard. He was kind of trying to tell like a up from your own bootstraps product of the American dream story, which is great. But the way he phrased it was that the American dream, quote, took me, the son of a Michigan shop teacher, all the way to be the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

21:02Jon Favreau:Dude, that is the American dream. I watched the speech again this morning. I was like by myself in my house. And he did that line. And I laughed out loud to myself. It's that exact line. I was like, where is he going to take this? And then he's like, to the House Intelligence Committee. From the factory floor to the chairman of the deep state. That is the American dream. What are you talking about? That speech was fun. I mean, we can talk about the attacks on Abdul in that speech. But the fact that he has nothing to say, you get six minutes in front of, it's generous to say a national audience because I'm sure not many people were watching at all.

21:39Only 2.5 million watched Trump the first night total. And that's like the Fox. That's the normal Fox audience at night. So Trump didn't even break that. So I'm sure no one was watching. But you have six minutes in a big speech like this. Nothing about costs in Michigan, the economy, what to do for people. It was literally like he did the 9-11 commemoration and all he talked about was terrorism. It was as if he was giving the speech in the 2002 Senate race.

22:10Jon Favreau:John, I literally wrote down, I feel like I'm watching the RNC in New York in 2004. It was Bush era post-election message. Let's roll a clip of Rogers so folks can see what we're talking about. I know what they're capable of. And I know what happens when America becomes afraid to call evil by its name. September 11th isn't something that we deserved, no matter what Abdul's buddies say. Abdul is funding his campaign with money from terrorist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. He wants to represent Palestine. I want to represent Michigan. again maybe that'll work i mean it tells you where the campaign's going which is all fear mongering islamophobia stuff yeah but like the whole the way he talked about 9-11 it's like hey mike rogers and then what happened um do you have any do you have an apology to all the men and women uh in this country who lost loved ones um in the iraq war and and in afghanistan and in all the years that we have fucked up the Middle East and the world by just doing the wrong thing, reacting the wrong way after 9-11?

23:19Yeah. Did those wars go well, Mike? Yeah. How did that go? How was your time on the Intel Committee? How was your time? Did you like the Patriot Act? Did that go well, too? Do you think people are happy about that?

23:31Jon Favreau:Yeah. It seems like Republicans are a little worried about these days. Yeah. Ted Cruz did something similar. So Ted Cruz also hopped into his time machine, went back to 2002, did some post-911 fear-mongering. John, let me, tell me if you can figure out what the two Democrats name-checked by Cruz in this clip have in common. Let's watch. When Mondami says he wants to seize the means of production, he means it. When Abdul Al-Sayed says he has a, quote, obligation to comply with Sharia law, he means it. very subtle to uh link kazoran and abdul with nothing in common uh also john ted cruz on the anniversary of charlie kirk's assassination says nothing in response to two calls to shoot democrats i feel like that tells you everything you know to need to know about his sincerity as a human being and also the republican party's commitment to uh rooting out political violence yeah you could tell that the first one i thought they were maybe even three in the longer clip but But like you can tell that maybe he doesn't hear the first couple.

24:34He definitely hears the last one. And because there's like almost a pause and he just decides like, well, I can't call that. I couldn't say don't say that because that would be showing some kind of modicum of courage. Yeah. Decency. Right. Yeah. I don't. I mean, look, the Mamdani stuff is crazy and just blatantly Islamophobia and racism because Mamdani is not running in the midterm. He's not on the ticket anywhere. So bringing him up over and over again is just a way to write up the base.

25:09Jon Favreau:It's just Fox News brain. I mean, we have Fox on in our office. They've been talking about some 9-11 families not wanting Zoran to go to ground zero to go to the commemoration event. Obviously, those families can feel however they want. But they're also putting on just like hardcore right wing Republican politicians who are just being Islamophobic disgraces. And by the way, Zoran Mamdani is a Shia Muslim. So bin Laden would call him an infidel and want to kill him, too, just for the record. But those facts don't matter. I'm sure that distinction matters. They're going to listen to me on this one.

25:40Jon Favreau:OK, let's just talk big picture on the race. So like we were saying, like this is what the rest of the race is going to be. It's just going to be naked Islamophobia. Republicans think this stuff is effective. I don't know. Abdul is trying to counter it by showing other sides of his personality. Like we've talked about the goofy like blues clues video. I asked him about that. He's talking about sports. A lot of it is like guilt by association stuff with Hassan Piker. But really, like those guilt by association attacks are just Islamophobia. It's like basically they're saying like two Muslims are too much.

26:10Jon Favreau:If J.D. Vance really cared about Hassan Piker's views on Israel, then he would also denounce and cut ties with Tucker Carlson. But he doesn't give a shit. And this is just politics. I think ultimately where Abdul is on this is he thinks we need to be able to agree disagreeably on foreign policy, including Israel. He disagreed with some of the stuff Hassan said in the past. but he's not going to cut ties with the guy who was a friend for that. He's going to tell him, I disagree. And I think what's hard here is a lot of Democrats are following Republicans down this path of only focusing on guilt by association.

26:45Jon Favreau:And there's just no other conversation about this race because obviously Hassan said some stupid shit. He apologized, but Abdul didn't say it. And meanwhile, we have this really dynamic, exciting candidate that is inspiring people. and yet the conversation online and in the media just gets wrapped around the axle on this one issue over and over and over again and you can tell it's just driving abdul crazy because he's like i want to talk about health care and grocery prices and all the shit that i hear about on the campaign trail not this stuff yeah i mean a few things about this stipulated i think if abdul had to do it over again it would not have had hassan come to michigan and campaign right like i think that there is a difference between, and I still believe we've had Hassan Piker on the show and even politicians who go on Hassan's stream, like I will still defend that, right?

27:36Because you're reaching an audience, whatever else, like the campaigning made it tougher, right? Now, that said, the guilt by association that they're trying to do is guilt by association with someone who has apologized for comments he said were a joke about 9-11. And someone who, you know, they're like, oh, it's Abdul's best friend and his running mate and stuff like that. It's like, no, Abdul's had a million people campaign with them. And Hassan was there like twice, right? And that's it. I also don't think people, normal people give a shit about this. I really don't. I do think that, I mean, and I'm curious what Abdul has told you or like what their polling shows, whatever.

28:18Like, I think his to the extent he has a challenge and he does have a challenge. It is do do people think that he is too extreme or too progressive or too liberal? Abdul, right? Like, do they think his positions are too far to the left? Do they think he is too is out of the mainstream? And my view on this is like watching that event that he did. If he could if he could meet everyone in Michigan, everyone who sees him campaign, everyone who gets contact by the campaign. campaign contacted by Abdul, like has that kind of experience, I think he'll be fine. And I think people are going to come away with the view that like, yeah, he's progressive in all the right ways.

28:59And like his slogans, right? Money in your pocket, money out of politics, Medicare for all, very popular. And so my concern, I think his probably the campaign's concern, their challenge is, you're not gonna be able to reach everyone in a big state like Michigan. And for the people who are just tuning in at the end and are going to vote, which image of Abdul are they going to get? Are they going to get they're going to see him as this extreme out of step guy with a funny name? Or are they going to see the Abdul that that we all see? And so that I imagine that's probably their big challenge.

29:35Jon Favreau:Yeah, I mean, just on the Israel stuff, like I think the vast majority of voters don't vote based on foreign policy. It's economic issues. It's rage at the establishment. Now, that doesn't mean there aren't real concerns within parts of the Michigan Jewish community about Hassan Piker, past comments, etc. So actually, I called Andy Levin to talk about all this. He's a former member of Congress. He's from the Levin family, which is like a deep political history in Michigan. He's also Jewish. He was a president of his synagogue. He tangled with AIPAC back in the day because he was too progressive.

30:02Jon Favreau:His view was that this is a tempest in the teapot. There was this, you know, in the gaggle Abdul did, he was asked about a letter from 400 Jewish Democrats who now support Mike Rogers. But Andy Levin was saying that he thinks a lot of them are actually Republicans or supported Mitt Romney in 2012 because Obama was too dangerous on Israel or whatever. So, you know, we'll see. He said to me, ultimately, 1.3 % of Michiganders are Jewish. If there's high turnout, that's like 1.8 % of the electorate. But he also thinks that when you combine Muslim and Arab American voters, that's like 3 % to 4 % of the electorate.

30:35Jon Favreau:So politically speaking, it could offset. But also, Andy's like, in my Slack, I have tons of Jewish voters who are just really pumped about the guy. So maybe Abdul doesn't get 70%, but he gets 40 % or 50 % or 60%, something like that.

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33:27Jon Favreau:I think the bigger problem is what you're talking about, which is this effort to make Abdul radical. When you talk to his team, the traditional DSCC strategy would be Abdul hangs back, make Rogers the main character. His association with Donald Trump is way more harmful than Abdul's association with anyone else and just roll with that. But the challenge they're having is Abdul is too interesting and too different of a story politically for that to work because the media doesn't give a fuck about Mike Rogers because he just hides in Florida all the time. So they're like trying to get the establishment on board while letting Abdul be himself and not play into this lie that he's super radical because he's not.

34:10Jon Favreau:But in some markets right now, they're getting outspent four to one with all the outside money. And they're worried about Elon Musk cutting a hundred million dollar check at any time and dumping even more ads on their head. So they're just like, that's the challenge right now. Yeah, this is why I, and I think he's an excellent reporter and I agree with him a lot. But when Jonathan Martin has been saying recently, like, oh, why is Abdul making this about himself? Why doesn't Democrats just make him, like you said, hang back and make it all about Rogers? And, you know, the call is going to come in from the DSCC to like knock it off and just do less and all that kind of stuff.

34:47It's like, I get that if Abdul is Troy Jackson or Bill Smith. Yeah, right. Maybe even not Troy Jackson, because people don't know who Troy Jackson is because he just jumped in, but someone like that, right? He doesn't have an option of hanging back. He just doesn't. And he's got to do a whole bunch of reassurance for voters that he is an acceptable alternative to the guy they want to vote against, who is Mike Rogers, because he's too tied to Trump. So you have to do both. You just cannot make it all about Rogers when all this money is going to be spent making Abdul into this monster. Like he's got to push back on that.

35:24And he's got to push back on it by just revealing his actual personality.

35:28Jon Favreau:Yes. Yes. It's funny. When I asked that question about kind of the 2018 campaign between now, he was like, look, in 2018, I was 32. I'd never run for office before. I had no business running. So I decided like go big or go home. And then I went home. He's like a funny line in his dumb speech. But he was like, look, I ran thinking like, OK, these are the things that a politician should be. It's like the serious guy, the doctor, the nerd. And he's like, I am all these things. But like, I'm also like, this is me too. And this is my personality. And I'm just trying to be myself. And like, the corniest shit ever in campaigns is like, let Obama be Obama or let Trump be Trump.

36:03Jon Favreau:But I do think there's an element of truth there that the kind of more layered version of Abdul we're seeing that includes being the broad out, you know, lacrosse captain or whatever is more true to himself. And I think they also think that that kind of message or like the cringy, cheesy shit, the Love Island video, the Blues Clues video is a way to get attention and then offset this claim that he's too radical. I also, you know, I asked Andy Levin about the concern that a lot of, you know, folks should listen to Still Counting, our amazing new polling and data show with Nate Silver and Claire Malone and Galen Druk.

36:40Jon Favreau:You knew them as 538. Now they're still counting. Get it on your podcast feed because they talked about the kind of concerns about Abdul's candidacy in a really interesting and compelling way. But Andy Levin wanted to kind of push me on why the traditional approach of moderation is wrong and that progressives are the way to go in this cycle. Because he was just pointing out that progressives have been winning up and down the ballot in Michigan primaries. It's where all of the energy is. It's where the only way you will turn out more people and be authentic to yourself if you're Abdul. And he also thinks that this like kind of traditional measurement of extreme versus moderate, it's kind of ridiculous in a moment where like democracy is hanging by a thread and we're in a trade war with Canada that is really hurting Michigan and diesel's over$6.

37:27Jon Favreau:So, you know, maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong. He's like, my hopium comes from being a union organizer where you're always going against the boss. You should never win. But what we did there is, you know, we rank all our supporters one to five, like one is a yes, firm yes, five is a no. And then you count the ones and you subtract 10 % and that's your real level of support. And he's like, that's how I'm approaching every poll going forward. Um, because I'm as skeptical and concerned as you are, but we just got out hustling. Yeah. And it's also, this is all about how you define progressive and, um, no one is just a progressive on everything or not, or like voters, um, are more open to a more progressive position on health care.

38:08They just are. They are less open to a progressive positions on crime. Also just the truth. And you could go through every issue like that. And so the challenge is to Andy Levin's question, like, first of all, you can't completely just reinvent yourself as someone new in a general election. You have your past positions and running away from all those positions is arguably more damaging than keeping them and explaining why you feel the way you do. Right. So that's like number one. And then number two, like the everlasting challenge for Democrats is all of the energy and excitement in terms of what kind of candidates and like how they inspire and how they talk about politics is on the left.

38:53And I might be more in more agreement with a lot to center-left politicians on a host of issues. Some are more progressive, but like their challenges, they're not, if you just give the stump speech and read the stage directions and are boring, it could work. It has worked in a ton of places, right? But like, I don't know if you're trying to capture voters in a primary, like you've just got to be, you've got to have something to say real about the problems that people are facing and not just sound like you're reading it from a fucking poll. And for people who are like really concerned about money in politics and really concerned about health care and haven't seen like Affordable Care Act passed and they're still having trouble with costs, health care costs, they want to hear something, what you're going to do about that.

39:37And like that's I think that's that's why you're seeing all this energy.

39:41Jon Favreau:Yeah, listen, I don't know if this progressive case is the right one or if it means he's more likely to win. But just to articulate it more, I think you said it well, like voters have never hated the establishment more. They have never had less trust in their government. So if you sell them the same old shit, the same old talking points, they're not going to believe you. If you at least come off as a fighter, if you at least come off like you care and you understand the issues and you're not 150 years old, they like that. One thing I didn't get to ask Abdul about, John, was kind of how his Medicare for all position has evolved.

40:15Jon Favreau:You dug into this in some depth. Can you just give voters kind of a sense of how he's gotten seemingly more flexible on this? Yeah. Yeah. So the big challenge with Medicare for all is it pulls well. And then, you know, progressives will say it pulls well. It's great. Everyone, you know, what's what's the problem from the centrist and all that. And as we all saw, we have to live we have to live through 20 fucking primary debates about this, where everyone litigated the Medicare for all positions in the presidential primary in 2020. Once you tell people that it means getting rid of private insurance, the support goes down.

40:49Once you tell people the cost and that you cannot pay for Medicare for All, a real single-payer system, by just raising taxes on wealthy, support goes down. And, you know, the Medicare for All supporters will say, well, yes, maybe middle-class folks will have to pay a little bit higher taxes, but you're paying so much less in premiums and deductibles that it all works out. Sure, absolutely. But these are the attacks that the Medicare for all is going to face. And one thing in the Democratic primary in 2020 that candidates like Pete Buttigieg did is they tried to split the difference. And basically, Pete's plan was Medicare for all who want it, meaning everyone can enroll in Medicare tomorrow after the plan passes.

41:32But if you really, really like your private health insurance, you can keep your private health insurance and you do not have to go into Medicare for all. Now, even Bernie's plan, right, on Medicare for All plan, did eliminate private insurance completely. But even that plan did it over a set of years, right? So it wasn't all at once. Because if you eliminate private insurance tomorrow after a plan passed, bad things would happen. One-sixth of the economy. Yeah, right. It's a rough transition to do it right away. So even Bernie knew that it was like a four-year window or whatever it was. So Abdul, during the course of this primary, he basically his plan is more like Pete's plan was in the 2020 primary.

42:13I think that is a great thing because I think it also sends a signal for 2028 in the primary that we are not going to do another primary in 2028 where if you don't have Bernie's exact Medicare for all plan that you are, you know, an apostate and you like and like you shouldn't be listened to and you're just a neolib shill. Like, I think if the goal is, yes, we want every single American to have insurance and every single American not to go bankrupt and to pay just only what they can to see a doctor. And when they get sick, then there's a whole bunch of different ways to get there. And Abdul has one way and he's showing flexibility.

42:51And I think that is great.

42:54Jon Favreau:And if he wins the election, Donald Trump is going to be president for two more years, at least. And then even then, with a Democrat in 2028, we'll still have to build support for Medicare for all. So we should not attack him for a lack of purity between now and then we got to build support for this. The other thing I wanted to ask him about but didn't get a chance to was artificial intelligence. But someone in the audience asked about it. And he gave a very thoughtful answer that I'm going to we're actually going to put into the episode because it was just worth hearing. It was nice hearing someone who is young and thoughtful.

43:24Jon Favreau:And again, it was like the example of his political skill because he was able to explain the hugging face attack with open AI in a way that was really short and sweet and had people in the audience gasping because they had never heard it before. But it wasn't too confusing for them.

43:39Abdul El-Sayed:The question of AI is the existential question of our time. And it's not the technology per se. It's the incentives driving the technology, which are exceedingly dangerous. because right now it's all being driven by a few billionaires out in Silicon Valley. AI should not be used to do certain things like take your job or provide you healthcare or deny your healthcare or fire a weapon. We need an international treaty that governs the use of compute so that we understand how these things are being used. If you're gonna build a data center, the following things have to be true. Number one, all union labor.

44:19Abdul El-Sayed:Number two, that you cannot touch our water. Number three, that you cannot raise our electricity rates. Number four, that you need to improve our electricity reliability, not just keep it where it is. Number five, there needs to be a very clearly defined community benefits agreement that's negotiated in good faith, in public, not behind an NDA. Until we get that, terms of engagement at the federal level, I think there need to be state and local moratoria on data center construction. We need regulation. We needed it yesterday. So the best we might be able to get is tomorrow, but we need regulation.

44:54Abdul El-Sayed:We need it now. When I heard him give that answer and this goes back to what you were saying a couple of minutes ago about like why people like progressives and younger people and anti-establishment candidates. Because so I talked to I interviewed Seth Moulton right before that primary. And he was hitting Marky on on AI because Marky was like, I don't know, whatever apps are on my phone. and so then I like and I dug in with Seth on well what would you do what would the regulations be and look I don't want to criticize him too much for this because it was a short interview and we couldn't go on forever and we could have talked for an hour about it but he like he didn't give much on like the details of how to safeguard it what to do all this it was like pretty top line and I was like yeah okay well I thought you're supposed to be like the younger I know more about this kind of stuff guy and maybe he does again but we didn't get it in the interview Abdul who was supposed to be the like, you know, oh, he's a crazy progressive and he just has slogans like Medicare for all.

45:51He gave one of the most thoughtful answers about AI that I have heard. And he didn't just say like, ban it, done, paused. He was like, or like ban data centers forever. He talked about all the dangers, all the problems out there. And then he was like, we would build data centers if these conditions are met. AI, it's not the technology. It's the people controlling the technology. I thought it was just great. And he sounded thoughtful. He didn't sound too extreme. It was just you could tell he studied the issues and care about it.

46:18Jon Favreau:Yeah, someone smarter than me could tell me if it was bad policy or a bad answer substantively. But it was clear that he had thought deeply about it and he had something to say. And it wasn't just kind of whatever, you know, the latest polling memo said was the most potent attack against the data center industry or whatever. It was like a real plan. So look, going forward on the campaign, I try to ask his team, like, what's it look like, you know, from now until Election Day? They don't know really. Like, I think they changed the location of the town hall in Detroit like a couple days before. Right.

46:50Jon Favreau:So they're just kind of flying by the seat of their pants. They said they're just going to outwork Rogers. That will probably mean tons of town halls. But it also means there's also a diminishing return to events at this point in the campaign because you get your supporters and you don't get undecided. So they're trying to figure out like media places to go on to reach different voters. But they really, I think, just need money and they need the progressives and the establishment to just get on board with this campaign and go all in. Because like we don't just have an opportunity to like hold a seat in Michigan here.

47:21Jon Favreau:We have an opportunity to elect someone who is young and exciting and a great communicator and is brilliant, like a literal Rhodes Scholar with big ideas who cares deeply about the issues. And I think we should just everyone just be excited about that. Stop letting Fox News kind of drive the conversation about this election. That is a that is the Republican propaganda wing of the party. Fuck them. Let's all like let's be a little more hopeful, optimistic here about what the future could look like. And again, like I don't want to tell people what to do, but if you are still doubting Abdul or you're not sure about the race or you're sort of rolling your eyes about all this or you're on the other side of the primary, like just watch an event.

48:06Watch the event that you went to last night and see what you think. And like I feel pretty confident that people who listen to this show and a lot of other people will find it maybe surprising, compelling, all of the above. and yeah, it's, I'm, I'm just wondering about the money thing. I'm sure they, I'm sure they're going to get outspent and need money. Listen, if you watch him and you, and you don't, and his

48:29Jon Favreau:interviews on foreign policy or Israel or about Hassan Piker are a bridge too far for you, that's totally fine. Don't endorse, don't support him. That's okay. I'm just like, what I want from people is to do what you said, which is watch a full event. Like let's let this election be about something more than just a controversy that Fox News is doing everything they can to keep in the news because they think it's politically potent. Let's talk about the things that we really care about in the bigger picture in this election. Okay, so with that, here's my conversation with Michigan Senate candidate Abdul Al-Sayed.

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50:41Jon Favreau:And how do we use that data to understand or maybe even dare to predict the future of American politics? New episodes every Wednesday starting September 9th. Subscribe to Still Counting on YouTube.com slash at Still Counting Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

50:57Abdul El-Sayed:Apple Vacations, where your story starts.

51:00Jon Favreau:The Friends and Family Sale is here at Apple Vacations. Book by September 24th and save up to 50 % on all-inclusive vacations with instant savings. Whether it's a getaway with friends or a family vacation, there's always a reason to make more memories with your favorite people. Travel through August 2027 and start planning your getaway today at AppleVacations.com or with your trusted travel advisor.

51:22Abdul El-Sayed:Apple Vacations, where your story starts.

51:30Abdul El-Sayed:Abdul, great to see you. Great to see you. Thanks for coming to Detroit. It's great to be here. I mean, you're in Detroit and Mike Rogers is in Dallas.

51:36Jon Favreau:Who would have thought? So it's 820. It's probably your 13th hour of a very long day. Yeah, that's actually the tracks. We're at the sprint part that's also at the end of a marathon of a campaign.

51:47Abdul El-Sayed:That's right. So the primary is a marathon. And then you're like, you won. Okay, go sprint five miles. Go as fast as you can.

51:52Jon Favreau:And it's going to be exponentially worse. So you just did a town hall meeting here in Detroit. You got asked about food inspections, like listeria outbreaks, DOGE, whether Democrats are going to actually fight for stuff, artificial intelligence, and public safety. and then the work you did to keep Wayne County Prison open during COVID. They needed a press avail, and it was very different. It was like Israel, you know, Twitch streamers, et cetera. Like those town hall questions, are they representative of what you're hearing at town hall events? It felt very different than that kind of national media narrative.

52:24Abdul El-Sayed:That is very well put because when I travel to state, and we don't just stick around here in Detroit. We go all over the state. It's a big state. You can be in Detroit. You can be in Escanaba. And people literally use the same words in asking the same question. And it's almost always about something having to do with affordability, something having to do with government not working for them, something having to do with the existential dread of a data center or AI or healthcare. Those are all issues you get. And then, you know, you go on to some media platform hoping to communicate about the issues of the day and you get some question about a Twitch streamer in California.

53:05Abdul El-Sayed:It's not to say that people who make media in California are doing anything wrong. But that is to say that they are not the subject of a race for Senate here in Michigan.

53:13Jon Favreau:Well, that was the thing that was to drive Obama crazy. Because when you are campaigning, you're having like daily focus groups at all times. And you have like this visceral sense of what voters actually care about. And then you do the media scrum and it's just so divorced from it. It can be frustrating.

53:28Abdul El-Sayed:You know, maybe it's just because, you know, I famously hosted a podcast. You sure did. And a lot of what I tried to talk about on the podcast were the issues of the moment having to do with this issue of health. Of course, that was the subject of the podcast. But I actually believe that the media is important. I believe that the work that you all do, that the press does, that CNN and MS now do, maybe Fox News sometimes, that it serves a critical role in our democracy. and what frustrates me is that maybe like i'm a romantic about how this is supposed to work but i'm like guys do the job and you wonder why a lot of these traditional media outlets are hemorrhaging viewers or readers is because people don't see themselves reflected in the conversation that's being had and so in some respects i remember this moment where there's a crossover between a very famous political reporter and the Super Bowl.

54:29Abdul El-Sayed:And I was like, oh, wait. It's because the medium with which we consume politics has become the medium in which we consume sport, which means that the political conversation has been moved out of a way of actually informing people about what's happening in our civics into coverage for people who have the time and space to think about politics like it's a sport. But here's the problem. In politics, winners and losers really matter. It's not that team versus this team or this issue of the day that keeps you clicking. When people like Mike Rogers or Donald Trump win, like the people lose. And if you're not actually talking about it at that level, what's the point of doing this?

55:10Abdul El-Sayed:And I just, I kind of want the media to be better.

55:12Jon Favreau:Yeah, no, I hear you. Your opponent was in Dallas, Texas tonight, speaking at like this Trumpapalooza thing. He said a bunch of stuff. I mean, it wasn't a very long speech. He seems like he went there for like five minutes maybe. Well, the more important reason he went there

55:27Abdul El-Sayed:happened behind closed doors to Donald Trump.

55:29Jon Favreau:To talk to Daddy Trump. He said, you want to represent Palestine. He said, I want to represent Michigan. You know, he said you sanitized extremism. He called you a con man. He said, I'm a lawman. But I mean, I'm waiting to hear what the lawman has to say about, I guess when Ted Cruz was speaking about you, someone in the audience screamed, shoot him or kill him, something to that effect? Like, what do you think it says about our politics, the Republican Party, that that kind of thing is happening in such a public venue? And by the way, Ted Cruz is kind of like chortling about it, right? He's not like condemning it from stage.

56:03Abdul El-Sayed:You know, it kind of goes back to that point we just talked about, that this is real life and we are real people and all of us want to get home safely. And when you think about politics as being more about beating the other guy, it's easy to cross that line rather than thinking about politics, about actually delivering for people. and you know if Ted Cruz was out there or Mike Rogers was out there or Donald Trump was out there having a conversation about like here's the very serious things that we need to do to actually try to bring down the price of groceries for people or try to bring down the price of gas for people or trying to make sure that people can see a doctor without losing their livelihood on top of possibly losing their life I think you'd have a very different conversation but that's not how they do politics it's like this winner take all culture war through politics and it's very easy once you start to demonize somebody to the level at which you literally call them evil which is what jd vance called me what two weeks ago that you then get from there to a permission structure that allows you to call for violence against somebody right and politics democracy is supposed to be the process by which we solve our disagreements peacefully and it's been very clear they've been running against democracy for a very long time and this becomes the logical outcome.

57:21Jon Favreau:Oh, and this also happened on the day that the anniversary of Charlie Kirk getting assassinated, which was a horrible thing that everyone condemned left and right and should continue to condemn. But if someone's saying shoot him or kill him from state, you know, when you're on stage, you should condemn it in real time. You and I were talking on September 10th. Tomorrow's the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. You and I are both old enough to remember how terrifying that day was, how, you know, the country was gripped by fear for not just days and weeks, but years afterwards. But you had to experience that period as a guy named Abdul El-Sayed and all the Islamophobia and suspicion that went along with it.

58:01Jon Favreau:When I think about that day, in some ways, it feels like a lifetime ago. But then I look at our political debates and the way that Republicans are talking about you and fearmongering about you and your religion. and it makes me wonder if we've really moved on at all from the kind of post 9-11 politics of fear and I'm just wondering like what that period of time was like for you and and how you think about

58:25Abdul El-Sayed:it I remember I was a junior in high school sitting in my chemistry classroom and I remember watching the second plane hit the towers and thinking about what happened you know the victims of the terrorist attack that day were the 3 ,000 people who lost their lives the first responders whose lives were irreparably harmed, the families who have a hole in their families that's been there for 25 years now, the attack on our country, the attack on the ideals of our country. But there were huge ripple effects that happened. And one of the questions our country, I think, constantly has to ask is, who are we and who do we want to be?

59:08Abdul El-Sayed:And in the aftermath of tragedies like this, terrorist attacks, attacks on our homeland, we get to decide how we show up. And for me, obviously, I went from being a brown kid with a funny name to being a very particular kind of brown kid with a very particular kind of funny name. And I remember a set of words that I'd never heard before being hurled at me literally every time I'd ever step on a playing field. I was just what came with it. And I also know that my classmates, my teammates, whether it was football, wrestling, world lacrosse, they voted me captain of the football team, wrestling team, lacrosse team.

59:46Abdul El-Sayed:And they saw past the attempt by a few people to weaponize that attack to try to make America smaller. And by and large, we have seen in the past 25 years an attempt by a few people who want to gain power to constantly define out of the American norm certain groups of people. And I think what made the political rise and presidency of President Obama, who was the president of my 20s, so meaningful and powerful to a lot of folks was that he was the image of an America big enough for everybody. And we find ourselves in a moment like that now. But you're reflecting on 25 years, right? But we've been having this debate for 250 years.

1:00:31Abdul El-Sayed:you know who gets to be included yeah and a lot of folks ask me well what does it mean to be you i've only ever been me i i don't i don't know how to be anybody else i've never lived outside of this experience set but being me has also allowed me to see how people engage and interact with me and yeah there are the mike rogers and jd vance and the donald trump's of the world who see in me an attempt or an opportunity to define america as smaller than but I also get to interact with rooms full of people who are open-minded and big-hearted and are less interested in how you pray than what you pray for and are excited about the idea of an America that is bigger, more inclusive, more empowering, that does the things that America always should have done.

1:01:19Abdul El-Sayed:And I hope that in this race is less about me and my identity and more about America and our identity. and there's something exciting about the idea that Michiganders can prove Donald Trump wrong, that they can prove J.D. Vance wrong, that they can go back and prove the folks who wanted to persist in a Jim Crow era or perpetrated in eras of slavery or destroyed Native people, they can prove all of them wrong again, and that's the story of this place. So, yeah, we're talking about 9-11 on the 25th anniversary because it's important for us to memorialize the people who were lost on that day, But it's also important for us to memorialize that they didn't tear us apart.

1:02:01Abdul El-Sayed:They didn't take away that idea of an America that's big enough for everybody. And America decided to be that place that elected a guy like Barack Obama, that demonstrated how big it can be. And I think here in Michigan, Michiganders are going to prove that out too.

1:02:17Jon Favreau:You mentioned sort of questions of identity and who you are and who you always have been. When I think of you, I think of my really smart doctor friend, the guy I would call if I was trying to figure out, like, what is this new pandemic that I'm hearing about? Or, hey, man, help me understand this wonky health care policy. But then, you know, a lot of the clips and the ads I see out of your campaign, there's like a Love Island spoof. You've been calling Mike Rogers a beta. You just challenged him to an Oklahoma drill. And it's a little, you know, it's more bro than nerd. And I'm just curious, like, what's the image or message or story you're trying to tell about yourself?

1:02:55Jon Favreau:Like, tell me about the two sides and kind of what you want voters to know about you and come away with.

1:03:00Abdul El-Sayed:So, you know, the thing about politics is it always collapses people. Right. And I ran once before in 2018 and I had never run before. I was 32 years old. There were all these open questions about, well, you know, I had the same identity then too. And I realized I'd like kind of flattened my personality in that race because I was like, well, this is how a politician is. Right. Right. And this time around, I was like, you know what? I'm just going to be who I am. I was authentically the kid in, you know, AP classes and also authentically - I just met your calculus

1:03:29Jon Favreau:teacher. You met my calculus teacher. We interviewed her.

1:03:31Abdul El-Sayed:Authentically also the kid who too often, you know, would be scrapping at recess. I was both those kids. And part of it goes back to the fact that like, you know, I never walked into a classroom where I was quote unquote normal, right? And if there was a bully in that classroom, you better believe that bully was coming from me. so I learned pretty early that if you let a bully take your lunch you're not gonna eat lunch I like to eat so at some point I was like okay I you know I know what to do with bullies and my whole life like I I am the kind of person that if you're somebody who is struggling and don't have what you need I will go to the ends of earth to try to provide those things and if you're a bully who's taking those things away I will pull the fuck out of you because at the end of the day like I don't want a world where people like that get to decide who gets and who doesn't get.

1:04:17Abdul El-Sayed:So what you're seeing out of me is, yeah, I write policy books. I wrote the book on Medicare for All. I'm proud of that book. I like to sit down and research questions and think about health policy. And I enjoy studying. And I also know that we live in a time where the capacity to actually get good policy sits at the edge of defeating a set of bullies who've tried to domineer our politics away from that. And right now, we need folks who are willing both to think critically about big problems that we have and also willing to step up to the bully. And the thing about bullies is they don't respond to reason.

1:04:50Abdul El-Sayed:The reason they bully you is not because they've made a logical calculation about how best to engage in the world is because they're usually broken people and their approach to being broken is to try to break other people. And the only way you take on bullies is to take on bullies. So yeah, like they want to hit me, I'm gonna hit them right back. They want to pretend like somehow people should fear how strong they are. I'm going to show them what strength actually looks like so that we can get to a world where that's not what runs this. I mean, there's going to be an after Trump. And I'm excited about that.

1:05:23Abdul El-Sayed:So while we got Trump in our presidency, while we've got the mini wannabe Trumps, at some point, you got to stand up to them. And too often, I think as Democrats, it's like, I remember the kids in my advanced classes, anytime there'd be this bullying, they'd just kind of be like, oh, what are we going to do? I'm like, stand up, fight back. So right now is the time to stand up and fight back.

1:05:47Jon Favreau:I also would imagine like, look, I believe you that this is who you are, having known you for like a decade now. But also I wonder if there is political value here, right, in that, you know, Republicans are trying to call you radical and extreme. And then they see you in a Blue's Clues video and you're like, that guy kind of looks like a goofball, right? This doesn't look like a radical. a lot of young men in particular don't like the democratic party because they don't think it's masculine we can talk about all the ways that you know masculinity can be defined in bad ways it could be toxic in our culture but it is like a thing you see in polling and then you know that trump's demeanor and the way he is persona and the way he acts in the world appeal to a lot of young men and i'm just wondering you know when you talk about lifting and football and that kind of stuff Like, do you think it is appealing to young men?

1:06:36Jon Favreau:Is there, do you think that helps you break through?

1:06:39Abdul El-Sayed:You know, I played sports my whole life. It was a huge part of my childhood. Like chances are, if you met me when I was eight, nine, 10, I would be outside playing some sport with all the neighborhood kids. And so, you know, I spent a lot of my time in a lot of those locker rooms, listening to those conversations being had. and there's this game that people play around masculinity where they try to make it very hierarchical and I was always taught that any strength you have over somebody should be used to uplift that somebody the version of masculinity they like to present is one in which the only way you ever punch is down and the you're always kissing up i was always taught that if you're going to punch you punch up and that you protect down and i think it's important for people to realize you could be strong and you can be masculine and not be an asshole so if the adjective we always hear in front of the word masculinity is toxic what does like benevolent masculinity to look like?

1:07:49Abdul El-Sayed:What does it look like to actually be strong and use that effort to try to make yourself better in whatever way as a disciplining feature, but also a disciplining feature that is about how you promote others, how you become an integrator in your community, how you empower folks, and how you demonstrate that ability to discipline yourself. they want a masculinity that's about trying to achieve power over other people i've always taught that it was about achieving discipline over yourself and i think there's a way forward here which is not trying to pretend to be them but to show an alternative to what that is because it doesn't feel good to be an asshole it doesn't feel good to show up and just like tell people off or you always feel bad about it if you do it yeah you know none of these people feel whole it's a cycle right and then you're always watching out for somebody else to do it to you so what does it look like to come out and be like, yes, out of your masculinity, you're going to be a positive force in society.

1:08:47Abdul El-Sayed:You're going to uplift people. You're going to fight for more justice, more rights, right? And yeah, when it comes to standing up to bullies, stand up, flex, but understand what you're doing it for. It's not about the power differential. It's not about the power matchup. It's about trying to make a world that's better for everybody. And I think we have to be able to embrace that and embrace it in a way that is consistent with our values. Yeah.

1:09:11Jon Favreau:Speaking of kind of crossover appeal, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson was talking about your opponent, Mike Rogers, recently, and he said, quote, I wouldn't vote for Mike Rogers at gunpoint. What'd you make of that? And is that an endorsement of you? Are we going to do a Tucker event maybe in Detroit sometime soon?

1:09:29Abdul El-Sayed:Unlikely. By unlikely, I mean, no.

1:09:35Abdul El-Sayed:I'm just imagining all the ops being like, wait, wait, so there's a possibility. Wait a minute. Tucker, he's here this week? But look, I mean, I think what you get in Tucker Carlson is somebody who's seen up close a lot of the corruption inside MAGA. And what I think he sees in Mike Rogers is what all of us see in Mike Rogers. Somebody whose only interest is power and the money he can make off of power. And so when he says that, it's because he knew Mike Rogers back when Mike Rogers was in Congress and he was supporting things like TPP and NAFTA and now pretends like he's somehow the guy who wants to stand up for workers or against free trade.

1:10:17Abdul El-Sayed:The Mike Rogers he knew was the Mike Rogers who took us to all those wars in Iraq, extended the war in Afghanistan, who never saw a war he didn't like. and now Mike Rogers is pretending he's against war until Donald Trump does war, in which case he's for war again. Now we're loving Iran. And he understands that Mike Rogers is the guy who's never seen a corporate contribution he didn't like. So at least say what you will about Tucker. There are a lot of things that Tucker and I are going to disagree with, but he can see the corruption and the cowardice in the man. And it's just so off-putting when you actually have to look it in the eye.

1:10:52Jon Favreau:Yeah. There were a couple of people in the crowd tonight who worked with you when you were in charge of public health. As you know, like faith in public health and institutions took a huge hit. It took a significant hit during COVID. But then if you look at polling, it kind of fell off a cliff when Robert F. Kennedy took over at HHS. And a lot of it is because Democrats no longer trust, you know, the CDC or Kennedy to do their job. How do you think the federal government can rebuild that trust and better communicate about public health, knowing that often, if you're talking about a novel coronavirus, right?

1:11:28Jon Favreau:Like you're not going to know all the facts, right? It's going to be an iterative process.

1:11:31Abdul El-Sayed:You know, Tommy, I think the foundational issue is that people had lost public trust in public health and healthcare well before COVID. And it's because there's a lot of amazing science out there, but it always sits behind a paywall. And a lot of people couldn't scale that paywall. And so when you have a charlatan who comes in and says, well, I have this other alternative and they're just trying to make money off you. It's not that far of a leap to go from they make things I need, but they make them too expensive. So I don't trust them to, I don't even need the things that they make. I remember talking to a gentleman in the midst of the pandemic about the vaccine.

1:12:09Abdul El-Sayed:He said, you know, it's great. I'm gonna take the vaccine. I trust you. But how come y 'all out here trying to get me to take a vaccine that didn't exist a year ago for a disease that didn't exist a year ago that I don't even have. When I've been diabetic my whole life and insulin been around for a hundred years, how come you aren't out here trying to give me free insulin? It's like, good point. So one of the big reasons as a public health official, I'm so passionate about Medicare for all is because if we want people to trust health and healthcare, it can't feel like they're getting their pocket picked every day.

1:12:44Abdul El-Sayed:And if we want to restore trust, the things that are out there need to be available for people without having to worry about falling into debt, without having to worry about choosing between seeing a doctor and paying your rent next month.

1:12:55Jon Favreau:Buddy, thanks for the time. I think you got to go sit in a van and talk to CNN, so we'll let you go.

1:13:00Abdul El-Sayed:This is my life now, man. This is my life. Anyway. Living in a van in Detroit. I appreciate you being out here. It's good to be here. Welcome anytime. To all the folks out there who are listening, I hope you'll support us at Abdul4Senate.com. Get involved in this campaign. We are building a movement. We took$70 million on in the primary and still one got spent 11 to one because we built a movement to get money out of politics but money in your pocket past medicare for all that movement continues i'm up against literally the poster child of the worst features of american politics a guy who is never going to see an order from trump he doesn't like has never seen a corporate contribution he didn't like and we've got an opportunity to win an opportunity to win on our values and start redefining what the senate can be um i'm so grateful for you guys uh honored to have this conversation and looking forward to the next one.

1:13:44Jon Favreau:Also, the vibes are good out here. It seems fun. You got a fun team. People are cool in the town hall. So come out. Volunteer.

1:13:50Abdul El-Sayed:We'd love to see you out here. It's a lot of fun. Michigan in the fall, unbeatable.

1:13:53Jon Favreau:All right, John, that's it for Michigan. I'm going to shut down my laptop, upload some files, and run to the airport. So see you guys soon. All right. We'll see you soon. And we will have a new episode in your feed on Tuesday.

1:14:10Pods of America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Farrah Safari with Ree Cherlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, David Tolles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

1:14:51Jon Favreau:I'm Nate Silver. I'm Galen Druke. And I'm Claire Malone. We're back, this time with our friends at Crooked Media for a new show called Still Counting. Numbers are hard, takes are easy. And frankly, numbers have only gotten harder. What does the data actually say? How do we reconcile that with the other things that we're seeing in American politics and around the world? And how do we use that data to understand or maybe even dare to predict the future of American politics? New episodes every Wednesday starting September 9th. Subscribe to Still Counting on YouTube.com slash at Still Counting Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:15:33Jon Favreau:The friends and family sale is here at Apple Vacations. Book by September 24th and save up to 50 % on all-inclusive vacations with instant savings. Whether it's a getaway with friends or a family vacation, there's always a reason to make more memories with your favorite people. Travel through August 2027 and start planning your getaway today at AppleVacations.com or with your trusted travel advisor.

1:15:55Abdul El-Sayed:Apple Vacations, where your story starts.

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