Adelita Grijalva on Protecting Arizona from Trump

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0:58Ben Meiselas:Fox News is streaming live on Fox 1. When it matters most, you want the truth from the voices you trust. Fox News goes beyond the headlines, bringing you the stories you won't hear anywhere else. Live coverage, sharp analysis, real perspective. At home or on the go, stay connected when it counts. Stream Fox News on Fox 1. Download today. Hey, I'm running out to drop off a stack of letters and packages. Need anything shipped while I'm gone? Save the gas. Stamps.com lets you print postage and schedule pickups right from your desk. Sync your contacts into the address book, get detailed accounting insights, and get notified the moment your certified mail is delivered.

1:38Ben Meiselas:All from my desk? All from your desk. Join the 4 million businesses using Stamps.com right now with code podcast and get your free welcome gift. Stamps.com, code podcast. Taxes and fees apply. Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun An army hung on her every word My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana T 'was a lovely SUV, an inexplicably queenly offer They're even coming to the castle to collect it Tonight we feast! An offer you can feast on Sell your car today on Carvana Pick up fees, may apply We know that Donald Trump's approval is tanking nationally. The latest Gallup poll has Donald Trump's overall approval at 37 percent.

2:28Ben Meiselas:Amongst independents, it's 29 percent on issues like immigration. It's 38 percent. But he's also tanking in critical swing states that he won. If you look at Arizona, he's underwater there by about 12 points. And if you take a look at the various dynamics of what's happening in Arizona, you know, Donald Trump is screwing over that state in every single way. I mean, if you just take a look at the recent Dragon Bravo fires there, for example, we're seeing the Arizona senators pressing Donald Trump's interior secretary. Why were you treating this thing as like a controlled burn? This was under the federal supervision.

3:04Ben Meiselas:You did nothing. And critical areas have now been burned down. I just want to tell you that story in case you haven't heard about it, that Arizona senators are demanding answers from the Department of Interior over its handling of these devastating wildfires that are still burning out of control in the Grand Canyon's North Rim. In a letter sent Monday to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Democratic Senators Gallego and Kelly questioned the department's initial response to the Dragon Bravo fire. The blaze spread quickly over the weekend and destroyed dozens of structures, including the historic Grand Canyon Lodge, a visitor center and a wastewater treatment plan.

3:39Ben Meiselas:And it's been reported that the National Park Service initially decided to monitor the fire as a controlled burn, but changed their approach as strong winds allowed the fire to jump multiple containment features. I mean, this is something that we're seeing over and over again when it comes to emergency response with this Trump regime. It's frankly non-existence, whether we're talking about Arizona, whether we're talking about in Texas. Right. And speaking about, you know, in Arizona and Texas as well. I mean, these tomato tariffs and other tariffs abroad are going to cost, you know, tens of thousands of jobs.

4:15Ben Meiselas:This is from Arizona Central. Tomato tariffs and public media cuts. How Trump is impacting Arizona six months into the term talks about how Trump's recent moves, whether they're being felt in the Grand Canyon state, including his new tariff on Mexican grown tomatoes will increase the price at the grocery store. It's going to disrupt Arizona's tomato import industry, a billion dollar industry, immigration raids on popular businesses. The Mexico is Arizona's largest trading partner, according to the University of Arizona. Last year, the state's top import from Mexico was tomatoes worth one billion dollars.

4:53Ben Meiselas:You have Arizona now suing the Trump regime over education freezes, over health care freezes, over disaster prevention fund freezes. and more. I mean, it's a complete and total disaster right now. I want to get the take of somebody who's on the ground, Adelita Grijalva. Adelita running in that special election that I'm sure everybody knows about. She just won the Democratic primary in Arizona's seventh. Adelita, it's great to see you here. You know, that's what the data is showing. What are you seeing, you know, in the seventh? And look, we know the seventh is a traditionally more left-leaning congressional district, but Arizona is a purple state and you speak to people across the state as well.

5:37Ben Meiselas:What are you seeing in your district and abroad? Yeah, well, thank you for having me. I think that one of the biggest concerns is CD7, which is the district that I'm hopefully going to represent in Congress, has the three ports of entry. And so we have a lot of communities that are border communities have been there really well established. And what this fight that Trump is picking with Mexico on an up and down basis, there's going to be tariffs, there's not going to be tariffs. What it's doing is it's having this really chilling effect on the neighboring businesses. I mean, because we don't know what's going to happen.

6:12And it's also because of these raids that are happening more and more frequently. I mean, just walking into restaurants and looking around and saying, you know, are you a citizen? I mean, that's the kind of stuff that's happening here in our communities, that people are not going out. Whether you are a citizen or not, nobody wants to be harassed like that. And we're a community that has a lot of mixed status families. And so when we're living in fear on a regular basis, when, I mean, we never used to see Border Patrol or ICE in our community here. And now it's an everyday occurrence, which is very frightening for a lot of people because if you don't have the proper documentation, they're taking people into custody, whether you're a citizen or not.

6:59Ben Meiselas:Natalie, to tell people about the 7th Congressional District, I mean, specifically where it borders, you mentioned the three points of entry. So when we think about border communities and we think about how Trump demonizing border communities, you know, it is, you know, I think a noteworthy thing about what's really going on there and how people have felt about it before, how they're feeling about it now, versus, you know, look, no offense to people in Kentucky or New York or Michigan or other states, well, you know, or other states telling us about it, but you're literally, you're literally on the border with Mexico.

7:40Yeah. One of the things that is really frustrating to a lot of our community members in Nogales and San Luis. And, you know, we live in these areas, Douglas, they're the safest communities. I mean, statistically, the crime rates are so low. And what happens is we are dependent on Mexico. A lot of the businesses on the United States side depend on people coming back and forth for commerce, for compras, they're buying things, And that's not happening anymore. And so you'll see more and more businesses closing. Douglas has a lot of businesses that are closed, right? And others that are really struggling.

8:21And there's a fear there that is just, you can sense it when you walk around. And what we're really sick of is having, you know, congressmen come from other parts of the nation and sort of scapegoat our communities. That's not who we are or what we represent. And so it is incredibly difficult. You know, we have so many opportunities to really work together with Mexico and they are our greatest partner. And so when you have Trump sort of picking on Mexico, it really impacts us. And many, I mean, we hear it very often in our community, the border crossed us. We didn't cross the border. And so a lot of communities, especially a lot of families, they have people on both sides of the border.

9:12And when you talk about that impact to like nations, like the Ta 'anotham Nation, that is significant in cells where, you know, you see a lot of destruction of sacred areas. We see like mining in Oak Flat. I mean, those are impacts that this administration is having. And then the fact that Trump continues to have this narrative that he'll sort of spew things out that are completely untrue. But because he said it, other people will repeat it. And that's really scary. And I feel like I'm really appreciative of programs like yours where we're just going to talk about what the real issues are, because I am really sick of having to dispel a lot of myths that are out there just because someone in this administration has said something.

10:03Ben Meiselas:You know, and I think one of the things that made your campaign very successful, and I think you see this nationwide, are politicians, but really human beings, your human being first, who speaks to other human beings about the issues impacting them. You know, so many, I think, of those issues that are really affecting the people are not being discussed in favor of kind of broader narratives that are really abstractions on the things that people wake up fearing. I'm going to be able to do this. I'm going to be able to make it through the day. To me, your campaign was all about here's what here's what we're going to do for you.

10:43Ben Meiselas:I hear you on and really talking about all specific issues. So speak to that, because I think that's a template, frankly, for how people need to run campaigns versus, you know, all the all the flashy stuff out there. Yeah, I think that we're not relating to people. And that's one of the problems that we had in our election last go round is that we're not talking to people directly. We're not talking to a cross section of people. I mean, I think that that was one of the things that was very different about our campaign. We focused very much on policy and how it impacts people directly, not about personality, talked about very progressive values.

11:23This community has elected elected my dad 11 times, 22 years in office because he was an unapologetic progressive, as am I. And so when we did old-fashioned, like, door knocking, talking to people, hit 39 ,000 doors, 320 ,000 phone calls, had 1 ,400 volunteers in a special election in the middle of Tucson. It's 107 degrees. We had 100 people here, average, on a Saturday, willing to go and talk to people door to door. And that is, it's the real conversations. It's like, why don't you want to vote in this election? Well, it doesn't matter. Well, let me tell you why it does matter. And I think that if we do more of that, all politics are local, all of them.

12:11And so when we have people that people trust, then it's difficult to come after them. And I think that that was one of the benefits of being in this community is that, you know, I was sort of captioned as this establishment Democrat, but I'm established here. I'm not establishment anything, but people know me because I've been here. And I think that that's where the Democratic Party needs to move towards is getting people that are part of communities that people can trust and then supporting them and getting across the finish line. And I think that that's one of the things that that was very different about our campaign is we really talked a lot about policy and how Trump's this administration is hurting us when it comes to public education, when it comes to comprehensive immigration reform.

12:58I mean, it's a serious all out assault on our democracy. And that's where I think is really critical. The other thing is, is like, you know, I know social media. I'm not great at it. But we had my daughter started Youth Fraderita and put together her friends. And it just was this infusion of a really positive energy that really helps. And so we had a cross section of people that were part of this campaign. And it was our support was district wide across all demographics, but especially young people. And so I'm really proud of that. And I think that that's sort of the template that we need to work from moving forward, that it can't be all, you know, just getting this, the national media actually made it seem as if our race was so tight, which it did encourage a lot of volunteers to come out and encourage a lot of people to come out to vote.

13:54We had more people vote in this election in a special primary than we did in the primary for the presidential.

14:03Ben Meiselas:You know, I think one of the things that Donald Trump was able to do in the 2024 election is he spoke to and saw people's vulnerabilities because he's a con artist and he's a fraud. And he's and he's known how to prey on human beings his entire life. That's what he's done. But he spoke to those issues and he would go to different communities and make all sorts of conflicting promises. I'm going to make you rich. I'm going to make you rich. I mean, earlier today, Donald Trump, now that all this Epstein news is coming out about him, his new thing is we've made so much money on tariffs. I'm going to give you all a rebate.

14:41Ben Meiselas:Low income families, you're about to get a massive. And I'm like, wait a minute. Didn't you say that with Doge? You're going to make all this money from Doge that you were going to get the Doge rebates. Now it's the tariff rebates. And it's a Ponzi scheme over and over and over again. But he spoke to the people suffering. He just made them suffer more. And, you know, I think we have to listen the way your campaign did and hear people and speak to, here's how we empower you. Here's the solution. So on that, I'll give you the final word. And where can people find out more about you? And obviously, the campaign's still happening.

15:18Ben Meiselas:I mean, there's still an election in September. So what do you need people to do? But I'd love for you to just have the final word in general with the audience. Well, thank you so much. I think that what we really need to do as a party is focus back on our working families, focus on the issues that make sense to people and make them make sense in the way that everyone understands this is why politics are important because it impacts every part of your life, whether you are a senior, a veteran, a student, a mom, those are things that are important. And that's what we need to talk to people about and make them tangible because that's what we're not doing right now as a party.

15:58We have another, we have a general election. We do have a Republican opponent who is very much a Trump supporter. And so what we have to do again is go door to door and remind people it is all about who takes part in this democracy. And we won the primary because we focused on issues and values that we're consistently fighting for. And that's what we're going to continue to do here. September 23rd is our general election. It is the only election happening in the nation, which is why I think we got so much attention. If you'd like more information about this campaign, how to get involved, you can be anywhere in the nation and get involved.

16:40It's Adelita for congress.com, F-O-R. And, you know, what we're doing here is talking about the issues that are important, environmental justice, fighting for working families, standing up for tribal sovereignty, and demanding accountability for our community. And I would be honored and privileged to represent this community in Congress.

17:02Ben Meiselas:Adelita Grijalva, anytime you want to come back on the Midas Touch Network, just let me know. Thanks. Thanks for all you do. Thank you so much. And thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million subscribers. The truth is more important than ever. Check out our new Truth Over Lies collection at store.midastouch.com. All 100 % USA union made.

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18:31Ben Meiselas:Hey, I'm running out to drop off a stack of letters and packages. Need anything shipped while I'm gone? Save the gas. Stamps.com lets you print postage and schedule pickups right from your desk. Sync your contacts into the address book, get detailed accounting insights, and get notified the moment your certified mail is delivered. All from my desk? All from your desk. Join the 4 million businesses using Stamps.com right now with code podcast and get your free welcome gift. Stamps.com code podcast. Taxes and fees apply.