Have Democrats found their new Obama in Michigan?

0:00Bite into a stacked sandwich made with Hero Bread. And the only thing you'll think is delicious. You won't think it has up to 19 grams protein, 11 to 32 grams of fiber, or just 0 to 5 grams net carbs. But it does. Hero Bread. No compromises. Just loaves, buns, tortillas, bagels, and noodles packed with flavor. Right now, get 10 % off at Hero.co with code IHEART. That's H-E-R-O dot C-O code IHEART. All figures per serving of Hero Bread. Red Sea Nutrition Packs on Hero.co. This is a global production. I guess he's a progressive socialist. He's stood on a platform of Medicare. Even the cocktails at his watch party were kind of named after various colors of health care.

0:49She waited too long before realizing this race was not winnable for her. And that may well have been the victory margin for Stevens. In fact, it's quite likely to have been because the margin of victory for al-Said is very, very narrow. We're talking about just thousands of votes here. Whilst the left is hailing this as a radical departure from the sort of centrist candidates and possibly a new way forward for the whole Democratic Party, it feels as if this whole race has been a lot tighter than really many of us anticipated. But I also want to speak to this moment. We've got 13 weeks to defeat Mike Rogers.

1:33and however we might feel about the campaign we've just come through I want you to understand that it pales in comparison to the cynicism in comparison to the corporatism in comparison to the lies that Mike Rogers and Donald Trump are going to tell. There is so much more that unites us. However much we might disagree with our democratic opponent, there is so much more that unites us than divides us. And so to all of our supporters here tonight watching on TV, tomorrow we begin to mend fences. Whatever happens tonight, we have a responsibility to assure that we unite to make sure that Mike Rogers never sees the inside of the US Senate.

2:34It looks like Abdul El-Sayed has squeezed through in Michigan in the Senate race primary. Would his victory confirm the left of the party now calls the shots or are the Democrats going into the midterms with a terrible split down the middle? Welcome to the News Agents USA. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel. I was up watching the Michigan primary Senate race last night until about 4.30. And fool that I was, I woke up a few hours later to find that actually there is still no clear winner, as we record at quarter to one on Wednesday lunchtime. NBC, however, has called it for Abdul Al-Sayed over his opponent, Hayley Stevens.

3:31Now, it is such a tight race, as I talk, that the margin of victory is about 1.3 % with 95 % of the votes cast. And so whilst the left is hailing this as a radical departure from the sort of centrist candidates and possibly a new way forward for the whole Democratic Party, it feels as if this whole race has been a lot tighter than really many of us anticipated. motivated. We're joined now by Miles Taylor, who worked for the first Trump administration before he turned whistleblower. Miles, I know you're in Iceland with all that wilderness behind you. I'm not going to ask why. I'm just going to kind of pretend you're on the outskirts of Detroit.

4:13OK, well, look, this was my effort to escape American politics. And I have failed spectacularly because like you, I was watching the numbers come in and it was a nail biter, Emily. And this is one of those things that's also a peculiarity of the American system that you are going to see a lot more of this November, which is that the ballots come in from different precincts at different times, and they're counting the in-person ballots and the mail-in ballots. And so you can see the numbers jump all over the place. And last night, that's what made it a nail-biter, is we saw the delta between the two candidates increase and decrease and increase.

4:54Now, the reason I think as we sit here, NBC was able to call it is something miraculous statistically would need to happen for Stevens to pull ahead. And so it seems to be pretty much in the bag for El Saeed. But what I want to flag is that uncertainty is very likely to be exploited in November in the United States by rivals, particularly Donald Trump, for his candidates to say that something fishy happened, that something unusual is afoot because the numbers are changing or the vote tallies, you know, crisscross and one person's in the lead and then another. That uncertainty is going to be used potentially to make claims that there was illegitimacy, even though, Emily, at the end of the day, anyone who knows American elections knows this is just how the ballots are counted.

5:42Yeah. And whilst this is, I mean, essentially a two horse race between Hayley Stevens, who was backed by the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, albeit at the last minute, and this sort of progressive guy on the left, Abdul Al-Sayed. I think we should also mention Mallory McMorrow, because she comes in as a third party candidate who actually took herself off the ballot in the sense that she pulled out of the race. But her name, another quirk of American elections, her name remained on the paper. And she actually looks as if she's taken around 4 % of the vote. And so this is such a weird position to be in, where somebody who's not even standing, arguably, may have dictated the race.

6:33I mean, I guess it's impossible to say whether she was more one candidate or the other. But my sense is that the Stevens crowd will be angrier at this point that Mallory McMorrow's name remained on the ballot overnight, possibly denying her that win, right? Well, they will say, as they were saying earlier in this race, that she played the role of spoiler because a lot of her voters, as you note, would have likely gone to Stevens. and she waited too long before realizing this race was not winnable for her. And that may well have been the victory margin for Stevens. In fact, it's quite likely to have been because the margin of victory for Al-Sayed is very, very narrow.

7:14We're talking about just thousands of votes here. And the many tens of thousands that Mallory McMorrow picked up could have gone in the other column for Stevens. And this is just one of those things that you get into races and ego starts to get a good bit larger than practicality. Although, you know, early last year, if you would have asked folks, McMorrow was very popular. And a lot of people thought that she might be the one to surge in this race. But she fell off. And that timing is everything. So I guess we should get to the meat of the race, really, and what they stand for. Why did Saeed kind of come, as it were, from nowhere and become the winner?

7:56I mean, to all intents and purposes, it looks like he's going to take this candidacy now. He got the backing of a lot of the Democratic left. I guess he's a progressive socialist. He's stood on a platform of Medicare. Even the cocktails at his watch party were kind of named after various colours of health care. But the thing that really singles him out and has created the biggest division in this race is that he has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. And it has been noticeable that whilst Hayley Stevens was backed by AIPAC, which is the sort of Israel donor base in America, she got, we understand, up to 60 million dollars.

8:49He refused to take money from big corporate outsiders. And he also said, essentially, that he would not want to see any funding of Israel through weapons, even for defence. Now, Miles, I'm really interested in your take on this because this will have, I guess, split the Democrats. Well, we can see it split the Democrats. those who feel that absolutely this progressive stance on Gaza is where the party has to be, and those possibly who feel more protective of Israel, possibly more Jewish voters in Michigan, who will feel that this is sending out a signal that kind of Israel's been cast aside, that if you're not even going to support Israel's defence, then you're really sending out a strong message to its vulnerability and who feel that he stands for something that takes the party in a very, a very different direction.

9:49Well, Emily, there's absolutely nervousness within the party right now about Al-Sayed, both writ large about what it means in terms of the momentum of the progressive side of the party and doubts about whether progressives like Al-Sayed can win in a general election and more specific policy concerns, like the fact that the party appears to be veering away from its prior support of Israel, that it might be alienating Jewish voters that have been strongly allied with the Democrats. Now, I will say, in fairness, one of the things that Al-Sayed has done is he has tried very hard to create a distinction between the Israeli government and his opposition to the actions of the Israeli government and Judaism.

10:37He's well aware of the concerns within the party. He wants to make sure that he's out there talking about this proactively before he's painted as such. So take a listen to what he had to say on this front when it came to AIPAC and Israel. AIPAC and Israel are not the same as Judaism and the Jewish people.

11:01I love Judaism and I love the Jewish people. I venerate Judaism and I venerate the Jewish people. I stand with Judaism and I stand with the Jewish people. And the single most dangerous thing that they've tried to tell us is that somehow they can extend the definition of anti-Semitism to include a foreign government and its leaders. I call bullshit. No. No. That rise in his voice as he goes up is so reminiscent of Obama, isn't it? I mean, not the words, not the content, perhaps, but he sounds in his intonation like a 2026 Obama. And I know that there were some people kind of referencing that. They said that Obama's win in North Carolina in 2008 felt like this moment for him.

11:58But I guess if you think that there was an Obama-Hillary split at one point in the primaries that could have torn the party apart, this time they have to win a Senate seat, which is really critical to the Democrats controlling the Senate. And right now, if that win is on a knife edge, is Abdul El-Sayed going to get those Hayley Stevens voters on side? Right. I mean, this is this is like a major question now and probably a microcosm of what's going to happen sort of all together when it comes to the midterms. I hate to say it because I'm going to sound very, very much like the Gen Zers these days.

12:47This is all about vibes, Emily. This election is going to be about vibes. And as you note, El Saeed, he brings a charisma to the microphone and his supporters will say that's no invention. I didn't know him personally, but he was at Oxford around the same time as me. He came over also from the States on scholarship as a Rhodes Scholar, studied in the UK, ended up getting a D fill over there. And at the time, I remember folks comparing him to the person who was our president at the time. There was a big reelection in that window just as he was leaving Oxford, Barack Obama's reelection. And I think his peers had a sense that this young man at the time had a political future.

13:30And I think you're going to see him deploying that soaring rhetoric to try to unify the party. But he's also going to tack to the center to try to rebut some of these criticisms. And that's why Obama is also a very good analogy. Remember what Donald Trump did more than a decade ago, kept repeating Barack Hussein Obama. He still does it today. He likes to repeat Barack Obama's full name because it sounds foreign. You're going to see the same things happen with El Saeed in this race. There are going to be dog whistles or perhaps just loud whistles with a nod towards a sort of bigotry that people want to try to scare voters.

14:14Now, El Saeed was born in the United States. He's ethnically Egyptian, as he'll note, but he was born in the United States. He was born in Michigan, and he has tried very hard to talk, much as we were discussing with Israel, about his love for America while also talking about his criticisms of America. Take a listen, Emily, to this other clip because here he's trying to walk the line in a way I think is similar to the attacks he anticipates regarding his opposition to Israel when he's talking about his love of the United States. And so as we continue forward for the next 13 weeks, I am asking you to put your shoulder in the work to make sure that we defeat Mike Rogers.

14:55We defeat and send a blow to Trumpism. And we do the work of building that next 250 years that all of us deserve. Because at some point, whether you know them or you don't, the future will ask you, what did you do in this moment? For me, it looks like two little girls, ethnically half Indian like their mom, ethnically half Egyptian. Like me, 100 % American. Yeah, but listen, first of all, Miles, it's very reassuring for us to hear that you and Abdul learn everything you know from us in England. So I'm glad we put that one to bed. It's a great irony. The only reason the American experiment might survive is because the Brits continue to educate us.

15:41We've taught you enough. Good. I mean, look, I remember that Obama speech where he talked about not blue states, not red states, but United States. I mean, that's become a sort of cliche now. But in a in a weird way, it sounds like an anachronism because you've certainly never heard Trump say it. But back to your vibes point, I guess one of the things that we're looking at, and I think this was a criticism leveled at Hayley Stevens on the campaign trail, was that she just wasn't, she kind of wasn't out there enough. You know, some people call it lazy. I guess other people would just say not visible enough.

16:19And one thing that he's got, he's really kind of nailed messaging, messaging, messaging. And this is a point that Van Jones made on CNN last night. You know, the revolution will be televised, except he's taken it up a notch. Just have a listen. Look, this is this is the whole ball of wax. I'm from Jackson, Tennessee. There was a guy named Gil Scott Heron who had a great poem. It was called The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Gil Scott Heron is wrong. The revolution is being televised and podcast and streamed and elected tonight. Why is that? It's because there is a credibility gap that's opened up between the Democratic Party establishment and this insurgency.

17:05So, I mean, that is the point, isn't it? That we are we are on a Netflix trajectory now, not the old video store blockbusters, except Miles. And I think this is critical. And we we kind of need to address this. The Republicans at the moment are sounding really happy that it's not Hayley Stevens because they think they can beat him. They think, you know, you can take your vibes and quite frankly, shove it up your Netflix, whatever. But when it comes to a race in a swing state like Michigan, and we know how tight it was because Alistair Slotkin just won it by 1 % at the last election. Going into this race, have the Democrats gone too much for vibes over what looks like a kind of, dare I say, sensible, moderate choice?

17:59Has that cost them possibly the Senate seat? Well, look, I'm going to say that I do think this is a risky move. It's a risky move to nominate El Saeed because he's coming with a lot of the liabilities that Republicans have been hoping to exploit. They're going to go, I think, full Elon Musk on this. Right. Look at what Elon Musk has done in Great Britain. He's stoked all sorts of fears. He's used lots of coded language. They're going to try to use the same thing against him. They're going to go after his liberal politics as well. They're going to paint him as socialist and communist. And that's why I say I think that it would have been a less risky choice to put Stevens forward.

18:40But here's the thing. When you watch El Saeed, what he is good at is what Barack Obama was good at, which was getting ahead of those criticisms before his opponent even has the chance to level them. I mean we've already talked about how he did it on Israel, how he does that on Israel, how he does that on his Egyptian heritage. He gets right in there and talks about his pride in being American, but his need to fix America. And similarly, he's been doing this on his on allegations that he is a socialist. He's been getting ahead of those concerns in ways that are likely to allay Stephen's voters and get the party rallied around him.

19:23Now, the question is going to be what happens with independent voters? And I know Republican Mike Rogers. I used to work with him in the House of Representatives. He's actually a pretty even keeled guy. He's a pretty charismatic guy. And the Democrats Al Saeed's campaign is going to try very hard to paint him as mega maga super Trump. Unfortunately for them, Mike Rogers really isn't mega maga. And so it's going to be tricky. You've got these two campaigns that are going to be trying to paint each other as extremists while they're trying to tell a different story. I want to play one more clip, Emily, because El Saeed was on with my friend Jen Psaki on MS Now, and she confronted him on these concerns about his left leaning politics.

20:09Take a listen to what he had to say. The reason I'm asking is because if you're the nominee, Mike Rogers and the Republicans are going to try to label you as a Democratic socialist. You're going to say you're not. But I'm asking, help us understand what's the difference between your version of capitalism and their version of Democratic socialism? them. You know, Jen, the irony of this is that they're already trying to label my opponent, Haley Stevens, a socialist too. This is what they label any Democrat who runs against them. Now, Donald Trump is calling everybody a communist. We're so concerned about what they're going to say about us that we forget that we also have mouths and can talk about them.

20:42Let's talk about Mike Rogers. Mike Rogers is the worst kind of corporatist. He is so bought off by corporations that he made$14 million. He doesn't want to tell us how he made, except for he was likely trading on his relationships in government. When he did serve in the Congress, He never saw a corporate PAC check he didn't like. Voted to raise prescription drug prices, I don't know how many times, helped to architect the opioid epidemic. This is a guy who we're going to be up and down the state because the dude is bought off as hell. And I think it's time for us to stop being so worried about what they're going to say about us and start using our mouths to talk about what's wrong with them.

21:14Yeah, I mean, I guess he just has to, in a way, leave the MAGA stuff to one side and say he's about corporate money. And one of the ways that Al-Sahid has to win, I think, for the Democrats is to go and find the voters who've never voted before. You know, do the Trump trick. In other words, if you are energized, if you are passionate enough, if you are reaching people who didn't think politics was ever for them by your messaging or by your enthusiasm or by the fact that you are not taking corporate money, perhaps, then you get new people out. Miles, we're going to be back in a second. And this time we're talking about your old friend, the weird Max Miller.

22:02Bite into a stacked sandwich made with hero bread or a fully loaded bagel. And the only thing you'll think is delicious. You won't think it's up to 19 grams of protein, but it is. You wouldn't believe it has 11 to 32 grams of fiber, but it does. Hero Bread makes loaves, buns, tortillas, bagels, and noodles packed with taste, but without all the net carbs. We're talking 0 to 5 grams net carbs per serving. With Hero Bread, there are no compromises, just flavor. There's none of the stiff baked goods you'd expect from Better For You brands. There's just the soft, fluffy bread you crave. Plus, small batch drops of indulgent favorites, like the popular 2-gram net carb Hero Croissant and 3-gram net carb Hero Pen au Chocolat.

22:48And right now, Hero Bread is offering 10 % off your order. Go to Hero.co and use code IHEART at checkout. That's code IHEART at H-E-R-O dot C-O. All figures per serving of Hero Bread. See nutrition facts on Hero.co.

23:07The News Agents USA. Truly the seventh level of hell. This has been a horrific experience for my entire family. My daughter lives in constant fear of this man. Not like something that's existential, but deeply in her heart, she fears what this guy is capable of. You can't fathom what that makes me feel like. When the dad's number one job is to protect your kids. This has been brutal, beyond comprehension. And if there's any minimum standard for being an elected official, as I said, he fails to meet that minimum basic standard. I don't care about the politics at all. Don't think about it. It doesn't answer my consciousness.

23:55That voice you hear there, Emily, is Republican Senator Bernie Moreno talking about his son-in-law, also an elected Republican, over in the House of Representatives. His name is Max Miller, and he is embattled right now. He is in a crucial swing district in Ohio, and he has been alleged to have engaged in abusive behavior and neglectful behavior towards his child. And this is a history, Emily, that stretches back some years. And Miller has been fighting for his political career as these allegations have resurfaced the past few weeks. And it's only gotten worse with his father-in-law now weighing in on the scandal.

24:38This is becoming a very, very hot issue here in the United States because Republicans are concerned about losing the House of Representatives. And one other seat that they thought might be safe, Max Miller's seat, is now, because of this scandal, very much back in play. Yeah, it is a really horrible story, actually. And the accusations come from his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, Bernie Moreno's daughter, who's accused her ex-husband of throwing her against a wall, of holding a gun to her head and has even said she cannot rule out that he may have fractured their two-year-old daughter's collarbone. Now, Miller has denied the allegations and also said that he has been through police investigations which have cleared him.

25:26Last night, he appeared on CNN with Jake Tapper in honestly one of the most jaw dropping interviews you're ever likely to hear. And he's trying to explain why basically he is more investigated than any other controversial candidate in the race. and why it's really important that he doesn't pull out of this race because he doesn't want his two-year-old daughter, with possibly a fractured collarbone, to think of him as a quitter. Let's just give you a flavor of what last night sounded like. There are now three women, three women who have accused you of violent behavior. Politico published a report in 2021 that says when you were in high school, you, quote, pushed a girl out of the dorm of his room, and she fell down some stairs after he became enraged when she resisted his attempts to touch her, according to three people who were there, and many more who heard about the incident in the aftermath.

26:24Now, you deny that, but the woman in question told Mother Jones reporter Abby Vassoulis just days ago that it happened and was, quote, one of the more traumatic nights of her life. I would love for that individual to go on the record because that... Okay, hold on, because I'm not done with the list of women that have accused you of violence. Then there is a former White House press secretary. OK, you were young. Then there's a former White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, who was your ex-girlfriend. She accused you of being abusive and having a violent streak. She wrote in her book, quote, I could do nothing right by him.

26:54I would wake up every morning shaking with anxiety about his mood that day. I had seen his temper before and it had scared me, unquote. She has recently filed a temporary restraining order against you in a defamation case. And now there are these claims from your ex-wife, Emily Marino. And I guess the question is, are all three of these women who don't know each other, are all three of them lying? Yes, it's very easy, and I can tell you why. Every single time, and people have asked me, you know, what are you going to do? Are you going to drop out of this race? Are you going to resign? You know, are you going to get out before the deadline?

27:26And my answer to you, Jake, is no. And I can tell you why. In 2016, when President Donald J. Trump faced the most extreme allegations in the world that hit him day after day after day. And people in the media, very much like yourself and others, said that he would have no shot at winning, that he should not be the president of the United States. But guess what? He stayed in and he was resilient. And what the American people can see is that they can see that somebody is fighting who is resilient, and that is a quality that the American people cherish. And so for no second am I going to sit here and continue to be debased by false and baseless allegations and be pushed out of his seat, I have worked so hard to represent and done a terrific job for our community.

28:09You know, my record in Congress on the ways and means and House Foreign Affairs and bringing back money for our district. Right. And standing up for the Ukrainian people and also voting to protect Obamacare during this entire time. This is why no one's attacking me on my policy, Jake, because they can't. Emily, I got to say, politically, it feels like a mistake for him to compare himself to Donald Trump, especially on abuse allegations, and Donald Trump, who just had to pay millions of dollars to a woman who accused him of rape. He was convicted on that, and he had to make the payment. That's not the person I'd be comparing myself to in this moment.

28:46But I also have to disclose, Emily, I served with Max Miller in the first Trump administration. We were not socially close, but I knew and am very socially close with Stephanie Grisham, the former White House press secretary who leveled some of those initial allegations against Max Miller. And I can remember seeing how afraid she was to come forward about it. And of course, as you noted earlier, Stephanie has filed a temporary restraining order against Max Miller. It's my understanding that he got her at one point placed under a gag order. So she's not been able to talk about the extent of the allegations.