Digital Social Hour - Marianne Williamson On Fixing America, Running for President & Her Favorite President | DSH #151

Episode Date: November 8, 2023

On today's episode of Digital Social Hour, we sit down with Marianne Williamson to discuss the state of the public education system, how she wants to change the healthcare system and the corruption of the prison system. BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] APPLY TO BE ON THE POD: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 SPONSORS: Opus Pro: https://www.opus.pro/?via=DSH HelloFresh: https://www.hellofresh.com/50dsh AG1: https://www.drinkAG1.com/DSH Hostage Tape: https://hostagetape.com/DSH LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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going to have to become more humble now. On one hand, that's difficult for us on an economic level, but America doesn't just get to walk around and say what we want anymore. Right. And many times and ways in which we did, we abused our power. I want to be a president who says, this is a changing world. We've got some very serious problems, but we are Americans. Right. And we can fix them.

I would open the door, like the visual image I have, is that I would open the door of the Oval Office and say, come on, guys, we have four years. We are back. Digital Social Hour. I'm your host, Sean Kelly, with my co-host, Wayne Lewis. What up, what up? And our guest today, presidential nominee, Marianne Williamson. Well, I'm not a presidential nominee.

I'm a presidential candidate for the Democratic nomination. Yes. But you can keep saying that to sort of put it in the air. Yes, we'll manifest it. For sure. You see, I'm wearing mine. Hell yeah. Thank you.

I really appreciate that. I appreciate you. Yeah. So what's been going on with you lately? What's on your mind? Well, I'm in Las Vegas because Nevada is an early primary state. And I came here from Detroit and Port Huron because Michigan is an early primary state. And I came here from Detroit and Port Huron because Michigan's an early primary state. And so I'm spending a lot of time these days in New Hampshire and South Carolina, Nevada,

Michigan, getting this thing done. It's an experience like no other. But I'm not a novice at it anymore because I ran last time. Right. A little bit of a veteran. Right. Part of it is exhilarating and part of it is very sobering. Right. What did you learn the first time you ran that you're kind of implementing this time around? Well, it's not so much what I'm implementing. What I learned was that the system is even more vicious than I feared.

There is a political media industrial complex. And the role of a political party is to facilitate the process of democracy. But too often, and I'm seeing it from the belly of that beast, they're using their power to manipulate and even to suppress the experience and the expression of democracy for instance the president saying that he will not debate myself or his other opponent bobby kennedy so that's sobering and it's sobering to see how so much of mainstream media media chops wood and carries water for them how they erase a candidate basically like she doesn't exist invisibilizing like I can come in three points behind Robert Kennedy and a bull and but he's talked about and I'm not it's just it's um you know you see how it works but then on the

other hand what I saw last time, which I see every bit as much this time, is that people are wonderful. And this time it's even more interesting because last time, at least among the Democratic electorate, which is who I was speaking to, there was such a panic to defeat Donald Trump that all they really wanted to hear about

was who would defeat Trump, who would defeat Trump. Because we were all, to some extent, I think, living in retrospect with a bit of a naive, at least hope, that if we just defeated Trump, then there would be a return to some semblance of normalcy. And I think clearly now it's obvious that some cat had already been let out of the bag so I find people more open this time to an expanded conversation a realization that just tweaking things here and tweaking things there is not going to not going

to provide the level of economic and social reform that is necessary. I also feel that there is a rumbling underneath the surface of things, a deep realignment of our political realities and dynamics that neither political party is prepared to deal with yet. Wow, that's scary. So you feel like the media kind of favors certain candidates? Neither political party is prepared to deal with yet. Wow. That's scary. So you feel like the media kind of favors certain candidates? Absolutely. The media more than favors certain candidates.

You didn't push them. That's putting it mildly. But Trump was able to defeat them, right? Yeah. Well, no. Second time around. I think Trump actually got defeated the second time. The first time he was their guy.

Yeah, because as Les Moonves at CBS said at the time, bad for America, good for CBS. So at the beginning, Bernie's rallies were the same size as Trump's, but they kept showing Trump because it was the one that got them clicks. It was one that got them sponsors that people were looking at on television because they had seen him say you're fired so many times and also early on in the process, Hillary Clinton thought he would be the easiest one to beat. Yeah. And now this time the same, the erasure of candidates that they don't want in the conversation

is extraordinary but the as sobering as that is as undemocratic as that is it's not what the people want you know you see poll after poll after poll saying they want to see other candidates not just the president but even there when they talk about who that might be they only talk about younger clones of the president you know what I mean so even when they say no we need more variety when they talk about younger clones of the president. You know what I mean? So even when they say, no, we need more variety, when they talk about variety, they mean variety among the status quo

in which there's real no variety at all, except somebody younger, somebody shinier, somebody, but they're basically the same corporatist, democratic establishment. Why do you feel we haven't had a woman as a president yet? Why do I feel we have not yet? Well, I tell you something, that whole question

of misogyny has been on my mind in this race uh more than before it's you know i felt when it came to anti-semitism when it came to racism when it came to so many forms of bigotry i felt I had a pretty good visceral sense of how that works. I never had a visceral experience, really, of misogyny like I have in this campaign. DeSantis fires his campaign manager and they say, well, he's shaking things up. Things have to get better. If I have that experience or any, oh, out of control, crazy woman. Right. Yeah.

She's PMSing. Yeah. A man doesn't, yeah, he's shaking things up. He's got to, you know out of control, crazy woman. Right, she's PMSing. Yeah, a man doesn't, yeah, he's shaking things up. He's got to, you know, a woman, oh, what a horrible person she must be. Wow, that's interesting. You also have an interesting take on the public education system and colleges. You want to get rid of all tuition, right?

I think that the point of public policy is to help people thrive. That's how you have a great America support people in actualizing their greatness, which I believe is a potential within us all. Starting really from birth, public policy should do everything possible to support people in self-actualization. I think that's what the founders meant when they talked about the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And every other advanced democracy has tuition-free college and tech school.

We had that here in the United States until the 70s. Florida had a good system, Texas, California. This is one more example example of hypercapitalistic tentacles moving into every corner of our society. Where can we find a profit center? So money somehow. Absolutely. That's and it's a soulless

money grabbing greedy trajectory. It has no soul, has no sense of ethics. So isn't that what America was built on? Greed? Pardon? Wasn't that what isn't that what America is built on? Greed? Well, America was built on two things, and those two things are what are at play in every generation, including ours. On one hand, you had the Declaration of Independence,

which is the opposite of greed, which is a a perspective of profound enlightenment and and an expansion of opportunity for all men 41 of the 56 signers however were slave owners Wow so that is our story our story is that we are both and our story is that we are on one hand based on these profound principles of genuine social enlightenment. The idea that there could be a society where go do what you want to do, become what you want to become, good for you. And if you're not hurting anybody else, have a great time. Just that possibility, just that possibility that a nation could be based on that. And there have been people willing to struggle, to sacrifice, even to die for that throughout our history. However, there have

always been, from the beginning obviously, slavery being the embodiment of this, forces which for their own economic and or ideological purposes had no intention whatsoever of seeing those principles actualized because that would undercut their identity and their profits so that struggle has been inherent in every age and I think it's important for us to see that historical context because that's all that's what's happening now it we're just reiterating that same struggle. Now, we did respond to slavery with abolition and we did respond to the institutionalized oppression

of women with the women's suffragist movement. We did respond to the overreach of capital from the first gilded age with the establishment of organized labor. And we did respond to oppression of black people, segregation in the American South with the civil rights movement. But we're still oppressed though. But my, well, you're talking about specifically about black people? And just in general, I mean, I think there's a socially oppressed demographic that

is not addressed as much, but I know you're big on reparation. May I say one thing if I might just, because my point was it's our turn that that is my point my point is that what we are going through is the same struggle in our time and when it comes to Americans different versions and when it comes to black Americans I think it's really significant how history does not always move in a straight line. There have been times with everything, particularly race, when we've moved forward. And also we can see with mass incarceration and other things where actually we've slid backwards. And we're sliding backwards in many ways today, actually. I would assume you would agree. Absolutely.

So we have to rise up the way other generations have risen up so do you think the government puts certain cultures against each other yes i think i think i don't that's what i think i think the dynamic of corporate dominance we say corporate dominance what do you mean by that? I mean we don't have universal healthcare because of the insurance companies. We don't have, we have people rationing their insulin because of the pharmaceutical companies. We have carcinogens in our food, toxins in our water and air because of big food, big agriculture, big chemical companies. We don't have proper gun safety laws because of gun manufacturers. We have a profound crisis with the environment in

large part because of big oil and we have militaristic imperialistic misadventures because of defense contractors. It's a matrix of corporate power that is an essence of matrix of corporate tyranny now one of the ways that they own really our society is through the uh monopolization and conglomeratization of the mainstream media over the last few years so they tell the story that is best for their corporate owners their corporate owners being part of this large uh large corporate perspective in which short-term profits for huge corporations comes before the safety, health, and well-being of the American people. They, through their undue influence on the government, through money, because of Citizens

United, has turned our government into a system of legalized bribery. So when you ask me, does the government do that? Yes, but indirectly. They're just doing the bidding of their donors. So is that why they put certain amount of money behind certain candidates, because they're gonna push their narrative? Absolutely. Gotcha.

That's scary. Yeah, no, it is. So I hear your big, hear your discussion about reparations for obviously black people. Give me your concept of that, because I see, hear and read so many different concepts. How San Francisco is doing reparations, but it's based on last name, how long you live there. And it's more so like money base. But really, I feel as if when it comes to reparations, there's land involved too in the material aspect of it. So what's your concept of when you say reparations? Well, when the Civil War ended, it's believed that there were about, at that time, four to five million enslaved people.

Right. And of course, this was an evil institution that had lasted for almost 250 years. Then you add to that that there was another hundred years of institutionalized oppression of black people in the American South. If you were actually going to go back to the 40 acres and a mule that were promised, you're talking about so many trillions of dollars. And I think that if we're, you know, I read a book once which said, with vision, you must never compromise. Politics is the art of compromise. So at some point, and this is really not a decision for white America to make really

so much as it is a decision for black America to make. And that is what at the negotiating table is what one is willing and interested in pursuing. So in my belief is that if I owe you money, I don't get to tell you how to spend it. and how it is applied and where, outside the purview of expanded educational and economic opportunity, should be a decision made by black people, not by white people. That's why my plan is for a reparations council that would be intergenerational, so that the money would be dispersed over a period of 20 years the people on the council would be black leaders from everything from culture art politics non-profits real estate business and this money would be uh dispersed and then it should be for black people not white people to decide is Is it fighting off gentrification

because whole blocks of real estate are going to be bought? Is it going to be mainly to historically black colleges? This is the kind of thing which to me, black leadership should decide. What America should recognize in my mind is simply that there is a debt. For me, it's very transactional that way. Germany paid $89 billion to Jewish organizations after World War Two.

Wow. I think that by the middle of the 20th century, even we had paid some like $22,000 to every surviving member of the Japanese internment camps. 22,000 dollars? Mm-hmm. To each one who survived, because it was recognized a wrong had been done.

That's low, ain't it? Pardon? $22,000? No, 22,000. For to each person? To each person who had been interned in the camps. And also remember when that was too. We're talking about right after World War II.

Right, this was a while ago. That was a lot of money, I think. That's like 100K these days, probably. Yeah, yeah. And I think the point is that by the 20th century, by the middle of the 20th century, it was understood. It was simply a mainstream belief, internationally really, that if one people has wronged another people, that financial remuneration is reasonable.

And I don't understand why we would not apply that to something as clearly egregious as slavery and other forms of systemic racism in the United States. So what do you think the government's overspending right now? Like, you see a lot of hate on the Ukraine spending. We're overspendingending it's huge tax cuts to the very wealthiest among us in 2017 they passed a two trillion dollar tax cut 83 cents of every dollar goes to the largest uh earners and highest earning uh corporates and now remember just to give you an example if you look at the five top pharmaceutical companies alone, last year, their profit

combined was $80 billion. So we keep continuing to give these tax cuts. Now, there was a middle class tax cut in that larger one, which should be put back immediately. The rest of it should be repealed. It's been established. It will never pay for itself. Now, the canard was, you take these people's, you give them tax cuts and see the more money they have, they're job creators. But that is such BS, people realize that now. Their business model is not job creation. Their business model is job elimination.

Job elimination and worker exploitation. Also these corporate subsidies, we're giving billions of dollars in subsidies to corporations that are already making billions of dollars. We should have a wealth tax actually, 50 million or more. Somebody should be asked for another 2%, one billion, I think another 1%. And then of course the one that we all can see,

I mean it's right in front of us, is the incredible bloat and price gouging of the Pentagon on the part of the proverbial military industrial complex. Even 60 Minutes did an expose recently about the way that Raytheon and Northrop Grumman and Boeing, they basically are left to regulate themselves. So we could cut, even many conservatives say we could cut 10%. I say we could cut 20%. You know, these are the kinds of things you do, the things I just said, we have some cash on hand. Where do you think we're underspending? We're underspending. We are the largest, we're the richest country in the world, and the largest democracy, and we have the highest rate of poverty

and child poverty we have you know a year last year or the year before they cut child poverty in half with something called the child tax credit and at the time i was thinking well if you could cut it in half couldn't you like get rid of it right but even then there was a big hoopla because they cut it in half with the child tax credit. Six months later, that child tax credit expired and they did not bother to permanentize it. It's extraordinary. So to me, we have populations in crisis. I mean, I mean crisis. You know, there is in the issue of larger sociology or whatever you want to call it, this phenomenon of the screaming emergency and the silent emergency.

So COVID was a screaming emergency. That's when everybody can see it. But what we don't often recognize is how many people, millions of people in this country, their normal lives are a state of emergency. So, for instance, the president canceled the emergency status of COVID. And since then, there have been millions of more people who have fallen off Medicaid, fallen off the SNAP benefits. There is hunger in America.

Not starvation, thank God. There is hunger in America, not starvation, thank God, but serious hunger in America, including hungry children. In fact, if you go to any of my social media platforms now, I visited the other day a soup kitchen in Port Huron, Michigan. There's a video about it. They have a $ hundred thousand dollar budget and they pay they they feed 500 people a day wow and this is just once pardon they're gonna run through that three hundred thousand dollar budget i know i'm so impressed by that three hundred thousand dollars yeah that's it's extraordinary but these soup kitchens uh are just struggling uh these soup kitchens are over. It's horrible. What we have, you have in America, 20% of us who make a living such that things are good.

You know what I mean? And we celebrate that. And we celebrate the fact that people can make money in America. We celebrate, of course. The problem is it's like a club and not enough people can get in. So this 20% is like an island surrounded by a vast sea of economic despair. I mean, despair, we have a housing crisis. You have quite a housing crisis here. It's too expensive, right? Pardon? To get a house

these days, it's so expensive. Absolutely. Well, part of it is the commodification of housing by Wall Street, which should not be allowed. And also an eviction crisis. JP Morgan's buying what they own, what a trillion dollars in homes now? That's crazy. Right, and we have now, we had over 3 million evictions last year. Wow. And so many people. Just in Atlanta alone, 75,000 evictions this year.

That's crazy. And they will, and it's soulless. I was reading one story about a group of children who were home and it was a rainstorm and their parents weren't even there You know, those bastards just kicked those kids out Wow It's just and this is what happens when short-term profits whether it's a real estate industry or any other Wall Street venture is placed before humanitarian values and and and

Democratic values and that's really the crisis of this moment. And I do think people are waking up to it on both left and right. I also like your viewpoint on healthcare when you called it sick care. Because you said, healthcare isn't the problem, it's the people that are getting sick because of what we're doing with the food. And the stuff that they legalize here, that's not legal in other countries at all, like- Absolutely.

Banned, completely banned, completely banned. Absolutely. I want you to touch on that. Absolutely. And on my website at Marianne2024.com, if you look at the issues, my health care plan is called the Whole Health Care Plan. Because as you said, and as I said on a debate in the last campaign, we don't have a health care system. We have a health care system. We have a sickness care system. We have a much higher rate of chronic illness than they do in other advanced democracies.

And it goes back to what you said. We have 46% of our tap water is filled with PFAS, these forever chemicals, carcinogens in our food. If you look, recently there was an article about the ingredients in a bottle of ketchup here versus a bottle of ketchup in Canada. Now, what you just said about other countries, there is a company called Saint-Gobain in Merrimack, New Hampshire. And Merrimack, New Hampshire was the first place, it was on the last campaign, and it was the first time that I heard about the PFAS and this forever chemical and it doesn't break down and high cancer rates.

This is what's so interesting. It's exactly what you just said. It would be illegal to do in France what they do in Merrimack, New Hampshire. So it's a French company. And so France says, you can't put vinyl chloride like that. You can't do it in. That's okay. We'll go buy a company in the United States.

And then our politicians are on the take. Oh, they're going to create jobs. And this is what we're doing. Just like you said, there are companies working in the United States, doing things with our food, where the GMOs would not be allowed in their own countries. It's so obscene. We are such a f***.

It needs to stop. But you're pro-vaccine, right? It's not about, of course I'm pro-safe vaccine. Of course I am. Which vaccine? So even... Polio, smallpox, the vaccine, the childhood vaccines, like when I was a child, it's undeniable to me when you're talking about measles and mumps and tetanus and all that. I did get vaccinated for COVID. All four? No, I got the two at the beginning and then I got boosted.

So how do you feel about the vaccine? It's creating mitocarditis there are questions there are questions i'm certainly not a doctor uh there are obviously questions and i don't think the questioning should be suppressed and some of what you were just saying even when i mentioned a couple stories to my own doctor who's a medical doctor said i've heard those stories myself i'm not weighing in on it except to say it shouldn't have to be in America that, first of all, I think vaccines obviously save lives and I think that infectious diseases is no joke, especially when you're talking about kids at school. At the same time, yeah, those questions are out there

and they should not be suppressed. And people talking about those things should not be suppressed. I feel like we've all heard them. Making them mandatory is the problem. I feel like people should have an option. Well, I don't, but there weren't, I mean, in situations there was, I didn't really see a problem where people said, have the vaccine or have a Q-tip up your nose.

I thought it was reasonable enough to say or get tested I don't really see why that's unfair how do you feel about the prison system because it seems like a lot of people come out of it worse than before they came in yeah because our first of all when I was in college there were 300,000 people incarcerated in the United States. Today, there are 2.3 million. And obviously, the racial issue, black and Latino, I mean, anybody can see this. It's called a prison industrial complex for a reason.

The criminal justice system in the United States is not fair, particularly not fair to people of color. And more than that, even once people are incarcerated, it is more of a system of punishment than of rehabilitation. My daughter went to law school in England. And one semester, she was in some program where they were working inside prisons in England and she said mommy the the prisoners are not allowed to call themselves convicts if they call themselves convicts uh the people who work the prison go you're not a convict you're simply someone who made a mistake now we have seen over and over in this country and some states have them some states do have them situations where people are taught ways of making a living when they leave rehabilitative experiences etc and in those cases the

rate of recidivism is much lowered. But if you are looking at this only from a consciousness of punishment, then often what you get is a very high rate of recidivism. And of course, people just leave and here's $100. Good luck to you. They come right back. Some of them actually prefer to come back because at least it's a place to sleep. Now, this is an example in my mind of what I've seen throughout these areas. You could talk about regenerative agriculture. You could talk about dealing with people who are at-risk youth. You could talk about people who are coming out of prison. You could talk about almost any field or experience or circumstance in this country. There are people who know what to do. There are

people who are already practicing the techniques. They know what to do to rehabilitate lives. We have had for the last 50 years, we've had policy after policy that actually hurts people, that actually tears people's lives down, that destroys our earth, that destroys our air, that destroys our food. People are waking up to this now. We've had 50 years of destruction, and now we need 50 years of generation to event on repair. The problem we have is not that the repairers aren't out there. And particularly in a younger generation, people are ready to go. Young people are ready to be farmers. They want to be organic farmers. I mean, it's amazing what's happening out there.

The problem is here are the problem solvers and here are the policy makers. And they're not connecting because the people with power don't always call on the problem solvers, except in very performative ways. Oh, we're going to give you a prize and invite you to a, you know, maybe you even get to sit next to the first lady. But the problem solvers have to solve the problem their way. Well, but wait, yeah. So those problem solvers don't have the power.

Right. Because the people in power aren't calling them actually into the room. Right, right. Because they don't serve the short-term profit maximization goals of their corporate donors. They serve the goal of survival of the species, but they don't serve. So that's how I see my being president.

I see, I would open the door, like the visual image I have is that I would open the door of the Oval Office and say, come on guys, we have four years. Yeah, but even then that's not enough time. So what would be, if you were president today, what would be the first executive president today what would be the first executive order that you would sign the first thing i would do is i would cancel the willow

project willow project so explain what the willow project is so the willow project is an eight billion dollar conoco phillips oil extraction project on the north slope of alaska we are already in a climate emergency and I would declare a climate emergency. We already have people in this country dying of this heat and people all over the world. We are moving in a direction which within years means that you could have whole swaths of continents probably in the global south where the heat makes that land uninhabitable. So you have implosions of food systems. This is in the U.S.?

That's probably Africa, actually. But we're already in serious problems everywhere. Vegas is hot. So you have implosion of food systems. You have implosion of economies, which could create hundreds of millions of climate refugees. We are on the way to the iceberg. We're just headed right towards it. So the president, they love to say, the corporatist Democrats say he's a climate president and

he recognizes it's an existential threat. And they base that on the fact that he has made admittedly, and wonderful, some very healthy investments in green energy as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, although it's tiny compared to the defense budget. By the way, the Defense Department is the single largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet. Wow. But even though he's got these investments in green energy, then he approves the Willow Project and he has given more oil drilling permits than even Trump did. Biden, right? Yes. So those things nullify all of the benefits of those green energy investments. And so I would declare a climate emergency. That's crazy. So how do we reverse

the climate emergency? How do we fix it? Well, we have to do massive investment. Massive investment. Not healthy. I mean massive investment in green energy. Because we have to make a just transition from a dirty economy to a clean economy. And we need to do it now.

We need a do it now. We need to amass mobilization. And I think many people, including your generation, are ready to do this. Everywhere I go, I ask people, I say, how many people in this room is either, you are either a young person who has said, or you have heard a young person say that under normal circumstances you would be thinking of having a child but given the state of the environment you don't think it would be a reasonable yeah i've heard that a lot have you ever said that or heard that yeah so i don't have a kid i don't have a kid it's scary when you exactly so when you see how many people raise their hands in every room all over the country i ask people to keep their hands up and then I say, this is not normal.

This is not normal. Yes, we need to declare a climate emergency. So this is an example. If you look at Biden, you look at RFK and you look at me, we have three very different views on a lot of things. And this is why we should have debates. So Biden says we're investing in green energy, and then he's hoping you won't know about the oil drilling permits. We need to be ramping down fossil fuel extraction, not ramping it up. Robert Kennedy says, at least in a tweet I saw, he said the discipline of the free market would handle it, which that was, I was, okay, that's what he thinks. And I believe we need to declare

a climate emergency. Declaring a climate emergency means the president, the government has the power to place before short-term profit maximization for, let's say, oil companies, their transition to production of green energy, which they could do, and they know they could do it, and they're just slow-footing it, and the government is helping them slow-foot it because they want to squeeze every dollar out of the old way before they have to make the change. So what exactly is green energy?

Is that solar energy? Yeah, solar, wind, geothermal, all of those things. People are talking about that. to make the change so what exactly is green energy is that solar energy yeah solar wind geothermal all of those things people are talking so he invests in green energy but he also asks for more oil permits him because that's exactly right wow that's exactly right the first thief i feel like that's counterproductive right yeah a little bit a little bit a little bit so how do you plan on taking on these huge yeah i Yeah, I was just about to ask that. These are behemoths with so much money behind them. Well, you can't unless you declare an emergency. You need a president who just goes in there and says, we're going to do it.

That's the point. You can't. You can't unless you declare a climate change. So if you declare it, wouldn't they have to take a vote and then? No, the president comes in there. I'll give you an idea of something that happened in World War II. at the beginning of world war ii hitler's on the march roosevelt sees oh we wouldn't have to get in there right the united states had hardly no hardly any army at all and uh england had nothing and hitler had been building his military for five years and every time he

invaded a country he was able to absorb their industrial power so Roosevelt he knew we just got to make this happen right so he calls in the big three automakers from Detroit and he says gentlemen I need this many ships and I need this many tanks and I need this many planes. And the big three said, oh, President Roosevelt, we are patriotic Americans. And as soon as we sell our quota of cars this year, we're going to be there for you, sir. As soon as we sell those cars, we're going to make those planes and those ships and those tanks for you. To which he responded, I don't think you understand what I'm saying. I need this many tanks and this many cars and this many, no, this many tanks, this many ships and this many planes. And you will not be selling any cars until I have them.

In other words, it was a national emergency. And that superseded the normal capitalistic procedures of that moment. Now ultimately what he realized is he needed to partner with those guys, and I would as well. If you look at people, right now we have a dirty economy. What does that mean? That means that we have so many thousands of people whose jobs are at least indirectly associated with big oil. But a lot of those jobs can be laterally transitioned.

They are research, they are development, they are manufacturing. Just research green energy, manufacture green energy, use the technology. We could do this, we're Americans. But we've been taught to limit our political imaginations. And whether it comes to that or universal health care or anything else, we're taught things are complicated, which are simply corrupt. And it's time for we,

the American people, to intervene. Marianne, how would you have handled the bricks situation and why hasn't biden bricks in regards to uh our currency being pulled out of other countries they're no longer using our money you're the bricks you're talking about the bricks and the companies that are coming together like brazil and india and china yeah what do you mean the brook situation they're coming together now well they're not using our currency anymore listen it is no longer a unipolar world it is now a multi-polar world and the united states is going to have to become more humble now on one hand that's difficult for us on an economic level but america doesn't just get to walk around and say what we want anymore

and many times and ways in which we did we abused our power we squandered our moral authority we squandered our military respect and the United States has no power to say, don't do that. This is a new world. And, you know, I feel sometimes like what Republicans want is for you to think things are even worse than they are. Because you're supposed to believe that your fellow Americans are your enemy. And they're not. But the corporate Democrats want you to believe there's no problem here. Just put a lid on it. Any kind of real like rumbling. We think something's wrong. I want to be a president who says this is a changing world. We've got some very serious problems,

but we are Americans and we can fix them. And you're right. It's going to take a lot longer than four years yeah but with my administration we would begin the process you would you would feel i wouldn't be able in those four years to turn the ship around entirely but you would tell we we started around the curve and then after four years handed over to a younger generation and what's your what's your take on crypto currency you know uh i i it's funny because we're living at a time where it's so in the zeitgeist and that it's so much a part of what's going on now that theoretically you have to have an opinion but at this point i'm still hearing both sides so much uh i hear that it's the great democratization

i have friends and i've read articles it's a great democratization. I have friends and I've read articles. It's a great democratization. And I also have friends and have read articles. I mean, there are some bad actors out there. Right. And some regulations on those bad actors are not inappropriate. Right. On the other hand,

there are those who argue that some of the bad actors are people that we think of as the good actors. So I'm in a process of learning. About crypto? Yeah, I'm in the process of learning. About crypto? Yeah, I'm in the process of learning and forming, and people I respect have very different opinions. Which former presidents stand out to you as great leaders that you want to model after? Roosevelt, Lincoln. Roosevelt, Lincoln.

I mean, obviously Jefferson, although we know Jefferson certainly had some issues. But you can't deny what was created. But in terms of the functioning of the presidency, definitely Lincoln and Roosevelt. So you like the older school guys, no one in the recent years? I mean, Jimmy Carter, there were some good things about Jimmy Carter okay the Obama that ran in oh a mm-hmm was you know I was as excited and passionate as anyone but once he got there, he leaned into being one of them. That's kind of how I felt about him, too.

Well, he's a spokesperson. And most presidents are just a spokesperson. They're not really controlling the narrative. That's why you need to elect someone who's not part of that system. That's why we need to elect someone who's just not part of that system, has no tie to it. How do you disconnect from a system that was created so that it can

and will be a system and that the person in front of it will be the spokesperson for the system how do you disconnect from that because it seemed like when you do that you actually create more problems than not not just for society but for yourself because then they're bringing up allegations. You got, obviously, assassination. You have all these problems that come with not following their rules. You're absolutely right. It's true. And there are days when I think,

well, you must be crazy if you even want to do this. Yeah. And that's why the word wants. Are you crazy? Are you? Are you crazy? Either that or, you know, the word mishugana means partly on a mission from God.

It also means crazy. I think anybody who runs for president, we were talking about this before. You have a respect for anyone who would take this on. It's difficult. And the allegations and the smears and the lies, it happens now as a candidate. And you're right. As a president, it would be so much more. But, you know, a friend of mine said,

I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees. I don't want to die knowing that in the final analysis, as my father used to say, I let the bastards get to me. I'm old enough to see what's going on here. Or young enough to see what's going on here. Well, I think that there's beauty in every age. But there's something about knowing this is your last chapter and are you you know i i think a lot of people in my kind of the boomer generation don't want to feel that in the final analysis we forgot to do what we came here

to do and that's why i think there's such a a connection and a relationship between uh boomer boomers, certain boomers, myself included, and Gen Z, because neither one of us understand why young people should have to live at the effect of bad economic ideas left over from the 20th century. I remember the 70s when the average worker could afford a car, could afford a house, could afford a yearly vacation, could afford for one parent to stay home if they wanted, and could afford to send their kids to school. Sounds great. Yeah, I remember that.

So I'm with you in like, what happened? What happened? But what keeps you fighting so much? And this is maybe a rhetorical question, but why do you care so much and this is maybe a rhetorical question but why do you care so much i think all of us care i don't think so yeah i i hear you i you're right okay i'll take that back i think i think many people deep down care who's who are not apathetic they're just paralyzed because if you only look at things from with the external eye the system is locked up but I look at things like abolition and women's suffrage and the civil rights

movement and the labor movement and things were achieved by people in situations where there was no reason to believe they could succeed history is riddled with that and american history is riddled with that absolutely what is that line of martin luther king faith means taking your first walk on the staircase even though you have no idea where it's going to go right um i'm i i am just not the kind of person who's going to see something as, you know, Martin Luther King said, your life begins to end on the day you stop talking about things that matter. Now, also, in terms of what you said, you were right. If I win the presidency, I will be vehemently opposed. I will be vehemently opposed. I will be vehemently opposed. But the same forces that opposed,

would oppose me, opposed Roosevelt. It's the same forces. Like I said, it's the same forces all the way back to the beginning. And the difference between me and some people who could be elected president is, and by the way, Roosevelt called them the economic royalists. The difference is that I would take Roosevelt as my role model because he said, I welcome their hatred. And that's why I would go in there. I would not be seeking to fulfill the role of the presidency with any intent to run again, because you couldn't do what I want to do if you're even thinking about getting re-elected. And, you know, the president doesn't have a magic wand. The president shouldn't have a magic wand. It's not like all the things I want, universal health care,

tuition-free college, free child care, paid living wage, guaranteed housing, guaranteed living wage, all of them would not be you know magically no not in four years well but then but it doesn't have to be me personally i i mean so that would not be a reason so you have to stay eight no what i could do is give a battery charge especially using the bully pulpit and especially talking to younger people that's why i said i can help get us around the corner and then you take it spark the thought yeah I didn't spark the thought and yeah yeah yeah I see what you said so is it for for for you is more so like implementing the thoughts of the people and you know giving your what you feel

like would work and then allowing someone else to come in oh you have four years of presidential power but I, but that flies like that. Well, you can do a lot in four years. Yeah, I mean, four years is still four years. You still have cabinet agencies that you get to pick your people. My people would not be representative of corporate forces. Like our current Department of Defense is headed by a man who used to be a board member at Raytheon.

We would not have people from big ag in the agricultural department. That's one place where Bobby and I do align as corporate capture of so many of these agencies. And I would have the power of executive power. I would be able to go in there on day one, deschedule marijuana from a schedule one drug. I would be able to call for an audit of every cent at the Pentagon. I would be able to cancel all union contracts with the government has with union busting companies. President has a lot of power. I could convene the greatest minds in America on early childhood because everything's in the first 10 years. If you want America to be amazing in 20 years, do a lot more for children now. I want to establish a Department of Children and Youth.

I want to establish a Department of Peace. I could get a lot done. And most importantly, I'd have that bully pulpit. We need a president who says it like it is. You know, when I talk like I'm talking here, everywhere I go, I say to the audience what I'm sure is true in this room. I didn't say anything you don't already know. Yeah. I didn't say anything you don't already know. Yeah. I didn't say anything.

Maybe I gave a statistic here or there. We all know this. But nobody's saying the quiet part out loud because we've been trained. I'm sorry? I says, is your concept of what we're asking is what you believe, what your vision is of what we're asking you.

I mean, obviously we've heard it before, but everybody's belief system and what they feel is see fit for us is different. You know? Yeah. You mentioned descheduling marijuana. What's your stance on psychedelics? I think they should be legal and they should be regulated. Which ones?

Look when I was born, darling. Because I guess it's younger generation. You think you're the first one to read Noam Chomsky. You think you're the first ones who took medicine. There's a lot of benefits to them, especially the mushrooms. Well, they're finding amazing things like with veterans. Yeah.

No, there's no doubt about it. And so much of the research, Rick Doblin, Michael Pollan. It's time, it's a good thing what's happening. I's happening I love that feeling no president has that stance on psychedelics yeah not a I mean most of them haven't experienced some more like even do the proper research so they just kind of go off of the representatives like what do you regulate it and kids be careful so kind of like how medical yeah well I I would do schedule marijuana immediately oh so you would make it public everywhere i think we should have a very serious conversation about just ending the

drug war decriminalizing everything yeah not everything though it's not working well but what about like cocaine heroin meth and all that if you decriminalize then you regulate you it could there are those who would argue that things would act we'd have a less of a problem if we decriminalize, then you regulate. There are those who would argue that things would act, we'd have less of a problem if we decriminalize and regulate it. Why do you say that? Because, first of all, even take the southern border.

So, most of the horror that people are trying to escape from the southern border is because of the drug cartels. So the fact that it's a black market is only helping the drug cartels so the fact that it's a black market is only helping the drug cartel gotcha so if you decriminalize it it's like they would go out of business this is the one area where i say let the it's the one area where private sector private sector handle it yeah wow what if they come out with a new drug then what if they they

always come on out with a new drugs what if they come out with a new drug? They always come on out with a new drugs. Well, if they come out with a new drug and that's on the black market. sector and regulation once again I look at that area like I look at a lot of things and it's time for Americans to go what we're doing is not working it's not working look at what happened in New Hampshire with the opioid crisis so New Hampshire had 500,000 opioid deaths. And everybody realized the predatory behavior of the pharmaceutical executives at Purdue Pharmacy, the Sackler family. They got them. And the attorneys general all over the country came and they got some huge multibillion-dollar settlement. I don't think it was anywhere near what it should have been, apparently. And then they were going to tighten, really handle this with the psychopharmacologists and the pharmaceuticals and the doctors.

We're going to stop the bleed. Yeah. Guess what? They started again. Hardly went down. Yeah. Hardly went down. In other words, we have to address the underlying causes that make people not want to be in this world. That's why, even when we were talking about criminal justice before,

that's why, for me, fundamental economic reform is the bulwark of societal repair. You see poverty. Not only do we have poverty, we have near poverty, and we have those who are afraid of falling into near poverty. And you have 70% of Americans who say they live with chronic economic stress Wow so that's hot with you know if you let you know look at debt alone yeah one in four Americans living with medical debt you know the American dream used to be I could buy a

house and have a picket fence the American dream for millions of people now is that maybe i could get out of debt before i die so look at the stress look at the anxiety so we have to ask why are so many people addicted not only um how to stop the flow of the drugs because at a certain point and especially with the chinese so intent. We have to we have to in that area, as in so many address cause and not just something. Marianne, it's been an honor having you here. Is there anything you want to close off with?

Thank you. That's the first thing I want to say. Thanks for coming. And thank you for a conversation about things that matter. And I hope that people who do feel, I know it's very tempting to think the system is all locked up, but there's one thing and one thing only actually that can override that. And that is we, the people.

So if anybody feels like, yeah, I want to hear this campaign. Yeah. Please go to Marianne2024.com and sign up and throw a buck. Perfect. I always say, you know, if everybody who likes my TikToks send in a dollar every once in a while,

we would be able to override the media cancellation that I experience in too many cases. Oh, wow. Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you. Appreciate you. Thanks for watching, guys, and I'll see you guys next time. Peace.