Life Will Be the Death of Me with Chelsea Handler - Minisode: Fighting Back with Mikie Sherrill

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

New Jersey Gubernatorial Candidate Mikie Sherrill talks with Chelsea about why the race for governor matters on a national scale, how to put a slimy opponent in their place, and what every American can do to fight back against looming fascism.   * Get involved at Mikiesherrill.com.  * Need some advice from Chelsea? Email us at [e-mail] * Executive Producer Catherine Law Edited & Engineered by Brad Dickert * * * The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the Podcast author, or individuals participating in the Podcast, and do not represent the opinions of iHeartMedia or its employees.  This Podcast should not be used as medical advice, mental health advice, mental health counseling or therapy, or as imparting any health care recommendations at all.  Individuals are advised to seek independent medical, counseling advice and/or therapy from a competent health care professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issues, health inquiry or matter, including matters discussed on this Podcast. Guests and listeners should not rely on matters discussed in the Podcast and shall not act or shall refrain from acting based on information contained in the Podcast without first seeking independent medical advice.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you hear the new episode of the Hey Jonas podcast? We are at D23, so we'll see who stops by.

The cast of Frozen stopped by. Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Idina Menzel. I auditioned for Frozen. What? For Kristoff. They said, okay, what are you going to be singing today? I said, I don't know. That must have been why you didn't get it.

Oh, you probably won. Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars, and more. And I guess I can share that, uh... No way. Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, Mikey. Great to see you, as always.

This is Catherine, my producer. Hi there. Hi, nice seeing you. Our guest today is someone that I have personally campaigned for. She is a congresswoman in the state of New Jersey, and she is running for the governor of New Jersey. The election is Tuesday, November 4th, but vote by mail has already started. And early voting is available October 25th through November 2nd. So if you want more information, go to MikeySherrill.com.

dot com. Our guest today is a former Navy helicopter pilot, federal prosecutor, mom of four and Democratic nominee for the governor in New Jersey. So please welcome U.S. representative for New Jersey, Mikey Sherrill. Hi, Mikey Sherrill. Hi. Thanks so much for having me. This is great. Absolutely. I watched your episode for Pod Save America, too. I loved you on that. And I love those guys. They're friends of mine. Oh, good. Yeah, that was a great, great episode. That was a lot of fun to do. I'm very excited for your campaign. And how is everything going? How's everything going in the state of New Jersey right now?

As always, perfect. It's perfect here. Nothing going on here. No, it is. It's a tough fight. We are in a knockdown, drag out fight. I don't think anybody would be surprised to hear that because New Jersey is, shall I say, known for the rough and tumble politics we have that go on here. and I've always been up for it. But my opponent's pretty slimy and has broken the law in several ways and has just really gone after my family in a way that's wholly inappropriate.

So that has been a challenge. But you know what? I think in these times, that kind of thing backfires. I think people are kind of sick of career politicians who are slimy and trying to act like they're just, you know, slick guys and will pull out all the stops to get their own way. That's not what people want to see.

And your opponent is 100 percent MAGA, correct? Jack Cittarelli. He's 100 percent MAGA. Which he likes to say. That's not me saying that. That's Donald Trump saying that. And he's been pretty clear in showing that to the people of New Jersey. And so he's been in lockstep. And I think here, like just about every state in the nation, we've seen these tariffs drive up costs everywhere. We've seen the attacks on our Department of Ed funding, on our health care, on even our utility costs. So we're seeing costs go up everywhere. And I have always been sort of known for going against anyone who comes at New Jersey, and that includes members of my own party. So I think the demand here in the great state of New Jersey is for a governor that's going to stand up for the people here and not kowtow to anyone, including the president of the United States.

Yeah, let's talk a little bit about how a governor does that. and what abilities a governor has to stand up to Trump. Because we've seen Gavin Newsom do it. We've seen J.B. Pritzker do it. We've seen Wes Moore, to a certain degree, do it. So talk to us a little bit about the capabilities that you have to stand up to our president and how states can remain independent and to what degree they can. Well, a lot of that is the traditional ways, right?

I tell people sometimes, you know, I'm a simple girl. I just want my kids to be able to go to the bus stop without people shooting them or spend a day at school without an active shooter coming into their classroom. So I want good gun safety laws here in New Jersey, and we have some of the best. I want to make sure that the decisions I make about my reproductive health are between myself and my doctor and not myself and Jack Cittarelli, who's proven himself to be in favor of abortion bans. And like the things we're seeing, you know, across the South where women are dying of miscarriages on operating tables. I just want to get my kids, you know, the MMR, measles, mumps, rubella vaccines. I don't want an outbreak of measles, a deadly childhood disease here in New Jersey. I don't want babies, as they are across the nation now, dying of whooping cough or pertussis because of rollbacks in our national health.

So these aren't, to me, groundbreaking ideas. These are things that most people in New Jersey agree with. And so that's a baseline for what governors can do. All of these things I've just spoken about, but we're seeing some really, some new and innovative ways in which governors are growing state power. So things like Mara Healy and others in this Northeast Coalition, and I know Gavin Newsom's doing it out West, to promote national health, to make sure that insurance companies are not backing away from their commitment to provide basic childhood vaccines. And we also see people like Governor Shapiro. When Trump came after the Social Security numbers and the license information from the people who vote in Pennsylvania, Governor Shapiro said no. Trump's taken him to court. He thinks he'll win that. But he said no. But it just chills you to know that all of this personal information in other states is just being turned over wholesale to the Trump administration. And so this is where strong governors can really come into play. And you've mentioned several of them who are standing up right now to Donald Trump in this administration. So I think it's so key and so important. And how do you view the tech of it all? You know, all these tech guys basically genuflecting to Donald Trump and being in business with him or bending the knee for him. And like, how do we fight back against that state by state?

So I don't think it's a state-by-state plan. I think it's regional plans. Okay. And so we have really high-end research and development that goes on here in New Jersey, like photonics. And I was just talking to someone this morning about the partnership that is in place between New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. And we are going to have to find ways to continue to fund and promote that innovation, despite

the fact that the federal government is now attacking innovation. And so I think in a regional way, we can really grow our economies, grow our rights and freedoms, and protect our rights and freedoms, and grow opportunity in a way that's different from maybe other states across the nation. And it's already, and I was surprised by that, it's already becoming very clear to people what's going on in this nation. So we've seen 10,000 Floridians move to New Jersey. Oh, really? Which is a reversal of a long-term trend. And, you know, as you look into some of the data, it looks as if people are becoming increasingly concerned about governors who are not going to provide insurance for vaccines, who are going to wholesale promote abortion bans, who are going to allow the president to ransack everyone's personally identifying information for his own purposes. Again and again, we're seeing, I think, people becoming very aware of where those states are that are going to actually continue to promote our values, our Constitution, and our economy and drive in great innovation for their kids. And that is very contrary to Donald Trump.

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When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, Shut up. Don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

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So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. i love the idea of the region this regional thing and states banding together i feel like that you know if network executives or tech companies or these streamers platforms law firms would all just have gotten together and formed a coalition rather than allowing him to knock them over one by one it's so frustrating as a citizen to watch all of this go down so not only are you so qualified to be the governor but you're a woman and we need more women we need more women to have more sanity in this crazy, crazy world

and make really level-headed decisions. I know your campaign puts a lot of focus on making New Jersey more affordable for its residents. So how are you going to do that? I am going to do that by driving down costs for families here and really focusing on the things we can do in New Jersey, such as putting a rate freeze on utility hikes, so all of the mismanagement of our utility production

and our power production here in New Jersey isn't dumped on rate payers and families, ensuring that we are driving down the cost of housing, transit-oriented development, and developing some of the towns in New Jersey that were traditionally thriving and have not been invested in appropriately, like Trenton, like Atlantic City, so we can continue to drive down housing costs and also make New Jersey work better for people. Just next door, Governor Shapiro cut small business permitting times by 90 percent. So that's exactly the kind of government, responsive government, I'm going to run. But I also just want to touch a bit. You know

what, Chelsea, I have just been running in this race as somebody who has a record of serving the people of the state, who has a record of success. I was named the most effective member of Congress in only my second term and who has brought a lot to the table for the people I serve. I haven't mentioned, people know I'm a mom and they know I'm a woman. I haven't always placed that front and center, but this has been really horrible to see what the most incompetent Secretary of Defense is doing right now. Because I have to tell you, it hits home. And I was just being asked recently, because Pete Hexeth, who is that incompetent Secretary of Defense who's put classified information out over unclassified systems and given it to his wife and his brother

because he's like, you know, fucking little boy pretending to be the SecDef, is now saying that he wants to move back to the 90s. Now, in 1990, Pete Hegseth, I think, was about 10 years old, so he's really no idea what he's talking about. I was actually entering into the military in 1990. And I am so proud of my military service, not because of just serving, but because of something I felt like I was building. So the military at that time was not an incredibly welcoming place for women. I remember going to a breakfast with my parents. I was with my dad. And that morning, the Washington Post had reported that a female midshipman had been chained to a urinal in a hazing event. The former Secretary of the Navy and future Senator Jim Webb had put out an article

years before I entered, but it was still being widely circulated at the Naval Academy, entitled Women Can't Fight. And it seemed to largely say because he wanted to go desecrate corpses without women around, that women shouldn't be part of these units. The chief of naval operations, to a standing ovation, stood before the brigade and said, when asked, when will women be serving on subs? He said, not in my lifetime. So it was a tough place. But I will say, too, if you could show competence, if you could just fight hard, if you cared about your country, you could really make change in the Navy. And we did. By the time I graduated, I graduated with the first class of women eligible for combat on ships and aircraft. A classmate of mine

was the CO of an aircraft carrier. We just had a woman who was the superintendent of the Naval Academy, a woman who was the chief of naval operations, the highest ranking women. And now Pete Hegseth is trying to drive out every woman in service, trying to roll back what we've built, what I feel like I have personally had a hand in building. And so, you know, it's a really crappy day for women in service with that incompetent, sexually harassing, alcoholic guy, as my kids would say, jinx, really in charge of all this. So it's really offensive today. And I think you're exactly right. So it's important that we have more people serving our country, more women, more people of color, more people that represent the people of America so we can gain greater

success. Yeah, we're recording this the day after Pete Hegseth gave his speech to like 500 generals and yesterday with Donald Trump. When you hear something like that and you know that this is exactly the opposite and so antithetical to your commitment to working, you know, in the Navy or in the armed forces. What is your responsibility? To stay the course so that you can protect, you know, the people underneath you? Or is your responsibility to stand up, resign, and walk out the door? Like, how do you make that kind of decision, you know, in that position? I speak to service members. I speak to people at the U.S. Attorney's Office. I speak to a lot of people in other areas of federal service about this all the time. Because a lot of people have

decided, whether it's in the FBI or at the U.S. Attorney's Office or in the military, that it is so important to have credible people there in some of these incredibly powerful organizations that impact people's life, impact people's liberty, whether or not they're detained, whether or not they're unfairly prosecuted. And yet, at what point do you become complicit? And I've had these kind of long conversations with people about how you weigh that. And it's a really difficult decision. And I think that's something each person's weighing themselves. Am I still doing good? Am I still protecting the people below me? Am I still protecting U.S. values? Or now am I just carrying out something that's really dangerous and that I should not be a part of?

And those are really, really difficult decisions to make right now. Yeah. I remember in the first Trump administration wondering what all those guys were doing there. You know what I mean? Like Mark Milley and and these other kind of senior advisers and chiefs of staff, all of these people, like, how could they be supporting this guy? How could they be supporting? And now, in retrospect, when you hear all these guys come forward, you know, they're all like, oh, even John Bolton, who, you know, like, no, we were staying the ship. We were staying the ship. I never thought we would ever be saying like, oh, John Bolton. Yeah, he was actually doing a good job. He was doing a good thing because now you hear them and you're like, oh, now we're really in trouble because now he has this idiot Pete Hegseth running our military, which is absolutely just a shonda. It's unbelievable. What is something that's very basic that you actually miss from your military days? I miss being 20.

That was fun. But it truly was at that time such a time of the United States was in areas of the world that we traditionally hadn't been in. We'd been very focused on the fight with Russia and the Cold War. And so there had been some forces abroad. But I remember getting—I really missed some of the foreign places that I served in and learning about different people, learning about different cultures. And doing so, though, with a bunch of other members of the service, there was a lot of camaraderie there. And I remember just different experiences like that. I remember flying a helicopter, and I was flying with another woman, and the Saudi aircraft controllers would not believe that we were the pilots.

So they said, put the other pilot on. So I put her on. And then they said, you guys aren't pilots. And, you know, we were looking at each other like, I'm really not sure what to do. Yeah, like, you know, we're the only two pilots on this aircraft right now. I don't have anyone else to put on the radio with you. You know, I remember serving in Bahrain, and I remember this experience where there were a bunch of expats. So they had this rugby game, and there's a fence, and they're playing rugby.

And then over the top of the fence, I'm seeing the humps of these camels just all kind of go by. And it was this really weird contradiction. So I miss that kind of seeing the world and speaking to people about why, you know, I remember speaking to a Pakistani business owner about why he was in Bahrain and what had brought him there and all those kind of experiences I really miss. Yeah. I mean, there must have been some things that you've taken with you, right, from your experiences in the Middle East, in Europe.

You were in London for a while. I don't think you were in London on service, right? No, I was there serving. That was where the U.S. headquarters of the European fleet, I'm sorry, the naval fleet was at the time. What was your impetus for going into the Navy? So this is what I sort of warn parents sometimes, like, be very careful what you're saying to your children. Because I was having this conversation with my dad when I was in the fifth grade, and I cannot emphasize enough that I am 1000% sure my father was paying zero attention to this conversation. Like, I think he was, he used to make his own Christmas tree stands. I have no

idea why somebody wouldn't buy a Christmas tree stand because it was always this really, he was always like, you know, really angry about it because it never worked very well. And so, you know, why you wouldn't just, but he would like be hammering these two by fours into the bottom of the tree to make this stand. So I'm out on there, he's making this weird Christmas tree stand and he's hammering away and I'm talking to him and he said, well, what do you want to do? And I said, you know, I want to be a pilot like grandpa. And he said, oh, well, that's really expensive. If you want to fly, you have to go in the military. And I said, okay, well, I'll go into the Air Force because my grandfather had been Army Air Corps. He goes, oh, you don't want to go to the Air Force

Academy. I mean, that's kind of new. You want to go to one of the cool ones. You either want to go to West Point or the Naval Academy. And I said, oh, I'm going to the Naval Academy. He said, well, I don't know if they have, you know, pilots. And I go, I'll find out. I said, you know, that's what I'm going to do. And he said, well, I don't think they take women. He said, I don't know if they take women. And I don't know if women fly in the Navy. And, you know, this is kind of one of those things I talk a lot about with people around New Jersey, because to me, this is what we're fighting right now. Because when my father told me he didn't know if women could go to the Naval Academy or he didn't know if they could fly in the Navy, I knew that I could figure out a

pathway to that because everything I had been taught up until that point was that I could do anything, was that this country continued to open up opportunity so that whether it was my parents or my teachers or I always tell people schoolhouse rock on Saturday morning cartoons, I was told I could create these pathways or that this country provided that kind of opportunity. And I just see All of that being attacked every single day by the Trump administration. So whether it's clearing women out of the military, clearing Black service members' histories off of military websites, whether it is attacking health care or attacking Pell Grants or attacking all those programs we have so people can get more opportunity, attacking research and development, attacking every means of opportunity. and I just look at this and it just reminds me a lot of us as we were coming up there was I don't know if you remember Madeleine Albright said there's a certain place in hell for women who don't support other women and I just remember sometimes coming up when it was so new to have

women there and you would say oh the worst kind of person is somebody who climbs the ladder of success and pulls that ladder up behind them and here we're just seeing that in the Trump administration at every turn, in every way, capping opportunity right now for people. And what is your advice to our listeners who are against this administration, who want to protest? What are the most effective ways to demonstrate your right to speak out against this, in your opinion? So I think about this a lot, as you can imagine. And I do think we have no King's Day coming up. That's going to be very important. Get into the streets. Advocate for the things you believe in. And I will tell you, and your listeners are going to know, I'm a little biased,

right? I'm in this tough race right now in New Jersey. But there are only two statewide races in the entire nation, in Virginia and New Jersey. And these two races could either be a huge mandate against the Trump administration, show that the people of New Jersey, the people of Virginia do not agree with where we are headed in this country or they could give support to this administration. So, you know, to the extent people have time, go to MikeySherrill.com, sign up, come to New Jersey, come knock on doors, sign up for phone banking, text banking, chip in money, because right now we are doing everything we can to get the word out on the campaign. So anything you can do right now in New Jersey, I think this is really the race setting

the table for everything that's to come. Great. Great. Okay. Well, I will go and make a donation as well to MikeySherrill.com right now as we speak. Mikey, it was wonderful speaking with you. Thank you so much for being here and good luck with everything. And I will be there to campaign with you whenever you need me. I love it. I don't know if your listeners know what a good Jersey girl you are, Chelsea. I'm a Chelsea girl. Welcome anytime. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Have a wonderful day. Thanks, guys. Thanks so much. Genuflecting, to lower one's body briefly by bending one knee to the ground, typically in worship or as a sign of respect. Used in a sentence, Swifties thought Travis Kelsey was genuflecting to Taylor before realizing he was

actually proposing. Genuflecting. I just announced all my tour dates. They just went on sale this week. It's called the High and Mighty Tour. I will be starting in February of next year. So I will be touring from February through June. I haven't added second shows yet, but we probably will be to some of these. So go get your tickets now. If you want good seats and you want to come see me perform, I will be on the high and mighty tour. Do you want advice from Chelsea? Write into DearChelseaPodcast at gmail.com. Find full video episodes of Dear Chelsea on YouTube by searching at DearChelseaPod. Dear Chelsea is edited and engineered by Brad Dickert, executive producer Catherine Law. And be sure to check out our merch at ChelseaHandler.com.

i survived nine months in captivity and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them i'm elizabeth smart and these are the survivor files every week i'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable abducted stalked controlled and nearly silenced these are stories about what it takes to make it out alive listen to the survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week,

we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers book talk creators and plenty of overthought opinions listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts did you hear the new episode of the hey jonas podcast we are at d23 so we'll see who stops by the cast of frozen stopped by kristin bell josh gad and adina menzel i auditioned for frozen what for kristoff they said okay what are you going to be singing today i said i don't know that must have been why you didn't get it Oh, you probably won. Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars, and more.

And I guess I can share that, uh, no way. Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook. Each week, we talk to someone in show business and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicist for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, Adam Scott, Danny McBride, Ben Stiller,

and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.