No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Fox News' miraculous vaccine pivot

Episode Date: July 25, 2021

Fox News and some high profile Republicans miraculously decide to soften their tones on the COVID vaccine. Brian interviews Congressman Eric Swalwell about the GOP’s rejection of the January 6 Committee and his response to Kevin McCarthy who opposed this committee while having bragged about the Benghazi Select Committee because it hurt Hillary Clinton. And Executive Director of Florida Rising Andrea Mercado joins to discuss the best way to bring Florida’s Latino population back into the Democratic Party and whether the GOP’s fear mongering about socialism is actually effective there.Support Texas Democrats by donating here: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/texaswalkoutDonate to the "Don't Be A Mitch" fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about Fox News and some high-profile Republicans miraculously deciding to soften their tones on COVID and why. I interview Congressman Eric Swalwell about the GOP's rejection of the January 6th Commission and his response to Kevin McCarthy who opposed this commission while having bragged about the Benghazi Select Committee because it hurt Hillary Clinton. And I chat with the executive director of Florida Rising, Andrea Mercado, about the best way to bring Florida's Latino population back into the Democratic Party and whether the GOP's fearmongering about socialism. is actually effective here. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. In an almost unfathomable turn of events, some high-profile Republicans gave the country whiplash this week when they started promoting vaccines.

And look, I'm no brilliant political strategist, but I'm assuming, and stay with me on this one, that Republicans having convinced their supporters not to get a free, life-saving vaccine during a pandemic where the people dying are almost exclusively the unvaccinated isn't turning out to be a great long-term strategy. Turns out that condemning the people who listen to you to die at a rate of 99 to 1

might not be the move after all. Of course, they're not going to admit that, so the line they're going with is that the Delta variant is just too dangerous to ignore. Right, the 600,000 people who died from the initial strain of COVID weren't enough to raise eyebrows over at Fox, but the Delta variant is finally a strain serious enough that conservatives would deign to pay attention.

Again, this has little, if anything, to do with the specific mutation and everything to do with the fact that they've managed to single out their viewers who are now virtually the only ones dying from this virus. And so realizing the absolute dumpster fire that they'd created, because they decided to turn a public health issue into a cultural war issue, some genius, no doubt, decided that in fact they should promote vaccines, which, again, are free and life-saving and keeping 99% of those who catch COVID out of the hospital. And I don't know if, you know, a memo or some edict was sent down from the Heritage Foundation overlords, but suddenly we started getting messaging like this from Mitch McConnell. 97% of the hospitalizations in the country for COVID are unvaccinated people. It never occurred to me after three highly effective vaccines were developed in under a year that we, We'd have difficulty getting Americans to take the shots, but that's obviously where we are. I want to underscore in the strongest possible manner I can.

And I say this with some authority, as you all know, as a result of being a polio victim myself, and being very aware that it took seven decades to come up with two effective polio vaccines. This was done in under one year. These shots need to get in everybody's arm as rapidly as possible, or we're going to be back in a situation in the fall that we don't year for that we went through last year. We got this from Kaylee McInney, who, of course, couched her message in a way that would grovel at Trump's feet. And if you get the vaccine, it reduces your chances of hospitalization in the event you

can track COVID. So important, 95% reduction in hospitalization. for those over 65 for elderly. I'm vaccinated, encouraged everyone to do so. It's the Trump vaccine. He got this vaccine with Operation Warp Speed. So wrong answer, Socky. But everyone remember, Trump was at the helm of this vaccination.

We got this from Sean Hannity. Please take COVID seriously. I can't say it enough. Enough people have died. We don't need any more death. Research like crazy. Talk to your doctor, your doctors, medical professionals. You trust based on your unique medical health.

unique medical history, your current medical condition, and you and your doctor make a very important decision for your own safety. Take it seriously. And finally, this PSA that's been running on Fox. We're in this together. And if you can, get the vaccine. For information on vaccine sites, visit the vaccine finder on the homepage of foxnews.com. In total, Fox shows plugged vaccines.gov at least seven times this last week, after going six weeks without even a single mention of the website. The reversal was so obvious that even Biden pointed it out. One of those other networks are not a big fan of mine. One you talk about a lot. But if you notice, as they say in the southern part of my state, they've had an altar call

some of those guys. All of a sudden, they're out there saying, let's get vaccinated. Let's get vaccinated. The very people before this were saying, but that, I shouldn't make fun. That's good. It's good. It's good. Look, even Biden acknowledging the rights reversal on vaccines really does underscore just how arbitrarily Fox News and Republicans decide that something that was so bad is suddenly good. Like, no deeply held positions based on adherence to facts or science, just blindly regurgitating whatever's on the teleprompter. Just the flip of a switch and suddenly the thing that they were demonizing last week is great now. Everything is political and as soon as the political wind shift, so to all of their talking points. And I don't think I have to explain how bad shit crazy it is to approach.

public health that way. Now, even with some newfound revelations on the right, there were still some prominent voices who decided that unilaterally watching their own audience die wasn't quite enough to move the needle. And I think chief among them is, of course, Tucker Carlson, who not only didn't promote vaccines, but decided to tell millions of people that the COVID vaccine might kill them. So the government keeps a database and has for decades on vaccine harm. It's called the vaccine adverse events reporting database, VAERS, and it tracks the side effects of vaccines and their side effects to all medicines. You're not allowed to read it, though, and if you do, people attack you. So we ignore it. That's why today almost no one noticed

when the CDC updated the VAERS database, but we did notice it. So the question is not what the number is. We can debate that. The question is, are we as a country or the federal agencies and is the news media making a good faith effort to find out what it is and then to care about what it is. Why wouldn't we care? If Tylenol, there were claims that Tylenol was causing people harm, we'd look into it. But news organizations aren't looking into it because there's an enormous amount of pressure just to ignore it. We're not following along, of course, everyone else is. And of course, other clowns whose entire identity is predicated on the ignorance,

Marjorie Taylor Green's out here tweeting, stop masking children in the same week that a five-year-old child died of COVID in her own district. And yet when asked whether she feels responsibility for downplaying the effects of COVID on young people during an interview, here was her reaction. Do you feel any responsibility for keeping people in Georgia safe? You know, there are children, skinny people who have died of the coronavirus. Do you feel any responsibility? T.I. Correct me up. You know what?

I think people's responsibility is. their own. Yeah, hilarious, right? She's asked, do you feel any responsibility for promoting COVID misinformation, which, by the way, she did by suggesting that only elderly or overweight people are at risk, and she laughed because apparently the word skinny was just too funny not to laugh at before effectively just suggesting that the whole thing's not her problem. The fact that the right effectively ceded all of its messaging on COVID to people like this is why hospitals are full of Republicans dying of a now-preventable disease. And that's It's the most dangerous part here, because let's be honest, having just a few prominent

voices on the right suddenly tell people that vaccines are good is likely not going to move the needle. Like, because Republicans decided to turn what should have been a public health issue into a culture war issue, being pro or anti-vax has basically become an element of your political identity now. And it's a hell of a lot harder to have someone just up and change their identity than it is to be open to medical advice. They've basically made it so that being anti-vax is this hardened, emmoving, and move.

position for a lot of people, and that'll mean that we're going to lose a lot of people who would have otherwise survived this. That's the consequence of this exhausting barrage of cultural war grievance politics that the right traffics in, from whaling about the war on Christmas to socialism to critical race theory, to trans Americans, and on and on and on. So look, the point here is this. The fact that those sources on the right can just as quickly swing from don't get vaccinated to yes, you need to get vaccinated, is a testament to the fact that they're

He'll move wherever the winds blow them. This was never about science. It was about politics. It was about opposing Joe Biden because Joe wants you to get vaccinated, and so that means Fox and Republicans don't. And the only reason that they're still not towing that line is because the optics of having their own supporters literally dying on mass as a result of this is really, really bad.

And so knowing just how arbitrary all of this is, focus on the people who are actually qualified to speak on it. Not Tucker Carlson, not Marjorie Teller Green, not Kevin McCarthy, not the people who claim to hate COVID so much, who claim to hate lockdowns and mask mandates and stay-at-home orders, and yet refuse to follow any of the measures that would actually end this pandemic once and for all. So if you have friends or family or neighbors who are skeptical of the vaccine, even if you're not, you know, comfortable discussing just how incredibly safe it is, just point to the numbers. Virtually everyone getting hospitalized

and dying are unvaccinated. In most circumstances, it's like 99%. If anyone is worried about safety, it doesn't get clearer than that. Next step is my interview with Congressman Eric Swalwell. Today we've got Congressman Eric Swalwell. Thanks for coming back on. Of course, Brian. Thanks for having me back. So first off, congratulations on your updated book, Endgame Inside the Impeachments of Donald Trump. Brian, it was a book I did not expect. I would have to update. Maybe I did expect we

would have to update it. That's a sad state of affairs. I didn't want to update it. But it's four new chapters covering the insurrection, the inauguration, and the Senate impeachment trial of the second impeachment of Donald Trump. So four new chapters, and we added an S to the title. So it's inside the impeachments, pluralized. Yeah, just the perfect encapsulation of the last four years here, the fact that you have to add an S to impeachment in this book. But here we are. Okay, so with that said, you know, with this book, with the fact that you were an impeachment manager, the fact that you were a Democrat at the Capitol during the insurrection and therefore a target. What was your reaction to congressional Republicans who effectively

decided to absolve Trump by voting against the bipartisan January 6th Commission? Trump is the party now. And, you know, people like Adam Kinziger and Liz Cheney who've shown courage, frankly, they're more aligned with Democrats these days. You know, there's not much to save because, you know, it's too against hundreds between the House. in the Senate. And Kevin McCarthy, you know, he is just treading water, you know, in Donald Trump's ocean. And, you know, there's just no courage. And there's no conviction. There's no imagination. And, you know, what that leaves us with is the exact same circumstances we were under in January, on January 6th, you know, nothing has really changed, Brian. We have tried to pass in the house,

an increase in security assistance for the Capitol so that this couldn't happen again. But we can't even get it passed in the Senate because Republicans are blocking it there. You have Donald Trump telling people that he's coming back in August. So the same forces that led to January 6th are still out there right now.

And actually, I would say on the Republican side, there's even fewer people who are willing to step up. I'll just give you one number that's pretty disheartening. 10 Republicans voted for impeachment on January, I think it was January 13th, the day we impeached him, and only two Republicans voted for the select committee. So eight of them walked away from the courage they showed on voting for impeachment to the courage you needed to show to just have an independent, you know, select committee. And so that's where that's a state of playwright. Well, you know, you had mentioned Kevin McCarthy, obviously. Back in 2015, McCarthy

basically admitted on Fox News, I think it was during an interview with Hannity, that the Benghazi Select Committee had the intended effect of sinking Hillary Clinton's poll numbers, even though investigations within that select committee showed no wrongdoing on her end. But still, he cheered that on. And yet now, that same guy is opposing the same type of select committee, only now for someone who so clearly, blatantly, egregiously holds responsibility. So what would your response to McCarthy be in light of that? he weaponized a select committee, you know, when he thought it would help him attack the Democratic

nominee. And now, you know, he is using a shield, you know, against a select committee, because I think he's afraid of, you know, just how responsible he and others are going to be found for telling the big lie and enabling the big lie. But it's really sad, Brian, because as I said, it doesn't make us any safer. The best part about the September 11 independent Commission was that obviously it gave us the ground truth as to how, you know, the hijackers were able to pull off what they did, the intelligence failures that existed. But it also, you know, laid out a roadmap for better protecting America. And Congress went to work after the recommendations were made. And we put in place almost all of the recommendations. And I think you and I would agree

that, you know, when you get on an airplane today, you're a hell of a lot safer than you were on September 10th. And so if we don't have an independent select committee that the country looks at as, you know, validated. It's going to be hard for Congress, you know, to make recommendations to prevent another January 6-like event. Well, I mean, the argument could be made that that's the point, right? The entire point is to basically enable Republicans and Donald Trump, led by Donald Trump, led by Donald Trump, to do it again. And Donald Trump failed massively on January 6th. You know, he aimed that mob at the Capitol. He said, you have to fight like hell or you're not going to have a country anymore. He said that he was going to go with them.

And of course, he backed out as he always does. And the Capitol police prevailed. Yes, we did not have a peaceful transition of power. Yes, democracy almost died. But the Capitol Police and the National Guard and the resolve of, you know, Speaker Pelosi to get us back on the floor to certify the election ultimately prevailed. But what you are now seeing is the trickle-down effect of January 6th in Arizona and Florida and Texas, where just because they didn't win on the ground, on the sixth,

now you're seeing all these efforts to put in place mechanisms so that legislatures can overturn elections if, God forbid, Democrats win in those states. Well, yeah, I mean, look, you know, you've written about this. You sit on the House Intel Committee. Given how close Republicans got last time, you know, the people who blocked the GOP's worst impulses are now getting primaried.

Most of the Republican base thinks that there was fraud despite Trump's complete inability to prove even a shred of fraud. So that doesn't bode well for next time. Is our system of government equipped to deal with the subversions of democracy that are presenting themselves right now? These Republicans, you know, in their quest for power, have exposed vulnerabilities in our democracy. No question.

You know, Donald Trump did that every single day. I mean, you just took a wrecking ball, you know, day after day, you know, to the core of our democracy. And it had the effect of weaponizing the Department of, justice. It allowed foreign governments to believe they could stay at his hotels and line his pockets and have, you know, influence. He punished his friends and rewarded his enemies and, you know, were weaker as a country because of it. However, it also exposed, you know, some of the resilience in our country. It showed us people like Alexander Vindman, Colonel Vindman. It showed us people

like Masha Yovanovitch, the ambassador in Ukraine. It showed us people like Miles Taylor, you know, at the Department of Homeland Security, who wrote the book Anonymous. And it showed us people like Officer Mike Fanon and Harry Dunn and the heroes who defended the Capitol that day. And I think we need people like them, you know, everyday unsung heroes whose names were not necessarily known when we were being challenged, but they, you know, reached their own limits and stepped up and defended the country. And we're going to need a lot more people to do that. Otherwise, we will find that just like Hungary and just like Philippines and just like Turkey, you know, that as a democracy, you know, we are not inevitable that we could fail.

And it will take, you know, the best of us to save us, you know, from the worst of us. You know, I noticed that you didn't mention Bill Barr that would suggest that his rehab tour isn't going too well. He hasn't won you over, I guess. Yeah. And Brian, you know, these. books that keep coming out, which God bless the reporters, they're entertaining. But I don't look at military leaders and Bill Barr and others who, after the coup happened, you know, now are willing to dish on Donald Trump and tell us that they were planning, you know, for a coup. I mean, well, he didn't plan very well because there was an attempted coup where a police officer died.

hundreds of others were injured. We were taken from the floor for hours. So again, it feels self-serving for, you know, many of these folks who were trying to, you know, rehab, you know, their character at this point. The people, as I just named earlier, those are the ones who risked at all when the corruption, when the threats of violence were happening. They, they went public. They didn't hide behind, you know, sources. They didn't wait for Trump to leave office. They did it while he was in office, you know, as a clarion call for all of us, you know, to also do something. And so, yeah, I don't have much respect or, you know, I don't think he deserves a cookie because, you know, he, a coup was the red line for him, right? Like he, he was cool with lying to Congress about the Mueller report.

He was cool with letting Trump pardon all of his friends. He was cool with the Department of Justice spying on Trump's enemies. But, oh, a coup, that's where Bill Barr, you know, says, you know, I'm not. in for that. So he's a hero now. I don't think so. Now, I know a major theme of your book is accountability, which ironically is the one thing that a lot of us have given up on. You know, the guy who incited a murderous mob to go assassinate his own vice president is currently the favorite to become the 2024 nominee. So where does the optimism that accountability still exists come from? So first election after Donald Trump, first major election after Donald Trump was

elected was December 2017, right? It was a special election for a Senate seat in Alabama. And, you know, black women especially organized and turned out in record numbers. And we won in Alabama. We had the marches, you know, the day after Trump was inaugurated, the women's march, the marches for climate, the marches for science. Sadly, after Parkland, we had, you know, the march for our lives. And in 2018, you know, we beat 19 NRA. endorsed members of Congress. We flipped the House with 29 members of Congress who were in the 40s and under. And, you know, we in the House held Donald Trump accountable and, you know, as best we could without a Senate that would also have gone along and removed him after the Ukraine

incident. And so, again, it showed and proved the resilience that activism pays off and that, you know, when you do mobilize and register to vote and then organize yourself to go and vote, you have power and agency. And so we won in Georgia, right? We added Georgia, you know, to the states and Arizona to the states that we could win in. And we clawed back Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania where we had lost before. But I would agree with you that the 2020 election, I think in many of our minds, we thought, okay, this is the showdown of Trumpism versus democracy, and we're going to resolve this. And what we've found is that we are in this, we're in overtime right now, that this is, you know, extra time, as they would say in soccer, you know,

for the country. And everything's on the line. And so the 22 midterms where you have a 50-50 Senate and a plus four majority in the House, you know, it is tight right now. And every race is going to matter. And so motivating our voters, you know, to understand what's at stake and then, you know, making sure they show up at the ballot box, you know, that's priority number one. I want to end with this. You know, you have a pending lawsuit against Donald Trump. Can you walk me through that? Yeah, you know, I have never sued anybody in my life. I've never been sued in my life. You know, I've spent my career as a criminal prosecutor holding people accountable, you know, for their criminal acts. And after the Senate trial, after, you know,

putting together hundreds of hours of video evidence, you know, scouring through so many tweets and statements from Donald Trump and then looking at the $50 million that he invested the 20 days before January 6 to aim that mob at Washington, I was convinced that, but for Donald Trump, you know, this attack would not have happened, that we would have been able to kill everyone's votes, that I would not have been terrorized and traumatized along with my colleagues on the floor. And I just believe that you shouldn't be able to get away with that. You know, you should be held accountable for that. And in our system of justice allows someone to be held accountable for that.

So filed the lawsuit, you know, strictly for accountability. I looked at some of the other characters who were part of January 6th, like Don Jr. and Rudy Giuliani and Mo Brooks and, you know, included them in the lawsuit. One side note, Brian, again, it's Gallo's humor that has gotten us through, as many of my colleagues have gotten through, you know, everything since January 6th. And when we were getting ready to set up in the Senate chamber for the first day of the trial, an IT team came in to give us a side room where we could work

out of. And they gave us laptops and printers and copy machines. And Joe Neguse and I, you know, the two millennials on the team are asking for the Wi-Fi password. And one of the tech guys says, you know, it's under the network managers. And he gave us the password. And I said to one of these guys, I said, you know, we just impeached Donald Trump and you guys have set up this state-of-the-art IT center for us, you know, to be ready, you know, for our trial, you know, really impressed that you're able to do that. And the IT guy said, without any irony at all, he said, well, sir, you know, to be honest, we were the same IT crew that did the first impeachment. And so we just left everything up because we figured you all would be back. I just thought, boy, this was predictable the entire time. They just left that stuff up because they figured, like, Donald Trump, of course he's going

to get impeached again. That's just who he is. So my hope for the country and the point of the book is that may we learn from this and may our resilience, you know, redeem democracy so that no one's ever pessimistic about their country in a way that was expressed, you know, in that moment. We'll end there. So again, Congressman, thank you for coming on, and congratulations on the book. Again, that's Endgame Inside the Impeachments of Donald J. Trump.

Thanks, pal. I'll see you around. Thanks again to Eric Swalwell. Now we have the executive director of Florida Rising, Andrea Mercado. Andrea, thank you so much for taking the time to talk. Yeah, I'm excited to have a conversation. Yeah, so tell us about Florida Rising, first and foremost. What do you do? Carter Rising is an organization that is focused on expanding democracy and advancing racial

equity. We do voter registration, and we do a lot of work to engage people around elections and building independent political power that centers black and brown communities in particular. So I want to get into the politics of Florida for a moment. Democrats kind of disregard the constant fearmongering about socialism because that's just what Republicans do, right? They've been warning that electing any Democrats going to usher in an era of socialism, and yet we've had eight years of Bill Clinton and no socialism, eight years of Barack Obama and no socialism, and now we've got Joe Biden and Andrea, it doesn't

look like we're going to have socialism now either. But the fact that we're not pushing back against these, you know, this constant barrage, is that creating a vacuum that only the right is filling? And is that having a real life impact in places like Florida where, you know, the Latino population does respond negatively to socialism. Well, I mean, it's definitely true. You know, Florida is a very large and complex state. We have 23 million people. It's the third largest state in the country.

And we have a sizable population from Latin America. You see it right now with all of the discourse around what's happening in Cuba on Spanish language outlets. They're really attacking Democrats and progressives pretty hard. You know, I think that's why it's really important for organizations and for elected officials to stand up. And you see that, you'll find that nuance, a lot of South Florida-based elected officials really understand. You have to engage in what's happening in Latin America because so many voters here in Florida are paying attention.

So what's the best way to overcome this deficit here? Like, what's the best way to overcome the right-wing talking points as it relates to all of those issues? I think it's really important for us to engage with some nuance. So, you know, on the left, I think there's oftentimes a strong critique of, um, U.S. interventionism in Latin America, which is absolutely true. I mean, the role that the U.S. has played in the hemisphere cannot be ignored, but sometimes it fails to acknowledge, you know, nuance and also the hypocrisy of the right. You know, Governor DeSantis made it a priority to criminalize protests to say that people will be charged with very serious felonies for

blocking a street or a freeway or that people who ran their cars into protest shouldn't be held accountable. You know, it was a clear attack on the movement for Black Lives and the uprising after George Floyd's murder. And yet when thousands of people take to the streets to support people in Cuba who are protesting repression and state violence, the Republican Party is silent. Governor DeSantis supports those protests. And so I think it's, you know, I think it's really important for independent organizations in particular, to be clear about our values and stand up for them at home and abroad. So then obviously, you know, a question born out of all of this is, what's the best way

to persuade Florida's Latino population to vote for Democrats, not just, you know, what pushes them away from Democrats on the Republican side? And I do ask that, knowing that the Latino population isn't a monolith here. So it works for Cubans might not work for Puerto Ricans, and that might not work for Mexicans and so on. But is there a plan to better appeal to people who aren't trending toward Democrats right now, as we've seen in the last election? Well, I mean, we've spent a lot of time studying right-wing infrastructure in the state that's targeting Latinos. It's massive. And it's not just the Latino community.

There's also right-wing infrastructure that's targeting African-Americans. Because in a place like Florida, when statewide races are won by less than half a percent, you win at the margins. And so they don't need to win a sizable number. They just don't. need to win a few more points. I think we've really studied the right-wing Spanish infrastructure, which is really large and growing. We recently released a report on disinformation that's happening in Spanish language radio in particular,

which is wildly popular in South Florida. And the right almost has a monopoly on Spanish language radio in South Florida. It's unlike Spanish language radio anywhere else in the country. And we recorded what they were. were saying during the insurrection, for example, to just really capture the kind of lies that these radio hosts were spreading and some elected officials would join these shows like Maria Elvira Salazar or Mario Diaz-Balart and not challenge people who were

minimizing the insurrection or saying, you know, things that have been proven to not be factual, like more people voted in Pennsylvania than live in Pennsylvania during the election and challenging the legitimacy of our president. And so, you know, I think what we need to be doing is building out progressive Latino infrastructure all over the country, but especially in a place like Florida. We can't just cede the airwaves to the right wing. We have to offer different points of view because that's the only way people can really make a decision.

We can't just normalize these lies and these ideological viewpoints. You know, we need to be out there talking to people. And so, you know, that's a lot of what we do at Florida Rising is we talk to people in communities where we're out there knocking on people's doors right now to talk about COVID and whether people are, you know, do people know where they can get vaccinated if they're not vaccinated already? And, you know, we do that work in communities, but I think it's really important for us also to do it in the media. You know, and, you know, we just saw, I don't know if you saw this, Trump, the One America Network, is now launching a Spanish-language television station.

That is how seriously the right is taking Latino voters, and, you know, we don't see the same kind of investment by Democrats. Is there any type of burgeoning, you know, right-wing radio investment in South Florida? Are there plans to counter this, you know, on their turf where people are listening? You know, I mean, I'm seeing a lot of emerging, so there's more and more Spanish language podcasts, but it seems like the donor class is more interested in monitoring and understanding the disinformation on the right is spreading than actually supporting, building the infrastructure that we need for our side. And that's something that's concerning

to me. I believe in the importance of monitoring. That's why we did this no must disinfo report on what was being said during the insurrection. You know, we need to understand what they're saying, but we can't stop there. Right. At some point, it can't just be, we can't just be constantly proving to ourselves over and over and over again that disinformation is happening. Once we realize, you know, because it's being broadcast and broad daylight that it is happening, we have to, you know, move forward and actually, uh, to overtake it. Right. And that's what we're not seeing yet. And I'm, and I'm hopeful, you know, that those resources will come. But, you know,

I don't want it to be another story in Florida where the resources come so late. I mean, Part of what we saw in the 2020 election is that, you know, Trump was out spending the Biden campaign two to one in June, in July, you know, and then it's like Biden starts out spending Trump three to one in October. Well, it's too late. People have already decided how they're voting. They've probably actually already mailed in their vote by mail ballots. This is really the time that we need to be engaging with voters. And so, you know, that's what we're doing with our, you know, members of Florida Rising are our out there. there in English and in Spanish and in Haitian Creole, you know, talking in our communities and having these conversations, but I think the level of investment that we need hasn't

really come. And, you know, I'm hopeful, but we're not, like I said, I think it's a major problem. Yeah. Well, you know, that is a good segue into the fact that Florida Rising is a partner for the Don't Be a Mitch Fund that I started that we have, you know, thousands of donors for, I believe, that we're coming up on the $50,000 mark for every organization, and we have nine organizations that are part of it. Obviously, like I said, Florida Rising is our partner in Florida. So what are those donations supporting right now? Yeah, so right now, we are knocking on doors in four counties. We do neighborhood monthly people's assemblies in 10 counties across the state. Yeah, right now, the resources that are coming into the organization,

are helping to resource our canvas team, our organizers, and our communications squad. So making sure people know about the kind of campaigns that we're working on, whether it's climate justice or voting rights. So I do want to jump back into a political question here, and that is, where is the disconnect between the Democratic agenda and Democratic politicians? Because Florida overwhelmingly voted for a $15 minimum wage, Democrats largely support raising the wage, and Republicans overwhelmingly So why are the issues beating the candidates that espouse them by double digits?

Yeah, we were really excited to pass the $15 minimum wage. It's the first $15 statewide minimum wage in the South. And like you said, it was wildly popular amongst voters. I think one of the problems is a lot of people who were running as Democrats didn't really embrace the initiative, didn't talk about it. So people don't know necessarily what one party stands for and what the other party doesn't. doesn't if we're not messaging around it and if people aren't talking about it. And we've seen that time and time again. I mean, we saw that in 2018 when we passed Amendment 4, which was voting rights for returning citizens, people who had felony convictions. We saw that we've passed

affordable housing. And then, you know, the Republican legislature does everything that they can to undermine it and attack it. So I think there is a lot more education that needs to be done about who Democrats are and what they stand for. It's also true that for many years, you know, we're talking a lot about Latino voters, the only Spanish-speaking elected officials for a long time in our state legislature were actually Republican. Yeah.

And so we, you know, we've been building up a pipeline of leaders from our communities who will go to bat for our communities and the things that we care about. And then doing that education so that people know and can connect the dots on what, you know, what they're voting for in Tallahassee and what's happening up there? Because they actually don't want us to know that they're giving tax breaks to the largest corporations

while attacking trans kids and women's right to an abortion and attacking our right to freedom of speech and to protest. A silver lining that we've seen from the Trump era is just how important repetition is. I mean, a lot of what Trump did, you know, obviously what he was selling, was a lot of disinformation and outright lies. But the fact is he used repetition so frequently and was able to convince people of whatever he wanted to convince them.

So, you know, if we're doing it with a more noble cause, we're actually being honest about what the Democratic agenda is, at least we can see how important repetition is so that people can find, you know, they're not going to get it after one time, not going to get it after two times, but three, four, five, six times, you know, then it'll finally start to sink in.

I do want to finish with one last question, and that is, you know, just broadly, if you're a Democrat, Florida has, at least in the recent past, has left a lot to be desired. So what's your message to people who feel like because we've been burned by Florida before that it's not a lost cause? Well, I would say, you know, it's the perennial battleground. And I know it can be, believe me, no one's more frustrated than those of us that live here and whose families, you know, when we're not able to expand Medicaid and we don't get the resources we need for our public schools. And, you know, we're the ones, the fact that we still have the

stand your ground law. No one's more frustrating than us. And that there's like a team of organizations and organizers and people that are giving it their all and really like giving it so much heart. And it comes so close. Like the last midterm elections came down to less than half a percent. In a state with 23 million people, it was 18,000 or 30,000 votes. So it's coming down to the wire in spite of the fact that the Republican Party is, you know, doing everything that they can to hold Florida because they know that they have no path to the White House without it. So, you know, I would remind folks that, you know, we can't take communities of color for granted that they're going to vote Democrat.

Nowhere is that more true than here in Florida. And, you know, we have to do persuasion and mobilization and, you know, make sure that people feel like they understand the difference. And that's why we have such a unique opportunity right now with the Biden administration, the child tax credit, the American Recovery Plan. You know, it's like how do we actually show the difference between, you know, Democrats are in office and Republicans are in office and hold everyone accountable, regardless of whether they have an R or a D behind their name. Absolutely. Well, thank you for doing the work on the ground. You know, obviously it makes a huge difference. So Andrea, thank you again and appreciate everything you're doing. Thanks again to Andrea. Okay, couple notes here. I'm still raising money for the Texas Democrats who fled to Washington, D.C., to deprive Republicans of the quorum needed to pass their voter suppression bill. These Democrats are the one and only line of defense against this bill getting passed. So if you support what they're doing, please donate a few bucks. The link is in the episode notes. Remember, these are state representatives who make $600 a month. They're not flush with cash, and these donations make a really, really big difference for people who are risking everything right now,

living out of suitcases in a hotel, away from their families, all to protect our democracy. And finally, we are so, so close to reaching our halfway point goal for the Don't Be a Mitch Fund. So if you'd like to support voter registration and voter outreach groups and nine key states ahead of the 2022 midterms, you can donate to that fund, too, and the link is also in the episode notes. And again, doing this work now is what makes a difference, not just throwing cash at a super pack in October of an election year. So please help support the people on the ground who are setting the stage for Democrats to flip some desperately needed seats ahead of 2022.

Okay, that's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera, and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out Brian Tyler Cohen.com for links to all of my other channels.