The Adam Mockler Show - Elon Musk NEEDS to pay his fair share...

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

CHECK OUT Abdul El-Sayed for Senate: https://abdulforsenate.com Adam Mockler sits down with Michigan Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed to talk healthcare, Elon Musk, etc. Click below for premium Adam Mockler content: 👉 https://adammockler.com/subscribe 👉 https://www.youtube.com/@adammockler/join JOIN THE COMMUNITY: Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AdamMockler/ Discord: https://discord.gg/y9yzMU3Gff Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adammockler/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/adammockler.com/ Twitter: https://x.com/adammocklerr/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@adammockler Contact: [e-mail] Business inquiries: [e-mail] Adam Mockler - Mockler Media LLC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Seriously, why aren't Democrats in Washington doing more to stop Trump? I know. Have you heard about Phil Weiser and Colorado, though? No. Is he different? Yeah, A.G. Weiser sued the Trump administration 65 times. He's beating Trump in court again and again. Things like protecting Obamacare against Trump's illegal tariffs, and he even won against Ticketmaster. So he actually gets results.

Exactly. As governor, Phil will fight for Colorado. Paid for by Phil Weiser for Colorado-registered Agent Nand-N-N-Nosegazy. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMDM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly.

If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. I'm gonna call this out here. You know why I think he bought Twitter now X? Because I think he wants to make it the front row to Starlink, which is the internet he's able to provide,

which is not broadband, which is buried, right? But it's coming to you from satellites, which he now has a monopoly on being able to build through SpaceX. Think about this. He got into power through Doge, and he spent 120 days in the White House on Ketamine, we know this, running around.

And he basically rewired a lot of contracts that were supposed to go to other companies, towards his own personal companies. This is one of the most captivating conversations I've had with a Democratic candidate in a while. Today, I talked to Michigan Senate candidate Abdul al-Syad, and you're gonna wanna watch until the end, because we call out Elon Musk, we talk about wealthy individuals

that are ruining America, and we talk about ways that we can fix our broken system. Make sure you drop a like, make sure you subscribe to the Adam Aklar feed, watch until the end, and if you live in Michigan, check out Abdul al-Sayyad. Thank you all, watch. I'm proud to be joined

by Michigan Senate candidate Abdul al-Sayed. Thank you for coming today, sir. How does it feel being in the best state in the Midwest? It feels like that all the time when I'm in Michigan. Having to come here, you know, I deal with second best. Second best? Wow. Welcome to Illinois.

Are you enjoying Chicago so far? Chicago's lovely. I mean, look, it's a great town. Yeah, of course. You know, I don't love me some bulls. I will tell you this, man, you know, we've got to give it to the Knicks, right? Mamdani did that in, like, six months. Yeah.

Plowed the, plowed the roads. won the Nix's a championship. Balance the budget. Free child care. I mean, this dude executed. Taxi billionaires. This dude executed on every single vision. Most importantly, the Nix won.

So, you know. I mean, like, the one game that they lost was just because Donald Trump ruined the vibe. Very true. So, you know, I've really liked the way you've been messaging with both conviction and in an easy to understand manner to people in Michigan.

The Democratic Party had lost that for a bit, but your message is very, very solid. You actually gave us access to an experience. exclusive ad that we'll be watching here for the first time. I want to react to it with you and then get your thoughts on it on the other side. We're seeing this for the first time right here. There is a man from Michigan.

Who knows how great we once were. And how great we can be again. Abdul. Abdul, Abdul, Abdul, Abdul, Abdul, Abdul, who love as Michigan as you get. Parents work, the auto industry, football. You have them, became a doctor to help people.

Michigan has the opportunity to send Abdul to the United States set. He rebuilt the health department. department after the politicians scored dollars. Got rid of millions of dollars that are better for day. Got thousands of glasses for kids, including me. Abdul is a doctor. Abdull ain't no politician. The only candidate who has the guts to take all of them on and represent the working class.

No corporate pet money. Medicare for All. Abolish ICE. He took on Trump's war and he'll fight to invest our money right here. That's the Abdul Way, baby. This campaign will take on the powerful with three simple ideas. Money out of politics, money in your pocket, and Medicare for all. Coach Fais Abdul, the next U.S. Senator from Michigan.

I'm Abdul, I'll say it's son of Michigan, and I approve this message. Don't worry about his thing. As we say, that goes hard. That goes incredibly hard. Let's start off with money out of politics. Can you tell me what that looks like on a practical level? Look, I'm the only candidate in my race, which is a crazy thing in 2026, who's never taken a dime of corporate money to run a campaign, and never will.

Not this race, not my previous race in 2018, not any race in the future. I just don't believe our politics should be bought. And that's why I'm going to fight like hell to try and overturn Citizens United. Now, there's a lot of other things we can do, even in the face of a Supreme Court, that does not want to see the obvious light about what Citizens United has meant for the foundations of our democracy. You could imagine a situation where, you know, you have belt and suspenders, so to speak.

So if the Supreme Court wants to rule down, right, opposing Citizens United, you could also imagine public funding. And public funding that checks in for every dollar that a corporation puts in on behalf of a candidate or against another candidate. You could also imagine limits across the board and how much is spent. And that way, there is no undue influence. There's a lot we can do if you're serious about this. And I'm deeply serious about it. Because every problem I want to get a comp, I want to solve, whether it's standing with unions or it's addressing the financialization of our economy, or it's standing up to,

the oligopolis and monopolies that dominate our economy. Of course, guaranteeing healthcare through Medicare for all, every single one of those challenges goes back to the fact that a corporation can buy off a politician, even our foreign policy, right? The money that we spent, obviously A-PAC is dropping. We've already dropped 15 million, dropping another 15 million against me. Just against you.

Just against me, 30 million in this race. They call me the most dangerous candidate for the US's relationship. I'm still waiting for the T-shirt, like preferably a black v-neck if you can. But, you know, that's all money in politics. It's not even just them. It's Raytheon, general dynamics.

It's all of the weapons manufacturers that have us in these contracts to make weapons for other countries. All of it goes back to money of politics. We've got to get money out of politics. It kind of goes back to the apathy that we see in politics today, especially across the country, but uniquely with young people my age, young men my age, feel very apathetic and like voting doesn't matter. I've talked to so many young men and women that think the system isn't working for them. And it's because you always have these disproportionately powerful special interest groups and corporations who, no matter who's president, I mean, listen, Biden's policies were infinitely better, but there are still these interest groups

who have the incentive to keep health care prices high, to keep the prices of other things high, and that's what we need to defeat. Can you expand a little bit more about your view on APAC in this race? Because in Chicago and here, what they did is create these shell corporations, and they title it elect progressive women, but then they weren't electing progressive women. They would either try to do a candidate who can pull votes away, or they would pour money into the less progressive person. So there's these insidious tactics that we need to fight back against.

Yeah. So look, to the first point that you made, which is a really good one, the way that money in politics works is it's about protecting these bipartisan consensus issues. So it doesn't matter if you're talking about a Democrat or Republican that both parties support Israel, despite the fact that it literally makes no sense, that a feature of our foreign policy as the United States of America should be about protection. protecting the interests of foreign government.

Similarly, you think about a lot of neoliberal policies protected that way, right? The idea that we rely on private health insurance, that is a bipartisan consensus. Now here's the thing, when there's a public consensus in one place and a bipartisan consensus in another, the difference is usually somebody's money. Right?

So whether it's Israel and Apex rule or it's healthcare and the role of big pharma, big insurance, and big medicine, all of it, right, is reinforced on both sides of the aisle. And so when you think about an 8-pack, the bulk of their money comes from folks who are billionaires, folks like the Aedelson's who spend huge amounts of money, 100 million a cycle, right, to reinforce this bipartisan consensus. Half of it against you, it feels like now. I mean, so 30 million, they're saying that's like a third of their whole budget. But I'll just, I'll just tell you, you know, I've been clear on my principles from the jump.

I don't pay my taxes. You don't pay your taxes to buy a foreign government, a bomber, a tank. Yep. That's basic. I don't think that we should be in the business of unconditional foreign military aid. Let's start with Egypt where my family comes from. Now, if you want to call me anti-Egyptian for saying that, fine, go ahead. But I'm watching as our tax dollars are being used to cement the chokehold of a military

dictatorship against its own people. I don't want to pay for that. I want my kids to have glasses and good schools and functional infrastructure. That's why we pay our taxes. Now, they're coming at me because that principle, is dangerous to the US-Israel relationship. Because if you at all started to apply any basic human rights,

any basic principles about like whose interest we should be focused on, i.e. our own kids. That whole approach by which we give them our money, we sell them weaponry that they use to backstop apartheid and genocide, the fact that we run cover for them at the UN or the ICC or ICJ,

all of that starts to crumble. And so they're right. I'm the most dangerous candidate for the U.S. Israel relationship only because I'm willing to surface the contradictions between our policy there and our stated aims both as a party and frankly as a country.

And if that makes me dangerous, so be it. But like principles should govern us and we should apply our principles equally and we should not be afraid as somebody who's running for office about the amount of money that they're going to use to smear me. And people are waking up. They're waking up.

Because in this race in particular, you got Chuck Schumer, A-PAC, right? All of the folks everybody hates in the Democratic Establishment. backing a candidate who is struggling to articulate a way forward. Then with me, you got me, the UAW, the nurses, Bernie Sanders, right? And we're out here running a campaign to get money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all.

So people are going to have to take sides. And my hope is that the side that they take isn't even mine is theirs. Yep. Because that's what's at stake here. You're just human dignity first, whether it comes to health care domestically or stopping the West Bank settlements abroad. I agree with you that people are. rapidly waking up. Just today, Ben Gavir tweeted out after this memorandum of understanding

was signed. Ben Gavir is the guy in Israel who's incredibly, incredibly radical, their minister, foreign minister, he essentially comes out and he's like, we are not subject to the United States deal, we do whatever we want, we are a sovereign nation, meaning a country that we pour billions of dollars into is directly saying that, hey, even though you unconditionally give us aid, there are conditions on whether or not we mess up your ceasefire or your memorandum of understanding, rather. So, I mean, this country is absolutely rogue right now. Can we just talk about why we even went to war?

Yeah. They invited the foreign, the prime minister of foreign government into the American situation room to make an argument about why you should go to this war in the first place. So if you're paying $5 gas, you know who you get to thank? Benjamin Netanyahu and A-PAC. Because he's been searching for 40 years for a president dumb enough to go to war with Iran, he finally found one.

Yeah. And so the sum total of it is this. We taught the Ayatollahs that they can choke the energy supply globally whenever they want, and we're paying $5 gas to basically get the same agreement we had under Obama. Yep. And we spent, what, $50 billion of our taxpayer dollars to do that? Maybe $100. Maybe $100 billion.

And ultimately, we pay the price for what? Well, Israel had clear war aims. We didn't. I mean, this is the thing. You look at this war, it's deeply incoherent because we didn't have clear war aims. They did. And they haven't accomplished all their war. One of the war aims was the attempt to annex southern Lebanon, which they're not quite done with,

and that's why they're trying to make all these provisives. But it's a pretty crazy thing that we spent $100 billion of our tax dollars. We're now paying $5 a gallon so that they could annex southern Lebanon? That's on top of the tens of billions of dollars in weapon sales that Trump has already approved towards Israel. And again, they have extended this war. It was supposed to be four to six weeks, remember? And Trump even said at the beginning that he was doing this to liberate the Iranian people. Four to six weeks in, Trump was threatening to genocide the Iranian people and end their civilization.

Now I believe we're 107 days into this war. We've gotten zero concessions, as you said, but we have all of the political costs coming down on the American people. So, I mean, people like... You're paying for it. I'm paying for it. You're paying for it. Everybody's paying for it. You know, you're the only Democrat that I've heard say this so candidly. I mean, Chuck Schumer is not going to say it like this. Your opponents aren't going to say it like this.

They're going to try to walk this line and kind of give a watered-down version of this. but we need to be pointing out whose fault this is. And it's Donald Trump's fault, Benjamin Deniau's fault. It's also, it's kind of a weird thing, right? Like, everybody kind of sees this for what it is. Yeah. And I don't know, man. Like, I studied complicated stuff.

It's not that complicated. It's like when obvious shit happened, you just say, that's obvious shit. Yeah. And when you don't and you can't, then the question people are left asking is like, well, it's obvious and you're not saying it. So who are you listening to if it's not me? And then you want to come and ask me for my vote? Yeah.

And this is the problem I think with the Democratic Party is that like I love my party. I just want my party to be able to say obvious shit. I want my party to be better. When we say we're for human rights, then we apply our human rights everywhere. When we say we're for working people, don't take money from the corporations. We're nickel and diamond working people. It's really not that hard. This is a funny thing.

Everybody's like, oh, it's so courageous. I'm like, it's not courageous. What is courageous about this? What's saying common sense? Well, it's courageous because you're going against the system of people. I mean, listen, there are powerful figures after you. A PAC, Chuck Schumer, all of these people who would like to take you down. I guess my question is as well, can I ask you about Elon Musk very quickly?

The world's first trillionaire. I think this is an interesting line that Democrats have to walk because we need to say I'm not against people being successful. I'm not against people building a business. I'm a small business owner. I know a lot of small business owners. But what Elon Musk is doing is at a different level. He bought Twitter, rebranded it to X, donated $300 million to Donald Trump in his campaign so that he could have control over the narrative online and the campaign on the ground.

And due to that, he got favorable contracts that has now made him a trillionaire. This is different than just being like, like the Republicans are like... Talk about immigrants taking the handouts, huh? Immigrants taking the handouts. The Republicans are like, oh, you don't want someone to be successful in America.

We want everyone to be successful. That's the problem. There's three points on this that I think are worth saying. Just on this point of political courage for a minute, what do you lose a job? Like, what's the point of having the job? If you can't do the things that need to get done, like, what's the point of this job?

Nobody's been able to explain this to me. Like what's so cool about the job if you can't actually do this stuff that you set out to do? To the point about Elon, you know, people are like, well, you know, I want to be able to play in the sandbox too. You're like, yeah, but he took all the sand. He's the reason you don't get to play in the sandbox. And it kills me, right, when people defend him because there is a system that has been rigged by the richest, the billionaires, the corporations, against everyone else who just wants to do business the old-fashioned way. It is harder to build and grow a small business now

because of what they call rent seeking. It's a fancy economic term for the idea that when you're big enough, you can buy government to set regulations to make it harder for anybody to come into the market who's at all competing with you. It's the reason we end up having to pay a lot more because you've got a few folks

who have legacy positions in every market and they get to dominate that market against the rest of us. We end up paying more as consumers and we don't even get to get into that market as producers. And it's funny because you say that, people are like,

well, you must be a socialist. I'm like, no! If you believe in capitalism, if you've read capitalism, you know what they identified as the biggest risk to capitalism? Monopoly. Yep. And we're living in a world in which government gets bought off to create, in effect, monopolies on everyone. So on Elon's point, right, he wants you to think that because he's a trillionaire, his success is somehow indicative of your future success. And if anything, his success is directly tied to your inability to be successful.

Because once he's able to dominate more and more of your mind share, your time share, your attention share, that's a worrying thing. I'm going to call this out here. You know why I think he bought Twitter now X? Why? Because I think he wants to make it the front row to Starlink, which is the internet he's able to provide, which is not broadband, which is buried, right, but it's coming to you from satellites, which he now has a monopoly on being able to build through SpaceX. So I think what he's trying to do is just corner the entire internet. I could be wrong. No, no, no, no.

You're right. I mean, think about this. He got into power through Doge and he spent 120 days in the White House on ketamine, we know this, running around and he basically rewired a lot of contracts that were supposed to go to other companies towards his own personal companies. We've seen more and more contracts get rewired away from companies that are competing with them. Conservatives are supposed to be pro competition, right?

But they remove competition the moment, the exact moment that they're going to be rewired. that it benefits their richest donors. So what is your actual practical solution to somebody like Elon Musk? For my understanding, we can't just straight up tax him in the way that we normally would because he's got a lot of unrealized speculative wealth. What do you think about a consumption tax

or other forms of taxes on Elon Musk? Because there's a lot of critics of the type of taxes. It's hard, right? So I believe in wealth tax. Yeah. Straight up, right? I think we need a wealth tax. I think if you had a wealth tax and that wealth tax was progressive,

At some point, it would be kind of impossible to get that level of wealth because once you are that rich, your money makes money. Right. If Elon Musk makes, just run this math through as you're saying, if Elon Musk makes 10% on his money, his trillion makes him $100 billion. That's wild. Like you can't deal with that kind of number without actually being like... It's like Apex budget against you basically. So that's one side of it. The other side of it, though, is that we dealt with this problem before, just like 100 years ago.

In the original progressive era, there was a recognition that once you got big enough, you wanted to grow both vertically, meaning own the part of the business you own, but then also horizontally, meaning buy other parts that are relevant to your business, so you're controlling everything. It was like standard oil and the railroads. We have this history. So the way we dealt with it is that we just stopped people from being able to accumulate horizontally, and we forced them to have other entrants in the market.

Like we can do that shit again. It is not hard. In fact, the laws are already on the books. It's just that we don't enforce them. See what I mean? And so antitrust enforcement, I think, is one of the most important things we could do. It's one of the most important things we can do in almost every sector. But in particular, when it comes to tech, that's the most dangerous one.

Because when you start talking about an AI play, which, of course, Elon has his hands in, that's the moment where you start to say, okay, well, you know, what more can you control when you control the cognitive capacity of a potential general intelligence? And I think we got to get real serious about that kind of antitrust regulation and real serious about AI regulation in general. Yeah, I think that Elon Musk is, like you said, cornering the media market, he's turned Twitter into a propaganda machine where he can very clearly boost the most hateful, most vile rhetoric possible. And on Elon Musk's Twitter, I see a lot of xenophobic, Islamophobic bigotry. We were talking a bit before this. My grandpa immigrated from Syria in the 80s.

My dad visited, he visited a lot before Assad and the Civil War. Now he's visiting again for the first time in 15 years. He's told me many stories about, you know, post-9-11 era, anti-Muslim bigotry being pervasive. I feel like we're seeing a sort of resurgence in that. We have actual sitting members of Congress, people who you may be working with at some point, mainly in the house like Randy Fine. We have Ogles, Andy Ogles, is that his name? They repeatedly say incredibly Islamophobic comments.

They try to act like Islam as not compatible with Western values. What do right-wingers get wrong about this? And what would you say to them if you could speak to them? I'll say a couple things on this. Number one, I was a junior in high school when 9-11 happened. And I remember the experience of going from being a darkly complexion kid with a funny name to being a very particular kind of darkly-complexed kid with a funny name. And the next year, my teammates elected me captain of my high school football team.

What my experience being Muslim in America has taught me is just, just how open-minded, just how big-hearted people in our country really are. And if this country has one unique gift, it's the ability to correct. It's the ability to get it right next time. Now, these people are not opposed to Muslims per se. Yes, they're opposed to Muslims. But what they're more trying to take on is that big-hearted, open-minded America. They don't want us to be the kind of place where folks who look different,

come from different backgrounds, might pray different, can come together to build something that's greater than some of those parts. And I take a lot of inspiration from the union movement. The idea that you can come together for our mutual interest to build something in solidarity that stands up for all of our well-being. And that's what's really at play right now. I don't, I spend much time trying to defend myself. You know, I know who I am. I love my faith. I love my heritage. I love the background that I had been raised by my immigrant father and my white American stepmom. I'm grateful for all of that. My job is to defend us. And I hope that what people see in this moment where folks like them might come after me because of how I pray or where my family came from, I hope they understand that it's not too many leaps until they come after you.

And I'm going to be here standing in the cut to protect you from that vision of America. We're on the 250th anniversary of the founding of this country. The only thing in front of us is what we do with the next 250. And I would love to continue to be that America that correct. We got a lot of correcting to do. Particularly given where we are right now with this administration right now. But I get to travel my state, 105 cities I've been to now. And everywhere I go, I see people who might never have met somebody like me

or are interested in this question of, well, how do we get money out of politics, how we put money in your pocket, how do we pass Medicare for all, how we do it together. And I think this is the moment. What they hate is not any of us. It's that any of us might stand up and come together with all of us. And that's what America has always been at its best. Very, very well said.

It's funny because Randy Fine will target like Muslims. He'll target trans Americans, gay Americans. But in the moment, Nick Fuentes is for some reason allowed in his far right right wing movement. He's like, wait a minute. I don't like when I'm targeted. I mean, our philosophy is to end bigotry before it enters the movement at all. And that is how America should function. Thank you.

And we're rooting for you at the Adamocry. Appreciate you, man. And look, you know, you guys will always be the second best state in the Midwest. Yeah, second best team. Got me. Appreciate you so much.