The Adam Mockler Show - We have a plan…

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

Leaders We Deserve: https://leaderswedeserve.com/ Click below for premium Adam Mockler content: 👉 https://adammockler.com/subscribe 👉 https://www.youtube.com/@adammockler/join Adam Mockler joined by David Hogg breaks down Trumps continuing erosion of norms and corruption. 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

David, it is great to be joining you on this beautiful morning. We've been making a lot of progress. You've been making a lot of progress in these elections, absolutely killing it. I'm currently in a New York hotel room where I was having some technical difficulties. But, yo, thanks for inviting me. This would be great. Of course. Thank you for having coming on and talking about this.

So I just want to say on Tuesday night, I was in the green room at CNN before I went on to do election night coverage after you were on with, I think it was, you know, our mutual friend, Scott Jennings. And it was, I don't even know who you were talking to, but there was something that you said where you just completely dogwalked this conservative about January 6th. I forget exactly what it was. I wish I had a clip.

I wish this was like a CNN show where I could be like, hey, producer, can you pull the clip? But it was, I remember being like, God damn, because he was just stunned. Like he could not respond and then just went on with some diversion. Do you remember that moment? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we were talking about Trump potentially declaring a national emergency and seizing ballot boxes.

And the Trump supporter next to me was like, I don't know, there's no reason for us to take this very seriously. And I was like, no reason. This dude literally sent an entire mob to the gas for the five years ago. On top of that, he did a fake elector scheme in seven different states. He called Brad Raffin trying to commit actual voter fraud. Like legitimate voter fraud. I don't want to be lectured by a single Republican about election security or election laws when they're actual leader tried to violate election laws.

And steal 11,000 votes in Georgia. Find me those votes, Brad Rappenz. On a fucking recording where he said, I just need 11,000 somewhat. Like, everything they do is fucking projection. Like, they call everything they don't like communism, except actual core principles of communism, like they are practicing buying private fucking companies with government money and having them be partially publicly owned. Like, what the hell is going on?

By the way, one year ago, the U.S. had zero stake in any private companies. Now it's 30 companies that we have stakes in. And Trump supporters close their eyes to that. Then they try to attack like Abdul Al-Sayette of Michigan for socialism. Abdul believes in free markets, from what I've heard. Abdul isn't a DSA member. He's somebody that is not a socialist. So just they're trying to fearmonger because they don't actually have a platform and they're scared of the repercussions that will happen when the midterms come by. Here's what I'll say. You don't have to seize ballot boxes or declare a national emergency. you're confident in winning. That is a, that is a manifestation of them losing and knowing that they're losing. Yeah, it absolutely is. I mean, this is a sign of a political party that is in decline, as the other one is getting rebuilt and winning over and over again. You know, it turns out having a bunch of younger people that actually speak to the people's needs coming in power is what we needed. It's almost like what basically everybody in the country was saying, what Democrats across the country of all ages were saying of the need for a new generation and people that don't take corporate PAC money that reject the influence of APAC,

was a good political strategy. And yet the establishment is still caught there thinking, you know what, if we get another $100 million from APAC, maybe that will save us. And it's like, no, that is not going to save you. You cannot continue to just put, voters are sick and tired of seeing what color of lipstick you're going to put on the pig this time instead of addressing actual pig.

Yeah, maybe like one more article about Hassan Piker or one more finger wagging at young voters for being a little bit worried, about the system not working for them will do the trick. The establishment has this very reductive analysis where they think young people are moving towards radical views because we're all just radical. That's where their analysis ends. They fail to take into account the systems that have left young people feeling disillusioned. And young people aren't like studying Karl Marx.

We're just like, hey, maybe we should have a system where student debt and medical debt and all of these things aren't accumulating so much so that we can't buy a house. Donald Trump refused to sign a bipartisan housing bill that passed through Congress about a month back. And it's such a perfect example of an out-of-touch elderly leader refusing to address the needs of Americans, of all ages, but especially young Americans when it comes to housing. So yeah, you're totally right. That's why I really respect the work that you're doing, David, because you're really out there putting in the work, scouting candidates, building the infrastructure and building this next wave of leadership in the Democratic Party. Well, it takes a village. It takes a whole ecosystem that's been built up. And I think part of the reason why we're succeeding so much is because, you know, in 2016, the progressive movement was just in it, the modern progressive movement was just in its infancy. You know, a lot of us were still in high school getting inspired by Donald Trump. You may have been in middle school, Adam actually, in 2016, or getting inspired by Bernie Sanders, I should say, not Donald Trump. And that generation is now old enough to run for office or old enough to be elected. And there's a whole new progressive. media ecosystem that you are a part of, that is part of the reason why,

even when there is tons of money that's spent against these candidates by APEC, by other major special interests, they're still able to win. I mean, when I was on the ground in Michigan, five days ago, you know, I was, I was in a restaurant, and there was like 50 TVs

because it's in Midwest, and they love college football. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And every single one of those TVs had, like, Peggy Flanagan and black and white and how she was going to destroy Minnesota and everything. And I'm like, I saw that.

And I was like, I don't know. I cannot believe that APEC and these other special interests think that that's going to be an effective message against the fact that Angie Craig voted for the to enable the ICE agents that killed two Minnesotans even more. That's not something Minnesotans are going to forget. And they didn't. You know, this past week with those wins, you know, everybody's saying like, oh, my God, Francesca didn't win in Wisconsin. and the media is like the progressive movement is dead. Let's be clear. She was a self-declared Democratic Socialist

that still managed to get within 3,000 votes of an establishment-backed Democrat that had tons more money, was way better organized, and came that close. That's how hungry people are for change. And we saw in Minnesota, Peggy Flanagan, one, despite massively being outspent. And Matt Little, the candidate that I was on the ground with,

where we went to the places where Alex Pretti and Renee Good were murdered. We went to an ICE detention center where people are being sent out into sub 10 degrees in winter with no coat. Oftentimes it's teenagers or very young adults that are being sent out there that are not given a phone. And we met with the Minnesotans who wait outside of this ICE detention center every day and have for months to help the people that get sent out of there. Like those are the true heroes, in my opinion, of this story. The villains are people like Donald Trump. And frankly, the Democrats, like Stephen Lynch and others, who are voting.

to enable ICE more in voting to thank them. Yeah, from all the conversations I've had, and I'm sure you've had many conversations like this, too, Democratic voters right now just want fighters. Like, it's as simple as that. They want fighters, people who represent change, and people who can push back against a system that has been failing us,

push back against special interest groups. I think you said this very brilliantly in an interview a bit back, but APEC has just become a litmus test. It's not just about AAC as a specific group. It's about this idea that a politician will either be taking money from special interest groups or they won't. I also think it's really, really important that after the primaries, Democrats unify and

begin to campaign for each other. Like, Haley Stevens is a really good example of this. I really think she's been doing a great job going out there and being a surrogate for Abdul Al-Sahad in a very accessible and affable way. Speaking to her Michigan base, I really like to see that. And on the flip side, it seems like Hong is going to also be campaigning with Crowley. I think this is really important to see, especially when the stakes are so high. We all have preferred candidates.

I definitely have my preferred candidates, and it would be great if they won every single time. But at the end of the day, we need to beat the Republican Party, which is full of like election deniers, people who want to undermine the very fundamental core of our democracy. This type of stuff bothers me. We were just talking about a minute ago, the election fraud debate on CNN. And there was also a moment where I'm like, as a young dude, you experience the same thing. as young dudes, we've grown up watching our leaders at the highest echelons of power, like Donald Trump, undermine democratic elections. It makes me sick to my stomach.

And a lot of Americans aren't really thinking about it that way. They don't care about institutions. They care more about affordability in their daily lives. And I get that. But when I see Donald Trump undermining every single election that he loses, it genuinely makes me sick to my stomach and it feels anti-American. Tom Tiffany, the person's running against David Crowley now in Wisconsin, and tried to overturn the 2020 election results via court cases.

Of course, it didn't work because the 2020 election had no fraud, no actual fraud that Trump was claiming. But I just, I hope Democrats can keep their eyes on the ball, and I hope that we all unify come to midterms and really push for the America that we want. And then there's going to be a huge battle of 28. Yeah, I mean, there absolutely will be. And I think that's people are always freaking out about these primaries saying that they're

two divisive, that this is not what we're focused, what we should be focused on. I think it's exactly what we need to be focused on. Like the idea that we're going to offer voters, the same thing that we offered them that lost to Donald Trump twice and not have a real reckoning within our party, bring in some fresh blood and show, yeah, what I want to do is I want to show young voters, while there are Democrats out there that we don't agree with at times, there are Democrats out there that take corporate money that I think should be primaryed. There is a segment of younger Democrats in the party and some older people like Bernie Sanders that actually do represent you, that are not representing

these special interests that are building power and building momentum, but we need you to get out and vote to help us grow that movement. And that's part of why we do what we do with leaders we deserve, because I'm tired of just telling people, young people to go and vote for candidates that they don't really believe in. Yeah. Because it doesn't even sound like those candidates believe what they're saying half the time because these moderates triangulate to like, well, what is the mean of whatever the political spectrum is that's constantly changing and instead giving them an authentic leader like Abdul or Justin Pearson or so many of the candidates that we backed with leaders we deserve that they feel like they can genuinely believe in because there's going to be a power vacuum after Donald Trump.

He's not young after all. Thank God. The question is like, what's going to fill that? Is it going to be some super moderate milk toast Democrat that nobody really feels passionate about, that nobody that they don't even sound passionate about what they're saying, or is it going to be a real fireman that excites people and says, hey, we can win. We can get our country back on a better track. And the way we're going to do that is we're going to show voters that there is one party that's out there that is funded by these special interests that are making your life worse every day that are trying to engage you in in all these culture war fucking bullshit issues as your life gets worse because they want to distract you as much as possible from the fact that your life is not getting better under their leadership.

I don't think there's anybody outside of maybe defense contractors that feel like they are better off in the United States and they were two years ago. The Epstein class. Right. And right now we're also seeing. sailors on USS Abraham Lincoln that are, as I'm sure you saw this reporting at him, that are literally trying to jump off the ship and kill themselves effectively because they are so sick and tired of being caught up in this new Forever War. Yep, it's just another function of older people running our politics.

And I just want to put some numbers behind what you said very quickly. And then I want to talk about the USS Abraham Lincoln because there is a massive problem. with young people being systematically underrepresented in our politics. And what I like about leaders we deserve is that you guys are presenting the solution. You guys are meeting young people where they are by finding candidates that appeal to young people. A staff that I've had in the back of my head for a while, I just, I pulled it up right here in Chicago where I live and record. The average age of a voter is 53 years old. But the average age of populations who are able to vote, like who are, you know, of age, is 41. So there is a systematic underrepresented.

where older people tend to be controlling these elections more. And then when you isolate it to primaries, the base becomes even older and more partisan. So we have older, more partisan people dictating the primaries, dictating these elections, and we need to meet young people where they are. So I think it's a really good number to visualize how we can maybe get this age down. So the average voter actually matches where the average age is as well. Well, on that point, Adam, I think one of the funny things that I've learned throughout this experience working at leaders we deserve is old people are upset with older people too.

Yeah. Yeah. Stick and tired. And the thing that I hear more often than anything is it like, I don't think this is so much a generational divide, at least within the electorate and the Democratic electorate at least, as much as it is a divide over the people that benefit from the status quo and everybody else. Yeah. Who wants to change it. And old people are sick and tired of their generation being in power to. And more than anything, the thing that I hear most from older people is, you know, thank God, you young people are stepping up because my generation really screwed it up and I'm here to support you. And that's, that's one of the ironies of leaders we deserve is young

people don't have a whole lot of money to give to support candidates. It's expensive to go against these special interests. And that's why there's so many older people, like, there's so many older people that actually donate to support leaders we deserve because they're like, you know what, I'm old, but I'm old enough to still remember when I was younger and I was told by these same people in power, don't go out there and protest against the Vietnam War. Like, just, just support it in our country or win because America's great. And now, a lot of those. those older people that were part of those anti-Vietnam War protests are the new old people that are in power saying to old and young people like, don't go out there and protest what's

happening in Gaza. Don't go out there and protest anything. And it's just like, how do you not see the irony in all of this, where you've become the thing that you guys originally hated in our politics and are now there. And thankfully, they're being defeated because that brings me to one of those older people, Stephen Lynch, who is one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress, who is in a safe blue seat that not a lot of people are talking about right now, but he's being challenged by Patrick Rose, who's a voting rights attorney, who's rejecting the influence of corporate PAC money, and Stephen Lynch, just to give you a few stats on him, of some of the worst votes that he's done him.

He has voted for the Lincoln Riley Act. Stephen Lynch voted to thank ICE. He voted to give ICE more money, and he's been in Congress so long that he's the last Democrat to vote against the Affordable Care Act. What? And he's taken over two million dollars in corporate cash. And Patrick is running a people-powered campaign. That's not taking a dime of corporate pack money.

He's a young father that has paid rent this century, actually. That's a rare thing to have in Congress. And we are seeing real momentum in his race that we're going to be announced later this week that I can't get into about some polling we just got. But he can win. Like this race is likely going to come down to single digits. And nobody's really paying attention to it right now. But Patrick, truly, after Sri Tandador, who thankfully we also got rid of,

Stephen Lynch is probably the worst Democrat, second-only to Shritanador, that we have in a safe Democratic seat in Congress, who is voting consistently with Republicans. Yeah, you're right. This is a safe blue, heavily Democratic area centered in Boston. He's in South Boston. People should volunteer and donate to him, by the way. This is a race that is happening on September 1st. We need people to pay attention.

At leaders we deserve, we've already spent several hundred thousand dollars backing Patrick because of the hundreds of thousands of people that support us. With none of that, not a dollar or a single cent coming from corporate PACs, and our small dollar donors enable us to go out there and shake up the status quo and challenge these conservative Democrats that are in safe seats that don't risk us flipping the house and get a better person elected there. But Patrick Roth is on, this district is on the south side of Boston. You guys can look up his website.

I'm going to have somebody from my team put it in the chat on where you can volunteer, where you can donate directly to Patrick. But that's one of the main primaries that are coming up that not a whole lot of people are talking about, but Patrick's progressive. He supports Medicare for All. He supports banning congressional stock trading. He also supports, you know,

rejecting the influence of corporate PAC money. It's the exact type of thing that we need way, way more of. For anybody watching on YouTube after, I'll also link this in the description below. I also want to retouch on a topic that you brought up a few minutes ago because it really does get to the generational divide in a different way. Like, this is the on-the-ground effect. of the generational divide. We have people like Mitch McConnell or now past Lindsey Graham advocating

for these wars over and over and over, and the wars lead us here. Let me just read this snippet. Six U.S. sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier have tried to jump overboard and reportedly attempt suicide as catastrophic mental health crises reach breaking points over exhaustion, food shortages, water contamination, deteriorating conditions, supply shortages, lack of basic hygiene products and poor quality rations aboard the carrier. Now, the 5,000 sailors and Marines have been deployed for the Iran War to be there as like the turrets or whatever the hell Trump strategy is, and it was supposed to only last until May. They keep perpetually extending the timeline, and now there is no end date for this.

They are on this perpetual horrific escapade where they're out there just waiting for any U.S. leadership to get their shit together. And I just want to point out very, very quickly. Like, when it comes to the Iran war, we have bared all of the costs of this with none of the benefits whatsoever. The straight of war moves is closed out. They are holding a lot of the global oil hostage.

We've lost U.S. soldiers. Even hundreds of school children died during the opening salvo at a girl school in Manav in Iran. So all of this combines to create a situation where the United States is humiliated right now. Trump doesn't know if he can negotiate. He doesn't know if he should bomb. He's trying the carrot, which is like enticing them with negotiations, and the carrot's not working.

So he's trying the stick, which is bombing them, and that's not working, because the Iranians have realized as long as they control the strait, they have leverage over the United States. To me, I don't like how we're being humiliated. And I don't like how leaders on television and Congress are telling us the same thing they told us during the prior wars, that you hate America. Including Vietnam. Yeah, including Vietnam. Yeah, really good example. Like, I, the clip that made Scott Jennings really pissed to me. I think we talked about this last time. I said, you'll defend any war as long as it's against a country that begins with the letter is IRA. And he was like, bra, rah, all pissed to me. But it's so true.

The same excuses that they used 20 years ago to defend prior endless wars that build on our debt. We have $1 trillion per year that we pay just on the interest of our national debts. People like you and I will have to bear the brunt of that because of the fact that these endless wars continue to expand. One final thing I want to say is that this was supposed to take four to six weeks. we are now on day 167. It's absurd. It is absurd how long this has gone.

But on your side, how are you viewing this through your leaders we deserve? I mean, we need to take, we need to make sure that we use this as the opportunity that it is to prove that our country should not be just putting us

in a purely nonpartisan, you know, historical perspective. The idea that we are going to invade a country and bomb them into liberation that has whose entire history for the past 500 years has been defined by foreign actors trying to overthrow their government and somehow act like it's going to work this time is suicidal politically. It's suicidal in our foreign policy and it massively discredits us because right now Trump has put our country into a position where either we're going to accept the term, the insane terms

that are being offered or he's going to have to continue going forward and creating mass humanitarian crisis where they're going to have to basically turn out the lights in Iran and cause create 90 million refugees that are going to go into Turkey that are going to go into other countries and create a whole other crisis. He has put himself in this position because he let the Israelis drag him into this war. Every president basically in since, at least in our lifetimes, has had the government of Israel come to them and say, Iran is about to build a bomb. We need to invade them right now. And thankfully, up until this point, we've said no. Here we are, them. We are in a position where we are weaker politically, we are weaker financially. Our sailors and our

service members are exhausted. And the thing that enrages me most about this isn't just the fact that we're spending grotesque amounts of money on this war that miraculously we seem to always be able to afford to enrich the defense contractors and other people without actually paying our service members a reasonably good wage to go out and serve our country. But also the fact that I know a lot of the people my family are veterans. My dad was a disabled veteran. He died of early onset Parkinson's disease in part because of jet fuel exposure when he was a Navy helicopter pilot. I know that when those sailors come back, the ones that jumped off, the ones that have scars that cannot be seen mentally from this as well, and they have PTSD from this, and inevitably have major health

issues come up with that, like getting cancer because of the stress of this and other things. Our country is not going to be there for them because I've seen that myself. I remember watching my own father die in front of me as only a couple days later, we found out that his expanded VA benefits were denied once again. We cannot in good faith send our soldiers into these wars if we refuse to take care of them when they get home. And we never will because our country is more interested in feeding the military industrial complex and the defense contractors.

that are funding our elections, then they aren't actually taking care of the people that are out there risking everything to go and serve our country. Because we live in a corporate military welfare state where effectively one of the only ways that you really can get ahead at this point is by joining the U.S. military.

We actually saw this when there were conversations about canceling student debt. We had Republicans saying, well, how are we going to get people to join the military if they don't have massive amounts of debt that they need? That is so fucked up. and it enrages me that we continue to have Democrats that have allowed this to happen, certainly less of them than the Republicans, but some of them that are cheering this on that absolutely

do need to be primaryed. And the Republicans who let this shit happen and continue to get away with it when we can nail them and say, look, Donald Trump had the opportunity to do something about your cost of living. And what has he done instead? He has enriched himself by making over a billion dollars in the first year of his presidency on over 21,000 stock trades. with companies that have business coincidentally

in front of his own fucking administration. And then we saw him drag us into this war to distract from the fact that he is in the Epstein files and the very files that he ran on releasing, he's all over. And we have to build a stronger Democratic Party to fight back against this. And it's not going to come from just electing any Democrat generally.

We need to vote for them in the general elections, obviously. But we need to embrace a healthy competition, healthy culture of competition in our primaries that makes APAC money, that makes corporate money radioactive and toxic and so radioactive that Democrats in our party are like, fuck it, I can't take it even if I wanted to because I know my ass is going to get primaried and I'm going to get destroyed in my primary if I am taking money from these defense contractors or I'm taking money from these corporations. That's the type of Democratic Party that I think we need to build. Yep. First of all, thank you for sharing that

powerful story. It really does demonstrate how our system, fails. There's another clip I saw of yours that I really liked, and I think it was Doni from CNN asking you why APEC was so feared, and you said it's because they were on a monstrous winning streak. And once that winning streak begins to break, you can see

that the emperor has no clothes. You can see the fact that they're not as strong as they thought they were. And I just want to say you're doing great work in that regard. One final thing I just want to end this off by saying is that Republicans will constantly look at conversations like these, where we're pointing out the failure of the Iran war and the failure of our politicians, and they'll say

that we hate America. I get accused of hating America for what I say. The reality is, I'm calling these things out. I truly believe we're calling these things out because we see better America down the road. I call out these failed wars because I love America. I love what America could be. I have a vision in my head, as do you, of an America that actually helps veterans, that actually helps people who are need, that helps the most vulnerable Americans who are sick, who are young, who need help. because the reality is there is a version of America that represents human dignity for every single person that lives here,

whether you're an immigrant or whether you are somebody that was born here. There's a vision of America that represents social harmony, like a harmonious society between a bunch of different groups. My grandpa is Muslim. He goes to the mosque every Friday,

but he has a lot of Jewish people that he works with and Christian people that he works with. There is a harmonious human dignity-based America that we can focus on, where veterans are treated well. And that's the America that I want to work on. When you and I see money distorting our politics and these endless wars and the removal of Medicaid for many Americans who need it, it just brings us farther away from that vision. So to all the Republicans

who want to say that this is like an anti-American conversation, I think calling out the government for their failed war is about as pro-America as it gets, using our First Amendment to call this stuff out. And that's a reframing that I always try to do when I'm debating Republicans. But one more time, Check out Leaders We deserve in the description below. We'll link it both on Substack and on YouTube. You're doing great work, David. Thank you so much for the conversation. Thank you.

We got a lot of races ahead, and we will finish this out strong. And to your point, Adam, I think we can build a really great future, and there's a geriatric power vacuum that's forming. And at Leaders We Deserve, we're proud to help fill that vacuum with truly a new generation of leaders that are not the same younger versions of the same corrupt people we have right now. And if people want to help us with that, as one final start. story before we close this out. People wonder why shit doesn't change in our party and why there aren't more Mamdani's. I'll tell you why. It's in part because young people don't see themselves in power, so then they don't run it. And if they don't run, other young people don't see themselves in power. But it's also because when we spend $300,000 at leaders we deserve to be Zoron's largest

organizational funder in the primary, there was one donor that had given us several hundred thousand dollars last cycle with the explicit purpose of going out and winning back young people. That called me up and said, after we supported Zoran, I can't give you money anymore. because you supported a candidate that I don't agree with, even though that candidate, Zoran, got three times the 18 to 24-year-old turnout of voters at Kamala Harris got. And what gives us the independence

to be able to tell a major donor like that to go take a hike is the fact that 80% of our money comes with people that give less than $1,000 to us so that we can focus on electing the candidates that the American people want and young people want, even if special interests and the ultra-wealthy don't want them because we know it's what our party needs. So if people want to support us in that work and helping to build a better democracy that

prioritizes people and not the military industrial complex or the corporations that are buying off our politicians, they can support us at Leaders We Deserve.com. It'll be in the description. And we need their help. We count, it's a critical moment right now before the election. A lot of people have been on vacation in July. So I'm happy that people are checking out of politics sometimes, but politics is never checking out of you. So help us do that work at Leaderswedeserve.com. Thanks so much, Adam. David, let's do this again very soon. I really enjoy these conversations for real,

and I do apologize for the difficulties that I had at the beginning, log it in. That was my back. No problem. No problem. Take care. Talk soon. Peace on.