The Daily Beast Podcast - Inside the Fight Against Trump’s ‘Music Man’

Episode Date: October 17, 2021

This week on The New Abnormal, our bonus episode takes you inside the fight against two men producer Jesse Cannon calls “the GOP’s worst congressmen.”  Cannon and host Molly Jong-Fast interview Charles Graham, who is running as a Democratic challenger in North Carolina’s ninth congressional district against Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC), and Matthew Diemer, who is running against Max Miller in Ohio’s sixteenth district. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey folks, today we have a special bonus episode with two congressional candidates taking on some of the GOP's worst congressman. We're going to talk to Charles Graham, who's taking on Dan Bishop in North Carolina's 9th District. Bishop, of course, authored the state's discriminatory bathroom bill. But first we'll talk to Matthew Deamer, who's taking on Trump's quote-unquote music man, Max Miller, in Ohio's 16th district. Hi, welcome to the new abnormal, Matthew. How you doing? Thanks for having me. I'm very excited to have you. So let us talk.

It's early days to interview you, but I wanted your district is big in the news right now. And so I wanted to talk to you about it and also just to talk about this. You are in Ohio's 16th congressional district and you are running as the Democrat. This is not a Democratic district. Is that fair? That's fair to say. What is it? I was looking up the numbers, but I didn't see.

It's an R plus. We'll go about 8 to 10. 20 million? Maybe 20 million. Eight to 10 isn't so bad. But you have a lot of excitement here. First, the incumbent who is not running again took a stand and actually was quite brave. Anthony Gonzalez came out against the Republican Party's cultism.

Is that correct? That is correct. He voted to impeach Donald Trump after January 6th. And now Trump has found a new candidate to replace him. deemed the music man. Yes, yes, Max Miller, yes. Well, I was hoping that you might explain Matthew how he got that title.

So what I know is that Donald Trump has a very, I would say, volatile temper. And his staff, when he was in the White House, found that playing show tunes to him would help him relax and calm him down a little bit. And so they tasked some person, a staffer in the White House, to play said show terms.

I think memories from Katz was one of his favorites. And that person was Max Miller. So I think that we all have that picture in our head now is a person that is raging out of control. Nobody can talk to him. And they say, Music Man, come over here and let's play this music for him to calm down. And you have Max Miller running in there and, you know, Plesson play either on MP3 or turntables or singing.

I don't know how this went down. But that's the picture that I have in my head. I mean, how does that make? you fit to run for Congress? You're talking about how does it make him fit to run for Congress? Yeah, no, no, him, not you, obviously. But I'm just saying if you're, I mean, does playing an MP3 or playing a song on your phone

make you fit to run for Congress? I mean... Well, I can tell you right now, though, I bet one of his best lines on his resume is that he can follow orders. Right, right, right, right. Yeah, it was great candidate. He became famous, this music man, from his appearance in Stephanie Gershom's book, which came out a couple weeks ago.

And Stephanie Grisham, as everyone here who listens to this podcast knows, but I'll just, for my dad, who might not know this, Stephanie Grisham was Melania Trump's sort of Girl Friday. And then when Sarah Sanders left the White House, she took over. And she's most famous for being press secretary who never held a press briefing. She's written this book where she says she actually had a relationship. with the music man, and he beat her up. That's allegedly that is what happened, yes. And now he's suing her for saying that.

That is allegedly what is going on. Actually, that is going on. He is suing her for a defamation. Yeah. So this is an open Ohio seat. Now, talk to me. Do you feel like this is a very Republican district, or do you feel this is a district that may be sick of all the Trumpy drama?

Well, I think that we have to look at what the American people want, especially in Ohio. You know, Ohio is one of those places that has been, you know, plagued with factories closing down and jobs moving overseas. And, you know, a lot of people that voted for Trump, voted for Barack Obama. And they were promising the same thing as saying, look, let's get your life and let's get your jobs, let's get your opportunities, back here to Ohio or back here to the U.S. And that's what Ohio is, is people that want to take care of their families, people that want the best opportunities, and people to have a little bit of breathing room, economic breathing room, financial breathing room, to do different things to take their

family on vacation, to, you know, buy, you know, maybe a new car or maybe upgrade their house or do, you know, work on their house. And, you know, that's what the Ohio is. And so I fail to believe that Ohio is a Trump Republican state or this district district is a Trump Republican district. It's people that want to have opportunities and find people that will help them achieve and get those opportunities. A lot of the factory, we've interviewed a bunch of people on this podcast who have talked to us about factory manufacturing jobs and we had Farah Stockman on who talked about how these followed three people who had lost their manufacturing jobs. I read a really interesting article today, which was that the sort of focus on these manufacturing jobs is kind

of misogynistic in a way because there are all of these other very good jobs like in home health care and in child care and in food services industry that those pay those jobs are coming up and pay. I mean, they're obviously not. The factory jobs are really preferable and that those jobs are not focused on the same amount. I think that's a very, very good point. Look, I think for the campaign that I want to run and the conversations that I want to have is I want to look at the opportunities that we have in our current economy. I see that we saw that our supply chain has some cracks in it. That leads to a national security issue. I mean, some of those supply chain issues, we should be bringing back here to our shores. Also, we're having this conversation about living ways jobs. Now, if those living

jobs are across different industries. I love that. But I really want to focus on as well as innovation and our supply chain. And, you know, like you mentioned when it comes to the FMB or hospitality industry, the gig economy that she's employing a lot of people, those are all great avenues. But I guess what I'm trying to say here is that we have to see, and I see lots of opportunity right now within the emerging economies, the innovation, the new tech that is coming out, that we can have those jobs here in Ohio. And I think all those other jobs that are here as well, we have to lift those up. I mean, the fact of the matter is, I want to provide as much opportunity to the people of this district as possible. So now you have a Trumpy candidate. Do you see in your district him getting support already

just from his allegiance to Trump and Trumpism? Well, I mean, well, we have to be honest. The ex-president in the United States has a big microphone. Every time that something happens with, I mean, we have Stephanie Grisham's book. We have, and Gonzalez dropping out, we have Donald Trump supporting him. Max Miller is getting a lot of press. And so that is honestly, and that's why I want to say, thank you very much for having me on. There's so case that there is a Democrat in this race. There are other voices in this race. So he is getting a big microphone and a big spotlight on him right now, which is only, you know, helping name recognition. I mean, he is getting pressed for allegedly having beaten someone up. I'm not sure that that's the kind of press that

translates into votes. Oh, I hope they do not. Yeah. I hope they do not. But I think back to your question is, is do we see that a lot of support coming from Trump? I would not know what the support is coming from Trump Republicans as right now. I know that he is making his way around the district.

But he is raising a lot of money with the ex-president. But we're also, you know, out there fighting ourselves, you know, making calls every day, you know, going to Democrat meetings and also meeting with everybody across the aisle to make sure that people understand that there's another person in this race. You probably have a Democratic primary, too. I do not. I am the only person who is the only person running. Oh, wow. Okay. So that is another reason to support you. Do you see a split in the Democratic Party? I mean, what is the Democratic Party of Ohio like? I mean, you have people like Shera Brown, who is pretty incredible. You have some great Democrats coming out of Ohio. What do you see? I see out of the Democrats of Ohio is that this district has been notoriously a Republican district.

But I think that Ohioans, we agree on a lot more than we don't agree on. I think that we just need candidates out there to try to unify. Look, Max Miller is coming out as a divider already. He's coming out as one side, hard lines, and not really going across the aisle. And that's the difference between our campaigns. I'm going out there to try to talk to everybody to understand that we are a representative for the district, not just for a one certain fraction of the Republican Party. And I want to say fraction of the Republican Party

because the moderate Republicans, the people who are kind of a gasp that Gonzalez dropped out of the race, but they understand because Gonzalez said he felt the safety of his family was at danger. And we have to make that clear that this isn't just, you know, the moderate Republicans going, we don't feel that we have a voice. And that's what we're coming out to do is be the voice of this district. Yeah. Are you guys registering voters?

I mean, when we see in states like Georgia, where a state is flipped, it's generally because politicians are out there. Stacey Abrams is a great example of that and out there registering new voters. To be perfectly honest, the Democratic Party in Ohio has been weekend over the years, but we just got a new party chair at the ODP. Her name is Elizabeth Walters and has a plan to, you know, strengthen the Democratic Party again. But to be completely honest with you, it has been weakened over the years. Yeah. And it's interesting. I mean, I feel like those factory workers that have been kind of the question, of the Democratic Party in the Midwest.

Like, what do you say when you're out there campaigning and you're talking to someone who lost their job? You know, they're like, well, Trump is going to give me my job back. I mean, what do you even say to that? Well, I think that's a really good question because that's when I start pointing to my ideas and experience and the things that we're interested in and seeing what's happening in the country.

Look, like we said earlier in this podcast is we see a lot of opportunity. Like, the biggest factory for solar panels outside of China just got set up here in Ohio. We see Ford, it just got announced that it'll be set up here. Hopefully it does. We saw Ford with four new manufacturing plants going to Kentucky and Tennessee. I wish they came here to Ohio.

We see Tesla and Rivian. We have new car companies. We have green manufacturing and we have other innovations coming out. Look, these are opportunities that we can grab. And the thing is, my opponent is not talking about these opportunities. He's talking about division. We have new emerging technologies when it comes to biotech and other innovations coming out that we could have, you know, setting up here.

here in America, in Ohio and in our district. He's not talking about that. I lived abroad and worked in international markets in China for a long time, and it's easy to paint China as the bad guy, but if you never lived in China and saw what they accomplished, this is what I want to point out, it's like, we need to get our, build our middle class again. We need to take this seriously. We need to invest in our infrastructure and do this in America. And I'm the only person that have seen this in my own eyes and understand what needs to be done here and voice that in Washington, D.C. So back to your original question, when we talk about how do I combat against the Republicans taking some of the blue color of votes, I will just point to that they don't have the plan to even talk about this or the experience to talk about this or the foresight to talk about this. And Max Miller hasn't spoke about it yet. He just wants to sell division. And I want to make sure that people get the best opportunities in this district.

do you encounter people who won't admit that Trump lost the 2020 election? Do you feel like there's a group of Ohioans who are in this information vacuum? There definitely are people who won't concede that Trump lost the election. But when we see challenges, I see opportunities. And the opportunity that I see here is we should address that. If there is a 30% of the population that says, hey, you know what, I would like more transparency in our elections. Let's figure that out.

I'm not playing a hindsight 20-20 game with our campaign. I can't go back in time and do anything with the election. But what I would like to do is say, look, you feel uncomfortable? Let's talk about it. Let's figure out solutions. Let's see if there's ways that we can have more transparency and tracking your ballot. Let's have more transparency so maybe we can have an open source auditing solution. I'm not too sure, but I would like to hear those, try to talk about solutions to make sure that all Americans have faith, 100% faith in our electoral process.

Well, that is very ambitious of you, and I hope it works. Thank you so much for coming on, Matthew. This is great. Molly, thank you very much for this opportunity and for amplifying this race. I appreciate that. And now we'll talk to Charles Graham, who's running in North Carolina's 9th District. Welcome to the new abnormal, Charles Graham. Well, thank you.

It's a pleasure to be with you, and I just want to say, happy Indigenous People's Day. I want to talk to you first about the way we got to. you was you had this incredible video. So let's talk about the incredible video first, because you have an very interesting race, too, that you're in, too, but I want to talk to you about this video. Well, yes, ma'am. Thank you. I appreciate the question. Certainly, the rollout of our video has has gone viral, and I'm very, very excited about our video. It's about my culture. It's a little known story of Native Americans facing down the clan. Yes, a little known story. And I hope as a result of our rollout, it's obviously gotten a lot of views.

And it's about our people, my people, the Lumby people, here in Robinson County in southeastern North Carolina. And this rollout, some ways, identify who Charles Graham is and something about where he came from, his culture, his people. And I think we've been able to give not only something that's very, very important to our history, but it also demonstrates that when, communities come together. We can make significant strides. This was an opportunity for our community to come together in 1958 to fight against evil. And of course, the Lumby leaders during that time did exactly that. And I'm very proud of this story. It just demonstrates how we all, if we work together, we can fight evil. And if we contrast where we're at now in 2021, we have some of the same hatred and bigotry that's going on across our country, lies about communities. And I certainly

believe that there's a stark contrast between 1958 and 2021. And I certainly wanted to tell that story. And in a lot of ways, it gives my, gives the public views of who I am and what I stand for. I stand for uniting, not dividing, helping our communities, not destroying our communities. It's a very interesting story of Native Americans staring down the clan and winning. Absolutely. Staring down the clan, not running, not hiding, standing up to evil. I believe that it's a great story and it's a good demonstration of how, if we as people, not just the indigenous people, it's all people standing up against evil and conquering things that we're seeing now.

We'll be a better country, most definitely. I mean, I feel like North Carolina, the last couple of cycles, has sort of been a disappointment to Democrats. And I don't quite understand why. Why do you think that's happened? Well, I've been in the legislature now. This is my sixth term. Yeah. And I would think since 2010, we've seen the GOP coalesce around their agenda, and their agenda is not promoting prosperity, not promoting unity, putting politics in the center of all their partisan. decisions, and it's just kind of gotten a tailwind, and it's moving through our country, through our communities. And, you know, it's just heartening for me to see and hear some of the things. I've never thought in my lifetime that I would hear some of the things that I'm hearing

now in our media. You know, when I was a young boy growing up in rural North Carolina, staying within my community, my tribal community, I did have the opportunity to get out into the communities as I participated in sporting events throughout my teenage years. And prior to that, my mother and father protected our family. We did not venture too far away from our home, but other than to buy the essentials. But as I became a teenager, I was able to get out, travel around North Carolina as a athlete and participate in sports. And some of the hatred that I heard, and I was the only person of color on my teams. And some of the hatred that I heard coming out of those stands. It was hurtful, but in spite of those things and those hurtful comments,

I continued to focus on my mission. And of course, I've done that throughout my life. I've confronted and faced racism. And here I am today, a state representative, the only American Indian serving in the North Carolina General Assembly, the only American Indian, as far as I know, east of the Mississippi. And I'm proud of that. And I'm proud of the struggles that I was able to, uh, withstand. Have no regrets. Now, you're running against Dan Bishop, who is the author of the bathroom bill, the famous

bathroom bill. Yes. The famous bathroom bill. Yeah. And this is actually, it's not such a red district, but it is very, I mean, I followed the Dan McCready race against Bishop, but there's been a lot of drama in this district.

You are correct. A lot of drama, harvesting votes. Right. You know, that was the drama. You know, our state board of elections standing up, to be honest, we'd be for fair elections, fair elections. You had a Republican cheating in North Carolina's ninth district. Yes, we did, and that was uncovered. And I give a lot of credit to our state board of elections for trying to write that ship.

But then you see, you hear from the JCP now about. I remember that was Pittenger. Yeah. And now what is what is the rhetoric you hear now? Voter fraud. That's, you know, that's what they're promoting. The only voter fraud that I'm aware is the Pittinger voter fraud. Yeah. Yeah. It happened here in the ninth congressional district. And it's been well documented. But, you know, here again, we have to, from my perspective and my campaign, my campaign is about unity, doing what's right, standing up for the people who need a voice in Washington, an indigenous person as myself.

who has fought battles, whose fault poverty. I've been on both sides. And here I am today asking for support of my campaign. And I am proud and honored to be in this position. I realize that it wanted to be a fight. My county, Robeson County here in southeastern North Carolina, turned red in this last election cycle. And I was the only Democrat to win of any state campaign or a national campaign. And I think I can attribute that to my representation, and that is supporting people and rural communities, being a voice for those individuals.

One of the things that we see right now is disproportionality of health care, broadband, and I'm right in the middle of this here in my home district. And it's my intentions to go to Washington and be a voice for these rural communities and these impoverished communities, people of color. And that's my intention. And I will not be deterred from that.

I have worked all my life to do the right thing. And that's what my campaign's about. Not dividing. Not trying to conquer anything, but standing up for rights, standing up for justice and going forward. And I would hope that in rural communities across this district, people will recognize that. Yeah. I mean, that's a great thing to be focused on. What do you think Democrats should be doing in North Carolina?

Democrats should be uniting now. We should not wait until the primary. We should not wait until the general election. We should be supporting democratic ideas, those ideas that stand up for working families, those ideas that promote a better life, equality lives. Since you were on the ground in North Carolina,

I'm curious to know what do you think would be better I feel like Democrats have a lot of trouble messaging. When you're talking to working people about what Democrats want to do for them, what are the things you sort of highlight? Well, we're right in the middle of the debate in Washington, which is a great debate. And the ideas that's put forth by our president, build back better. It stands for many things that our rural counties need.

It stands for inclusion. I happen to live and work in one of the poorest counties in the country, and the Build Back Better Plan is going to greatly enhance the lives of working families, working poor, people who are less unfortunate, and you name it, our children, our elders, educational opportunities. You know, Build Back Better is huge in terms of how. it can affect our rural communities. Broadband expansion is a great and it's a huge opportunity for rural communities throughout this country. And that's my message. I'm a working guy who's

going to stand up for working families. I've worked all my life. I think that's really fantastic and so interesting. What do you see? Do you confront Trump voters? Do you feel like you're able to sort of negotiate with them and explain to them the truth, or do you feel like a lot of them are in a separate information universe? I think they're in a separate information universe. I think they're grounded in their belief. My candidacy is going to be grounded in just the things I mention to you. I will continue that message. I'm not going to get into a debate. I want individuals to understand who Charles Graham is as a Democrat and how he will stand up for working families. And not only that, promote our economy, support businesses.

But no, you know, obviously, his supporters are very grounded. I recognize that. I accept that, that they are grounded. But I have a different belief system. Yeah. Thank you so much, Charles. This was great. Please come back.

Well, you have me back. We will. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens?

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