The Keith Edwards Show - Democrat enters MAGA district and then... everything changes.

Episode Date: March 30, 2025

Keith Edwards interviews with Rep. Greg Casar following a town hall in Rep. Chip Roy’s district, where Casar addressed constituents’ concerns amid Roy’s absence. This event was part of the “Democrats Show Up” campaign, aiming to engage with communities where GOP representatives have been unresponsive

A rising star in the Democratic Party, Greg Kassar held a town hall at a Republican district for Chip Roy, pictured here as a cutout. At least Chip Roy attended sort of. And look at what he asked the audience. It's an awesome moment, an awesome moment. And I got a great surprise for you. Rep Kassar got on the show just after this town hall. He was literally in the car. And I've got that interview for you right now.

Just got off a town hall where, and I'm going to show the audience this, where you had a cut out of rep Chip Roy here and I'm wondering how was a reception you did a town hall in his district. What was it like? There were hundreds and hundreds of people way more than I expected here in Dripping Springs, Texas in Congressman Chiproy's district. Dripping Springs is population about 8,500 people. and so to pack the parking lot and fill the entire room here next to the livestock show. This is where they do the livestock shows. It was just incredible. And I think it shows the energy right now of Democrats, independents, Republicans alike, who are so opposed to these billionaire tax cuts and to these puppet politicians that won't show up to their own town halls.

And so we're talking about how Republicans are running away and Democrats need to show up. And we're calling it that national Democrats show up campaign. being invited to these town halls. Like I didn't organize this thing. I got invited. They invited me. They invited Chip Roy. And if he wasn't going to show up, I was going to show up and answer questions about how,

whether people might disagree with me on this social issue or that one in rural Texas, we can baseline agree that corrupt politicians shouldn't be taking your hard earned money to make their donors more rich. Politicians should be representing the people and answering questions. That's right. And, you know, it was also just reported maybe a couple of weeks ago. where Republicans were advised to avoid in-person town halls because they wanted to stop going viral. So I think it's like so telling that they, instead of like addressing the problem, which is that people are really pissed off about what they're doing, they're just like, well, we're actually just not going to do our job.

We're not going to show up. So I love your phone. My title is technically not congressman. It is representative. That's our baseline job is to represent the people. And I think the problem that Republican members of Congress have right now is that they're acting like Trump Musk employees instead of representative of the people. So then people get a real upset. Over 80% of Republican voters in areas like this one in Texas do not agree with health care cuts to pay for billionaire tax breaks. So 80% of Republican voters disagree, but 100% of Republicans in Congress are trying to cut things like Medicaid. And that's why these viral moments are happening. That's why hundreds of people are showing up. This isn't some paid protester thing. I asked inside this livestock call, hey, how many of you all are paid to be here?

No hands to go up. But I said, how many of you guys are Congressman Chiproy's constituents, and hundreds of hands went up? Now, do you think that was all Democrats who were in that room, or do you have a sense of what the political alignment was? They actually, for a second, said, if you're a Democrat, put your hand down. And if you're an independent or conservative or libertarian, your hand and ask me a question. And I answered several of those kinds of questions because I think it's important for us as Democrats, not just to answer questions for the people we agree with, but those that may disagree with us on this issue or the other. And people don't always fall on this clean, left, right, political spectrum. They were independents who asked me here,

look, you know, I don't agree with Democrats on everything, but I do think that we should have universal health care instead of these private insurance companies screwing us over and telling me no after I call and call and call because they're trying to make more money for themselves. And so I think this is a real moment where Democrats can channel this energy. Hundreds of people showing up at town halls. Tens of thousands of people showing up at rallies. Cannel this energy in the short term to get three Republicans to flip their votes. And then we could actually stop a lot of this madness.

Republican majorities are not big in Congress. So if we can get just three of them to vote with their constituents, we can stop some of these attacks on Social Security and Medicaid. and on veterans. And then in the medium term, we have to inspire and utilize this energy to win the midterm elections. Finally, after that, though, if we don't want to just keep going back and forth from the minority to the majority, we need to build the kind of Democratic Party that brings those more socially conservative voters or independents or libertarians or disaffected voters into the tent. Well, how do we do that? Because, I mean, listen, I exist online,

and I have to say, I am the most dem of the Dems. But even if I sometimes will say, something and it feels like if there's such a purity, there's such a need, like it feels like the base demands purity on every single issue. And that makes it really hard to build a coalition of voters and also politicians who align with the Democrats. So how do we change that change that culture of the Democratic Party? Look, if you care about defending vulnerable people, which I certainly do to my core, I was a labor organizer before organizing workers that were immigrants and not immigrants, undocumented and documented.

We want to be able to protect those core rights, and we need the votes of the overwhelming majority of the country. So I think the way we do it as I went on Fox News live on Sunday, and I went and told folks. I actually had that. Let's show that, and then we'll finish it. Having the conversation about how is it that Elon Musk, who makes $8 million a day, from federal contracts, as you just said. Okay.

Why is he looking for even more contracts? It was just reported he's trying to land a contract with the FAA so that he can get billions of dollars for Starlink out of that. He was trying to land a huge contract with the State Department until he got caught by the press. We should agree whether you're a Democratic or a Republican president, you shouldn't be allowed to appoint a billionaire to the government and then for him to look for billions of dollars in contracts for himself.

That's corruption at its finest, and we need a Republican Party and a Democratic Party. that's willing to speak out against that kind of. Brilliant. That went super viral too. But I do think that's like part, I think it's part of it. But so what, what does that Fox moment mean to you?

What it means to me is that we can be honest with people and say you might disagree with me on this social issue or that one. But on the core issue that I think the Democratic Party should be running on. Do you want a government buy and for the people or a government buy and for the billionaires who buy politicians? we can get a lot more agreement. We've got to be able to build a majority coalition. And it should be okay for people to have debates and disagree on certain issues.

But if we want to be able to have a Democratic Party that stands for the Constitution and stands for people's basic rights, stands for the rights of the vulnerable, we have to first and foremost be known as a party that is against corruption and a party that's for the pocketbooks of the everyday person. Look, I'm sitting in rural Texas where Democrats won for generations. and they had coalitions of progressive voters and socially conservative voters who all voted for people like LBJ because LBJ was for health care for the sick and the elderly and he created Medicaid and Medicare. There were generations of Democrats in rural Texas that kept voting Democratic because FDR passed Social Security and the New Deal.

So we've got to build a tent where we put people's economics first and where we're not part of the billionaire class where we're not bought off by corporate interests, that might get some elected Democrats uninvited from some fancy dinners, but if it wins us the vast majority of the votes, that's how I think we get things back on track.