The MeidasTouch Podcast - Democratic Star BATTLES Most EXTREME MAGA Candidate in the Country (Interview with Marie Gluesenkamp Peréz)

Episode Date: November 5, 2022

On this episode of The Mighty, Ben, Brett and Jordy chat with Marie Gluesenkamp Peréz, the Democratic candidate for United States Congress in Washington’s 3rd district. Perez has deep roots in Washington State: her great-great-grandfather helped build the state’s Capitol building, and her own parents met at Western Washington University after her father immigrated from Mexico. She now owns an independent auto repair and machine shop with her husband, Dean. Perez is running against perhaps the most extreme MAGA Republican candidate, Trump-endorsed election-denier Joe Kent. Volunteer and support Marie Glusenkamp Peréz’s campaign here: https://marieforcongress.com/volunteer Shop Meidas Merch at: https://store.meidastouch.com Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 The Tony Michaels Podcast: https://pod.link/1561049560 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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On the one hand, there was everyone saying Marie's incredible. She's a fifth generation Washingtonian. We know about her auto shop right here in the Portland area, and she's an incredible candidate. So I got a lot of requests saying that. And I also got a lot of requests saying the person who Marie's running against, Joe Kent, is a MAGA extremist who is an election denier who claims Antifa is running around everywhere. And that's why there shouldn't be any economic investment in Washington, third congressional district. You put out a video. We have so much to talk about. But Marie Glucic-Lamperez, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I am running on jet fuel here. It's really great to see all of you. Thank you. And so one of the things that you are also running on in addition to jet fuel is this idea of normalcy and moderation. You were endorsed by the former congresswoman who, or the current congresswoman, but who was defeated in the primaries by, you know, a combination of you and Joe Kent, the mega extremist, and you're running on that moderation. Can you talk about

why that's so important in Washington's third? Yeah, I mean, this is, well, I think we're all, frankly, just really tired of just the division. I think we're all frankly, just really tired of just the division. I think we're really tired of feeling like we have to like, look at somebody's bumper sticker before we pull over and help them on the side of the road. You know, I think that's just a really impoverished version of like what it used to mean to like live in a community in America. And, you know, I, this is a, this is a very light red, purple district. And representing this district is, you know, that that's what it means is to work right down the middle and provide substantive, you know, improvement of people's lives, not this kind of frothy clickbait politics that

we see all over the place. And, you know, Congresswoman Jamie Herrera Butler, who currently represents Washington's third, many of our viewers and listeners will remember from the January 6th committee. She was one of the courageous Congress members, I think, who had reached out to Kevin McCarthy right away and said, what the hell is going on here? We need help. And McCarthy was like, well, Trump's telling me everyone. It's like a famous line with Butler calling and McCarthy's like, well, Trump saying it's Antifa. It's actually not insurrectionists. And so there's nothing that we can do. And really, it's kind of on that basis that she just said, look, insurrections are bad. We shouldn't have insurrections in this country and we should have free and fair elections that she drew Kent and this MAGA extremist challenger to take her out to spread conspiracies. one of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump the second time. And then it was a crazy primary with like, there were 10 people running at one point and they were all trying to out

MAGA each other. And my opponent Joe Kent was the one who did get Trump's endorsement and has been leading that bandwagon here. It's, you know, he's had, he's had proud boys on his staff. He's been out talking about banning all immigration for 20 years. And he said to reestablish a white majority. I mean, this guy is like beyond the pale of anything we've seen in the Northwest. This guy is the most extreme candidate we've ever seen. And so it's really out of step with this district, which is a moderate district. That's Brian Baird, Jamie Herr, Butler. And I will tell you the craziest

thing that just happened. We were at a debate on KGW, and he's telling us that we should have machine guns. We've banned machine guns since 1934. he says that any weapon the military has citizens should have so like where does that end are we talking about like surface to air missiles are we talking about tactical nukes like we're gonna have like gofundmes to buy uh it's just crazy it's crazy but the answer to your question there for him if you were to ask him those questions at the debate, because essentially he was, he will answer those questions. Yes, he literally is. I believe, you know, and this is hard to say because there's a lot of dangerous extremist candidates in this election here on Midas Touch. We just talk about moderation, normal, exhausted majority. But Joe Kent may be the most extremist anywhere in the country, and he's running in

Washington's third. So I have to play this video that your campaign put out, which is Joe's greatest hits, because everything that you just said, and this is what we do at Midas Touch, we always show the videos and the statements that verify that that's actually what was said. So I got to play Joe's greatest hits of video your campaign put out. And then I want to talk to you about it. I have my issues with the way the last election went. It was stolen.

It was rigged. We are in a war with the left. We are in a war with the establishment too. The national security state has been weaponized against us at the behest of the progressive left and the globalists. I don't think there's anything wrong with there being a, like, white people, like, special interest group.

You can blame for what happened on January 6th. None of this is on President Trump. I mean, it reeks of an absolute intelligence operation. I 100 percent support Roe v. Wade being overturned. I would move to have a national ban on abortion. Privatized, high-interest, tax-free savings plan that's managed on the private sector, on Wall Street, is a much better option for Social Security. The folks in Congress right now, like Matt Gaetz, I think has been absolutely unapologetic.

Marjorie Taylor Greene's another one. She's a great fighter. We have to realize that we're at war. Bringing the national security state to heel must be our top priority. We're going to go after A.G. Garland, impeaching Joe Biden. We're in very dangerous waters right now. Unprecedented. We've never been here before. I mean, wow, I'm left speechless after seeing that, which is also one of the reasons why I had to just I had to get you on this podcast. I had to talk to you. So when you see that, what's your message to voters in Washington's third? Take him seriously. Take him seriously. This is not a game. You know, I mean, this this guy's dad was one of the lawyers on the Ruby Ridge case. Like, this is somebody that is very serious about pointing our country

towards civil war. He says it there, like, he believes we're at war. And, you know, I think that we've been entirely too sanguine about where our democracies is headed towards. You know, we did not take them seriously enough when they said they were going to overturn Roe versus Wade. And here we are. Millions of women are suffering because of that. This is a crisis. And it's time for us to get in the ring and fight for this. And then he takes that extremism

and dangerous at a federal level, dangerous at a state level, dangerous at a state level, dangerous at a local level, and economically very harmful because his views, for example, is that a light rail between Portland and Vancouver, Washington on a new badly needed I-5 replacement bridge is a plot to bring Antifa into the district. And because of all of these conspiracies, he literally wants to turn his back on bringing economic opportunities into the district and into, and into the area. I mean,

well, yeah, well, and not only that, I mean, one of the other things he says is that he will defund our police departments because he doesn't like the laws they're enforcing. That is tyranny. That is tyranny. Like we, you know,

we elect our local governments and to have somebody pull the purse strings like that is, is crazy. You know, he talks about defunding Oregon and Washington because he doesn't like their immigration policies, but it is wild. And you know, like there are 39 vacancies in the Clark County Sheriff's department right now. And Joe Kent is talking about making it worse because he's worried about light rail. Like what, what in the actual heck is going on? Wow. And let's tell us a little about yourself. Yeah. You know, I want to, I want to know about you, your background running for Washington's third. Did I, did I butcher anything in the introduction about your background?

No, no. Oh, yeah. So I live in rural Skamania County. Get my water from a well, get my internet from my radio tower. I'd probably be the only member of Congress that doesn't have broadband at home. But for a living, my husband and I, we own an auto repair and a machine shop. So we're an independent shop, which is kind of a dying breed. We're not affiliated with any dealership. And so we're out there doing our thing, work on all kinds of cars, a lot of older cars. And I think that's the really interesting thing because it's like you are seeing middle America every day. You're seeing people who are struggling to pay the bill to have their catalytic converter replaced.

You're seeing people who have struggling to pay the bill to have their catalytic converter replaced. You know, you're seeing people who have had their windows smashed, you're seeing people who are, you know, just trying to get one more year out of a Honda Civic that's, you know, already at, you know, 450,000. And I think we need to have a Congress that looks like America that understands what we're facing. And, and I, and for me, I think like part and parcel of that is being a mom. I have a 15 month old and like any new parent will tell you getting a spot in a daycare right now is it's a blood sport. Like one in 10 child care facilities has shut down permanently in America since 2019. And so we bring our baby to work with us because that's the option that's available to us and like

that's a position of privilege to be able to take your kid in and it sucks like having a toddler in an auto shop is like it's a it's frankly kind of a nightmare um but uh that is the reality for so many working moms for so many small businesses trying to navigate these issues and the the reality is, is that you're actually somebody who understands the struggle of working class families. And I feel like that's so important right now as families are facing issues like higher prices out there. So what would your taking those learnings, taking your firsthand experiences, what would your priorities be to help these people with, you know, lowering costs and whatnot, should you get into Congress? Yeah, I think that I kind of think these things like this has been a long arc in getting us here. We've had a long, you know, a couple decades of losing American jobs, losing like factories

being offshored. And I will tell you, I see this in the automotive industry, just like a deterioration of the parts that are available, like aftermarket parts have gotten crappier and crappier. And that hits the middle class first. And it's just this slow sort of bankruptcy of our assets. You know, we have so many homes being bought up by investment firms, not being bought up by first time home buyers. We have, so what, you know, and we've also seen, I think we're all kind of in a generation where we've seen the best trade schools, like for instance, like Benson getting turned into computer programming schools, which,

you know, the thing about trades jobs is they can never be offshored. They are family wage jobs. Like, you're not going to be able to hire an electrician in China to, like, wire in a heat pump. And they're part and parcel of, like, the green economy, right? Like, it's a carpenter, you know, it's somebody putting spray foam insulation in your house. It's new windows. It's all those things.

And so it's going to take us time to work ourselves back into an economy that is like operating from a position of strength that has inherent value in it. And that's going to mean investing in trade programs. I think one of the biggest linchpins of that is for me, one of the things I'm excited about working on is right now, Pell Grants can only be used for two and four year colleges. They need to be available for apprenticeship programs, too. We, you know, we need to support more trades and that slow growth in the economy is what's going to get us back to a position of strength. There are very few things that you can be certain of in life, but you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And of course, you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink.

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He wants to defund the police department. He spends his time attacking the FBI, lying about what happened on January 6th. So what is your message to families who are concerned about safety, knowing that your extremist opponent literally wants to put machine guns on the street? Yeah, Joe Kent wants to defund the police. Like that is that is what he's talking about. He's talking about he has this idea of like constitutional sheriffs. I don't know if you guys are familiar with this. But it is, it is what little like fiefdoms look like, you know, he's big, there's this belief that the sheriff is the highest elected official in an area. And it's terrifying. It is not what a safe America looks like. And I will tell you, I mean, we talked about catalytic converters, is that there's about $30 of platinum and a catalytic converter on a car. Thousands of them have been stolen, like tens of thousands across our region. People are melting them down, basically. And that's a $1,300 bill to replace a catalytic converter.

And that is eviscerating so many people's emergency funds. And, like, we don't have a Congress that cares about that. We don't have a, you know, Joe Kent doesn't care about that. He doesn't understand what that means. You know, the organization that addresses organized crime is the FBI. That's what the FBI does, is organized crime, you know, child predators. Joe Kent wants to defund them. That's not going to make our communities safer. You know, you can have a machine gun all you want all child predators. Joe Kent wants to defund them. That's not going to make our

communities safer. You know, you can have a machine gun all you want all day long. That's not going to fix the low level crime that is hurting our communities. That's why I mean, that's why it's so important that we have people in Congress like you who are of a working class background who actually have real world experience, aren't just like billionaires who who don't understand what's actually going on. One of the interesting things has been watching the dynamic between Kevin McCarthy and Joe Kent.

It's one of the most bizarre things to see from the outside because they famously butted heads. But recently, Kevin McCarthy has come around to Joe Kent. And the fascinating thing that I saw is McCarthy just held a fundraiser for Joe Kent in your state. And like, neither of them wanted to speak about it. Like both of them, like tried to kind of hide that it even happened. They posted one picture about it on social media, would not speak to the media, would not answer any questions, would not say what happened. Why do you think they both are kind of wanting to hide

their association with each other? It's just a weird thing. Yeah. Well, I think McCarthy does want, I mean, McCarthy wants credibility in Joe's circles of the MAGA extremists. And so I think that was probably a pretty carefully navigated agreement. And Joe is, you know, his funding, listen, he spent the entire primary bashing the Republican establishment, you know, and now turns out he needs their help to actually get elected. He, you know, ran around with basically like right after the primary, like he was running around with Jamie's head, you know, the incumbent Republican he unseated, how proud he was about that work. And I'm going to tell you, like a lot of moderate Republicans were not thanking him for that because now they're going to have to vote for a Democrat. But that is the crazy thing, too, I would say on campaign finance. Like just as like a normal person running for Congress, like that the crazy thing you realize how much money these things take you know and like i run a business you know it's it's like a you know we've got eight employees like i i understand that it takes money

to do stuff um you know it's a six bay shop but then you get into the scale of like a federal campaign and you understand the insanity of our campaign finance like it is bananas and early on i made the choice like not to take corporate pack checks because it's important that our representatives are accountable um but it is it is um very deeply concerning having gotten gotten a closer view into campaign finance and And so I will make this pitch, listeners out there, I have no trust fund. This is a grassroots campaign. And if you're able to chip in, it still does make a big difference. Yeah, please do that. I mean, we're going up against just such crazy amounts of dark money, all these billionaires coming out of the woodworks to

fund these campaigns. I think people get it to some extent, but I still don't think they fully understand just how corrupt that whole process is. So your small dollar donations go a really long way. One of the things I've been impressed about watching you is you've seemed to really be able to break through to rural voters in the country. And I feel like rural voters often feel neglected by the Democratic Party. So what would your advice be just to the Democratic Party at large on how to reach these voters who think the Democratic Party has not been speaking to them for these past few years? Stop. Democrats need to stop explaining things to rural voters like it is so pedantic and like offensive, like we know stuff they don't know you know sure they

know stuff we don't know but i've had this experience of you know the you know higher electives like you need to go in and listen to a community you can't come in and just explain things all the time like there needs to be a lot more humbleness when you come into a community and, and not this like prescriptive, like, oh, I'm here to help you. You know, you need to understand what's going on in our communities. What do we think the solutions are? Like I am the second candidate ever nominated in the third congressional district. That's not from Clark County. You know, that's just like a huge lack of representation for the interest of rural communities. And I think we're all just really tired of being told what, you know, we just kind of get pat on the head all the time and told like, oh, you don't understand these things. And we've got to do better.

I saw you fire off a tweet about this, so I wanted to get your take here as well. So your opponent refers to the January 6th insurrectionists as political prisoners. Meanwhile, on that day, five police officers died as a result of that day. So when you can't condone the death of cops by insurrectionists, I mean, what does that say about one's moral compass and their ability to lead? Yeah, I mean, that was horrifying. And he's like doing this like, you know, weasel evasion. and their ability to lead. Yeah. I mean, that was horrifying. And he's like doing this like, you know,

weaselly evasion. He's like, well, they didn't die that day. I'm like, what are you talking? Like, you know, that's the problem is like when you condone political violence when it's in service of your team, like that's exactly what you said. Like there's no moral compass there. That's, that is a huge problem. Like there needs to be an unwavering standard of what's

acceptable, um, and, and political dialogue. And we have just completely gone off the rails. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think you've hit on this, uh, sort of throughout this, but I wanted to ask it more pointedly. Um know, what are some issues at Washington's Third that you would like to focus on in that office that doesn't get sort of the national attention, but are really important to your constituents? Well, we are one of the districts, like so much paper and cardboard used to come, so much, say, you know, lumber. And like where I live in Stamania County, we butt up against the Gifford-Princio. And we were five years ago, we were about seven miles from the Eagle Creek wildfire. This year, we were two miles from the Nakia Creek wildfire. Like it's getting closer and closer

and closer. And there's just a lack of urgency in addressing the broader climate change drivers of wildfire and also the practical reality on the ground. Like the woods are a hot mess and it's been such a political football, you know, I think from from all sides without a real addressing of like the actual health of the woods. Like we need real investments in prescribed burns and in thinning projects like that's just not happening enough. And I think this is important because another thing another like issue I think that a lot of us are starting to become aware of are microplastics. Like there's microplastics everywhere. They're in our shellfish. They're in our waters. They're in our bodies. And they have real impacts. And one of the drivers of microplastics is overabundance of plastic packaging. The solution to plastic packaging is paper and cardboard, like we used to have. And so I think there's a real symbiotic opportunity here between support for the paper

and cardboard industry in Southwest Washington and getting plastics out of our waste stream. And I that is something that I'd love to champion as a member of Congress. That's awesome. And then pivoting really quickly to some more of those national issues. Now, what does a vote for Marie Gluckman Perez mean for Social Security, for abortion, for Medicare? Yeah, I am going to work my tail off to ensure that our rights to healthcare are federally protected. That is critical. We cannot assume that our rights are protected in Washington State and Oregon right now, either place, because they take these people seriously. Joe Kent will enact a national ban on abortion. That is his stated goal. You know, he's talked about lowering the age of retirement. And this is just like this sort of frog level reasoning, right? His idea is

that because people are living longer, we can increase the age of retirement. White collar workers are living longer. Blue collar workers like my family and I are not living longer. So when you increase the age of retirement, we're the ones paying for their extra vacation time. You know, and it's just like, it's just like thievery, you know? And so I will work to enact actual solvency reform and social security.

Hot topic in our, I know that's a hot topic in our demographic, but it's something that we have to address because we're going to be the ones holding the bag on that if we don't. Absolutely. And so I know you did the pitch earlier, but I'd love for you to do it one more time, even more specific. So we're only a handful of days away. What's the best way for folks to get involved with your campaign?

How can they help? Where should they go? Yes. Please come door knock. Please come door knock. We need your help door knocking. You can do that on my website, marieforcongress.com backslash volunteer. We need your help door knocking. This matters. Turnout matters.

You know, and let me just say like a lot of the older door knockers who used to like they were old, like they old hands at this. They were experienced. They're afraid of COVID and they're not coming out to volunteer. We need younger people to show up and door knock. We also have, we've got to do more rural radio buys. We've got to be doing more texting programs and that takes money. So if you can chip in $5, 50 bucks, whatever it is, it is not too late to have a big impact because these voters who haven't voted yet are the undecideds. These are the people who are deciding which way this election is going to go. So it's even more imperative that we communicate with them. So you can also make that contribution online. Folks, these elections have consequences and you could be the difference maker in these races. You have to believe these extremists when they

tell you who they are. And I got to say, it's always such a pleasure to speak to a candidate, not about conspiracy theories about the past and trying to overturn previous elections, but about actual solutions for the future for people. I think everybody should want to elect somebody who is actually working in the interests of the people in how to improve their lives. Marie Glusenkamp-Perez, thank you so much for coming on this episode of the Midas Touch podcast. Thank you. Thank you. It's such a pleasure. I'm so grateful to all of you. Thank you. And everybody go right now. That's marieforcongress.com to donate. And if you want to volunteer, marieforcongress.com slash volunteer. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Midas Touch podcast.

At Midas Touch, we are unapologetically pro-democracy and we demand justice and accountability. That's why we're spreading our message to convict45. That's right, gear up right now with your convict45 tees and pins at store.midastouch.com. That's store.midastouch.com.