The MeidasTouch Podcast - MI State Senator McMorrow on Why Hate Won’t Win

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Michigan Trump voters turn against Donald Trump and wanting that vote back and Meiselas interviews Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow about what Democrats are doing about her new book. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michigan voters are having some serious regrets about picking Donald Trump. Michigan went for Donald Trump in 2024, but a recent focus group by Axios and the group called Engage Us Sago spoke with some of the Trump voters in Michigan who are livid to say the least. Overwhelmingly, the Trump voters in this focus group were pissed off. They said they feel utterly betrayed. They say that Donald Trump has taken a wrecking ball to the country and their state and they want their vote back. We'll just show you a little bit from this focus group that was released a short time ago. Let's play it. A show of fingers. Who approves of what Elon Musk has

been doing in the Trump administration? None of you. Who disapproves? All seven of you. See, he wasn't elected to do anything. I don't understand his position. It's a made up position that they made, department or whatever. And he's been going through with the sledgehammer, just actually dismantling everything with the approval of Trump. So I'm almost at the point where did he actually buy the election to do what he wanted to do? He was president for four years. You knowingly chose to put him back in office, having watched him in office for four years. How can you be surprised? I don't feel like he was this aggressive last time,

so I don't think anyone would have voted for him if they expected to see what we're seeing now. I don't understand the need to piss every other country off. Canada, we love Canada, don't we? just my whole life there's never been a problem with Canada I thought he was going to like change things with affordability and make things cheaper but by like putting these tariffs in and terrorizing the world now things are just more expensive everything I believe was going to happen I think is going to go the opposite direction I feel like a lot of his actions have just been disruptive and creating chaos. He didn't come out and be real with us and say, hey, I'm going to cut, you know, hundreds of thousands of jobs and you could possibly,

your bills are going to go up like that wasn't campaign. You voted for Trump in 2024, but you've been very critical of him so far in our conversation. Someone watching this might say, why did you vote for the guy? Sure. I think what he campaigned with and compared to what he's doing is pretty opposite. Yeah, I just didn't I didn't see this coming. I didn't think he was going to take these these points of views that he's taking. I thought that his first hundred days, like he talked about, would be so much better than they are. It's a little frightening. Well, that's an understatement. And the MAGA Republican Congress members in Michigan, like Tom Barrett, are avoiding their town halls. Let me just share with you from a local news

segment. They are finding time to show up to basketball games, but not see their constituents who are holding their own town halls in the absentia of the MAGA Republican Congress members. Let's play it. There is a town hall planned today in Lansing, and Congressman Tom Barrett has been invited to attend, but it doesn't look like he's going to show up. The organizers behind the event say they will still leave an empty chair on the stage anyway and give people a chance to voice their concerns about recent changes to the government. Now let's bring in Michigan Democratic State Senator Mallory McMorrow out with a new book, by the way, Hate Won't Win, Find Your Power and Leave This Place Better Than We Found It. Here's the book right here. And I read it. Thank you for sending me a copy of it.

And when I show you that focus group, is that what you're hearing on the ground in Michigan? Oh, yeah. I mean, people are pissed. They are livid to see that Trump and Elon Musk is just giving Elon Musk a chainsaw to slash and burn the government in a way that people did not vote for. This is directly impacting people's lives, and the Republicans are just running away and hiding from their own constituents. One of the things you're hearing a lot, you spoke about it recently at a committee hearing, is how scared the veteran community is not being able to access services. Can you speak to that?

That's right. Yeah, I had a town hall in my district and a woman came out who works for a federally qualified health center. They do a lot of work with the VA. And she told me she can't even get a call back from the VA that people there have either been fired, they're too scared to answer the phone. They are afraid to do their jobs. And this is no way to treat veterans is to just completely cut them off from their healthcare and their support system. And that's what's happening right now. We've been covering the protests across the country. There was a big protest in Detroit and then kind of a corresponding one in Windsor showing support between the American

people and the Canadian people with this wedge being driven by the Trump regime saying they want to annex or conquer Canada, you know, as Michigan's proximity to our ally, people that we love, Canada. What are you hearing in Michigan, and how is this all affecting your constituents in Michigan? I mean, you heard it right there in that focus group. We love Canada. Canada is our neighbor. You drive around Detroit, you take one wrong turn, you're in Canada. It happens all the time. We have people who cross the border every single day between Detroit and Canada to come to work, to see their family, to see their friends. The idea that we would treat our friend and our neighbor and our ally in this tit-for-tat tariff war is absolutely insane. And people are so angry. This is such an overreach. And as we saw, it's bringing Canada and the United States together in protest against Donald Trump.

Your book, Hate Won't Win, it's perfect for this time as well. And it's also, I think you talk about just as Democrats, but as people, not sacrificing your values. I mean, just because we saw what happened in the 2024 election doesn't mean to become clones of this hateful message to lead with empathy and love and bridging the gaps between people. So it's a very timely book. And maybe speak to the book in the current context of what we're seeing right now, late March of 2025? The book is really to answer the question that I've heard from thousands of people across the country who said to me, I'm so overwhelmed. I want to do something and I have no idea where to start. So part of it is about my story, my very unlikely journey into politics. I quite literally Googled

how to run for office in the wake of the 2016 election and found my footing and found my voice. So the book is a lot about what I've learned and how I've seen people find their own voice and be effective. Right now, what we're seeing at town halls is people not just asking Democrats to do something. They're asking what they can do, too. And it is going to require all of us

to step up and use our voices and tell Donald Trump and this administration that they're not going to take our country away from us. And this book is a guide that I hope people take and use and learn how to do this themselves. You know, it's so funny because when I was getting involved as well in building this media network, the first way I started was Googling. Like, what do I do if I want to make a video and how do I go about it? We all start somewhere. And that's what you have in your book, you know, find your power, a whole section on the step-by-step guide about what you do and don't view politics as a dirty word and just start by starting.

What do you think in this moment? Look, the Democrats on the federal level, it's a different situation than in Michigan. But on the federal level, Democrats don't control the House, don't control the Senate, obviously don't control the executive branch. But that's not an excuse. People are saying, OK, that's fine, but we want to see you fight. You're known as a fighter in Michigan and in the state Senate. So what do you tell the Democrats who don't control the House and the Senate at the federal level? What does fighting look like to

Senator McMorrow? People do want to see you fight and they want to see you fight with them. We can no longer accept things that we've seen on the federal level, like holding a press conference in front of the Capitol and telling people that you're fighting for them and then following up with a text message that says, I'm fighting for you, give me $5. People want to know that we're in this together. People right now are raising their hands and saying, put me in coach, I'm ready, what do we do? And it requires getting out of Washington, getting into your communities, going to town halls, answering people's questions, and leading all of us to a place where we recreate this country in a way that isn't about hate and demonizing other people. It's about building a new American dream and that we do it together.

What do you make of this whole situation, just the incompetence and the dangerousness? And then they always mounted on top of with the lies of what happened with the Trump regime, Department of Defense officials, national security advisors, sending like war plans on text messages. And then earlier on Tuesday, there were hearings with the top director of national intelligence, head of the CIA. And they go, yeah, you know what? It's not that's not even classified information. It is what it is.

And then the senators were like, we would be talking about war plans. Of course, that's classified information. And it's just this it's this gaslighting, strange time. What do you make of it all? It's insane. You know, the idea that you're sharing classified information in a text group. I mean, I think any of us who grew up in the Internet age in group chats, we know that you just don't do that. I think everybody responsible for this should be fired. And our new senator from Michigan, Alyssa Slotkin, has said just as much. You know, she served two tours in Iraq as part of

the CIA alongside the military. This is incredibly dangerous. It's not a game. And it just goes to show how incompetent the people in this administration are. But we can't let them get away with it. We have to make sure we keep the pressure on and that we are clear-eyed about the path ahead to return competent people to all of these offices. And finally, when you see that focus group and you see all of those people who now have regret, like what's the message as you're traveling around Michigan right now as part of the book tour but just in general what are you saying to the people who are scared about social security Elon Musk calling it a Ponzi scheme Trump's commerce secretary saying you're probably engaged in

fraud if you complain if a social security check is missed gutting Medicaid 5 4.5 billion dollar tax cuts for billionaires so so on and so forth. What are you telling people who are like, I'm nervous? What do I do tomorrow? First of all, that you should be scared. It's okay to be scared. It's okay to be anxious. It's okay to be angry about what's happening right now. We got an email from a constituent who saw that telehealth visits have been cut off and she's on Medicare. And she's like, this is a lifeline for me. I don't have transportation. I live alone and I don't know what to do. And as Democrats, we have to reach out to people and tell them,

you have every right to be angry. Let's fight back together. Here is how we are going to build this back together. I see some corners of the internet are kind of reveling in, you know, F around and find out and treating people like you should have known what you were voting for. We have to win. And we win by bringing people back into the Democratic Party, by showing them that we have a path forward that is not about slashing all of these things that you worked so hard and pay for with your tax dollars. We are not about to give your tax dollars to Elon Musk and to Mark Zuckerberg. We're gonna rebuild these systems for you.

And we have to create a system where they want to be a part of joining us. And as you say in your book, don't check out, stay in the fight, stay in there. Everybody get a copy of this. Hate won't win. Find your power and leave this place better than we found it. State Senator Mallory McMorrow. And of course, everybody knows the historic speech that you gave. I normally would play it at the beginning, but everybody knows State Senator McMorrow. I'll ask you the obvious question if you're going to be running for Senate, but I'm not sure you'll give the answer anyway.

And so I'm rooting for you. And that's all that I will, that's all I will say. Thank you for joining us. Thanks, Ben. I appreciate it. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 5 million subscribers. Can't get enough Midas? Check out the Midas Plus sub stack for ad-free articles, reports, podcasts, daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski and more. Sign up for free now at MidasPlus.com.