The Problem With Jon Stewart - A Progressive Policy Prescription with Abdul El-Sayed

Episode Date: October 21, 2026

As candidates make their closing arguments to voters ahead of Election Day, Jon is joined by Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed to talk about the state of his race in the final stretch. Together, they discuss how his family’s immigrant background shaped his politics, the case he's making to skeptical voters, and the disconnect between the issues dominating media coverage and the concerns Michiganders are raising on the ground. Plus, Jon answers listeners’ questions about AI-generated music, fake polls, and fake news! This episode is sponsored by: GROUND NEWS - Go to https://ground.news/js to see all sides of every story. Subscribe for 40% off the Vantage Subscription only for a limited time through https://ground.news/js. TREES.COM - Get 20% off at https://trees.com with code TWS. BOMBAS - Head to https://bombas.com/weekly for 20% off your 1st purchase. MINT MOBILE - Shop plans at https://MintMobile.com/TWS. Follow The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart on social media for more:  > YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@weeklyshowpodcast > Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weeklyshowpodcast > TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@weeklyshowpodcast  > X: https://x.com/weeklyshowpod   > BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/theweeklyshowpodcast.com Host/Executive Producer – Jon Stewart Executive Producer – James Dixon Executive Producer – Chris McShane Executive Producer – Caity Gray Producer – Brittany Mehmedovic  Producer – Gillian Spear Video Editor & Engineer – Rob Vitolo Audio Editor & Engineer – Nicole Boyce Associate Producer - Rebecca Rottenberg Music by Hansdle Hsu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I will be your hosted guide throughout this podcast. It is Tuesday, October 20th. The elections are in two weeks. Two weeks from today, we will learn. Can you hear the people sing singing? I am not a prayer, but I cannot take this anymore. I must be able to believe I live in a country that can see the disaster that our wagon has been hitched to and can make corrective moves that can get us to, not a better place even immediately,

just the hope of getting to a better place. I truly want to believe that these will be a very anxious couple of weeks. Now, ultimately, look, we'll deal with what we deal with, whatever happens, happens, continue to still work hard no matter what. But the hope is that some measure of relief and understanding will be delivered on that day. And I really hope that people are fired up and ready to get out there. and vote and send a message that this is all entirely unacceptable. And to that, you know, we're lucky today.

We've been talking to different candidates and different swing states and things like that. And we're going to do it again today. We're going to have on ourselves, it's one of the most, I think, talked about races in the entire country, given that it's a swing state, Michigan, and that the Democratic candidate is a, I don't know if we have scary music. Muslim. Did we have a sound effect there? Most likely we did not.

Because we are not a morning radio show. But we're going to talk to this gentleman today. It was the Democratic Senate candidate. So let's get right to it. And so we are delighted to be joined this morning by Dr. Abdul El-Sayyad. He is the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate in Michigan. How are you, sir? I am well all things considered.

Existentially tired, but grateful to get to do this and honored. How long is the run? What's the, because you've been through a bruising primary and now you're in the final run of the general election. How long has this process been for you? Believe it or not, we kicked off in April of 2025. Oh, for God's sakes. Let me get a pen.

Hold on. Let me start doing the calculations here. I'm 14 days left. What is the final run-up feel like? Do you feel present? In this, are you just sort of a buoy in an ocean being dragged through? What's the feeling? I mean, honestly, the day to day is just you're constantly being moved from one thing to

another, but you're constantly being greeted mainly by people who are really excited about what they are part of. And I'll be honest with you, my family immigrated from a place where there is no democracy. There's no chance to run for office. Did you come from Egypt? Yeah, my family immigrated from Egypt. And there is no democracy. There's no running for office.

And I ran before in 2018. And when it was all over, I realized I really loved this work, but it's not the kind of work you can just do. And for eight years, I didn't get the opportunity to do it. I was working in public health doing other work that I loved. But, you know, I've been doing this for 18 months. And right now with 14 days left, I'm just so grateful to have been able to do this. and I want to do it the best I can for the next 14 days.

And at its best, what you're doing is you're having a conversation about who we are and who we want to be and what that means for the future we want to build. And it's a real privilege and a moment of a lot of gratitude, honestly. And I don't know how it's all going to end up on Election Day. But I'm honored that, you know, this many people have been so inspired by what we're doing and how we're doing it. And I try to live in that, right? Just a space of gratitude for the ability to do it.

because I don't take it for granted. Action and of history, I get to be born in the United States. I get to participate in democracy at all. I get to participate in democracy in the greatest country in the history of the world. Like, I'm just really grateful. So, you know, as tiring as it gets and as. Are you resigning, sir? That sounds like, no.

You're ready to rock this thing. You know, you are. But like, you know, there's a moment when you're, when you think about it like a race, like you see the checkered flag and you're racing as hard as you can. And you don't know how it's all going to end up. And you're focused, of course, on talking to every last. person. But the thing about democracy is like we focus on the competition of the thing, but it's not a competition. It really is about trying to reach to people and talk about what they need in their

lives and what you can do to deliver that. Like that's a real privilege. And, you know, I trained in medicine and the thing I love about medicine, you know, in the moments, people will give you the worst information about their life on the, on the worst day of their life because they think you can help. And you're out there armed with the information you have and knowledge and your empathy and your ear and the ability to like be that person who people trust with that to try to do some about it, that's a gift. And politics is the same way when you let it be. And so I just take this as the same kind of work on a larger, on a larger platform and at a larger scale. And so at its best, you're you're really locking in on the challenges people face and what we can do to solve them

together. And that's what I try to stay locked in on. So what are you, you know, as you go here, what have been the best environments? Because I'm always curious, you know, there's a There's a wide array of events that people do when they're campaigning. And then there's also obviously the more kind of conflict-oriented interactions that you have with people that might disagree with you or with the candidate that you're running against. But what forums have you been in where you feel like you're able to actually connect to people in what they're going through and where they can be revelatory about those issues and can inform you best. Like as someone who is trying to get to maybe the core of the issues that people

are struggling with, where have you found those moments to be most revealing? There are two. One, anytime anybody invites you into their home, that's their space. And just the fact that they invited you in says a lot. And often, you know, there are kids in home. And when they look at you, they're looking at you and then looking at their kid and looking at you. And every time they look at their kid, it's like they're remembering the purpose of the question they ask. And those are the moments that I find the most meaningful. And then in a question and answer at a town hall, right, because town halls are as old as democracy. And people come, they bring their questions and they ask them in front of their neighbors. And there's a moment where we collectively get to talk about the

challenge. I mean, we're still doing town halls. They're a lot bigger than they used to be, but we still take open questions. But like, it takes me back to the beginning of the campaign when the rooms were like 25 and 30 people deep. And we'd have these really intimate moments. And the thing about it, somebody would ask a question. And then as they ask a question, you look into the audience and you see everybody's else's head nodding because they just touched on a nerve. And I think great politics is about being able to surface a pain that is collective, but that people thought they were holding on their own. You know? And you see that moment. on lock and if you can speak to the core of the problem and what could be done about it,

it's almost like you get to do a certain kind of like civic chiropractics. Like healing. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's like you have a little adjustment. You know, you've seen one of those videos on Instagram or TikTok where like the chiropractor like does this little thing and all of a sudden you see this look on this patient's face. They're like, oh my God, you're just unlocked all my pain.

Everything feels better. Right. There's a moment where you can do that. Or broke their neck. I mean, that's the other side of that. Like, no, we don't want to do that. This is not a Trump show, okay? What would have been the issues when you say like somebody expresses a pain in their life and you watch it resonate in the room?

Are there certain issues that you have found specifically that you've found those moments in? Is it affordability? Has it been a story about health care? Is it cycle of life stuff? You know, I'm trying to take care of my parents. Like where have been those moments of resonance? It's three things. The first one is anything having to do with care, health care, child care, senior care.

You hear it all the time. Somebody says, you know, I had a woman come up to me. She's like, I had an emergency appendectomy. And my insurance only covered $395 of it. Wow. And like, whenever those stories get shared at a town hall, everyone's like, yeah, no, that happened to me. Yeah, yeah. Or I'm worried about my parent.

They're getting older and they're needing care, and I can't offer it. And I'm losing hours at work because I got to stay. home with my parent, I don't know what happens next. In fact, the problem is I actually know what happens next and I don't know what I'm going to do about it. And then the third one where this often comes up is just this dread about AI. And it shows up in they're going to put a data center in my backyard or my kid's never going to have a job despite the fact that they took $60,000 in debt to go to school, to get a degree. And I've told them their whole life prepared them for this and they're going to graduate into an economy where there's like no job for them because

of AI or I heard about this thing called hugging face. I didn't know such a thing called hugging face existed. What does that mean for me? So now you're literally doing town halls of people in Michigan and people are like, what about these agentics that are going into hugging face and doing, yeah, no, I can imagine. It's terrifying. No, you'd be in the middle Michigan people are like, hey, recursive self-improvement, go. And you're like, okay. How long is it going to be before it's recursive and then it can self-improve and then the hugging face is going to, yeah, it's terrifying. Like, I don't want my face hugged. Like, I want my face caressed, but not Now, do you make changes?

You know, is the process of running for office, is it the kind of thing that you have to make adjustments then to the policy prescriptions that you're making? Like, how does this all come together? Because, you know, I imagine the schedule is so busy and so much of it is reactive to whatever they think the moments are. How are you able to take those stories and then turn them into what looked like

affirmative policy choices that you could make. Because I imagine that changes the more you hear. Well, it changes how you talk about it. But a lot of times, I mean, this is the thing, right? It's like, this is why the parallel of the medicine works so well. People will tell you, oh, I've got this pain. And you're like, oh, okay, based on my knowledge of anatomy and physiology and pathophysiology, what might be causing that pain? And you have sort of a differential diagnosis. And then there's, you know, exams that you do to try to figure out which of the diagnoses or which of several it is. So you're triaging. As a political canadian, you're you're kind of triaging a society of what's the most urgent care needed. Exactly. And then the policy prescription, though, is like,

how do you, you know, how do you treat appendicitis? Well, there's a treatment for appendicitis. It's appendectomy, right? And you want to be able to demonstrate to somebody, hey, look, like, this is the manifestation of this particular societal illness that you are feeling. Here is the solution set based on an understanding of public policy that we think can address it. Now, the heart part about it is like, you know, there is no one set decision we have to go and work that decision through the political process. And the tough part about it is like, this is where the analogy crumbles. It's like there are like a set of like warrior doctors out there, namely MAGA. You're going, you're going to go Mario card on this. You're going, you're running for Senate and

you're going Mario cart on me. All right. But you, but you know what I'm talking about, right? Of course. Exactly. So, I mean, but this is the thing about it is that I think too often, we don't campaign like most campaigns because I, you know, I've done the work of listening. I've been out there for 18 months. I mean, in the early days, we were really listening

before we had proposed, you know, all of the specifics around all of our policy solutions. Right. As you put it together. And so you hear it and then you sort of map it to the policy. And then from there, you're talking about the policy that you need to pass. But, you know, the thing about me, I think most people have probably interacted with our campaign.

at some point on something, TikTok reels. You saw me on a, you know, getting a colonoscopy on CNN or something. Wait, did you really get a colonoscopy on CNN or is that a joke? It's more like a political colonoscopy on CNN. Oh, okay, fair enough. All right. There we go. A metaphor.

It's a metaphorical colonoscopy. All right. But the thing is, like, I just say the same thing because I'm not, I don't take money from corporations. I'm not out here trying to triangulate between what my donors and what my, what my voters think. I'm here for voters. I want to work for working people.

And so maybe it makes it easier for me because at the end of day, I don't have to worry about like, is this thing that I said going to piss off some donor over there, some special interest? Like, you know, special interest, they are dead set to make sure to beat me. They've spent a historic amount of money to do so. But in my case, I'm like, look, the only thing I got is I'm going to tell you what I think. I'm going to say it everywhere. I'm going to say it the best I can. And, you know, God willing, people support me.

And if they don't, that's okay. But I'd rather not be in the United States Senate out here without. the ability to actually solve the problem because I've, you know, lied through my teeth all the way up. Yo, these guys, I wish this thing exploded. I wish this was the thing that everybody talked about about news. Ground news, it compares coverage on stories across news outlets, compares them across international coverage. We're not getting the information that the world is necessarily getting. We live in a bit of a kind of a, I don't know what you would call it. I guess you would say bubble would be the way you call it.

So it helps you differentiate how the world is seeing the events in this country, how we are seeing it, how we're seeing the events in the world. It's remarkable. It compares how each outlet frames the same story and allows you to get the context to help you understand your own thoughts, your own conclusions about the information that is being fed to you and it is being fed to you purposefully. You can even see news sources factuality rating.

You can see who's funding them. What? What? Transparency? Subscribe for 40% off on limited access by scanning the QR code on screen or go to ground dot news slash j s make sure you use our link so they know we sent you again that's ground dot news slash j s you know you've reflected a lot on how what you like about politics is somewhat what you like about medicine in that it's kind of prescriptive you're getting

people are telling you the symptoms of the difficulties they're having you're diagnosing what it might be and giving them a prescriptive or a remedy that they might be able to use to ease that pain, which makes me think to myself, why didn't you then become a doctor? Because it sounds like something that is very much a process embedded in the way you think. So what was the, why did you make the decision to pivot from that? So, you know, when I graduated in medical school, I had done a PhD in public health and finish medical school. And I'm in my final year in medical school. And I'm starting to realize that so many of the challenges I'm trying to face sit downstream of a set of systems that make people sick in the first place and keep us from actually healing them. And it's not to say

that you can't get good health care in the health care system. It's just that you have to be a very particular kind of person to get good, uncomplicated health care. And, you know, I really, I went to medical school in large part because I could go 15 hours to my family's native Egypt or 15 minutes from where I grew up and I crossed 10 years difference in life expectancy. And in order to solve those problems, I realized that you needed to be the kind of doctor that worked on the system and not just in the system. And so a lot of what I've tried to do has been around, you know, addressing the circumstances in society that keep people ill or stop them from getting the health care they need. I went into public health, rebuilt Detroit's

Health Department, Led Wayne County's Department of Health, Human and Veterans Services, we guaranteed glasses for kids, we took on corporate polluters, we made prescription drugs, less expensive. We eliminated $100 million, up to $700 million, when the program's all over, of medical debt. We made sure that after Flint, kids weren't drinking lead in their schools. That's the kind of work that my career has been about. I wrote the book on Medicare for All. So in some respects, it's like saying, well, you know, do I treat the problem one patient at a time frustratedly? Or do I try to go upstream, as folks in public health talk about it, to try to understand why the system is so broken and how to fix it.

And then the other thing about it is, you know, my whole life, all of my mentors had told me I'm going to run for office. I'm like, that's some crazy bullshit. Did they really? I mean, so my college graduation, I was like, I was the valedictorian in my class at Michigan. And I got to give the student commencement speech, which was a real honor. All right.

There's no need to go validatory. No need to go valedictorian on me. That's hurtful. That's just hurtful. But look, look, nobody, I'll tell you this. All right. I'm a child of immigrants. Okay.

So, so I'm here feeling pretty good about myself. and my parents make it very clear. They're like, we're not going to hear you. We're going to hear Bill Clinton, who is the actual speaker. Oh, Bill Clinton was the speaker at your graduation? Yes. So I give my speech. President Clinton gives his speech.

He, like, praises me in his speech. He gets my dad to clap for me for the first time. I didn't even see it. He was in the audience. My siblings told me about it afterwards. But after the speech, President Clinton comes up to me. He's like, son, you know, why are you going to medical school? Which is not a question people ask you when you go to medical school.

I'm like, uh, brown and Muslims, what we do? But also, I love people. I love science. I want to serve. And he said, that's great, but you got a gift for communicating. And maybe someday I run for office. I was like, really nice to you say, I've got an 11 letter first name.

Got sounds that come out of parts of people's throats. Most people don't know they have. People like me don't get to run for office. And it's funny because he thought about it for a second. And then he chuckled and walked away. This was 2007, right? 2008, President Barack Hussein Obama. Right.

Runs and wins. Is that, was Obama's victory? a clarion call for you. Was it, oh, wait a second, if that name can make it, because it's clearly something you had a little bit of an interest in. Was that, was that the moment that you thought it becomes a possibility? Honestly, it was 2004, watching him give that DNC speech. Really?

Though, we're not, we're not blue, we're not red, we're purple. Yeah. But it was also just like, I had never seen politics look like him or sound like him and implicitly look like me at all. Right. And he just, I mean, I was, I was doing dishes. I literally, I, like, stopped when he started to give that speech. And I was, like, watching, you know, how you have the TV on.

I was doing dishes in my parents' house. And I just stopped. I was like, suds are falling from my hands. I'm just watching this man, give this speech. And then when he won in 2008, when he ran, right, the way he ran, when he won in 2008, I still didn't expect that I was ever going to run for office. You know, at that point, I was on my way to Oxford to do a Ph.D. I was in medical school when he,

Wait. So you're validatory image and then you're on your way to Oxford to do a paycheck. You're annoying me now. Now I'm annoyed. Listen, man, look, look, look. I'm just, I'm just a brown kid who's a child of immigrants with a gigantic chip on my shoulder who had to prove it. I just, I just, I studied way too much in my life. But, yeah, look, I mean, and I'm really grateful.

Like, I, I'm grateful that he was a president of my 20s, but I still didn't think it was the right thing for me. I wanted to be a physician scientist. I thought I was going to be a neurosurgeon. My dad still annoying me, annoyingly reminds me. He's like, hey, you could have been a surgeon. I'm like, I could have been a surgeon. Oh, wow. Are you surprised, Abdul, because it's, you know,

the way you describe the mechanism of like the immigrant experience and why, because I hear this a lot in first generation, second generation immigrant families. And my parents had that experience, that the expectation was, this isn't about you. This is about the sacrifice that we made to get you. you hear and you will not squander that opportunity, young man. You know, there's a real pressure that is put on those children of, you know, first generation, second generation to not squander the sacrifice to get to this place of

opportunity. I think that's part of it. And I'll crystallize it for you. Like in the mechanism day to day, I love playing sports, right? I played football, wrestle, play the cross. But my dad's rule is no, a, no play. You know, if you don't get straight A's, like if you get a single B, you don't play. You sit. Wow.

Yeah, you will not play. I'll pull you from the team. I would not have played. Yeah. I really enjoyed playing. So, like, for me, I was like, all right. But the other part of it was this. Like, in my middle school years, my parents would ship me off to Egypt. And I'd spend my time with my Teta, my grandmother, smartest person I ever met, best storyteller you've ever heard.

heard. Like, really, never got to the school. She was illiterate. Ninth of 14, grew up in Alexandria, Egypt, had eight babies of her own, two of them died before their first birthday. My dad was her eldest. He watched his two siblings pass before he turned five. And it was recognizing the accident of history. My dad was an amazing student. There was a reason no A, no play was a thing, because, like, he literally studied my life into existence. I'll never be able to repay that. And he gets to come to America to do a PhD in engineering and gets to make cars in Michigan, which is the dream for this kid, right? Right.

So that's how you ended up in Michigan. He was engineering the cars. Exactly. Okay. And he worked for a GM. But in some respects, it's also realizing that I'm like, man, you know, when I was a kid, I'd have teachers be like, oh, you're smart and you work hard. I'm like, my grandmother was smart and worked hard.

She got nothing. Right. And it's not about smart and work hard. It's smart and work hard if you're lucky enough to have the opportunity for it. So you recognize this. You never resented the kind of grind that you had to do because you looked at it as it wasn't an obligation. It was a privilege.

And that you had family members that you were looking at, like, no, those people struggled. I'm living the dream. John, I'll tell you, like, on my worst day, I have a nicer life than most of my cousins. Right. Could ever dream of. Right.

You know, like. Are they still, are, a lot of your family's still there? Almost my whole family's still there, right? I think there's one other family member that immigrated to Canada. But like, you know, I just, So it's one of those things where you're like, wait a second, wait a second.

I get this incredible gift and I get a front row seat to the life I should have had, but for the opportunity to be born and raised in America. And so in some respects, like as I matured and I got older, you realize you owe that something. And my grandmother, I remember, I remember I was 13 years old. It was one of the first trips I'd gone on by myself. And, you know, when you go back to your family's homeland, they, I had two suitcases, one with my stuff and one with all the gifts. So now I'm just like, giving out all the gifts to all my cousins. Right.

You're the messenger that has to bring all the back and forth. Yeah, but like, but like I'm not feeling like the man, right? And my, my grandmother pulls me aside. She's like, have you come sit down? So I'm sitting down with her. She says, points to one of my cousins. That one's smarter than you are. Damn, right off the bat.

Points to the next one. That one, taller and better looking. That one is nicer than you. That one. But she told me every one of my cousins. But she was making a really important point. Because I asked her in the end of this, I'm like, I'm like, you know, like, She just tore me down to size.

And I asked her, I was like, well, Tita, like, what do I have going for me? She's like, you have the best thing of all. I was like, okay, all right. She's like, you get to go home at the end of the summer to America. The rest of your cousins stay here. Dude. And they're like, it's a reminder. You're like, I have opportunity that my cousins don't have, and not everybody has that.

And the crazy thing about it is this. My grandmother's understanding of America was like the 1950s movies that were translated on TV in Egypt. She couldn't have imagined. Yes. Like, she couldn't have imagined that I could go 15 minutes from where I grew up. and there were kids whose opportunity set looked a lot more like my cousins than mine.

Oh, that's interesting. And, you know, like, I, growing up, really, it was one of those things where I'm like, no, no, no, I want whatever I got, I want to be able to use it to make sure that other folks get the opportunity I got. And so it's been the sort of through line of my career. And, you know, it's a reason I went to medical school. It's a reason I decided not to train clinically,

went into public health. It's the reason I went into public service. It's the reason I'm running now. And so a lot of folks will look at me and they say, oh, well, that guy's got like a chip on a shoulder and doesn't back down. I don't back down because I also know that like, what are you going to take for me? Honestly, like I had a better life than most of my cousins anyway. What are you going to take for me? You know, like I don't have to be a United States senator, but I do not want to be a United States

senator who plays this game to get to where everybody thinks you actually have some power, only to be hamstrung to do the thing with power that you were supposed to do in the first place. So I'm going to tell you what I think. And if I don't win the seat, okay, but I'm not going to lie to you. And I'm not going to tell you that I am okay with a certain series of bipartisan consensus that have been manufactured by a few folks with a lot of money. I'm not okay with that. And when you see that, you know, the surprising, because I think people in other, you know, they always talk about, well, there's the third world and then there's America. And not understanding that in America, in the way that we have it, there are millions and millions of people suffering

through the same kinds of economic deprivation and the same kind of difficulties that those and these other countries are feeling like, well, that, that would never happen in America. Was that surprising to your family to see that? I think for my dad, definitely. You know, my dad immigrates here. He goes to Detroit, to Wayne State, and his dad sold vegetables in a fish market. So he never trusted the, you know, the stuff at Kroger.

And he would go, we have this amazing outdoor market called the Eastern Market. So we would go to the Eastern Market. And it was an eye-opening experience for him because immediately he comes to America and is struck by American poverty. in, you know, like minutes walk from the eastern market, you have a deep amount of poverty. And I'll just say this, the poverty that we have in America that afflicts predominantly black folk in this country and rural folk in this country is categorically worse because if you think about it happens in a context in which we assume it doesn't exist. Or the broader public doesn't talk about it. And it also doesn't have to exist.

That it is, you know, when they talk about it's one thing I always say is, you know, you know, You know, they say there's an affordability crisis. Well, it's not a crisis. It's the inevitable result of a system that is rigged towards these outcomes. There is a certain underclass that our system requires to function in the manner that it functions. This is the end result of it. This is exactly the choice. When we make a choice where an economy is more interested in making it easier for a billionaire to make a second billion than anybody out there to make their first 100,000, this is what I'm.

happened. First 10,000, first 5,000. I mean, look, you can go to communities in Detroit, median income is $14,000 a year. Right. And their schools look like they did 50 years ago. And meanwhile, we're out here, right, creating all these tax gaps, right, the one big, ugly bills, cutting health care for those folks, while it's creating tax loopholes for the richest people to make a second billion under the argument that somehow this is good for our economy. It's insane. We're, we know, how much, how many billions do we spend buying bombs and tanks for other people's countries that go and kill other kids when we should be spending on schools and health care for our own kids. It doesn't make any sense. So when this, you know, these are the types of messages

that I would imagine would resonate, you know, and as I'm reading up on it, they're saying, well, El Cair is struggling a bit in Detroit and he lost Detroit to Haley Stevens when he was doing. That seems like the kind of message that would resonate completely and totally in communities that have been suffering. So is your message resonating there? Are you surprised that there's still this conversation about, well, geez, Mike Rogers is going to do great. Mike Rogers is the opponent that you're running against is going to do better in Detroit than people thought he would. What's going on there that makes this message maybe not resonating in the same way?

Let me say three things about that. First, it's easy to manufacture a narrative online if you want to. There you go. That's the easy to manufacture narrative for somebody. like Mike Rogers. He opened up, what, 16 days left in the election, opens up a Detroit office, invites a whole bunch of suburbanites to come and open a forum. Okay. Are you suggesting, sir, that the narrative I've been reading about in the papers may not be accurate? I am intimating that it may, in fact, not be accurate. What? Well, that is it. The second thing is,

you know, in my primary, we got out spent 11 to 1, 70 million dollars spent against us. That is a record spent in the primary. In the primary. This is two Democrat. This is Democrat on Democrat. violence, $70 million spent against another Democrat. $70 million. Holy shit. So why do they spend that money? It's not just like, you know, shits and giggles. It's not like they're just having fun spending that money.

They spend that money because it's effective. And if you look at the ads that they ran, it was an ad arguing that President Obama had endorsed against me and took an op-ed that I wrote 15 years ago about the let's move campaign from the First Lady intimating that somehow I'm disrespectful to women because I wrote an op-ed with a few critiques about that program, saying it's a good program, but you here's some limits on the program. So it was, it was $70 million spent specifically to break my relationship with the community. And I was up 20 points on July 4th, headed into a month before the primary, and then they spent that much money. And I still took 40% of the black vote. Now,

here's the thing about it. If you look at dollars per vote spent, right? And if you take the argument that advertising works, well, I think our narrative is pretty good. The problem is that far fewer people heard that than they heard the mis and disinformation about me in a, Tack ads. Let me ask you a question, though, because I hear this sometimes a lot. Is there anything, though, that you did or that you said that you thought, actually, that was a mistake, and it did, it did cause some conflict or friction with between the black community? Because there are real issues there between the Arab community and the black community, things that you might have said that, you know, might have rubbed them the wrong way. Like, the spends in those things, I, I, I,

understand it can be tough, but what are some of the things that you think could have gone, could have gone better that you had done? Look, I've been leading with black folk in the city Detroit, almost my whole public service career. City of Detroit, rebuilt the health department there. Wayne County served in the county. And my work, I hope, speaks to what my intentions and my work is about. That being said, right, there are a lot of sources of tension too often. If you're in the city of Detroit and you interact with somebody who looks like me, it's not a good experience. It's behind bullproof glass in a gas station or a party store. You're being cat-called. You're being denied a bathroom. You're being sold goods that nobody should be eating.

You're saying in terms of like small business owners that, I mean, there's always tension in communities between small business owners that don't look like the community and the community that is going there. And it's even bigger. Like I would argue that, you know, a lot of these business owners have not done what they needed to do to build relationships and have been deeply disrespectful, if not racist, in these communities. And I've tried to be on the right side of those issues. You know, when I was health director, both in Detroit and Wayne County, I worked to hold a lot of these folks accountable. At the same time, right, like most folks haven't interacted with me, but they probably have interacted with one of those folks. The other thing I'll tell you

is that, you know, in the 2024 election, the question of uncommitted became a serious issue. Break that down a bit. So for people that are listening that don't understand, there was in the 2024 election a large portion of the community in Michigan that felt that Gaza was not being addressed. Right. And it was about the primary. Right. It was about an uncontested primary where President Biden, frankly, shamefully, backstop the genocide in Gaza. And folks wanted to send a message. And frankly, they borrowed from the political tactics of the community, of the black community. when it came to apartheid in South Africa. They said, look, we are not going to abide this, watching our tax dollars go to kill, for some people, their cousins, literally. And so the community said, look,

we're going to vote uncommitted in the primary. And at that point, it was a closed primary, nobody else was running against the president. And then, you know, I supported uncommitted for a reason because I wanted to send a message to my own party. I'd run for governor in 2018. It's not my first time. I wanted to send a message to the president,

party. Now, after President Biden dropped and Vice President Harris became the nominee, I endorsed her the next day. I was the first Arab Muslim leader to do it. And I endorsed her because I knew whether you saw this from the eyes of a child in Gaza or the eyes of a child in Detroit, that Trump would be worse. And I spent a very, very frustrating 106 days, both on the phone with Arab and Muslim leaders trying to be like, guys, don't you remember the first thing he did when he got elected last time? It was a whole old Muslim ban. And then also on the phone with the Harris administration being like, hey, there needs to be some daylight between the president's policies and this campaign's policies. And in the end, there was no budging and we saw what happened.

But I tried to be on the right side of that both times, both times. So you're balancing that. So the idea is they feel like by putting uncommitted, you might have hurt Kamala Harris's chances there. And so the black community might feel like, all right, that guy wasn't a good soldier for us when we needed him. Right. that his issue was more important. Except for, I personally was,

whereas a lot of folks who looked like me were not, right? And I, again, I endorsed the vice president. In fact, the vice president endorsed me. She came and campaigned with me in this general election just about a month ago. And then all that flips around, and now you've got a problem

with the Jewish vote in Michigan. It's a very complex little dance that everybody has to do. And the thing that you'll get with me is in the end, I'll always side on, principle, right? On principle, I endorsed uncommitted. On principle, I endorsed the vice president when she ran. And on principle, I oppose our unconditional foreign military aid to foreign governments

generally. Like, and it's not just Israel. It's Egypt. It's Saudi Arabia. It's Pakistan. It's Jordan. And I, you know, when it comes to the question. Well, it's also the autocracies. Like, you know, these are all military obligations in places where democracy does not live. That and, and, and, you know, it's like we are so incoherent and so hypocritical when it comes to our foreign policy, right? Even just take the question of Israel on its own terms. Every single president has said that they support a two-state solution. And we are out here aiding, arming, and abetting,

the very government that wants to foreclose on the second state telling us that we are supporting a two-state solution. I'm like, no, we're not. We are actually actively not. There is a full on genocide in Gaza. There's full on apartheid in the West Bank. Our tax dollars subsidize it. So when you speak with that, and I appreciate the candor, obviously,

and so much is made of the semantics of this. But when does principle that you stand on and moral courage get in the way of empathy or understanding of different communities that you stand on? you have to balance in your home state of Michigan. Because your passion for it is so clear, but if I'm from Michigan, I might think, why do I give a shit about that anyway? Well, John.

Bring it. Look. Bring it. Detroit Public Schools. Yes, sir. Just had $700 million invested in their buildings. Now we're getting somewhere. Come on.

They owe. They still, right, are behind $1.8 billion. We just authorized $2.8 billion. of 2,000-pound bombs for a foreign government. And a 2,000-pound bomb never gave a kid in education. It never fed somebody, never provided health care. So, you know, people are like, oh, well, Abdul cares more about the West Bank. I'm like, no, I don't.

The money that we are spending to subsidize apartheid in the West Bank is money that should be used on the West Side. That's our money. It should be spent here. We got a $1.5 trillion defense budget that we're working out. And wars we shouldn't be fighting. Why? Right.

Right? Because our ostensible ally came and lobbied for a war that they had clear wariums in. Right. It's like if you're walking with your friend in the woods and there's a bear and your friend pokes the bear

and now you're running from the bear you're like, yeah, well, who's more dangerous? The bear or my friend? I'm just like, and what kind of friend put you in a position where you're now fighting a bear?

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Trees.com code TWS. Now's the perfect time to plant. Let's grow together. Use TWS to save today. Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. Your opponent, Mike Rogers, holds a special place of disdain in my life. You and me both. Well, I'll tell you why. And it goes along with this. It's this paper patriotism of guys that claim the mantle of I love the... the troops, I respect, never forget the heroes in 9-11. This guy, Mike Rogers, was a real pain in our ass in 2010.

We were trying to get the Zedroga Act, which was for 9-11 first responders in their health care through Congress. And he was a particularly obstinate, oh, that's just a New York problem. He voted against it all while talking about how much he respects. and the heroes of 9-11 and I'm a patriot and all that. And it was all bullshit. And I cannot tell you, he holds a special place along with like Senator Mike Lee, the same kind of bullshit of never forget the heroes of 9-11. And this country was attacked.

We got to stand up. And we're the patriots and we're the patriotic party. And he stood in the way of these individuals that he called heroes, getting the health care that they needed based on the selfless heroism that they just blade down and I love. So I, and I apologize for the rant on that, but man, does that hold a special contemptuous place in my heart for individuals like that, truly? And John, I got to, I got to credit to you for your incredible activism in standing for folks. No, no credit to me. Believe me, it was all these other guys, but I'm telling you. There are a lot of folks, but you helped lead the fight. He was a, he was a

problem in that fight. I mean, this is who he is, though. He lacks the moral ability. to hold himself accountable for his own positions. And so he can both lie to you and say that he is a real patriot and he would never, ever, ever fail our first responders and then literally look at a first responder who had part of a limb amputated because of his heroism on 9-11 and tell them that I'm actually going to actively vote against your health care because it's a newer problem.

No, that's John. The individual you're talking about, his name is John Feel, and he runs a foundation for his responders in New York, and he was the guy who's, you know, kind of heroic efforts pushed this thing through to its limits. So, yeah, I am very familiar with your opponent. And boy, do I hope that. And it's interesting to me because so much of the campaign, if we're being honest, you know, you're talking a lot about. your background and how it informed your desire for public service. They're talking about your background and how it informs your dual loyalties to America. How so it's, I find it such an interesting dichotomy that as you tell your personal story, it really forms what your desire for public service is. and right now it's being utilized. We'll talk about, you know, you're at a town hall and this young Tommy, we'll call him,

I believe his name was Tommy, asked you to disavow the Muslim Brotherhood. Now, this guy, Tommy, apparently turned out to be a Republican operative who worked for Josh Hawley, Senator Josh Hawley. But what does it say that your opponent is not interested in what part of your immigrant story drove you to service,

but it's the part of your immigrant story that makes you worthy of suspicion? It's that I have, my family has an immigrant story in the first place. And he's going to use that to distract people from the actual issues in this race. Because the actual issues in this race are that the guy who called him up and asked him to run, Donald Trump, took us to a war. We had no business fighting. And now you're paying for it both in your taxes and at the pump and at the grocery store.

there's a tariff war with Canada because he's got a vanity campaign against the prime minister of Canada. And so now we're getting tariffed through our teeth, $5,600, what we're paying in Michigan on average. And people should know, Michigan and Canada, I mean, when you cross the border from Michigan to Canada, it's not like an international trip. It's like going from, you know, New York to New Jersey. Like, it's like crossing a state border. It's exactly. I mean, Detroit is the only place in the country you can go south to go to Canada. That's how intertwined.

we are. And, you know, and now we're paying for it. And he, I mean, he has the audacity. This is a crazy thing. He has this ad that Debbie Stabenow ran in the early 2000s, standing in front of Windsor on the Detroit River, talking about how much more expensive prescription drug prices are here than there, except for he voted four times against prescription drug reimportation. I'm like, my guy, you did that. That was your policy. And so he is just, Maybe it's like the hypocrisy of the thing. He doesn't want to talk about how hard it is to see a doctor. He doesn't want to talk about air and water.

He doesn't want to talk about any of these things. So instead, he just points to me and my name. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are in on the act. They're doing all of this because they don't want to actually talk about their policies. And they think they've got red meat. The thing they don't get is that I don't back down. And I don't, I'm not afraid of who I am. I know exactly who I am.

And for years, I wrestled with the idea of whether or not I could even do this because of my name. And at some point, here's the thing about it. I was raised by my dad and my stepmom, Jackie, okay, daughter of the American Revolution from the middle of state. Jackie? Jackie, right? And, you know, grandparents are Jan and Judy Johnson. Jackie El-Sayed.

Jackie El-Said, right? And the irony of it is this. My, I have a little brother whose name is Osama. Long story, right? So my parents named me. He gave me 11 letter first name. They were like, we're going to do a lot, something a lot easier. And so 1992 rolls around.

And they're like, we're going to name him, Sam. with O on the front and A on the back. And then that asshole in Saudi Arabia went and ruined it for him. But here's the funny thing. My brother, Osama, I'll say it. Okay. Osama, he, he literally is a blood descendant of Abigail Adams. Oh, that's wild.

But that's America, right? Like, that is America. And there are small-minded people who want to make America small like them. America has always been big, particularly in Michigan. Michigan, people don't realize this is a microcosm of America. You got Detroit. You got, you got Dearborn, you got Grand Rapids. And then you've got places like Cairo or places like Iron Mountain or places like Escanamo.

Now, I'm not familiar with any of those, Iron Mountain. Where's that? There are tiny little towns. I was just in the last three days. Yeah. Where we had like, by the way, 500 or 600 people in every one of those rooms. And the thing about it is that, Michiganers are this rare combination of being gritty and earnest. Right. And we expect the best and give the best, but we're willing to work. We just don't like being exploited by people.

And a little overly nice for my taste. When I've been up there, the niceness almost starts to feel like sarcasm after a while. You're like, wait. Sometimes sometimes it is sarcasm, John. Yeah. Oh, all right. I knew it. I knew it.

A Midwest nice. But look, but this is the thing about it. Like, people are good people. And I've been a guy named Abdul in Michigan almost my whole life. And I know that Michiganders are a lot bigger than what J.D. Vance and Donald Trump and Mike Rogers want to make them out to be. And so they're going to keep pointing to my name and my family. faith and we're going to keep pointing to your gas prices, the price at the grocery store, the ability to see a doctor. And I think we're going to win that exchange. And I think we're

going to win that exchange because Michiganers are sick and tired of being told that they're too small. And our vision of Michigan is a big Michigan where people reach across divides. And we're going to keep believing and betting on that Michigan. And I feel pretty good about what we can accomplish if we do bet on that. Let me ask you, if you're reflecting on the challenge to close this thing out, is do you have more? difficulty right now convincing those that may cast suspicion at someone named Abdul al-Sayed from let's say the Republican side or maybe even from the Democratic side if we're being honest or do you think you have more of a challenge of firing up those in

Detroit or in you know traditional Democratic constituencies that that might not come out in the same numbers because they're concerned about either your rhetoric with Israel or that you haven't done enough to win over the black vote. Like where would you say are the biggest challenges then for you as you close down these final two weeks? Can I try to reframe the question? Please. And I've seen you do this.

I've seen you reframe questions and now I'm going to look like a chump. No, no. You're going to look great. I think in politics, you know, you're asking, two questions, one that's obvious and one that's less obvious. Yes. The first one is, what do you say you're going to fight for? What do you about? I want money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all. But the second question is the one where most politicians trip up. It's, how do I know you're going to fight for it? And what we're doing here to answer your question, both questions,

which is the harder part, what we're doing here is just demonstrating that you can throw as much money from big tech in big pharma and big AI and the utilities and the insurance companies and APAC at me as you want but I am going to stand pat on my positions because it's what I believe and I think whether you're somebody who's trying to decide you know what's this Abdul al-Said about can I trust somebody named Abdul al-Said well I see him taking it on the chin not for what he stands for but but just for who he is and I see him standing strong but there are legitimate So, but that gets me to my point. There are legitimate possible concerns in the black community and in the Jewish community

that have nothing to do with your name, things you've said, other things, that you will have to convince them that they have no need to fear your candidacy. So it's not all, I don't want to, and this is just to push back and say, I don't want to give you the easy way out. No, but the other side of it is, this is a binary choice. Well, it's a three-part choice. Do you just stay home? Okay.

Or do you support this guy named Abdul Al-Said? Or do you support the guy who is a sock puppet to Trump? And two out of those three choices bias for Trump. But you don't want to be the lesser of two evils. You want to be the affirmative choice. I want to be the affirmative choice. But for a lot of people, the only way I prove to you what I'm about in the long-term is to show you what I've done, which I've tried to do.

And to show you after six years of my service, what I've done. I can't do that yet. The six years of my service comes next. But I also can remind you what Donald Trump is actively doing and what Mike Rogers has done for 14 years while he was in Congress. And you talked about some of it. That's just part of what his record has been. And so the question I'm answering always is, what are you going to fight for and how do I know you're going to fight for it? And I think if you recognize that in this moment, you are paying way too much for gas and groceries because of Donald Trump, you are paying way too much to see a doctor or to have your prescription drugs because of the choices of Donald Trump and his party.

Do you think Abdul is going to credibly fight against those things? I'm showing you every day that I will. And I think that is about making an affirmative choice. And I think that choice is both why we're getting such huge crowds and enthusiasm in communities that they say that Democrats shouldn't even waste their time with, but we go to and we speak in and we take questions in. And also why I'm hearing every. every single day from both black and Jewish Michiganders

and from Michiganers who are part of the party who say, I cannot wait because I know who you're going to be in office because you're showing me who you are right now because you're not backing down, you're not triangulating, you're not telling me what you think I want to hear, you are standing up and fighting for the things that we need and deserve. And that's the best I can do.

When you go into a room and maybe it's a skeptical room, and I don't know if you've had that experience, Have you had the experience where you've walked into a room? Of course. What is that, have you been able to turn that skepticism around? What have been kind of the fulcrums and levers that allow you to do that? And what is that, what does that feel like as that coalesces? You know, there's this thing that too often people in my party do, which is like they show up in pander.

They use the words. And I've been pander to. I'm, you know, I'm a, well, every politician is. Every politician, you know, but this is the thing I actually don't. do. Like, I've gone into rooms and we have this town hall. You're like, you're like Bill Burr when it goes into a room if that just starts ripping the crowd apart. No, I'm not trying to rip the crowd apart, but like, you know, it was a room full of very skeptical Jewish Michiganders. Okay. And in my, in like right near my hometown, I grew up in a heavily Jewish commuter. I'm really grateful for that.

I mean, Judaism and the Jewish people, incredible contributions to Michigan to America. Judaism is a beautiful faith. I mean, you know, the holidays. The faith is. The faith is. The holidays could be a little bit of a drag sometimes. Well, that's on, that's on you to decide. But, like, I've, I've enjoyed what I've been able to participate in. All right. What I knew, it was a very icy room. Right.

But when the question around my commitment to Jewish safety, which is sacrosanct, because the commitment to Jewish safety is a commitment to safety for any of us. It's the ability to practice your faith as you choose. And, you know, somebody who's a Muslim who's being attacked for my faith, like, I don't want anybody to attack for their faith. I'm Jewish and they're mad at me. Fair. I mean.

So you can imagine. I can imagine. And so, you know, I'm in that room and I told folks, I'm like, look, I'm going to tell you straight up what I believe. And you are straight up going to disagree with me. But I want you to know something. Where I agree with you, I'm going to be honest, specific, and direct. And where I disagree with you, I'm going to be honest, specific, and direct.

Because in the end, I don't want anything but honesty and directness. I want you to understand where I stand. And I want you to decide where you stand relative to me. And I'll tell you this. if the issues of preserving our democracy or standing up for reproductive rights or standing up for LGBTQ rights or standing up against tyranny

or standing up to Donald Trump in these insane tariffs in this ridiculous war if those issues are bigger then you know what you're getting somebody who is going to stand up and fight back if the issue of Israel is bigger then you know what you're getting I am going to tell you what I think

I'm not afraid of what I believe but the choice has to be yours what I think people are used to is a politician coming behind closed doors and being like, hey, yeah, yeah, well, you know, let me tell you what I think you want to hear. I just say that to them, but you guys, here's what they're true.

Yeah, but I don't want you to ever think because what that means then is that even where you disagree with me, you knew I had the courage to tell you what I thought. So when it comes down to the issues that you agree with me on, you're going to be like, well, he has the courage to step up and fight. That's the best I can offer. Really, that's the best I can offer. And this is the problem.

You know how many times I've been in a room? Like, it's in Iftar, okay? and it's during Ramadan. For those who don't. Iftar is the meal that happens after the fast. The break fast after Ramadan, right? And so you'll have very well-meaning politicians who come in and say, you know,

I fasted in solidarity with you. I'm like, solidarity, there's food right here. I don't need your solidarity. It's not like I'm starving, okay? Like, we've got good food. It's delicious food. It's probably the best meal you've got to have all week. I don't need your solidarity

when it's here in this space and we're about to eat delicious food. I need your solidarity when people are coming for folks to try to take away the religious liberties or people who look like me or pray like me are getting bombed by our tax dollars, that's when I need your solidarity. Right? Don't you tell me that you're in solidarity with me when it's easy.

I need solidarity when it's hard. And what I'm trying to prove out is, look, I am going to tell you what I believe and I'm going to stand Pat. So on the vast majority of issues on which we agree, you know where I stand. And you know I'm going to go fight for him because I had the courage to tell you where I disagreed with you. And that's the thing too few politicians do. So it goes back to that point that I'm making.

There's two questions that everybody. he's asking about a politician. Number one, what do you say you're going to fight for? And two, how do you know you're going to fight for it? Hey, everybody. It's the fall. You know that. You've seen leaves are turning.

There's a little bit of nip in the air. But for me, the fall is a particularly consequential period of time. And I'm going to tell you what. In the springtime, it is the Robin Redbreast that signifies renewal. And it signifies a return to the earth for so many creatures. and for me, the signal of fall, more than Halloween, is the putting on of my fall bombus. This fall, I cannot urge this enough. Get the best socks that are out there, and that is bombus.

They'll get you through. They've got marino wool socks for the cold nights. They've got sport socks for sweat so that you're not bringing stinky dogs into the house. Swayed moccasins for, I'm going to say, I don't really know why you would wear suede moccasins. You probably can't wear them for that many activities, but they've got them because they've got everything. Because fall is the time of year where you treat your feet.

Head over to bombus.com slash weekly and use code weekly for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash weekly, code weekly, at checkout. It's very interesting to me that, and look, this is also a point. part and product of the aggregator system of the internet and it's looking for these moments. But a lot of this stuff I see on you, you know, in my general travails as I'm flipping through things, is will you disavow Hassan Piker? Will you disavow the Muslim Brotherhood? Will you judging you by a variety of things that are kind of associative and not affirmative in terms of what you said?

is that the experience that you've also been having or am I getting a much more skewed vision of what you are experiencing? You know, John, I've been on a town hall tour for the last two weeks. It took me to 10 different communities. A variety of communities, rural city, but okay. Rural, urban. But the questions that I get asked by media almost have nothing to do with the questions that I get asked in the room.

Really? Total disconnect. Total disconnect. And I'll have a whole gaggle, like a whole press gaggle right after. Right. And the folks in the room are asking me about AI. They're asking me about health care. They're asking me about rights.

They're asking me about how you're going to work with Republicans. Tell me about your leadership style. They're asking me substantive questions because they're making a decision about who they want their next U.S. center to be. And then I'll do a gaggle afterwards. And it's all of these gotcha questions made for clicks on the media. And I'll just, I'll tell you, look, I hosted a podcast. right i've i've i've done this thing and i believe in the role of the media but part of the reason

people don't trust media anymore is because it becomes so disconnected from their actual lives and it's made for the entertainment well it's part of the reason why also they don't trust government right because they they see that government policy is also disconnected from their lives and that's the thing that they're getting with me i think is that when i stand in front of you and i take open questions. We don't screen questions. People are realizing that like, wait, this is a guy who did work in government to try to make it work, solving medical debt, putting glasses on kids, making sure kids weren't exposed to let in their schools, like, that's important stuff I actually agree with and I want him to do. And they're, you know, asking him all these questions in the press and he

keeps coming, bringing it back to, yeah, but you can't afford your gas, you can't afford your groceries. People don't, you know, can't see a doctor? And they're all like, yes, yes, yes. Okay, fine. but can we talk about Israel for the 15th time? And you're like, we can, but the thing I keep trying to tell you about that is, I don't want my tax dollar subsidizing a foreign military when it could be used to subsidize kids' schools. And they're like, yes, but you're evading the question.

I'm like, no, I'm actually answering the question that most people care about. You just want to hunt for clicks. Do you see it, is there any kind of synchronicity between, is the media able to shape those narratives to the point where you begin to feel them in your interactions with regular, people that you're going going around like as you see the news cycle focus on piker or israel or

Muslim brotherhood or any of those things does that bleed into or do you see the downstream effects of advertising in your interactions with people the advertising definitely you hear you do here okay well is it true that you're is it is it true that you're going to and you're like well let me let me just speak to number one who's funding that and number two what my actual position is but more often than not, right, the sort of gotcha click-baity stuff in the media, specifically in interviews, if anything, people come up to me even when they disagree with me. Like, I've had multiple Trump voters who are like, you know, I saw that interaction with Tommy. And thank you for standing up. Tommy. By the way, I love that. I love that he's just named like Tommy, just a random

boy who stood up in the back, a little Dennis the menace of a child to ask a question. Dude's a Republican. operative implant named Tommy. Actually, you'd be surprised how many people actually know that about him now? Oh, no, that it, yeah. They know what he is. And then they'll also say, look, I saw you on CNN. I saw you on MS now. I saw you on Fox News.

I saw you on whatever. And they kept trying to get you on this thing. And you know what? Like, you kept bringing it back to me. So thank you. And so in some respects, it's funny because like when the camera shuts off and we're all off the record, I'm like, how did you think that interaction was going to go? Right.

Like, because here's the thing about it. is going to get clipped, and then it's going to go on the internet, and then everyone's going to kind of look at that and be like, you know, that guy's actually just talking about me, and you keep trying to make him talk about everything else. And what people think I'm going to do is there, I'm going to back down, or I'm going to give, I'm going. Like, no, I know what I'm here to fight for. I'm here to fight for affordable gas groceries, the ability to see a doctor, I want money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all. That's what I'm here to talk about. If you want to make me talk about foreign policy, I will, but I'm going to

talk about it with respect to where our tax dollars are going and where they should be going. Right. And, and, you know, the hard part about it is there is this sort of assumed thing. I mean, let's just step back. We've got these, these bipartisan consensus in politics. And then you've got public consensus. Wait, we do. Right. But like, but here's the thing. This is what makes it so weird. The broad public generally agrees that the government should be giving us or guaranteeing us health care. Right. Both parties don't. So why is the difference? pharma money insurance money hospital money

same issue with foreign policy so i think one of the biggest issues though is if you really want to look you know on a macro level at what these forces at play are i think we have to look at the supreme court decisions there's been three areas where they've made decisions on money in politics they've made decisions on

uh you know executive power and they've made decisions on defining corruption a variety of decisions in all three of those areas that I think have made our democracy really much more vulnerable than it needs to be because it allows for all the influences that you're talking about. You're exactly right. And it's why my first, my first point is always money out of politics. People say that how, how do, can I ask you a question? Is there a possibility why,

who can introduce an amendment? And I don't really know how the process works. I know you can introduce amendments. Does it have to come from a state? Why doesn't a state introduce an amendment to the Constitution that makes these changes? I don't understand why partisan gerrymandering is allowed. I don't understand why Elon Musk can spend $500 million to avoid paying taxes to get, you know, it's just, it's incredible to me. So why do you think there hasn't been a process to try and amend the Constitution?

based on that because clearly the process exists. I mean, I think too often, I hate to say it, but there's, again, both parties play at that game. And I would love to see us do it. The other thing I'll tell you is I actually think that if we passed a law, thinking about belt and suspenders when it comes to Citizens United, like just a law to push back and make an act of Congress that says. But they've tried.

I mean, McCain-Feingold was sort of the reason why all those Citizens United Bills came out. You know, the reason why I say it is it looks like the law would be declared unconstitutional, which is why I think you have to approach it from the level of an amendment. It's the only reason why I say that. But I agree with you on the other if that would work. But overturning it feels like it would need an amendment, not another piece of legislation. What if, what if, though, the way you thought about it, you said, okay, fine. You know, if the Supreme Court has interpreted the 14th Amendment to say that a corporation is a person

and money of speech, what if they, what if any support from a super PAC triggered equal opposite public funding? Fine. We're not taking away your, your right to speak as a corporation. Flood it more.

Yes, there's just going to be public funding that trucks in and says, look, like this is going to undo some of that. I just don't, then I think you're talking about public funding that is upwards of $10 billion for each electric. I just don't, I don't think it's tenable on just,

the nature of the amount of spending. I think we have to find a limit somehow. I would propose a constitutional amendment that limits election seasons to a certain amount of time, spending to a certain amount of limit, takes away partisan gerrymandering, and doesn't allow for, you know, the people that don't want any of their power.

I'm talking about, you know, the technocrat class, any of their power regulated, removes their ability to create this vicious cycle, where they get to buy political outcomes that they want. We have to do something. Let's do it. Look, even when I get elected, let's go do it. Let's go.

Money out of politics. I mean, look, I want to try any and everything that addresses the fact that our politics are bought and sold. Yeah. Right. And, you know, I know it intimately. I'm seeing it happen to us. I mean, by the time this is done,

there's never going to have been a candidate in Michigan history who's had more money spent against them. Primary and otherwise. Right. Upwards of $300 million. Primary general. Can I ask all. So, you know, $70 million on the primary.

And I know Haley Stevens, she endorsed you immediately. I'm grateful for that. And said all that. How important is that healing process within? Because the Democrats are going to be going through a type of kind of civil war, tug, you know, tug of war back and forth as to, you know, what direction they're going to go in. Because right now they're, you know, sort of rudderless and relying on individuals. What is that process like?

And when you go through this bruising primary season, how do you put that back together again? And how do you guys move forward in a more united? Was that a difficult process? And I know she hasn't really been out there that much. You haven't campaigned together. What are the residual downstream effects of that? Well, she's been out there campaigning for us, which I really appreciate it. And we're in the point of the campaign now where everyone's kind of fanning out and hitting as many people as they can.

But, you know, it's a recognition that whatever differences we have and there are real differences the risk of Trump and Trumpism are so much worse. Mike Rogers is going to be a check on that. And it's a recognition that, all right, we had a good scrimmage to decide who the starting team is going to be. And now let's go shoot up on Friday night because this is where we need to go. Now, look, we're going to have an internal party discussion, of course, about who we are and who we want to be.

And my hope is that we come out of this election season saying, hey, when we stick to principle and we're clear on our principle, when we step aside from corporate and special interest money, when we can speak directly to the issues of working people, the power of a union and the need to provide health care, we can win elections. We can win elections anywhere. And what we're proving in Michigan is that actually, you know, if you look at the polling, I do better among Republicans than any other statewide candidate running right now. Why? Because say what you will about me. You might not agree with me on everything, but you know I'm not bought off and you know I'm telling

you what I think. And I think it's just really important for us to be recognizing that actually the difference in our politics isn't red and blue, right? The difference in our politics is people who are locked out versus the people doing the locking out. And I always want to be on the side of the folks who are locked out. And I think Democrats need to be the people who are always on the side of the people who are being locked out against the people locking them out. Well, I very much appreciate you being here and taking the time. You know, we all see, it looks like it's going to be quite close. I imagine, I don't know if you guys have internal. I mean, I don't even know what polling does anymore. It seems like, you know, I remember in the primary, it looked, you know, the polls were saying it's

Syed in a blowout, and then it was really, really close. So I don't know if you're having a fear of that also happening in the general, or if you have internal numbers that line up differently. But how are you feeling about it going into these final two weeks? We feel strong only because we're seeing support in pockets we didn't expect, and a lot of support in pockets we do expect. We're going to fight for every vote. You know, I don't trust any polls. There is no resting on laurels. We are going to burn through the last 14 days. And in the end, we're going to look up and see what happened. but Michiganers are good people. They deserve a lot better than they've gotten.

They deserve way better than being exploited by a billionaire from New York or a millionaire from Florida. And we're building a campaign that has been true to our ideals. I'm proud of the campaign we've run. We're going to keep running and fighting for every single vote to the end. That's what I trust in. I don't trust in polls. Well, Godspeed, sir.

Godspeed. Thank you. And I really appreciate you being here and taking the time to talk to us. Dr. Abdul-El-Syad, Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan. a Mishigander. Thank you. Appreciate you down. Thank you. Folks, you know, this company, admit mobile.

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I really hope they speed that up. Oh, for fuck sake. I forgot to ask him if he disavows the Muslim Brotherhood. Oh, fuck. Damn it. Why don't I think of that? We'll never know. God, I'm so stupid.

He was right there. While we're here, do you guys disavow the Muslim Brotherhood? He was sitting right there. What are you, Tommy? Let's all just disavow it while we can. But it is so interesting because it, it points to a couple things. One is the absolutely skewed perspective that we get from the national and aggregate media

culture. Yes. Which, I mean, it, like, it must feel like bizarre a world. Yeah. The fact that he said, though, that that doesn't really trickle down to the race is interesting, but that advertising really does matter. Yeah. And I think it reminds me of when we had Mikey Cheryl on and there was like that terrible

ad that was running in New Jersey. That was just like, she literally was giving an example of something she would not do. And they clipped it and were like, she wants to do that. No, I thought, can I tell you? Because I'm in New Jersey, like, and I was selling all the ads, I was like, oh, she's not going to win. Like, those ads made me really nervous. And the fact that she blew them out was a real shock. Yeah.

Let's hope for that again, just one year ago. But it's funny because beyond that idea of like the skewing of the national media and media in general looking for like only conflict points or only things that can travel virally. But compare that to when he describes his immigrant story and you start to see the reason he is why he is was the pressure of. of recognized sacrifice getting to this country and the opportunity that was going to be presented him and him not wanting to fuck that up and squander it versus how his immigrant background is used by the other side as a mode of suspicion.

And I thought he gave a great answer on that early in the campaign where he was like, I think a lot of people can put trust in somebody that looks like me because I think a lot of people are used to having doctors that look like me. And I was, yeah. Right. Depending on your HMO, sure.

That's right. If you have insurance, yeah. Yes, if you have that. Emergency room is a different experience. Yes. But you also see like he's a prickly dude. Well, I mean, holy shit. What he's dealing with.

Yes. While doing research for this episode, there was a lot of moments where I literally said to myself, oh my God, just the things that have been thrown at him. Yes. But I fucking love his bite back. I really do. You got it because it is beyond the pale. I do wonder, you know, how effective it is because they wouldn't do it if it wasn't in some ways.

Look, they don't have much to run on. But unless they thought it was somewhat persuasive that the appeal to the unknown dark man is in a, like, they must think, well, it's got to be worth something. Absolutely. It's how Trump and Vance got elected, to be honest. And it's not a dog whistle. It's like a loud fucking whistle that they are whistling. And it's, what was so interesting to me is when you talked about the difference between what they ask him, people that live in Michigan in the town halls, and then what they ask him right afterwards from the reporters that are there. I mean, maybe it's just the media that I get or from where I'm sitting, but they seem a lot more interested in asking him to, you know,

know, disavow, Hassan Piker, disavow. That's all I see. Then they actually feel about asking anyone else answer for a president. By the way, that is, that is ice. Yeah, coming for me. And they're coming for it. No, we know it's not ice because ice. No siren.

Yes. Just like a weird, you know, you know. No siren, no name tag. Right. Just a camry, an unmarked camry that drives up and four guys in masks come out. by the way they always say like you know when they say they we had to shoot the guy we were looking for because he tried to get away from us and you're like right because to the person in the car four random people with guns just ran up on me with no identification or no anything else so I'm getting the fuck out of there yeah you can use a little signage buddy yeah it'll be it'll be really interesting I'm I'm in a little bit of a dark hole about the election are you in in the sense that will there be any price to pay for the Republican Party in general for acquiescing to the abject recklessness and, you know, megalomaniacal instincts of this guy that's more interested

in building ballrooms and monuments than making measured decisions and getting us into a reckless war and just throwing out impulsive tariffs that drive cause? Like, will there be any, is there anything that can happen? I have an anecdote about this, actually. Gillian, thank God. I am going to sound like the New York Times. I was literally in a diner. Is this a trend?

I was in a diner that is technically in the middle of this country, okay? All right. Whether it's blue or red, I won't say. I assume you were there fact-finding. You were not there on your own volition. I was on a fact-finding mission. Is it New America? It's New America.

I was in New America. Uh-huh. And I, as I'm sitting down at my table, a man who's like in his 60s or 70s, he's getting up with his wife. And what I hear him say in a draw, which I don't think I have the confidence to perform, but I'll say what he said. I'll do it for you. Tell me what to say.

He said, I don't like anything Trump's doing and none of them stand up to him so I can't vote for the party anymore. That is all I heard this man say. Wow. And I said, I was like, we can go. I don't need. I heard exactly what I wanted to. to hear. It confirmed everything I need. Have you ever had one of those moments like where you're sitting on the beach and it's like 6.45 at night and the sun is just setting and it's that perfect

moment. And then all of a sudden a dolphin swims by and you're like, did somebody cue that? This is the simulation. That sounds like they were in there and then they go, a couple number one, get up, say your line. Cue the dolphin. Move past. Yeah. It was. I was, I was, I heard exactly what I needed. So I can sleep easy at night. From your mouth to God's ears. I hope at some level that there's not a one of them that deserves to be reelected because of their passivity in the face of recklessness. 100%. I think they're nervous. I really do. I have this sense that they're slightly nervous. Yeah. Like Trump going to Kansas. Like they're just, there's something about that I'm, I'm feeling

optimistic. I hope so. I, you. You know, I've just because, as we talked earlier, I think the national media is so disconnected from the reality of things that all they care about is the horse race and creating narratives around blue wave and not blue wave and tsunami. And the polling is always so fucked and so wrong that I just really have no sense. I know the country is hurting, but I also like, my anecdote is, I can't even remember where I was. But it was, I saw a commercial from Texas that is just a woman going, James Talarico wants to make it illegal for you to object to transgender mutilations on children. He wants you to go to jail if you don't agree with him.

I can't vote for that. And you're just like, what the fuck is happening? Now I got to swing. Brittany, what, let's hope the listeners have some questions that pull us out of this morass. John, for the first question, there's an intro. Oh, boy. Is it musical? Is it a draw? Will Jillian perform it? Hopefully not. John, as an up-and-coming musician, does it scare you that AI-generated music can already replace you?

Was that, did I just dance to AI-generated music? You know what's sad? I can never take that back. I just, my body just moved to the dulcet tone. of AI generated music. I apologize to our listeners, to our audience. I found it pleasant and agreeable. It somehow seeped into the synapses in my brain.

It triggered dopamine. I was moving. Many of you can't see it, even if you're watching this on YouTube. My hips weren't lying. They were, and I feel right now only shame. I feel only shame.

The good news is I'm shitty enough as a drummer that you don't need AI to replace me. I can be replaced by a child. No. I can be replaced by a child who's three months into their percussion career. So no worries there. I've listened to music and I'm like, I really like this. And then I'll be like, oh, yeah, this is AI. Yeah, no.

It just sounded like a regular jingle music. Like, listen, if the worst thing that happens to us is, all our jingles are replaced. Yeah. I think we'll consider ourselves lucky. But I don't think that's where it's going. Questions? Kind of gave it away for me.

Yeah, it can't pronounce questions. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Didn't quite sound. Once they, I'm telling you, once I'm telling you, once I started going to Taco Bell and the little box went, hello, what can I help you? Oh, boy. All right. And by the way, won't answer you.

No. They've decided, I think, why. Let's not even create interactive prompts because people are just going to fuck with it. So I do a lot of like, you seem like you're having a good day. No small talk about. Bolognautrophic on the flip side is like if you're mean to Claude, we're banning you. Yeah, no. When you do that, the machine, the AI immediately goes to like, do you want sauces?

Will you be paying with the app? Exactly. Always the first question. What else they want? We touched a bit about on this, but, John, Trump says, quote, the polls are fake. So are we in for another utterly disappointing election? Well, that's whether Trump believes them to be fake or not is not even the question. Could we be in for another disappointing?

I think there is not anyone alive who has not felt the gut punch, the stomach dropping feeling of the floor going out from underneath you. and the lack of equilibrium that you feel when the results, when you are shocked by what you believe your good fellow Americans want to happen in this country. Like that to me is the greatest feeling of disequilibrium is a sense that, oh, these people around me want something I find, not just a policy disagreement, but actually dystopian. Like they actually want to create fear and disorder in communities of immigrants that are just

really, like, that have been here 20, 25 years, just trying to get to work. Like, that's the part that I find. I have trouble reconciling. Can't wait. No. But isn't that, isn't the issue on elections? It's, for me, it's almost never about like, oh, this is going to have policy, you know, disagreements that I'm probably not going to be on board with.

It's the feeling that those around you, that that's what they wanted, that there was a majority of people that said like, oh, no, that grabbing by the pussy guy. Like, that's for me. Yeah, I mean, I think that's why 2016 was so destabilizing for me was I literally felt like I had been, like, lied to my whole life. just about like who we are, that kind of thing. Can I tell you the moment for me, when Hillary Clinton said in the debate with Trump,

America is great because America is good. And you're like, is that? Why are we? And then America was like, no, we're not. Yeah, no, actually, we're not. You know nothing of my work. Right. And you're just like, eh, it's a tautology that doesn't quite ring true.

But the fact that we. we did it again, like that we decided, or some people decided upon doing it again is really kind of where I. And did it again knowing that now those dystopian goals were explicit. Yeah. And after January 6th, like, I'll just never understand the people that thought that that was permissible. That's a great point. I mean, there were so many red lines that you thought like, well, there's just no way. Mm-hmm. So I think that to me is, I think Jillian, the perfect word there was destabilizing.

Yeah, and you're being told this by like Steve Kornacki. I figure if I can't trust a guy whose sleeves are rolled up to here, I mean, A2, Steve Kornacki. Why would anyone roll their sleeves up to here if they weren't going to tell us the truth? I mean, I could understand somebody lying with a sleeve over the wrist. But here? No. With the truth forearm fully exposed?

Unacceptable. More and more disheveled. All right. Last one. John, do you think Trump yells fake news because he can't yell, fuck you? Here's the thing about Trump. He can yell, fuck you. And he's done it.

And he does it all the time. Like, I don't think, I think he just, depending on, you know, he has a variety of responses, like a sort of magic eight ball to think. he doesn't agree with and fuck you is one of the responses and fake news is one of the other magic eight ball responses and he uses them all and it's all part of his kind of deep-seated core belief that he can shape the reality that we all live in and unfortunately he's had more success doing that than we've had convincing him otherwise and that's on us I mean that going back to to your point they're like if after january six he's like oh that's fucking nothing i'll i'll come back

from that and we let it happen well who's shaping the reality who's who's warping reality who's distorting it him or us like you're not delusional when you're the president of the united states that's exactly right so who's living in the distorted reality those of us who believe that those things are disqualifying or those of us who go nah that's not even a speed bump on my path to total domination. Oh, man. Oh, this is fucking terrible. We're having a terrible...

Whatever happened to the... Whatever happened to the fun. Oh, the question. Get out and vote. Please, God, if there's... The people of France are burning down the fucking country because their schools are crumbling. We live in an utter political dystopian reality,

and everybody's like, eh, I don't know. Like, come on. Both sides. Let's demonstrate that we recognize the position, the urgency of now, the urgency of the moment. Yeah. Fuck yeah. Fuck yeah. Control!

All right. Well, thank you guys for, yeah, all right. I'm going to get out of it. I'll get out of it. This is going to be a two-week. Two weeks. It's going to be over so quick. Churchill used to call it the Black Dog.

I'll be visited by the Black Dog over these next. two weeks, which is a kind of a Taylor Swift song. Is Black Dog really a Taylor Swift song? Sure is. Is it about depression? It is. But that's a secret. Oh, that's, it's a whole thing.

It's layers to it. I really got to, you know what, I've got to delve back into the collection and start, and start looking. That's why I'm here. Brittany, that is so, it's one of the small reasons why you're here. You're here for many, many other, but Brittany, how do they get in touch with us? How do they keep us informed? Twitter, we are Weekly Show Pod.

Instagram, threads, TikTok, Blue Sky. We are a weekly show podcast, and you can like, subscribe, and comment on our YouTube channel, The Weekly Show with John Stewart. All right. Thanks again to everybody who helps put this show together. Producer Brittany Mehmedevich, producer Jillian Speer, video editor and engineer Rob Vitolo,

audio editor and engineer Nicole Boyce, our associate producer Rebecca Rotenberg and our executive producers, Chris McShane and Katie Gray. Thank you guys so much, and we'll see you again next week. Bye, bye. The Weekly Show with John Stewart is a comedy show.

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