How Democrats Abandoned the Working Class

Summary

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Podcast Summary: “How Democrats Abandoned the Working Class”

Podcast: Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know
Host: Hasan Minhaj (186k Films)
Guest: John Russell (Reporter, More Perfect Union)
Release Date: August 12, 2026

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Main Theme

This episode explores how the Democratic Party, once synonymous with the American working class, has shifted away from labor-focused policies toward corporate interests—driven by political strategies and economic changes since the 1990s. Hasan engages with John Russell, an on-the-ground labor reporter from More Perfect Union, to unpack how these shifts affect rural and working-class communities, the bipartisan backlash to Big Tech (especially AI data centers), and how political coalitions might be rebuilt.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining the Working Class and Party Shifts

• The Old Democratic Coalition:

  • The Democratic Party's roots with organized labor—through landmark policies like the Wagner Act, Social Security, the minimum wage, Medicare—made the working class central to the party’s identity (05:00).
  • “Places that Democrats could count on, maybe even take for granted. I mean, why would Hillary even need to visit Wisconsin?” — Hasan Minhaj [04:25]

• The Clinton Era Realignment:

  • Bill Clinton pivoted the Democrats toward corporate-friendly, neoliberal policies: deregulation (Glass-Steagall repeal), NAFTA, Welfare Reform, prioritizing Wall Street over workers (05:53–07:15).
  • “It was Hillary Clinton’s husband... who pushed Democrats towards more business friendly practices and away from labor.”—Hasan Minhaj [04:50]
  • Audio flashbacks highlight how these choices were noted—and warned about—even at the time (e.g., Robert Reich, 1994: “We are on our way to becoming a two-tiered society…” [04:15])

• The Fallout:

  • Deregulation and loss of working-class focus led to growing inequality, culminating in the 2008 financial crisis—which the weakened social safety net could not absorb (07:12–08:10).
  • “Thanks to the weakened social safety net... millions of people were pushed into poverty.” — Hasan [07:35]

• Abandoning Labor for the “Suburban Strategy”:

  • Under Obama and especially Hillary Clinton, Democrats increasingly targeted moderate suburbanites, neglecting their historic working-class base—even stating this strategy out loud (see the 2016 Chuck Schumer quote: “For every blue collar Democrat we will lose in western PA, we will pick up two, three moderate Republicans in the suburbs…” [08:58, 30:10])

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2. Who Is the Working Class Today?

• Broadening the Definition:

  • John Russell: The “working class” isn’t just “a white guy in a hard hat”—it means anyone who gets paid for their labor rather than owning capital or equities (19:13–21:31).
  • “If you can’t call Howard Lutnick, you’re working class.” — John Russell [19:16]
  • Hasan summarizes: "You're basically talking about labor that perhaps works for companies... if you are not part of the equities class, you're part of the working class." [19:42]
  • “A million seconds is 11 days. A billion seconds is 32 years... We have a trillionaire, man.” — John Russell [21:28]

• Common Dignity Over Romanticized Jobs:

  • They push back on politicians’ platitudes about “good working-class jobs.”
  • “I think most jobs suck… But what I think we need to focus on is common human dignity.” — Hasan Minhaj [22:10, 23:44]

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3. The Extraction Economy & Rural America

• Historical and Current Exploitation:
  • Rural America is defined by extraction: coal, agriculture, and now—Big Tech’s push for AI data centers (14:46–15:59).
  • “There is such a push to put these things in communities that have already had most of their wealth taken out of there.” — John Russell [15:40]
  • The “Pits” in Ohio: Land used for off-roading, soon slated for a massive data center—galvanizing both left and right in opposition (12:49–14:12).

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4. Bipartisan Anger: The AI Data Center Backlash

• Unexpected Unity:

  • Resistance to AI data centers is a rare, bipartisan issue—farmers, Trump voters, progressives alike (11:11–12:00, 33:03–36:21).
  • “There’s no other issue where the mask has been completely off and the agenda of these companies is totally visible.” — John Russell [34:49]

• Why the Outrage?

  • These projects promise jobs but deliver few, and often siphon critical resources (like water), while further extracting wealth from rural communities.
  • “AI data centers are literally a job killing supercomputer.”—John Russell [36:15]
  • Clip: “...all we get is losing land, water, air quality.” — Community member [11:11]

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5. Media, Identity, and Values

• How Russell Connects Across Political Divides:

  • Approach is values-driven, upfront about politics, rooted in shared economic hardship (“wear my politics on my sleeve”; “I talk left-wing politics in my small town bar...” [17:35])
  • “You have to go deeper than that, to rescue people who are a little too far gone, you have to get back to shared values.” — John Russell [16:11]

• Belief in the Redeemability of Trump Voters:

  • Not all who support Trump are “irredeemable”; many are unified by anti-elite anger and can be reached if approached genuinely (52:17–53:40).
  • “To unwind the level of corporate power we have, you’re going to need everybody who’s in the same boat as you.” — John Russell [53:11]

• Ignorance vs. Bigotry:

  • Distinction drawn between willful bigotry and ignorance exacerbated by media bubbles (44:13–44:30).

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6. Case Studies: From Blair Mountain to East Palestine

• Coalitions in Action:

  • Historical example: Miners’ rebellion at Blair Mountain, WV, a multiracial, armed labor uprising, suppressed today in school curricula (65:15).
  • “The definition of redneck should be... rooted in solidarity in our labor history.” — John Russell [65:15]

• Elliott County, Kentucky:

  • Once the most Democratic county in America (144 years), flipped to Trump after feeling betrayed by Democrats' shift to corporate interests (27:14–28:54).
  • “You can trace through the history... it switched to, you know, Bill Clinton and corporate donors.” — John Russell [28:17]

• East Palestine Train Disaster:

  • Catastrophe and its aftermath as a microcosm of corporate neglect and regulatory capture; bipartisan disillusionment with politicians over hollow promises and inadequate compensation (59:23–64:46).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Hasan on Clinton-Era Democratic Politics:
  “They were like, yeah, Social Security, social. We put it right in the name, bro. Come at us.” [04:00]

• Robert Reich, 1994 (Audio Clip):
  “We are on the way to becoming a two-tiered society composed of a few winners and a larger group of Americans left behind whose anger... is easily manipulated.” [05:18]

• Chuck Schumer (2016):
  “For every blue collar Democrat we will lose in western PA, we will pick up two, three moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia. And you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” [08:58, 30:10]

• Russell on Working-Class Definition:
  “If you can’t call Howard Lutnick, you’re working class.” [19:16]

• Russell on AI Data Centers:
  “AI data centers are literally a job killing supercomputer. That’s what it does. That’s how they sell it on Wall Street. And people know this. There’s no jobs in there, man.” [36:15]

• Hasan on Ignoring Media Binaries:
  “The way this is always framed by the media is a blue versus Red problem. ... But there are ways in which the working class is very united.” [09:55]

• Russell on Coalitions:
  “It is on... the people building that working class movement to reach out to the people who are reachable... because it's strength in numbers.” [53:11]

• On Blair Mountain & Labor Solidarity:
  “This is where striking miners, multiracial, white, black, tied red bandanas... and they were called the redneck army. I think that is what the definition of redneck should be.” [65:15]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Democratic Party’s Working-Class Roots & Clinton Era Shift: [05:00–08:10]
• Suburban Realignment, Schumer’s quote: [08:50, 30:10]
• Defining “Working Class” Today: [19:13–22:05]
• Rural America & Extraction Economy: [14:46–15:59]
• Bipartisan Backlash Against AI Data Centers: [11:11–12:00, 33:03–36:15]
• Building Coalition Across Divides: [16:11–18:13, 52:17–53:40]
• Elliott County, KY Flip: [27:12–28:54]
• East Palestine Disaster Update: [59:23–64:46]
• Labor History & Blair Mountain: [65:15]

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Final Thoughts & Takeaways

• The Democratic Party’s abandonment of deep working-class policies in favor of corporate donors was a decades-long process, with roots in the Clinton administration, the aftermath of deregulation, and rising political dependence on affluent suburbanites—leaving millions feeling politically “homeless.”
• Working-class identity is far broader and more multiracial than stereotypes and current media depict.
• Issues like corporate overreach (especially AI data centers and surveillance tech) are forging unlikely bipartisan coalitions—areas of common ground that could reshape politics if tapped authentically.
• Grassroots, values-first, and face-to-face engagement (not divisive culture wars or party cheerleading) are key to reconnecting with America’s working class and rebuilding meaningful coalitions.
• Political redemption is not only possible but necessary for any effective movement to challenge entrenched corporate power and serve ordinary Americans—regardless of past votes or party labels.

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To Learn More:

• Watch John Russell’s reporting at More Perfect Union
• Look out for future episodes of Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know on Amazon Music or Spotify.

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[A]

it's midterm season and there is one target audience the Democrats are desperately trying to pander to. I'm not talking about Subaru moderates, granola, NPR whites or Cupertino lizard people. I'm talking about the working class. The working class. The working class in the working class neighborhoods. I represent regular working class folks. What has he done for the working class? So who are the working class and why are Democrats so thirsty to prove that they are the true party of working class Americans? Now some terms show up in political discourse gradually, like neoliberalism or polyamory. But working class had a very specific moment. It entered the mainstream 1:35am Eastern Standard Time on November 9, 2016.

[C]

Some big news here, Megan. Huge news, actually. Huge.

[A]

Huge.

[C]

The AP now projecting that Donald Trump

[A]

has won the state of Pennsylvania. That is the race, frankly. It's been almost 10 years since Trump broke through the blue wall, winning Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylv. Liberals suddenly remembered that everyone can vote and it's not just a Capital One rewards perk. For months, the media fanned out across rural America to study working class Trump voters like gorillas in captivity. Like small business owner want banana Me Soledad o' Brien me friend reading hillbilly elegy became doing the work. That book actually shot back to number one a week after Trump's inauguration. Liberal guilt made J.D. vance so famous that depending on how bad Qatari engine, this guy might be president soon.

[C]

The man and woman who raised me,

[A]

mamaw and papaw said we're for Democrats

[C]

because Democrats are for working people. I don't think that's true anymore, my friends.

[A]

Now Grifter Huckleberry Finn is getting at something very real here. Since 2016, there's been a lot of debate around what the working class even means. But it used to be very simple. Working class people got a paycheck, they had a boss, they were probably in a union, and they almost definitely voted Democrat. Ever since FDR and the New Deal back in the 1930s, workers were a core part of Democrats identity as a party. In 1935, FDR signed the Wagner act, which guaranteed workers the right to collective bargaining. Republicans at the time tried to smear it as socialist, but Dems didn't give a fuck. They passed Social Security later that year and were like, yeah, Social Security, social. We put it right in the name, bro. Come at us. In 1938, Democrats created the minimum wage in the 40 hour work week. And in 1965, they started Medicare. This was a party unafraid to fight on the side of workers and against capital. And it made states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which were built on manufacturing and agriculture, Democratic strongholds. Places that Democrats could count on, maybe even take for granted. I mean, why would Hillary even need to visit Wisconsin now? I know what you're thinking. Really Huston, you're going to relitigate 2016 all over again? I'll be honest with you, I feel like relitigating 2016 is kind of hacking as a concept. So what I'm going to do is relitigate the 1990s. It was Hillary Clinton's husband, jazz icon Bill Clinton, who pushed Democrats towards more business friendly practices and away from labor. Bill Clinton's 1992 platform was silent on antitrust and monopoly power, which had been a party playing for Democrats for over 100 years. And the next year he signed NAFTA, which enshrined into law that investor rights would get priority over labor rights. This was all happening as inequality was getting worse and leaving the working class behind, which was totally understood at the time by the people inside the Clinton administration. In fact, this is Clinton's Labor Secretary Robert REICH Speaking in 1994, just a year after NAFTA was signed. My friends, we are on the way to becoming a two tiered society composed of a few winners and a larger group of Americans left behind whose anger and whose disillusionment is easily manipulated. Today the targets of those rage are immigrants and welfare mothers and government officials and gays and an ill defined counterculture. But as the middle class continues to erode, who will be the targets tomorrow? Don't worry, Rob, it's still the same people. But Clinton didn't just stop at NAFTA. In 1996, he signed the Welfare Reform act, ending cash assistance for millions of people in poverty, and then bragged about it in campaign ads.

[C]

He signed tough welfare reform, work requirements,

[A]

time limits, forced teenage mothers to stay

[C]

in school or lose benefits.

[A]

Yeah, Bill, I'm sick of these welfare queens not finishing the Great Gatsby. Here's what's crazy about that ad. Those aren't even black teenagers. Do you know how Republican you have to be to go after white teen moms? Now, once Bill was done handcuffing the working class, he unleashed the investor class, repealing Glass, Steagall and passing the Commodity Futures Modernization act, which basically turned Wall street into a giant casino. Now, there's a reason people look back fondly on the 90s. This actually worked for a while. There were budget surpluses, Economic growth soared. Millions of jobs were created. Housing prices went up and up and up. What could possibly go wrong? Lehman Brothers, a 158 year old firm, filed for bankruptcy. The house passes a sprawling $700 billion government rescue of the financial industry. 2.6 million jobs were cut from the economy last year. That's the greatest decline since the 1945. Why weren't we bailed out? That live grenade of financial deregulation that Bill Clinton left in the economy. It all blew up in 2008, right when I was graduating college. And thanks to the weakened social safety net, further weakened by George Bush, millions of people were pushed into poverty. And by the time Barack Obama came along, things were starting to get a little awkward. Even though anger at Wall street was spiking, it was still an important source of funding for the Democratic Party. Now, Obama at least gestured towards fighting on behalf of the working class. But let's be clear who Senator McCain's fighting for. He's not fighting for Joe the plumber. He's fighting for Joe the hedge fund manager. But on Obama's watch, no bankers went to jail. And inequality kept skyrocketing as union membership continued to fall. And when all that hope he sold didn't come through, it curdled into cynicism. Working class people kept going into the voting booths, pulling the lever, and nothing changed. In fact, a 2014 study of policy outcomes over 20 years found that economic elites have substantial independent impacts on US Government policy, while average citizens have little or no independent influence. It was basically a math proof that the 1% ruled in. The 99% drooled. So unless your dad works for Blackstone or Blackrock, you're fucked. So it's no coincidence that two years later in 2016, the two most popular presidential candidates were people who could credibly claim that they weren't in Wall Street's pockets and would fight for the working class. Special interests, lobbyists, donors. They make large contributions to politicians and they have total control over those politicians. I don't want anybody to control me,

[C]

but the people right out there.

[A]

We need a political revolution where millions

[C]

of people stand up and say loudly

[A]

and clearly that our government belongs to

[C]

all of us and not just a handful of wealthy campaign contributors.

[A]

Of course, we all know what happened next. The Democratic Party backed Hillary Clinton, whose campaign followed the usual playbook. Ignoring working class voters and focusing on suburban moderate. That is not a conspiracy theory, okay? Chuck Schumer literally said it out loud. Three months before the election. For every blue collar Democrat we will lose in western pa. We will pick up two, three moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia. And you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin. 2016 was the year the suburban strategy stopped working. It was the Democrats worst turnout for union members and rural voters since WALTER Mondale in 1984. So that brings us to today, 10 years after 2016 and the Democrats still have not figured out how to win back all those working class people that they lost. Now I've heard the ideas. We should run DSA candidates. Great. We should shut up about trans rights. Not great. And we need a Joe Rogan of the left. What the fuck does that even mean? But it's clear that there are millions of Americans who still feel politically homeless. A recent poll showed that 43% of Americans are not happy with either party. Honestly, I thought that number be higher. The way this is always framed by the media is a blue versus Red problem. The country has never been more divided. We have never been more divided. Our politics have never been more divided. Our countries have never been more divided.

[C]

Our country's never been more divided than it is today.

[A]

This country has never been more divided. But there are ways in which the working class is very united. They are united in hating the billionaire psychos running the economy. They are united in their opposition to the Scrooge McDuck corruption in Washington. And now we're seeing the rise of maybe the most energetic bipartisan working class coalition that we have seen in a generation. Who are all saying in unison, fuck AI Data centers. The backlash against AI data centers is growing with protests from coast to coast in dozens of states today. The issue uniting many Americans across The political divide. We don't want this.

[C]

It is not going to benefit us in any way. We are not going to pay double

[B]

the amount of our utility bills.

[A]

Do you understand that?

[C]

We don't get anything for it other than we're losing land, we're losing water, we're losing air quality.

[B]

Why are you protecting.

[C]

What are you doing this car tire off.

[A]

To talk about this more, I reached out to a media outlet whose mission statement is building power for the working class. Since 2021, More Perfect Union has been doing on the ground reporting, focusing on labor unions, inequality and corporate power. And maybe no other media outlet out there right now is doing more reporting on the backlash to AI data centers. So I sat down with one of their reporters, John Russell, a West Virginia native. Someone who has spent years having real conversations with working class voters, trying to genuinely connect with them in good faith. We talked about the bipartisan coalition forming against Big Tech.

[C]

It's a mask off moment where people can see what side you really are on.

[A]

How he connects with people who maybe don't share his politics.

[C]

If they know you're coming from a genuine place. You're not trying to hide something. You're being upfront about who you are. That can kind of set the tone for a conversation.

[A]

And as someone from Appalachia, I got his take on the Vice president. What is your take on J.D. vance?

[C]

Oh, trash, trash.

[A]

I mean, what's everyone's problem with J.D. vance, other than all the stuff he says and does and is and of course, his face. Hurry right away. No delays are there. Make your daddy glad you have had such a.

[C]

West Virginia is one of those states that your hand is a map of it and it is a middle finger and it's perfect. So this, literally, this is West Virginia, eastern Panhandle. You got Maryland. Down here you have Morgantown. So Wheeling's right here. This is Ohio. I grew up here, but it's like Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, all these states. This area is where generations of my family's from the cuts for us. There is this place called the Pits. They want to currently build a 3 gigawatt data center on the Pits. Yeah, what the Pits is, is thousands of acres of absentee land, like in the hills, that for decades, like an outlaw dirt bike culture has taken over.

[A]

Oh, shit.

[C]

East of the Mississippi, if you want to go crazy off roading, look this up on the Internet. You go to the Pits outside of Wellsville, Ohio, and it's like there are no rules. Nobody knows knows who owns the land. It's like a dirt bike gang has taken this out.

[A]

So X Games meets the Lost Boys, Peter Pan.

[C]

And I'm seeing this, like, you know, data centers are uniting left and right.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

In crazy ways.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

And I'm watching, like, everybody I grew up with in high school who I saw, like, send a dirt bike off a cliff, like, organizing petitions against data centers. And I'm like, there's something to work with. Yeah, totally.

[A]

High school Johnny Knoxville.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is like, fuck these.

[C]

Yeah. Get the data center out of here. They'll dismantle it.

[A]

Okay. One of the things that I love about the videos that you do for more Perfect Union is you actually go out into the field and you do practical reporting. You are not a cable news pundit sitting on a roundtable, basically arguing with someone before commercial break. Yeah, I want to chat with you. Let's break down a few words that get thrown around in media circles oftentimes. Let's start with rural America.

[C]

If you're living in rural America, I think one of the things it's defined by, regardless of where you go is extraction. Like, if you are in the middle of the country, like large scale monoculture agriculture, where monopolies are owning all the inputs, that's kind of the economy that you deal with. If you're in the mountains of West Virginia, it's been the extractive industry of coal. That's rural. If it takes a while to drive, to go get groceries, rural. You know, there's all these indicators that fall on a spectrum from, you know, the city center to the suburbs to the exurbs to where it takes a while to get to Walmart, you know, but. But I would say, you know, the extraction economy is a major theme in, like, the rural coverage that I do. And that always comes paired with, you know, I think of the coverage we did of West Virginia data centers. Like, they. There is such a push to put these things in communities that have already had most of their wealth taken out of there. Yeah, they're used to it. And so the next wave of this wealth extraction is something like data centers. And I think that's a uniting thing

[A]

for the people in my audience who perhaps have family members that voted for Donald Trump and see these people as irredeemable in your reporting. What would you like them to know?

[C]

I think the way that we consume, the way we talk to our family members, first of all, like, check where you're coming from, you know, because if you're just trying to defend a political party, I think you got to go deeper than that to rescue people who are a little too far gone, you have to get back to shared values. And there are a lot of people in Trump country that share the value of wanting to hold it. They wanted to hold the Epstein class accountable. That was the whole thing with their base. Right. You can get in there and relate on that thing. But if you're just trying to come in and say your party's bad and my party's good, they're prepared for that and you got to go on values.

[A]

I mean, speaking of values, naturally you lean a little bit more left.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

How do you unlock people who have more conservative positions than you? Is it the mullet doing the work?

[C]

Is it the mullet? Like, what's the like it is my. Just a little bit of this. No.

[A]

You're clearly affable. You genuinely come from a place of curiosity. But what did you find was the way that you connected with people that don't vote like you or perhaps share the same values that you do?

[C]

Well, it does help to look like this, you know, But I did find growing up where I did, before I got hired at More Perfect Union, I worked at a dive bar. Shout out to Johnny's Bar.

[A]

Shout out to Johnny's Bar.

[C]

And, and that's where I learned something that helps me in my work all the time, which is I, I just, I wear my politics on my sleeve and I don't try to hide that with people. And I think that if they know you're coming from a genuine place, you're not trying to hide something. You're being upfront about who you are. That can kind of set the tone for a conversation. And that's what I always did in Johnny's Bar. Like before I got hired at More Perfect Union, I was making tiktoks about like, you know, we should all join together as people in the same boat here and maybe take back some of our power. I talk left wing politics in my small town bar with people mostly whose idea of a leftist is the actual devil.

[A]

Was there a moment that inspired you to start making those videos? Like what? You know, not to like Heroes Journey this, but like what was, what was the inciting incident? What was the moment that made you go like, oh, I actually, I want to go to the cesspool that is social media. Like talk about politics and perhaps reach out to people that feel unheard.

[C]

I think I've always been angry about how this billionaire owned media lied to the people I grew up with. And I've always believed in the possibility of Them joining together with other people who are in the same boat so that we can end some of this suck that we're currently in. And I was like, there's got to be a way to do this. And everyone's on their phone, so why don't we pump out some stuff and see what happens? You know, maybe suggest, hey, we should all get together on this.

[A]

So this idea of joining together, right?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

People talk about coalitions all the time. It's something that you've really focused on. A thing that gets talked about in lefty politics is the idea of building coalitions around the working class.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

How would you define working class?

[C]

Yeah. Anybody who doesn't make their money from owning stocks, anybody who makes their money from selling labor. Anybody who, like, if you can't call Howard Lutnick, you're working class.

[A]

Got it.

[C]

If something that you say in public moves markets or starts wars, then you might not be working class.

[A]

This is the first time I've actually really heard this articulated well this way. You're basically talking about labor that perhaps works for companies. You could work at a grocery store. You could work at a variety of different places. But if you are not part of the equities class, you're part of the working class.

[C]

To me. To me. Yeah. If you get your money by selling your labor, most of your money by selling your labor. To me, you're working class. And I think that doesn't strike people because we're the. The assumption is like a white guy in a hard hat, you know, a doctor and a lawyer. You know, we kind of separate that in the pop. But I don't think we should.

[A]

Like, dentist.

[C]

Yeah. Working class man.

[A]

And like, dude who bags groceries at Safeway, where I used to work.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I was fired. Which is some fucked up shit.

[C]

You got to tell me.

[A]

I thought it was a pretty good employee. I just didn't want to work there. But I did work.

[C]

I'm on your side.

[A]

I thought I did. I thought I was decent. I didn't want.

[C]

What did you do at safe?

[A]

I was. I was a courtesy clerk.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

Which is. I buy groceries.

[C]

Yeah. And your work.

[A]

Yeah. Essential work. And shout out to my boy who got me the position. I still owe you a huge thank you. Shout out to Chris. Thank you for getting me that job.

[C]

Way to go, Chris.

[A]

I fucked it up. It wasn't. And you vouched for me, and I fucked it up. And I still live with that. But me and Chris are boys. Let me. Let me get us back on track. So so you're basically saying, hey, my cousin who's a dentist.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And plumber. There's a connection here.

[C]

Yeah. And I think we need to update that now because you look at the scale of wealth in America, and we have a trillionaire. We have a trillionaire. We have close to a thousand people with a billion dollars. You know, for me, I'm always trying to get people to think about the difference between a million and a billion.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

A million seconds is 11 days. A billion seconds is 32 years.

[A]

Holy shit.

[C]

A trillion seconds is 32,000 years. We have a trillionaire, man. And you think, like, being a dentist is closer to being the guy with a trillion dollars than it is the working class now. It's like, to me, in America right now, with wealth inequality, as bad as it is, you're all working class now. That's not to, like, flatten the difference between a lawyer and someone bagging groceries. There are differences there. But for the purposes of fixing our problems, which I view as mostly being caused by people with too much money and power making all the decisions, we are all working class.

[A]

Politicians always use this phrase, we want good working class jobs.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And.

[A]

And they always phrase it like, people love their jobs.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I think most jobs suck.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I've done food service. I've done. I've worked at grocery stores. I've worked at office max selling printers. All my jobs that I've had outside of comedy pretty much suck.

[C]

Does comedy. Comedy, Comedy, comedy.

[A]

I like. I mean, I am. I'm. I'm lucky enough to do what I'm passionate about.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

I feel that way too.

[A]

But every. But every other job that I had fucking sucks.

[C]

I was a stump grinder.

[A]

Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. That takes the cake. I don't even know what that is.

[C]

You have, like, a giant diesel machine, and then you blast a tree stump into dust. Seven years.

[A]

But why do you have to do that, though?

[C]

It was good money.

[A]

No, no, but people wanted the, like, there's like, that stump needs to go.

[C]

You'd be surprised at the amount of stumps in America. So, like, here's the thing. And, like, are you a homeowner?

[A]

I have on a home. Yes.

[C]

Okay. A yard of any kind.

[A]

We have a yard. We have a front yard. Yeah.

[C]

I don't know the situation in New York City, but, like, if you're owning a yard out there, if you. You're renting a yard, sure, you'll end up with a tree stump in your yard, and then people will go try to, like, set it on fire, drill holes in it, or, like, dig it out. There's no better way to get it out than blasting it out with a diesel machine and someone like me got it.

[A]

Children must have loved you. Like my son, whatever what you just described. He's six.

[C]

It's very Bob the Bill. Yeah.

[A]

He would have fucking loved. Yeah.

[C]

Most of my demographic is just, you know, children enthralled by machines.

[A]

Gotcha. To get us back on point, what I'm saying is, is we don't need to romanticize jobs per se.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

But what I think we need to focus on is common human dignity.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And the way people are compensated for their labor gives them the dignity to provide for their families, pay for health care, send their children to school. If a loved one gets sick, take care of them, get the bag, take care of grandma, be able to look out for my mom and dad, my sister. If someone's in a bind, I can help them.

[C]

I can see that on the bumper sticker right now, like, get the bag,

[A]

take care of my grandma.

[C]

Like, chill.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. Be able to help my sister out if something bad happens. Yeah.

[C]

Yes, Grandma, chill. One of the great things about my job right now is I get to kind of drop into locations and see how things are going there. We did a piece in Italy about worker owned cooperatives, because not only do I think we should stop, like, romanticizing jobs, but we should think about how jobs are organized because we're used to one way here in America, where most of them suck.

[A]

Yes. And what's it like in Italy?

[C]

So we did a story where like a fifth of the economy in this region of Italy, in northern Italy comes from companies that are owned by the people who work there. This. And I remember we were standing on the floor.

[A]

Wait, how does that work?

[C]

Okay, so the workers own the company. They can hire and fire their boss. And like, wait, is this like the

[A]

way the Green Bay packers are owned by the city or whatever? I never understood this concept.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Okay, so break this down for me, please.

[C]

Make me answer. I can't say I don't know the details of the packers, but basically a cooperative, Right? This is a company like any company you would work for, but instead of being owned by one guy and shareholders and a board, okay. The workers are the shareholders, the board, and they make the decisions to run the company. You can hire somebody to be CEO and you can also fire them. And it was mind blowing to me to go over as an American to Italy, stand on the floor of a factory where 2,000 people worked just like the ones that closed down after nafta. In the Ohio Valley where I'm from, they got a 2,000 person factory. It's doing manufacturing. It's owned by the workers. And I'm standing there with the boss of the company and three workers. And I asked the workers, what would you do if your boss made 300 times more than you make? And they were like, we would fire him. The workers are highly paid. They work in manufacturing, they control who runs the company, they make the products, and then they go sip espresso at 4pm and be reasonable.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

There are different ways to do jobs.

[A]

No, no, but what's the catch here? Like the way you describe it, I was like, no, no, no.

[B]

There's a catch though.

[A]

What's the catch?

[C]

There's, you know, nothing's perfect.

[A]

Okay. How long do you have to work there to be able to vote? Or the moment, day one, you're essentially on the quote unquote board.

[C]

So this, this would be a plug to watch the video because we had a worker who had just joined all the way up to somebody who'd been there a long time. First of all, you have far less turnover, you have far more expertise. Sure.

[A]

You've incentivized staying there.

[C]

Yeah. And there's a clear path from the guy we were Talking to is 20 years old to spend a short amount of time and become, you know, a worker owner.

[A]

Would you say kind of the core tenets of the videos that you work on for More Perfect Union are they essentially about labor solidarity?

[C]

Yeah, it's about strength in numbers. It's about solidarity. It's about different ways to organize the economy and work.

[A]

One of the things I hear in media reporting all the time is here is how the Democratic Party abandoned the working class.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

What does that mean?

[C]

Yeah. Well, that makes me think of Elliot County. We did a piece for More Perfect Union and this is one.

[A]

This was the Emmy award winning piece that you made about Elliot.

[C]

We won two Emmys. And shout out, I should say shout out to the whole team at More Perfect Union. Like anybody, any video that I'm on, there's a whole team behind that. Josh Hfel, Crohn, Meg Hirschline, Fast Faz, Josh, Miller, Lewis will go down the whole list. It'd take too long. But Elliot county is the only county in America. This is eastern Kentucky, only county in America that voted 144 years in a row for Democrats before flipping to Trump by one of the largest margins.

[A]

Talk about fumbling the bag.

[C]

There they fumbled the bag.

[A]

144 years you're running it up and then to just, and then to flip your entire base.

[C]

But here's they to your question. I would say the Democratic Party was responsible for fumbling that bag because what we found there, of course a lot of people who voted for Democrats forever and then flipped to Trump. But you can trace through the history of the Democratic Party. It used to be very much FDR and then it switched to, you know, Bill Clinton and corporate donors. And the Democratic Party that we know today, that we see in a fight with these primaries in a real contest for the direction, you know, like someone like Zahra Mohammedani or more of what we've been used to. It is the FDR Labor Party that kept places like rural Kentucky voting for it forever because they knew the deal. You vote for Democrats because they're for the working man. But eventually they lost those roots and, and we suffered a pretty large consequence for that of people.

[A]

In your reporting, what specifically did the Democratic Party do to betray the working class that made people say, fuck it, I'm changing my vote?

[C]

Yeah, well, you know, I target the Democratic Party a lot, but this really counts for both parties in our politics on the whole. Sure, but they just got, you know, we over the course of getting thousands of billionaires, now both of our parties have just switched to exclusively serving their agenda. I think about this report that came out more than a decade ago from Princeton, I think where it's like you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. The conclusion of this report was that the American people have little to no control over the policies passed by either party or either administration. So I think you can say about the Republicans that they've always been for corporate control and for the agenda of really large money. But for the long time you could say that less about the Democrats. And then they started, you know, going for NAFTA and free trade. And in the era of Citizens United, they're relying on corporate donations too much. And you get let that happen for years.

[A]

Well, aside from corporate donations, is stupidity also a part of it? Because there's this clip of chuck Schumer from 2016 where he's talking about the Democratic Party's sort of national strategy. And I think about this at least twice a week. Let's take a look. For every blue collar Democrat we will lose in western pa, we will pick up two, three moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia. And you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.

[C]

This is my sleep paralysis Demon. That's actually on a loop in my nightmares. I've watched it many times.

[A]

That's your Freddy Krueger.

[C]

Yeah, it is. Oh, God, it is. Yeah. I wake up in a cold sweat every night and it's Chuck Schumer just selling us out. Yeah. I think, you know, right there you can see the strategy of trying to go after suburban, you know, wine moms and such. And I think that is because we. They really lost their roots. Right. And they're trying to reconstruct a base that is. That goes well and doesn't offend corporate donors. So they say, like, oh, let's try to hunt for that base in the suburbs of all these cities, because those people will kind of get on a cultural agenda that doesn't offend our donors.

[A]

Right.

[C]

You know, all these major corporations can slap a pride flag onto a pretty terrible agenda, but not really be there to stand up for policies that represent people.

[A]

Right.

[C]

And unfortunately, I think there hasn't been a change from that strategy. I mean, Schumer still leads the party.

[A]

This is the thing I cannot understand. How is that possible?

[C]

There's no gravity. There's no consequences.

[B]

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[A]

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[B]

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[A]

Hey, Meta, where's the nearest flower shop?

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Five minutes away. Straight down Broadway past the bodega. Their lilies are trending on Instagram. Just saying.

[A]

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[A]

Something very unique has happened over the past 30 years where a disproportionate amount of power in capital has been allocated to two different things. And I call it more broadly tech in Wall Street.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

The amount of sort of both political capital and Capital Capital those two buckets have.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

There is a particular LinkedIn class that is connected to both tech and Wall Street. And now tech is Wall Street. Yes.

[C]

Look at the, you know, seven companies that are driving the S&P 500 growth. And it's all these, It's Silicon Valley now.

[A]

Correct.

[C]

And then that shows up in the areas where I grew up with the physical infrastructure of data centers. And you know, right now that was one vision of putting together a political coalition that we know fails now.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

But when you have Wall street and tech building out these data centers in all of the places where the Democrats lost, I am seeing a coalition of people coming together that is right and left saying no to big tech, no to flock cameras. And if the Democrats don't pay attention to that and realize that there is a coalition right there in the places you have lost. But you got to take up, you got to take a stand against the corporate donation, against corporate donors, against tech. It's right there for the taking.

[A]

That is the strange Venn diagram that I have seen where both left and right, it can be hardcore red, hardcore blue. Both sides are equally like fuck AI data centers.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Based on your reporting. What is that? What, what is this huge middle finger to these? Yeah, essentially these big ass server racks that suck up all this water.

[C]

There's no other issue where the mask has been completely off and the agenda of these companies is totally visible. I'll give another example from coverage with more Perfect Union. Yes, we go to cover a data center proposal going into Mingo County, West Virginia. Mingo and Logan County.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

These are the coal fields. They are used to big companies coming in, taking all the wealth and leaving a message. In the process of shooting that piece, we spoke to a woman in a minivan pulled over on the side of the road with a big five gallon jug getting water out of a pipe coming out of a mountain. And that is the only drinking water. She comes there three times a week to get drinking water for her family. That's how she gets drinking water in the coal fields of West Virginia. They want to stick a data center there and say, hey, you go get your water out of a mountain. We're going to give all the clean water that you've been denied for decades to a data center. It's a mask off moment where people can see what side you really are on.

[A]

I also think it's the first time we've seen technology be presented in such a way where people are like, no, I get how AI makes you rich.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

How the fuck does this make me rich?

[C]

Yeah. That's the other thing about it, man. It's like, you know, I see people like, oh, well, this is how companies operate, right? They come to areas where they already made a mess, where people are desperate for jobs. And a lot of people will say, like, hey, we need these jobs. But AI data centers are literally a job killing supercomputer.

[A]

Totally.

[C]

That's what it does. That's how they sell it on Wall Street. And people know this. There's no jobs in there, man.

[A]

So if you're a grocery store worker, you work at a fast food company, if you even do clerical work at your local school or dentist's office. Here's my question. In your reporting, right, you're speaking with all these Trump voters. But if you remember, do you remember the inauguration?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Essentially the fang stocks were right behind right there. And you would think the way Donald Trump positioned himself, it would be like, cowboy hat, no shade to you, mullet dude. Like, you know what I mean? Like, hey, like, he would have signaled,

[C]

like, here you are up on stage,

[A]

Cowboy stadium behind me, like, I'm America's team. But he basically had the top 10 companies in the S&P 500.

[C]

Yeah, like, Elon Musk is like, tweaking out on Ketamine. Zuckerberg, thousand yard stare, but just weird.

[A]

But the head of Apple, the head of Amazon. Do you know what I'm saying, Tim? Apple and so. Tim Heffel. But my, so my question is, is that when, when you talk to the people that voted for Donald Trump and they watched the inauguration, that scene signaled something to me. What did that scene signal to them in your reporting?

[C]

Well, that's the thing that a lot of people assume. A lot of people assume that doesn't land with Trump voters. It absolutely does. But for it to mean anything politically, you have to have a political movement that's pointing that out that says, there they are on his side, and here I am on your side. Is the Democratic Party doing that? Or are they kind of trying to hold on to this coalition that's now lost umpteen elections and avoiding taking a stand against the people who are standing behind Donald Trump. I think you have to draw it in a line in the sand. But thankfully now we've seen a movement of that happening. I mean, you, you have Zoran Mandani winning in New York City, but it's not only that but now we see candidates from that model succeeding everywhere. Michigan, you know, Colorado. And I think that can succeed everywhere. And you know, something that has been less examined is the fact that there are little blue cities all over red states where you can make government deliver for people, where you can take back some of the public sphere and say you can expect excellent public services. And we're also going to take a stand against data centers and flock cameras coming into town. And I think that would sweep Huntington, West Virginia, Wheeling, West Virginia, little towns all across this country. And you know, that's something. I haven't seen a wave of it happening, but I think it's possible.

[A]

So I got a question for you. I don't have the answer to it, but there's two states that me neither are. Hey, look, join me, man.

[C]

Yeah, please.

[A]

Well, there's two states that I don't, I don't fully get, but I'd love your analysis on. If you look at two states, there's North Carolina and there's Kentucky, those are two states where the governor will be Democrat, but the state voted for Donald Trump.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

What do you think's happening there?

[C]

Yeah, I can relate that back to covering Elliott county in Kentucky because Andy Beshear at the same time that Elliott county voted, that's 144 years for Democrats. Then Donald Trump. Same time they voted for Donald Trump, they also voted for Andy Beshear. That Kent. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat, has been re elected. This is a very significant win for Democrats. Beshear, who ran as a defender of abortion rights in a largely Republican commonwealth. Kentucky is defeating Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron. Now, some people will point at Bashir and say that's the way to go, that's the way to win. But I think it's important to also realize that Bashir is losing those counties just at a slower pace. So he's, he's, he's being better than other Democrats on this. But to really start winning those back, you know, I think it comes down to taking a clear stand for, for working people in an on an agenda that delivers and holding the corporate bad actors accountable. Thankfully, that's going to be a lot easier to do because now you have this data center push going everywhere. It's an easy stand to take.

[A]

So I want to get to. You did this great piece with Bernie Sanders where you actually took him and you had to meet different Trump voters. But here's the thing that I can't understand. I totally get, hey, the Democrats have abandoned us.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

But the Thing that I don't get is like. But this guy, like billionaire Scrooge McDuck, I'm only out for myself. Donald J. Trump. That's the guy. Because if you think about what even he's doing, cutting Medicare, cutting Medicaid. How is that in interest of workers?

[C]

Yeah. And that's also something that people get very angry about. You know, I run into Trump voters all the time who will tell me, like, it's not right to cut our Medicaid down here. They get very angry about these things like disability and Medicaid, Social Security, things that people rely on. They know when those things get cut and they're very angry about it. But you have to have somebody standing up on that. The other thing is, it goes back to the media takeover. You know, we can sit here and look at Donald Trump and say, I can't believe you'd be voting for this guy. But you have to be in the media bubble that a lot of people are to realize they're just overwhelming it with culture war issues to keep people divided. And that's what you have to break through in order to make any kind of change. And I know you spent a lot of time in the Fox media bubble. Have you turned on Fox News and watched it lately?

[A]

I can't, bro. Yeah, I can't.

[C]

It's crazy.

[A]

No, but I want to focus on what you were talking about, which is there are these moments of unity that people aren't focusing on. I want to focus on one moment from your Elliot county interviews that you were doing. This is a video where you're talking to a Trump voter about immigration. Let's take a look.

[C]

When it's people coming across the border versus, say, billionaires or something like that, who's got the most influence over the problems that you think we'll face as a, as a country?

[A]

Millionaires.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Do you think you have more in common with migrant from Mexico or Donald J. Trump?

[C]

Great question. A migrant from Mexico.

[A]

Yeah, a migrant from Mexico. Absolutely. Absolutely.

[C]

Because we're out here working to survive,

[A]

to feed our family. So she straight up sounds like Bernie Sanders.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

How common do you think this perspective is amongst the Trump voters that you've interviewed?

[C]

I see it all the time. And that was Nehemiah Stark behind the camera who asked that question. And it was key, but I see that all the time. Also in Elliot county, there's a Mexican restaurant in town and it is 99% white in that county. People love the Mexican restaurant. One of the things I'll do is, you know, I ask in that piece, what's the top issue for you? People say, the border. We're in Kentucky, thousands of miles away from the border, and that's only been a priority for, like, two years. But if you go and say, okay, the border is a problem, why don't we start by kicking out the guy who runs the Mexican restaurant in town? The answer you always get is no, no, no, no, not that guy. He's not who I'm talking about. I'm talking about everybody else who's doing crime and fraud and all of this. But those are boogeymen that are made up by the media that are keeping those people voting in a way that serves the folks who own the media that's filling their head with lies.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, so this happens all the time. And I've had this conversation with people all the time as well, when I had to go do field pieces for the Daily show, cover different conventions. But I've told people this before, and sometimes there's an overlap, and sometimes these are two different things, which is there's ignorant people and then there's, like, bigots and racists.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Sometimes it's both.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

Sometimes they're both ignorant and they're bigoted, but sometimes it's just an ignorance thing.

[C]

Yes. I think that. I think that's the. The biggest bucket there is. Ignorance. But that's something that you can. You can unwind. Ignorance. It's not going to be easy.

[A]

So one time I went to the Republican National Convention. This is when the Muslim ban was happening. Okay. This was. This was in the Zeitgeist.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

So I. So I did this field piece. It was basically. It was called, like, Hasan's goodbye Tour. So I basically went to the delegates from every state, and I'm like, hey, you're the delegate from Montana. Tell me what Big sky country is like. And he's like, big sky country is great. Da, da, da, da, da. You should go to Yellowstone Park. And I'm like, oh, I'd love to go to Yellowstone. I can't. Why? You know, the guy you're voting for wants to ban Muslims from the country. And then he was like, hasan's goodbye tour.

[B]

Right?

[A]

And then I like, I hug them. I'm like, goodbye from Montana or whatever. So that's the joke.

[C]

That was the joke.

[A]

I met this. This very lovely lady. We have the tape. We can play the tape. But she was like, that's not gonna happen. Donald Trump's not gonna do that to you. You're one of the good ones. And I was like, you're one of the good ones too. And then we hugged. But that is a part of my larger point, which is there's a group of people that I feel there's a chasm in between these two things. There is this MS.13 Taliban boogeyman that they see in the media and then there's their day to day neighbor. There is their Latino colleague at work. There's the Muslim dentist that, that works in town. There's the, you know, Bengali cardiologist that they are getting a heart exam for with. But let me ask you this. There is this narrative within media circles that the Republican party in the current MAGA movement is a white Christian nationalism movement.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

In all the states that you go to, do you see them as part of this movement or is it not about that for them there?

[C]

It's a big country. I'm sure there are parts where it's like anything else. There are. There are parts for which that is true, but that's not my experience on the whole. One of the things that I think is so interesting to that population of

[B]

people,

[C]

I try to have revealing conversations with Republican voters and I try to point out that, hey, you might be rooting for what ICE is doing right now, but be careful because you might find out that this standing force is also for you later on down the line. And I think about, how do you

[A]

make that connection though?

[C]

So right, right now you have NSPM 7. You have Rubio going out there and putting people's name on a list. And what they're doing is saying, anybody who does these things, they're part of the far left that we have to root out who's a threat to America.

[A]

Which is. So our audience knows. What is NSPM 7?

[C]

It's a NASH. It's National Presidential Security Memorandum 7.

[A]

Okay. Because the way you said it so fast, it was like, yeah, I'm deep in the. I was like, he just said a K pop group and not along to

[C]

act like, I know, but I don't

[A]

know, but I don't know. So I just wanted to be like. Because I didn't know.

[C]

I'm TikTok.

[A]

Yeah. I didn't know hundreds for a long time. And then my daughter was like, you don't know who Hunt tricks is?

[C]

And I was like, oh, fuck, I have no clue. That is.

[A]

Yeah. K pop Demon Hunters movie on Netflix. If you have children or daughters are super into it.

[C]

And this is much more sinister, worrying. Yeah, Nefarious.

[A]

I don't know, hey, they're fighting demons, just so you know. Okay, which is super fucked up too. Ice and some of the demons that they're fighting, but all the demons aren't bad. Anyways, I'm going on one of my tangents again. Back to you. NSPM7 is what?

[C]

This is a presidential memorandum that directs the full weight of law enforcement in the United States towards targets for enforcement. And they list out some of those targets and they all have that kind of. Under the umbrella of this far left threat, Attorney General Pam Bondes ordered the FBI to compile a list of what

[A]

the Justice Department is calling domestic terrorist organizations.

[C]

And one of the buckets of people in this memorandum is folks who are anti big tech. So if you are a Republican going out and say you get a crazy idea and you cut down a Flock camera, there's all kinds of news stories out there of people doing that with thousands of comments of people cheering them on, and maybe you're a Republican in doing that.

[B]

This is what's left of a Flock camera here on Claremont Avenue. It's one of several investigators say were targeted by vandals.

[A]

Houston police say they're investigating as eyewitness news now has found at least half a dozen flat cameras destroyed across the city this week. A man has been arrested for damaging close to a dozen Flock cameras in the city of Suffolk.

[C]

What you might not realize is that you just landed yourself on the far left terrorist list. You know, according to NSPM7 and this standing force that is totally unaccountable, that has murdered Americans, ice, you might find yourself on that list eventually if you are standing up against the priorities of big tech, big capital, and the people that they elect.

[A]

Just so our audience understands what this is, what is a Flock camera?

[C]

That is one of these surveillance cameras. It's a corporation called Flock putting them out. They have blown up all over the country, thousands in a very short amount of time. And they read license plates and they are able to put that in and track your larger movements, know where you're going, know if your car is getting hot. They know all kinds of stuff about you. By simply putting these cameras up small towns, big cities, it's a massive expansion of the surveillance state, which is already too powerful, in my opinion. And furthermore, that's kind of backed up by all of this artificial intelligence infrastructure. Right. It's a huge privacy and security issue.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

No, this is some George Orwellian.

[C]

And if you are a Republican and you go out there and you really resist that, you might find yourself on the Side on the wrong side of the security state with all the other leftists that ICE is supposed to be rounding up, et cetera.

[A]

In your reporting, when, when you went and you interviewed all sorts of different people, did you find that they all, in addition to AI data centers, they were also like, fuck, these flock cameras.

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Or did they think that, like, no Big Brother is going to keep me safe and these flock cameras are going to find MS.13 from where I am,

[C]

I would say people are against these slot cameras.

[A]

Understood. In your most popular video from More Perfect Union, you took Bernie Sanders around your home state, West Virginia, to talk to voters. That state was blue for 80 years and is now the second reddest in the country.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I want to show a clip from that video of Bernie talking to a Trump voter about health care as a human right. Let's take a look. You're so reasonable.

[B]

Like, they've.

[A]

They've painted you in a bad light. And it actually makes me very angry because, you know, you see things and you believe it. I'll just be honest. I haven't really seen you talk before. I haven't really, like, follow. I don't follow politics that much. And so the last couple days before this, I started watching some of your speeches and I started, like, watching your interviews, and I was shocked. I was like, oh, not as bad

[C]

as they had told you, huh?

[A]

This is not how he's portrayed in the media.

[C]

Yeah, there you go. You know, you meet people face to face. They know clearly what side you are on. And you can watch. And I've seen this all throughout my reporting. You can just watch the decades of propaganda fade away right there. So you have a movement at scale. Bernie's one guy, and he's old.

[A]

Not to be.

[C]

No, no, no.

[A]

He is. He has no shade, but he is old. He's very old.

[C]

Absolutely. He kept the flame alive forever.

[A]

All right.

[C]

Yeah. But if you have a movement.

[A]

Yeah, he's been cooking for a long time.

[C]

He has been cooking.

[A]

But let me just say this. The message of what that video is doing is I think you're establishing two things, and this isn't common in discourse. Like, John, I want you to know this. You're doing two things here that are very important. Number one, I think you're showing that people are reachable and people are redeemable. Would you agree with that?

[C]

I would not. And not to oversimplify, like, there are some people who are not redeemable in this MAGA movement, but they're not the majority.

[A]

So you've obviously seen this talking point that's made its way around the Internet. You hear it all the time of there are 75 million people that voted for Trump. Leave them behind, fuck them, Accost them at Thanksgiving. Like, yeah, take the noose and let them hang themselves. What, what do you have to say to that? As just a general political strategy, you're

[C]

not going to get very far in a movement to return power to working people if you don't figure out how to get those people onto your movement. Because to unwind the level of corporate power we have, you're going to need everybody who's in the same boat as you. And it is on, you know, the people building that working class movement to reach out to the people who are reachable and build bonds to get them on your side. Because it's strength in numbers.

[B]

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[A]

story that I see is that woman that's in that clip that we just showed.

[C]

There's a lot of people like her.

[A]

Yeah. And the saddest part is those people are being erased.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Their story, their perspective isn't being told. And I think the majority of the media's narrative is built around I call it I hate my brother in law who voted for Trump and I'm gonna accost him at Thanksgiving syndrome. That's essentially what it is. Like there's some family member that's didn't vote the way you like, that triggers something within you. So fuck my brother in law. And that's totally cool. You may not like your brother in law. Like that's, I understand that position, but I think that shift in mindset has to happen around building larger coalitions.

[C]

And to me, like politics just the way we think about politics and the way that most conventional candidates talk about it, I think as our problems, we have, like, several existential crises happening at once.

[A]

And what would you say those are like in the country? You have simultaneously.

[B]

Right.

[C]

Trillionaires inequality is one. You have climate which has just totally evaporated. But, you know, I was just breathing in wildfire smoke.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

You have the rapid build out of AI totally unaccountable. You have. I differentiate between Trump voters and elected people that know what they're doing. But you have fascism on the march that's mixed in with all of this. And, you know, there are some others in there as well. Yeah, right. That's not even getting into the substance of health care and wages and all this. Right. But that is clear to people now. And I think when you see people talking about the news and it doesn't match the sky being on fire, people are like, what.

[A]

What are you talking about here?

[C]

What are we doing here?

[A]

Right.

[C]

You know, so I think when a real one comes and sits down, that's a moment where all of this propaganda fades away and you can start to see a spark of the unreachable will become reachable. When you're really talking about, hey, what do we do about the smoke in the sky? What do we do that this AI data center is getting water and you're getting it out of a pipe in a mountain.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

We got to start talking about real stuff here. And politics and media has for the longest time just been left. Right. Red blue is a better term. Just horse race.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Game of tug of less and less represents what people can feel in their life.

[A]

So we clearly have seen MAGA 1.0. Right. We're now seeing MAGA 2.0. Let's look ahead to the midterms. So right now, Trump's disapproval rating keeps going up. Does that mean anything?

[C]

Yeah, you know, I think that it means he's unpopular.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

But what you do with it is a different thing. You know, I think we look too much at Donald Trump to define what the agenda should be and not enough at what people like Kristen are feeling down in West Virginia. You know, getting her vote, I think has less with Donald, less to do with Donald Trump being unpopular and more to do with the fact that she has real problems. So speak to those, and that's going to open it up.

[A]

You're asking for politicians to have original thinking or a set of moral clarity around say too much and representing their constituents. I actually, actually do think it's. It's Too much.

[C]

It might be too much because the.

[A]

The incentive structure. So off.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Meaning the. The center of power when it comes to technology, media, Wall street that's now all kind of lumped into one only works for a handful of people, AKA the donor class.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But I. But you're right. I do think there are politicians that are changing that narrative. Let me ask you this, as an Appalachian. What is your take on J.D. vance?

[C]

Oh, trash. Trash?

[A]

What do you mean, trash?

[C]

He sold out his people for his own political career.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

You know, he sold a narrative that we were helpless, that we chose. All of the problems you're talking about.

[A]

Hillbilly elegy.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

Yeah. From the very. From the very jump, he kind of.

[A]

Damn. From the moment you.

[C]

From the very jump, you were like,

[A]

I'm not buying this.

[C]

Yeah. Because it was just. It was a way to use the pain of an entire population to start his own political career, where he is now delivering for the corporate class that caused all of those problems that he wrote about. And he never really accurately challenged power in that book and instead suggested it was people choosing to be this way.

[A]

Okay, this is really interesting because I want to introduce a new segment on the show that we've never done, but I've always wanted to do. It's not that we can alt that title, but the title of this segment is called, hey, Whatever Happened with that.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So the first big story that you reported on for more Perfect Union. You remember the story East Palestine. East Palestine. Okay. This was the railroad disaster which happened in the county that you were born in.

[C]

Yep. Look at those flames.

[A]

Look at that. The town is under a state of emergency after 50 train cars derailed, causing a massive fire a half mile long which lit up the night sky and burned for hours. Once the news cycle passed, most Americans totally forgot about it. Give us an update. Whatever happened with that?

[C]

Well, the thing to realize there is that that detonation that everybody remembers from the news wasn't how they told us it had to happen.

[A]

What happened.

[C]

The narrative was that there are cars full of hazardous chemicals that might spontaneously combust so that. So we are going to blow them up first. So it can be a controlled detonation.

[A]

Yeah, it was called the controlled burn.

[C]

Yeah. Right. We later found out that there was data, temperature and pressure data from the actual cars in question full of those chemicals that showed the chemicals cooling down, not spontaneously combusting.

[A]

And the railroads make the pitch that, look, this is the situation. The temperatures are rising. We believe that polymerization is imminent, and the Best course of action is to do a vent and burn. And unfortunately, while they're making these decisions, the temperatures of the cars are actually starting to trend downward.

[C]

So that calls into question one of the major narratives of why they had to detonate that in the first place. Now we don't know what the actual motivation is behind that. This is a major rail corridor, so the quicker it gets cleaned up, I imagine the better to keep these rail corridors open. But that was a major point that wasn't covered in the initial reports that people really need to know about the decision to have that chemical exposure that caused acute risks that we know about, but bigger ones that we're going to find out about over the long term and we might not know about yet.

[A]

So you follow up on this two years later and my question is, was justice eventually served to the citizens in the town, the people that were affected by the chemicals that were burned off? It's really fucked up what ended up happening.

[C]

I would say justice was not served. The payouts were. This is a multi billion dollar corporation. The payouts are capped at a, at a laughable level in the, you know, tens of thousands of dollars in the best case scenario. You know, we talked to a man with advanced congestive heart failure half a mile outside of the derailment zone. Completely messed up his life and nowhere near the amount of compensation that a multi billion dollar company could provide. Nowhere near that. And, and that's just for the people who are closest to it. This is a wide ranging thing and for the most part, once you get out behind the narrow bounds where they offer to pay even a little bit.

[A]

Yep.

[C]

People beyond that get basically nothing. And you know, we, this is on top of a legacy of this part of the country having to deal with dirty industries in a collapsed economy. And you know, addiction was huge. In the area is my home county. I had 250 people total go to my high school. Almost near a dozen of them have died from addiction. You know, this is years ago, but that's a flavor of, of what people deal with in this area. And I remember there's a bar we went to when we were covering East Palestine. A woman worked there and her, she lived right by the tracks. Years before that derailment happened, her child was killed by a Norfolk Southern train. They come through town, they're always trying to run the trains longer, faster and with less people. That's part of the reason why this disaster happened. Her child was killed by a train that was going way too fast. They offered to pay her like $6,000 for the death of her child and said, you know, if you push beyond this, where we're going to go after you and we're not going to pay that, so be happy with $6,000 for the death of. Death of a child. And she was telling me this. That was years before the derailment. The derailment happens. She lives right next to the tracks and she's exposed to this. And then we find out that the father of that child is someone I graduated with, and he was struggling with addiction, you know, so that's one bartender in East Palestine with, like, generations of corporate negligence in this area that has only continued since that derailment.

[A]

One of the politicians that was at the time being very vocal about this was J.D. vance.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

How are Trump voters in East Palestine feeling about J.D. vance these days? Do they see him as an ally or do they now see him accurately?

[C]

I think they. From that disaster, basically every politician that came through town, people felt about them the same way. You're here for a photo opportunity, and we're not expecting much. And unfortunately, that was accurate.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And. But again, you can't beat something with nothing. It's not enough for J.D. vance to be absolute ass. You have to be better than J.D.

[A]

vance. That's the bar.

[C]

You have to actually hold Norfolk Southern accountable.

[A]

Hey, John, thank you so much for coming on the show.

[C]

Thanks for having me, man. Pleasure.

[A]

Ladies and gentlemen. All right, away. No delay.

[B]

Stop.

[C]

The largest labor uprising in American history, like in the largest armed conflict of working people since the Civil War in American history, happened at Blair Mountain in the coal fields of West Virginia. And this is where striking miners, multiracial, white, black, tied red bandanas around their neck, and they took up arms against the government and coal companies in a strike for dignity, for fair labor practices. For a lot of the things that we take for granted today that are under assault. And they were called the redneck army. And I think that is what the definition of redneck should be. It should be rooted in solidarity in our labor history. That, by the way, is never taught in schools around the area because that might be dangerous to the agenda of corporations there.

[A]

Hey, folks, you can now watch HMDK on Spotify. If you're subscribed to Spotify Premium, you don't get any Spotify ads on my video.