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The MeidasTouch Podcast
Senator Padilla Responds to Trump Destruction & Attacks on Voting Rights
00:18:55
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- [00:00]
Alex Padilla
Donald Trump voters continue to express their deep regrets online and elsewhere. Posts like this on conservative message boards. I voted for Trump because I thought it would be funny to see liberals growl like dogs. I wanted affordable groceries, but the tariffs are going to make everything worse and my life savings will be gone. I can't afford to spend this money on groceries. I didn't vote for this. Look, even when you look at, let's say, a blue state like California, but you look at some of the red areas which tend to be the areas with more farmers. Like take a look at Kern county and Fresno right there. These are areas that voted for Donald Trump. About 60% in Kern county, about 50% in Fresno. Think Trump was the first Republican to flip Fresno county since 2004. But let's take a look at the Fresno Bee. California farmers fear tariff trade War losses in billions. Uneven bailouts. You have a letter from a group including that that includes the names of nearly two dozens of the state's most influential farming organization, including the California Farm Bureau, Western Growers and American Pistachio Growers. It says in part that the emerging trade measures could trigger retaliatory tariffs that will hurt California farmers who exports totaled 23.6 billion in 2022. Take a look at the recent article from the it talks about the California Farm Bureau President calling for 600 million in legislative action for farmers. Farmers and agricultural leaders are once again highlighting the challenges that they are not fate that they are now facing. The LA Times article California farmers back Trump now. His tariffs hurt them. When you look elsewhere across the country, you're seeing the same type of pattern from USA Today. Going to be a lot of hungry people. Food banks. Farmers across the US Decry federal cuts. From the Wall Street Journal. Trump's loyal farmers stung by his funding cuts. Stuff like this is pushing me left, says a North Carolina honey farmer. And then outside of farming too, across all sectors, like the Detroit free press. Major US steel manufacturer laying off 600 in Dearborn and 600 also nearby, citing weak auto demands caused by the tariffs. But let's break down what's going on first in kind of California with the farming situation. We've got Senator Alex Padilla here, Senator from California. Senator, we're seeing a lot of Trump voters now saying they regret this. This is absolute chaos. They didn't vote for this. What are you hearing, Senator?
- [02:46]
Ben
So hearing a lot of the same fury, a lot of the same frustration and people coming to the realization Donald Trump lied to them. His whole campaign, his platform, his promises were all a lie. And it's coming home to roost because you're right, whether it's the, the tariffs, we know who's going to pay the price. Ultimately, it's not foreign countries, as Donald claimed. It's going to be working families here in the country when prices will go up. This is a president who said he was going to tackle inflation and bring down prices on day one. The opposite has happened. Prices are up in all categories. And now he's, I guess the one thing he has said that's truthful, just this last weekend, he says he doesn't care. He can care less, specifically, is what he said if prices go up because they're going up on everything from cars to fruits and vegetables and everything in between.
- [03:40]
Alex Padilla
You know, when he says I don't care and then when he just makes up stuff, you know, I've referred to this as kind of an idiocracy manifested in real life as well. And, and you see the idiocracy and dangerousness in California when he does something like dumping 2.2 billion gallons of water from a reservoir that was nowhere near the Southern California wildfires. It was after the wildfires are contained because he wanted to prove that he could turn on a valve that he's been talking about. So he orders the Army Corps of Engineers to release these billions of gallons of waters that were needed for the summer, for particularly dry times, and again, just further destroying the farmers. What do we know about that and what's been your reaction to that?
- [04:31]
Ben
Yeah, I mean, this is just insult after insult after insult to the group that you started this segment with, the agricultural interest in the Central Valley of California. The growers that supported him and in his election, they're going to pay the price when it comes to tariffs. Number one, they're already feeling workforce concerns because of the over aggressive detention and deportation operations. So many farm workers that are afraid to show up to work, afraid to send their kids to school, afraid to show up to hospitals for doctor's appointments. It's having a real impact in the fields. And now this, you, you know, just for show, for the sake of being able to post his social media account, a release of so much water in the middle of winter, trying to make a point. This was not for the fires in Los Angeles. By the time the water was released, the fires were already contained. Second, where they released the water, there was no way literally for that water to make its way to Southern California. But the worst part, what nobody's thinking about yet, is come the summer, come the hot, dry summer, Months when farmers need the water for irrigation, there's now so much that water is gone and you cannot get it back. So insult after insult after insult, it's going to hurt growers, it's going to hurt the agricultural industry, it's going to cost jobs and it's going to raise food prices.
- [05:59]
Alex Padilla
You know what your Republican colleagues in the Senate continue to talk about though, is that this pain is needed right now. They say we need to experience hardship. It's going to be uncomfortable. They claim that Donald Trump said that this is what it was all about, pain and suffering in the short term. And then they'll figure it out. I mean, like Senator Tim Sheehy, who replaced, I thought a great Democratic senator in Montana, John Tester. Here's what Sheehy said yesterday.
- [06:30]
C
Let's play it argument that maybe there's short term pain but long term gain here. But, but you just mentioned some of those countries. I mean, I was looking at the numbers. 95. Montana's imported goods come from Canada, Mexico and China. Is this going to hurt people in your state? You think there's absolute to be short term pain? The President's been cleared about that. Everyone has. I mean, if you're going to remodel your house to make it better, in the end, it's going to be really annoying in the short term when your house is getting remodeled and there's drywall desks everywhere and there's workers in your living room. The reality is that remodel has got to happen in order to make things stronger and more stable on the back end. We've had generations now of countries taking advantage of the strong American economy, the strong American workforce.
- [07:12]
Alex Padilla
What do you make of that, Senator?
- [07:15]
Ben
Yeah. When Senator Sheehy says Donald Trump has been clear about that, let's be clear, he's been clear about that after taking office. Throughout the course of the campaign, he promised the opposite. So he lied. It was a bait and switch. He promised to lower cost. Costs are going up. This short term pain, only now he's, he's realizing what it means, but the pain is real. So my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, you know, there's inconvenience and there's pain. If you're remodeling a house, hey, you know, good for you. But that can be an inconvenience. That's not pain. Pain is being left homeless, which a lot of people will be when they lose their jobs or can't afford to pay their rent because, because of Donald Trump's policies. That is Very, very real. Another impact of his tariffs. On again, off again and on again, on again, prices going up is what's happening with the stock market. Now, I don't say this because I'm sympathetic to traders on Wall Street. I bring this up because so many people's pensions, so many people's 401k, some people's retirement savings are tied to the economy. So when the stock market crashes, that's literally dollars that you can no longer have for retirement. It's gone up in smoke. But once again, if you ask Donald Trump what he thinks of all this, he could care less.
- [08:40]
Alex Padilla
You and I could probably spend hours talking about these horrific executive orders by the Trump regime. And we do spend hours talking about it on the show and you do on the floor of the Senate and with your incredible team there in California fighting back against them. I just to focus on one in particular, this executive order that would seem to disinted to disenfranchise so many voters targeting elections. You know, and in Trump's view, it is, I guess, whoever Trump deems should be able to vote ultimately is where he wants to go. I mean, I think he wants to bring this in a kind of Putin esque direction and it's all pretext for his kind of third term dictator language. But what's going on with this executive order regarding elections that seems to disenfranchise so many? And what's your perspective on it?
- [09:32]
Ben
Yeah. So first of all, thank you for bringing this up because all the chaos in the, in the flood of executive orders that continuously comes out of the White House, you know, this one is important to pay attention to. First of all, it's not his first attempt to try to get the personal information of every voter in America. He tried it in his first term. I remember vividly because I was serving as California Secretary of State at the time. We refused to cooperate with his sham of a commission and ultimately it was opposed by both Republican and Democratic secretaries of state. So it failed. But now he's got Elon Musk by his side and so he's trying again to get everybody's personal information across the country. We're not going to stand for it. Number two, when he says this executive order is important so that we make sure that non citizens don't vote in our elections. It's already the law that you have to be a citizen to be eligible to register to vote and vote in our election. So it is a solution in search of a problem. And it's a problematic solution at that. And here's the real rub. The way it's crafted. New requirements for being able to register, vote and to cast ballots will only have the effect of disenfranchising a lot of eligible voters to have to carry around a passport. Half the country doesn't have a current valid passport. So now you won't be able to vote because of a requirement that is not necessary. Number one, service members who move around may have an ID that doesn't reflect their current address because of deployment. So you're going to disenfranchise members of the military from voting, really? Or how about women, when they get married and may change their name? And there's a lag between changing their name in one document but their driver's license or id, and so they won't be allowed to vote. That's what Donald Trump wants in the last thing, because this is. The hypocrisy is rich on so many fronts. With our Republican colleagues. When President Biden was in the White House and we tried a number of things to strengthen our democracy by improving voter registration and getting more people to participate, Republicans were kicking and screaming, we cannot federalize elections. States administer elections, and we shouldn't impose federal requirements on them. But now, when Donald Trump has ideas of how he wants elections to run, Republicans are silent. The hypocrisy is offensive.
- [12:01]
Alex Padilla
You know, Senator, you address an issue that I've been hearing from a lot of women I know. I mean, my wife asked me the very same questions. She said, I'm afraid that I'm gonna be disenfranchised. We were married recently. She said she doesn't know what to do. And what you're saying here is that, by the way, that Trump is targeting women with this. I mean, this is. This. The concern is of one, is one that people should be aware about, that this could potentially impact women who' names are different than their birth names and their maiden names. So this is a real fear. What do we do about it?
- [12:39]
Ben
Yeah, well, we're going to push back, right? We're going to continue to challenge through litigation at every turn. And for the most part, we have been successful since the beginning of the year, whether it's temporary restraining orders on a lot of his overreach or actual overturning his policies through the judicial system. We're going to legislate as best we can. We don't have a ton of leverage points because Democrats are in the minority at the moment. But whenever we do have these leverage points, we have to exercise them. And we've Got to spread the word. You know, when the general public learns more and more about what's happening, whether it's how it's going to be harder for them maybe to register and vote in the future, or prices going up for their daily living expenses, we have to channel that energy into organizing because the midterm elections will be here before we know it. I know we have a few minutes left, but I gotta say this. As soon as we wrap here in a couple of minutes, I'm gonna go do another piece. Support my friend, my colleague, Senator Cory Booker from New Jersey, who is holding the floor. He's filibustering, calling attention to the chaos coming out of the White House and all the damage that they're trying to do, because we have to use every tool in our toolbox to continue to highlight and to continue to push back.
- [13:57]
Alex Padilla
Well, we'll take a watch at you on the Senate floor with Senator Booker, who's been courageously going as of this recording. Now it's going on 16 hours plus. Is he going to break the record? Is he going for the 24, 25 hours, or what do you expect is going to happen?
- [14:16]
Ben
I have confidence him. I think he can. I think he should only be righteous because the days that we're living in, the threats to our Constitution and the future of our country is also unprecedented. So I'm going to be proud to stand with him. And, you know, people are watching. People are paying attention. We need people to be talking and we need people to be organizing.
- [14:39]
Alex Padilla
Glad to have you fighting. Senator Alex Padilla, California, where I live. Thank you so much.
- [14:45]
Ben
All right, thank you, Ben. See you soon, everybody.
- [14:47]
Alex Padilla
Hit subscribe. Let's get to 5 million subscribers. Can't get enough Midas. Check out the Midas+ substack for ad. Free articles, reports, podcasts, daily recaps from Ron Philipkowski and more. Sign up for free now at midasplus.
- [15:00]
Ben
Com.