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The MeidasTouch Podcast
Trump Starts Attacking California…Dem Congressman Robert Garcia RESPONDS
00:14:38
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Transcript7 lines
- [00:00]
Host or Commentator
Gear up for a fight, folks, because Donald Trump is already making posts attacking California Governor Gavin Newsom. Donald Trump, who's now the president elect. If you thought, oh, the tone is going to change. He's calling Gavin Newsom, Gavin Newsom again. I mean, how just embarrassing and humiliating for our country just to have someone in the top office who behaves that way. You know that we previously reported yesterday that Gavin Newsom said, look, we're going to call an emergency legislative session in California to make sure that fundamental rights and freedoms are protected. That's all Gavin Newsom said. And most governors are basically saying, look, while hope springs eternal, we need to protect our people. And if you're going to attack our state, you're going to have to go through me. Gavin Newsom put out a statement like that. Governor Pritzker put out a statement like that. And now Donald Trump is doing this. Governor Gavin Newscum is trying to kill our nation's beautiful California. For the first time ever, more people are leaving than are coming in. He's using the term Trump proof as a way of stopping all of the great things that can be done to make California great again. But I just overwhelmingly won the election. People are being forced to leave due to his and others in all in caps, insane policy decisions like the ridiculously rerouting of millions of gallons of water a day from the north out into the Pacific Ocean, rather than using it free of charge for the town, cities and farms dotted all throughout California. He goes on to say they are making it impossible to build reasonably priced cars, the unchecked and unbalanced homeless catastrophe, and the cost of everything, all in caps, in particular, groceries is out of control. And he puts groceries in quotes for some reason. Also, as an agent for the United States of America on voting in elections, I will be demanding that voter ID and proof of citizenship are a necessary part and component of the voting process. Of course, all of this an attack on California. He's previously threatened he was going to withhold aid from California. I want to bring in California Congress member Robert Garcia. Congressman, thanks for listening to that intro and still being here, but we need you here. We need you in the fight. So let me get your response to that. And tell us, what are Democrats in Congress going to do? What are you going to do to push back on that?
- [02:17]
Robert Garcia
Yeah, happy to be here. I was just communicating with our governor just yesterday and honestly thanking him for diving in and protecting the state and protecting all of the folks that are here. And being a national leader on the pushback against Trump and Trumpism. And I think what's really important at this moment is one that we recognize that we lost. We lost the presidential election very hard. I'm proud of the vice president, proud of what she was able to do. But we have a lot of reflection and retrospection, and we have a lot of work to do ahead to ensure that we go back to winning these presidential elections. Now, look, it's also not all lost. We won some Senate seats across the country. We won Michigan, we won Wisconsin, we won Arizona, we won Nevada, the House. There wasn't some red wave where we somehow lost the House of Representatives. And so I would say that we absolutely have to take stock in our losses, but also know that this is still a divided country. So Democrats have to, at this moment, do the right thing, reflect, take some time for ourselves. But when we come back in the next few days, as we begin to take stock of what Donald Trump and his win actually means, we have to fight back. We have. It's more than just resisting. It's fighting back against Donald Trump. And so I think that what he is going to do, he's made clear already, California is going to push back really, really hard. I'm certainly going to be involved in that effort alongside our governor and our other members of Congress. And I would encourage folks that are watching to, yes, be in your feelings, because I am, too, but also be prepared to get back in the fight because the most vulnerable in our country deserve nothing less.
- [03:59]
Host or Commentator
Some of the most vulnerable in our country, though, voted for Donald Trump. Congressman, they had, they heard the arguments that were being made. They heard that Donald Trump was going to deport family members of theirs. And they sometimes voted to literally, potentially deport a family member to have tariffs which are going to be taxes on their own goods. So we have to acknowledge, right, that there's an information battle here because we say we're going to protect marginalized communities, we say we're going to protect people. But do the people vote, voted against those things? I mean, I think that that should be what we do. But how do we win the information war? Because obviously that was a major L for the party.
- [04:44]
Robert Garcia
Absolutely. And the same is true, right. When you're talking about people that are low income folks in rural parts of the country or communities across the south where you have people that are voting against oftentimes their best interests, that are poor, that are on social, rely on the social safety net, that consistently vote Republican. And the same has happened in this election where we saw additional groups voting for Donald Trump, whether it was Latino men, whether it was younger voters, that is absolutely the case. Two things are important. Number one is we're always going to fight for those that need our support, regardless of who they vote for, because that's what we do as good people and as Democrats. So if you are struggling because of housing, if you need Social Security, if your health care costs are too high, if you're someone that is LGBTQ plus and you need to have your rights protected, and if you're a low income person who needs government service, whether you vote for us or not, we're going to be there because it's the right thing to do. Secondly, and I think this is also really critical and this is why I support what you all do throughout all of your networks and what you are doing on YouTube and on social media is we have a misinformation and disinformation problem in this country. Before I got to Congress, I taught communications and mass media at the college level for 10 years. I have studied this stuff carefully. People are getting their information from sources that cannot be trusted. There's misinformation happening from foreign actors across the world. Traditional news media has lost credibility in many cases. Corporate media has not kept accountability to those that are lying constantly. And so people are not receiving accurate information. And we have to, as Democrats, as progressives, as people that just want truth, we have to figure out how we get information and get to people information in the ways they are consuming it because that is not happening right now. And that's a huge lesson we've got to take away from this election as well.
- [06:40]
Host or Commentator
You know, Congressman, you know, you've been on this program numerous times. Other members of Congress seem to get it. You know, I would say sometimes I felt like we were other than our big community of midas mighty, you know, subscribers and followers. You know, I was, I sometimes felt that we were just screaming into a void sometimes. And the whole kind of party apparatus only geared up for the fight, if you will, like right before an election. And they were nowhere to be seen. And then I think the people were like, oh, these are just Hollywood elites now. They want to join the fight because they come back from their vacation homes three months before an election and now they want to say, hey everybody, we're here. We want to tell you what to do. And they're like, where were you in my life over the past four years and on the right wing with a lot of disinfo and some misogyny, not some, a lot of misogynistic messaging. And some real problematic stuff. Those podcasters, those digital influencers were with the people in Covid in their homes. When these kids were locked in their homes, they were listening to these shows. So then even when they were talking about sports or this or that, when it came to, all right, let's. Here's who we like. Boom. People were like, you were with us. So that needs to be built. And it seems like you're saying that's like the key thing right now.
- [07:59]
Robert Garcia
It's so key. A couple of things. One, and you know this to be true. I mean, the pandemic and Covid actually changed us as a country, as people. And I don't think we've realized the impacts of what that has actually done to us. And the way that we interact with media, with the economy, with work, it's changed the nature of work. And so we. We have not yet taken full stock of the impact of COVID and how that has changed the way that we consume information in this country. And the second piece is, look, I just got the guy. I haven't even been in Congress one full term yet. I'm about to finish my first term. Obviously, I'm a freshman president of our freshman class. And what's interesting is every member of my class, the 30, what, six of us that ran all, are about to get reelected to Congress. And I think the one thing that this generation of Democrats coming in understand is we have to message and take the message everywhere. The reality is we have to be on every network. We have to go on social media. We have to be and talk to your audience. We have to create communication systems and networks that reach folks where they're consuming information. Today, we cannot rely just on the New York Times and the Washington Post to get information out to the public that is not going to win elections. And so I think it's really important that we rethink the way that we communicate and where we are communicating to the public. Because I think all these folks that I'm talking to, they're receiving their information in different ways. They're not reading the paper. They're not getting. A lot of folks are getting all their information from YouTube or they're getting it all from social media, or in some cases now, they're getting it from places like X. And we know what is happening on these platforms. And so we have a lot of work to do. I'm not in the. I'm not in the blame game, so I'm not going to get into that because I don't think that's helpful. I think what's most important is that we all went all in. We lost a presidential election. We had an exceptional, incredible candidate and campaign, but we didn't win. So now we've got to move forward and win those elections and continue to elect more Democrats to the Senate and the House.
- [10:06]
Host or Commentator
Well, let's keep bringing the message directly to the people, open, invite for you anytime you want to come on the network. Let's get the message out. Congressman Robert Garcia, we appreciate you breaking this all down. And you know, we're going, we're going nowhere. As you said, it's not just enough to resist. We got to fight. We got to go on the offensive. Bring the message to the people and learn from the mistakes. That's what we'll do. I know that's what you and your colleagues are going to do. We appreciate everything you're doing. Thank you, everybody. Hit subscribe now. Let's get to that 4 million subscriber mark and have a good one real quick. Meta just changed their algorithm to suppress political content. Please follow our Instagram idustouch right now as we head towards 400,000 followers so you don't miss a beat.