All Episodes
Oct. 12, 2023 - The Roseanne Barr Podcast
01:22:15
#018 Marianne Williamson | The Roseanne Barr Podcast
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hi everybody, welcome to the Roseanne Barr podcast.
It's going to be a very interesting show today.
Everyone's told me that I mostly have interviewed people from MAGA and And, you know, stayed on that side of things.
But, you know, I think you might have grasped, if you're smart, that, you know, I'm not easily definable nor containable in my ideas.
And so I like to cover the entire perspective of stuff that's going on politically in our country.
So I'm very excited that I finally got some people from the Democrat Party and, you know, more leaning leftward From middle, of course.
to agree to talk to me, a lot of them are really afraid.
Oh, you see, my patience is growing.
Uh, thinking that I'm not able to converse in a civil manner, but of course I am.
And excited to do so today with somebody who is a presidential candidate.
You guys know that I ran for president in 2012 as a socialist.
And found my way, you know, to where I am now.
But I'm very excited to have a guest that I have previously interviewed and spoken with several times, including having a lovely dinner with.
But on my talk show, I interviewed her, and I'm excited to have her today, a presidential candidate from the Democratic Party, Marianne Williamson.
Hi, Marianne.
Hi, Roseanne.
It's so nice to see you.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for being on.
I guess we saw each other before the turn of this century, wasn't it?
I think I probably was, actually.
Yeah, I think I probably was.
Things have definitely changed a lot, haven't they?
It's a different world.
It's definitely a different world.
I remember last time we spoke, you came on my talk show and we were talking about, you know, it was a really interesting conversation for me.
I was really amazed at the way you handled things.
We had an audience at the time.
that would ask us questions.
You know, we took questions from the audience and somebody, somebody, a man, he stood up and started giving you the, you know, business there, coming, saying blah, blah.
And you listened.
I learned a lot from this, Marianne.
You, you listened very calmly.
And I thought you were going to go ballistic because I was at that time somebody who went ballistic and, you know, when I heard opinions that I thought were abhorrent.
But you listened very carefully and you said, I disagree and thank you for sharing your opinion.
I was blown away.
I really admire that about you, that you're able to claim your space and stand in it.
And it's not easy to pull you off of your intention.
And I really admire that about you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I appreciate your saying that.
I have a lot of opportunity to practice those skills right now.
Yeah.
I think since we last spoke, we both have had a lot of opportunities to learn self, what do you call it?
Really, it's an emotional self-discipline.
Yeah, it is an emotional self-discipline.
Isn't that the hardest thing of all?
I think also when you're in a public space, people are watching how you react to things.
They're watching to how you react to things as much as they're watching and listening to you when you're just presenting your beliefs.
When somebody comes at you, I've noticed that.
I've noticed that throughout my career.
How you handle moments like that is a serious issue.
It is.
It seems right now, the time we find ourselves in, people really get easily triggered and pulled off their intention to go to a real ugly place that I don't like.
I think that there are factors that actually encourage that.
Social media, Twitter is such a cesspool, and a lot of even the news media that is looking for that sensational aspect.
You know, it's interesting.
I heard a man, he's a Democratic congressman, and he was talking about some of his Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives.
He said, you know, behind closed doors, they're really reasonable people.
It's in front of the camera that they feel their job is to be all oppositional and sensational.
But behind closed doors, we sit down and we have rational conversations.
Well, that's really terrible what's happened to America.
I remember many years ago, I was visiting the Congress, and I remember Dennis Kucinich was a congressman at the time, and we were having lunch.
This was during the Bill Clinton impeachment trials.
Graham was a congressman, and Lindsey Graham was one of the main critics of the president.
So I was getting on the elevator with Dennis, and Dennis saw Lindsey, and they were like, Hey!
Hi, Lindsey!
Hi, Dennis!
And clearly they were like bros, you know?
They were like good friends.
I got on the elevator, And Dennis saw that I was kind of bristling.
He said, what's with you?
And I said, well, you know, he's so awful about Clinton or whatever.
He said, Marianne, that's all just for show.
That's just on TV.
And I thought to myself, great, we get the poison.
The television audience, the culture, is poisoned by that opposition.
There was a book by Matt Taibbi called Hate Inc.
The first show that did that, he said, was a show called Crossfire.
Kids are raised with this, and you get to the point where nobody in the culture thinks that we can have a civil conversation with people who don't agree with us, which is dangerous, really dangerous.
It's so dangerous.
It's so dangerous.
That's why I came back to television, because I didn't like the direction it was going.
This was years ago, too.
What is it?
Five years ago.
And I thought, we can't be that severely divided at all.
It's not, you know, like they say, a house divided against itself can't stand.
And I really wanted to show A family that had a Hillary hater and a Trump hater, but they still loved each other.
I thought that was so important for our country at the time.
It just got worse and worse and worse since then.
I know they are looking for the soundbite to play, but it's almost as if they are trying to trigger people to go into a violent place with each other.
Ooh, what's happening?
I mean, is that part of why you are...
Are you running for president?
I wouldn't say it's why I'm running, but I think it speaks to who I'm seeking to speak to.
We all have to get out of our silos.
We have to have an American conversation now.
Nobody has a monopoly on truth.
Nobody gets to own this country.
It's all of us here.
And when people say, are you talking to this group or to that group?
I always say, I'm speaking to a place in the American heart.
And we all have that.
Yeah, we do.
That place is where we're going to find the answers and the new level of conversation, which is really the old level of conversation, out of which solutions will emerge.
We've all got a... That's exactly what I think, too.
That's exactly what I think and I say often.
The answers aren't going to come from these performers, basically, as you said, in Congress.
And, you know, in the government, the answers are going to come from the people themselves when we speak to each other with civility and actually seek answers rather than trying to prove the sound bites we parrot are correct or false.
I mean, we have to speak to each other and that's what America is about.
People have forgotten that.
I couldn't agree more.
And I think that it's in conversations like you and I are having right now, which might seem, oh, but they're not talking about politics right now.
Oh, but we will.
No, no.
But what I'm saying is this is the essential conversation, politics right now.
This is politics because until we reclaim this, we won't get any political answers.
Yeah, that's weird that you said that people on, you know, opposing sides of the aisle, you know, really speak to each other in a different way than they do when performing.
I think that's true because they're all golf buddies.
You know, you see them out golfing, so they can't really be so backbiting and petty as they seem.
On the television with each other.
And I guess that is how things get hammered out.
But it doesn't seem like they ever hammer anything out between them that benefits the people.
It's only for themselves.
That's how it seems to me.
They make a deal to make deals.
I was very excited about them.
I think this is a good political idea.
I wonder what you think.
Where they just start passing one I agree with you.
a time and they stop that piling on, well, we'll give you this if you give us that.
And they just bypass the health and wealth of the American people while they do that.
Just give them money to their lobbyists. I agree with you.
I agree.
But I don't know if that'll pass.
I knew that it was in the House, but that would be the biggest, the greatest, one of the greatest things that could happen in our government, because it's our government, right?
And I think that's the point.
And I think that that's what the majority of people on the left and the right feel, and rightfully so, that the government doesn't belong to us now.
And then we have disagreements on, well, who do you think it belongs to?
I, and many people on the right as well as left, think it belongs to the corporations more than it belongs to the people.
And that the government at this point does more to serve the corporations than to serve the people.
And people are angry about that.
And I think people have a right to be angry about that.
Do you think that's true?
And it also seems as if the government itself, it works as a corporation.
And what bothers me so much about that is that people forget that the last thing that's democratic in the world is a corporation.
They're anything but.
To have short-term profits for huge multinational corporations be our governing principle.
You can either have that or have democracy.
You can't have both.
And so this is really destroying our democracy.
You know, when you have people, whether it's carcinogens in our food or lack of healthcare or people rationing insulin or, or whatever it is only because of the greed of an insurance company or a pharmaceutical company and people's lives are falling apart because of it.
I don't care whether you're on the left or the right.
This is not about left versus right.
This is about power versus powerlessness.
In short, it's the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
The same old, same old.
And that's what we have to realize.
No matter whether you're on the right or on the left, if you're being screwed by that, you're being screwed by the same forces.
So those forces want the left and the right to feel divided by each other so that we don't look up.
You know, look to the right, look to the left.
They're your problem.
They're your problem.
No, they're your problem.
That's right.
American people, when we get out of our silos and realize that, that's when there's going to be the revolution at the ballot box that matters.
Yeah.
Now, if only there was something decent to vote for.
I want to talk about your campaign.
And, uh, now I like the person I want to say, I really admire the work you've been doing on, um, I won't say reparations, but it is along the lines of healing.
You know, as a white woman, you're a Jewish woman.
First of all, I want to say that I have so many things that... First, let me just say this.
It's so great that we're going to put aside our differences for a minute, for a while here in this conversation, and we're going to Concentrate on the things we agree on.
I think maybe we're setting a good model here for people in our country.
I think also, though, what I would like to think we can model is not just concentration on where we agree, but places where we don't agree.
You know, it's like in a marriage or a love affair.
You have to be able to disagree.
It's about how you disagree.
It is that.
You know, so we might not agree on every little thing.
I mean, I grew up at a time, so did you, when the fact you disagreed with someone about politics didn't mean you didn't have dinner.
Right, it doesn't mean families don't exist anymore.
You know, Eisenhower said the American-minded is best is both liberal and conservative.
There are high-minded liberal principles, there are high-minded conservative principles, and some of my best conversations are with intelligent conservatives, and the analysis of a, you know, I always learn, maybe the conclusion we come up with is somewhat different, but at the best, we both learn from one another.
I mean, that's really, you know, thesis antithesis.
That's what I think the founders intended.
That the truth would make itself known as long as we have the information, we had an educated population, and we would talk.
Yeah, I think so too.
And I think that basically we all want the exact same things.
We just disagree on the method of getting there.
Well, at this point, We're blocked by something, it seems to me, more than disagreement.
We're blocked by what you and I were talking about before, by this instinctive, almost impulsive, you're over there and I'm over here, and I believe what I believe, and you better believe what you believe, and if you don't agree with what I agree, then you're bad.
That's more than disagreement.
That's a personality dysfunction.
Yeah, it is.
It's a lack of maturity.
It's a childishness.
We are living in very serious times.
We all need to be grown-ups right now.
We really need to be mature grown-ups right now.
So it's not the disagreement.
The fact we disagree is how we learn from one another.
But this... I can't even call it silliness because it's more perilous than that.
It is perilous because it's...
Hateful words, and hateful words are usually followed by hateful acts, and I just fear that for our country.
You know, Roseanne, at this point, people die because of it.
People die.
I mean, this is a very serious moment, and I think that's why this is a serious conversation, as serious as any specific political issue we could talk about.
You know, we're all Monitoring everybody, you know, in AA they talk about, is it in AA?
Um, I can't remember the line, but something about how God didn't put you here to monitor somebody else.
Yeah.
Monitor your own heart and your own mind.
And I think, yeah.
And when you can't, I mean, you teach, you talk about the teachings of Jesus.
Um, Forgive me, Marianne.
I can't remember that book, the name of the book.
A Course in Miracles?
Yeah, of course in Miracles.
And well, now I spaced out what I was expecting.
That's fine.
But it was something good.
You were talking about reparations at the beginning.
Oh, before that.
Oh, damn.
I'm so old, I forget half the stuff.
Jesus?
No, before that.
I know that took us into another place, but I want to tell you something interesting that I read about memory loss as we age.
You want to hear it?
Yes, of course!
So I had written a book called, um, the age of miracles about turning 50.
This was years ago.
And after I wrote the book, I read an article in the New York times and the New York times was about a conference of neuroscientists and brain people and stuff.
And they were like, they were investigators into things like Alzheimer's and dementia and things.
And they were doing a whole conference about memory loss as we get older.
And so the thesis that was put on the table that was considered radical and revolutionary and had everybody like, oh my God, oh my God, was that someone had done research that seemed to indicate that not all memory loss was a devolution.
That some memory loss, the theory was that when your brain, kind of like in a computer, That when you get a file that has so much in it, so much data, that the brain has figured out the pattern that matters.
And so the brain just dumps the unnecessary details.
And that that's not actually a devolution, but an evolution.
Like an example would be, you and I. We might be talking, you know, our age group, we might be talking to a young woman, and she's telling us what she's gone through with her boyfriend.
And you and I might say to her, honey, he's not gonna call.
And she'd say, well, how do you know?
And we'd say, trust me.
It means we have years of experience.
We can tell ya, he's not gonna call.
So the point is that we don't need to remember the name of every man who didn't call.
Right.
We must learn the pattern.
Which I thought, so wait, so let me give you the punchline that's so amazing at this.
So everybody was really excited at this table at this thought that like, wow, this is really something that's an advance and not a bad thing.
And somebody then said, Oh, wow.
This is so amazing.
We need to like have a name for this.
What would be the word for this?
And then the article said that all of a sudden everybody at the table got quiet because it occurred to everyone at the same time.
And finally somebody said, wisdom.
Oh, wow.
That's very cool.
Yeah, I understand that completely.
I understand what you're saying, because the pattern and arriving at the final judgment takes a lot of wisdom, yeah.
Yeah, and you don't need to remember the details after a certain... No.
Yeah, but it helps, you know.
I'm a victim of it.
The names stop walking.
Sometimes I find if I walk into a room and I say out loud, what did I come in here for?
Then it comes.
Do you ever do that?
Yeah.
I'll try that.
Yeah.
Sometimes when you hear yourself speak things, it really goes into the brain.
It's like some kind of biofeedback, but I admired, I was, I was going to say that I admired that you were doing that back in the day.
And you were also talking about, uh, Not necessarily reparations, but how to make right the racism that has brought us here in our country, where we are right now.
And the great racial divide that all of us are beholding and wondering what can be done to correct or fix it.
We're all having those thoughts.
Well, some people aren't, but thinkers are.
And, uh, you know, you, you were very much on, you were really in the vanguard of that.
And I really admire that you have done that and that you continue to do that.
You opened up a very important dialogue and, and you, uh, you, you took it mainstream and that's very valuable that you did that.
So I can see from there to getting political.
And, you know, wanting to run for president.
I like a lot of the things you said, especially about this being a time for a woman.
I have to agree.
On such a level, on such a level.
It's really, it's really time.
Yeah, it's really time for, speaking of wisdom, particular and peculiar wisdom.
That an older woman brings to the world, which really hasn't been valued too much, but maybe in this new century, people will see the value in it.
I feel sorry for you.
I'm just saying this now that we're a little warmed up and know where our, you know, kind of fences are or whatever.
Maybe we don't, but I feel sorry for you that, you know, you're, You have to fight so hard to be heard in the Democrat Party.
I've heard you say, in effect, I'm going to stay and fight, rather than walk away and fight.
You're probably referring to a conversation I had with Brett Baier on Fox the other day.
What I said was, right now, I'm standing where I am.
You know, I said in that same interview, politics is part science, part art, part gut call.
And I'm not waking up in the morning and having my gut tell me, stop.
But I'm not stupid either.
I see the level of suppression of my candidacy.
Yeah.
And your words, your ideas aren't welcome.
It doesn't seem like your ideas are welcome there either.
Well, it's interesting though, because my ideas, in addition to being moderate positions in every other advanced democracy, if you look, for instance, probably my biggest thing is universal health care.
The majority of Republicans as well as Democrats want universal health care.
Absolutely.
Republicans as well as Democrats want universal health care.
So I'm actually talking about things that the majority of Republicans and Democrats want.
So if the interest really was how we're going to win in 2024, you'd think there would be a real openness to someone who's talking about things that both Republicans and Democrats want.
But instead, those things challenge the underlying corporate control of companies.
Right.
Because, you know, how ridiculous is it that you break your arm so you have to call an insurance salesman?
You have to call an insurance corporation to make sure they get paid before you go to the doctor.
That's exactly right.
And you know what?
I have had two doctors say to me, well, one doctor is a woman named Dr. Julian in Detroit.
And she said 20 years ago, or 15 years ago, I don't know.
If someone came in to see me and I told them what treatment I was prescribing, their first question would be, what are the side effects?
The question today that I hear most often is, how much will that cost?
Because there are millions of people underinsured.
The insurance company will pay for you to go to the doctor, but 18 million Americans can't afford to pay the prescriptions that their doctors give them.
So if the insurance company will pay for you to go to the doctor, but won't pay for the operation, or won't pay for the medicine, or won't pay for the testing, another doctor told me, based on this, he said, I don't even know why I bother to practice medicine.
So you said I tell people what I need, they can't afford it.
And no other advanced democracy, in every other advanced democracy, they have universal health care.
And we're told here it's too complicated.
It's not complicated.
It's corrupt.
We don't need these insurance companies.
And like you said, this has nothing to do with anything but their institutional greed.
And 1.3 million Americans ration their insulin.
Ration their insulin.
Once again, you don't have that in any other advanced democracy because they have universal health care.
You know, there are people who are faced with the decision, do I pay my rent?
Well, that's why, one of the reasons I left the Democrat Party because, you know, I couldn't stand that they passed Obamacare, which to me, they had to go to the Supreme Court and it ended up to be little more than a sin tax on the poor.
Nobody ever talks about that.
They promised it and talked about it for years, but they could never deliver anything they promised, so I feel sorry for you.
I had this fantasy last night, and I have had it for a long time since I ran for president, about Somebody said to me in one of my speeches, some woman came up and she said, what we need is a new party that likes women, which I really like.
Yeah, in my career, because you know I've known you for many years and I never felt like in those days in LA with my books and my lectures, I never felt a gender thing.
I never felt a misogyny thing.
I never felt that it was harder for me because I'm a woman.
In politics, Roseanne, I can't even believe it.
Yeah.
Things that they'll say about me that they wouldn't say about a man, the way they'll describe a situation I'm in, in a way they wouldn't describe a man.
And that's, that's your media for you.
And sometimes it's women who are writing those articles.
It's really disgusting.
You know, I find that it's almost always women that are doing that.
Cause I said, well, you know, the, the women now they've been so programmed and so, uh, just programmed.
That they are actually doing the dirty work that men can't get away with doing anymore.
You know, it's just terrible.
We're all being... Huh?
You're right.
We're all being targeted to destroy our own, to go and knock down our own, and fight like the top dog, like there isn't enough for everybody, when in fact there is.
I totally agree.
I totally agree.
But that's really what we all have to do that work and find those places within ourselves, you know, the bully within ourselves, the misogynist within ourselves, the racist within ourselves.
And nobody, nobody gets that yet.
Well, quite not, not enough people get that yet.
I want to say something to that.
Cause I think you just said something really important.
What I find on the campaign trail, and I found this last time too, you say nobody gets that.
I think most people get it.
You do?
Well, let me tell you what I found.
The system is so corrupt.
From the government, to the political parties, to the media.
But when you're out there talking to people, and I'm sure you feel that way too, people are good.
We are a decent people.
When you're just talking to people, and I think that's what's so sad in politics, and I think it's one of the reasons I'm running, give to the American people the option to just be noble.
Why don't we try that?
They try just compassion and nobility and decency first.
I think there is a hunger for that on both right and left.
I do.
So when you say nobody gets it, I think the American people are as horrified.
I think the American people, the majority of people on the left as well as the right are horrified about the same things you and I are talking about here today and horrified for the same reasons that we are.
Well, I, I like to, I don't believe that.
And sometimes I'm like, you know what?
I only see the hatred and the words of hate and the ideas of hate on social media when I think about it.
I don't see it in daily life.
But I do see a lot of people that like to blame other people rather than looking inside and fighting the battle within, because that is about battle.
Everybody talks about the spiritual war, well, because it's within.
And they like to say it's this group or that group or what have you, but it's within you.
Absolutely.
You know, I see, I see a lot of this today with this war in Israel.
Oh, I wanted to talk to you about that.
It's so horrible.
That's the first thing.
Can we just be human?
Before we go into right, wrong, who's, can we just be human?
and just have an experience of just the tragedy of this?
And then, from that place, from that really authentic place, we'll enter the conversation from a wisdom and a place where maybe some answers can emerge, where the only place answers can emerge.
Can we just have a minute first to register just the human heart?
Can we just do that first?
Yeah.
I saw that.
Yeah.
Instead of using it as a, you know, a platform to, you know, increase.
Your side is wrong.
I'll tell you anybody who's coming from my side is all right.
And your side is all wrong.
They're wrong.
That's number one.
And that's also, you know, there's a poem by Rumi where he said, beyond all ideas of good and bad, right or wrong, there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
We have to find that place.
You know, this is a sure human dimension of it all, which is in this case, Deep sadness.
And if you're not sad, for both peoples right now, for what's about to happen, you have no heart.
And we have to bring our heart to politics.
I think we, more than anything, we need to bring The voice of grandmothers and older women where it's never been allowed to the arena of humanity.
It's never been allowed there and it's just terrifying when you look at that.
That's the voice that's always missing.
I went, you know, I kind of made it my spiritual mission to go and I like to pray with people, you know, and I went over there to to Israel and prayed with Muslims and Christians and Jewish women about finding center, finding agreement, starting over, you know, getting rid of the old stuff that's all about war and hate, but finding something new that has to do with raising a safe and happy new generation of kids.
And we all prayed For the same thing.
And I'll tell you, it was just one of the best feelings I've ever had in my life.
And I think everybody else said the same.
And then we all danced together, which we're not supposed to say because people can be hurt, but we're doing that.
But it was to feel joy together, to feel agreement and joy amongst women of various beliefs.
So it was just a wonderful thing.
And I, I don't discount that.
I think it's so important.
I think it can change the whole vibration of everything, the way the world turns even.
I 100% agree with you.
I've had similar experiences in Israel.
You know, you always hear the phrase, the Holy Land, and then you get there.
Oh my God, there really is a land.
And the holiness is exactly what you just described.
You know, that is the holy experience.
And there's a line in the Course in Miracles where it says, God does not give you victory in battle.
He lifts you above the battlefield.
And in that moment, you were lifted above the battlefield.
Yeah, I love that.
That's where the peace and the good stuff is, above the battlefield, right?
Well, you just said that the whole vibrational experience is, you're lifted above.
Art lifts you above.
Truth-telling lifts you above.
Kindness lifts you above.
Forgiveness lifts you above.
And politics, you know, God said politics should be sacred.
Politics is something that weighs us down and brings us down.
Politics should be something that lifts us up.
And when you was talking- No.
Go ahead.
You were talking before, and I love that you've talked about this.
You've not only said the voices of women, but thank you so much for talking about the voices of the grandmother.
I am a grandmother, by the way, now, the first time.
Thank you.
Congrats.
You know, I've heard for years, they talk about the indigenous grandmothers, and sometimes I felt, well, others of us have grandmotherly wisdom, too, you know?
It's almost like people who say the indigenous grandmothers have wisdom, the rest of us are just Invisible and whatever.
So I love that you said that and I join with you in that.
I join with you in that.
It is the fact that we have been around for a while and that we are women.
There's some divine brew there.
There's some alchemy there.
There really isn't.
This just might be the time for it.
It feels like this is the time where it might actually In my campaign, when people ask me, how is 2020 different than 2024?
I don't think I'm so different, but the listening of people is different.
It's deeper.
but there might be no other option than to listen.
In my campaign, when people ask me, how is 2020 different than 2024?
I don't think I'm so different, but the listening of people is different.
It's deeper.
After everything we've been through, people, when I made them out there, Roseanne,
people know that something is wrong at a deeper level.
And all that let's try political, transactional stuff, it doesn't speak to some deeper level.
And I feel that there's a much deeper openness to a more expanded conversation.
And I'll tell you who else has it, Gen Z.
I always say, old people like me and young people like me, and people in the middle wish I'd go away.
Kind of the same for me too.
Yeah, that's funny.
That's funny how they were kind of socialized to be that way too.
But the young people are so smart and they aren't afraid of ideas that They themselves don't hold.
I see it on stage.
They're in Austin there.
My kids were telling me, don't go on stage, mom.
It's a blue city and they're not going to like you.
Cause you know, they think I'm a Republican, which I'm not, but you know, I'm a thinker.
But anyway, they go, don't go on stage there, mom.
And I had enough drinks that I was, you know, what do you call it?
Courageous?
Courageous, yeah.
And it was just so great.
I killed!
And they were all young.
They were Gen Z. So I just kept getting braver and braver.
And there's no place I can go to on stage where they aren't there with me.
Because they've also thought things deeply.
And that's what You know, it heartens me because that's what we want, right?
We want people to think things through deeply.
They're not even 20th century people.
They weren't even born in the 20th century.
That's huge.
The 20th century mindset is different than the 19th.
And the 21st is different than the 20th.
The 20th was a mechanistic worldview.
The world's a machine.
If you want to fix the world, tweak the machine.
The 21st century is more holistic, more whole person, a recognition that internal things matter as much as external.
You and I have been having a 21st century conversation here in that sense.
And the kids have no problem with that.
The kids are natural with that.
And the old right, left, neither one has done anything for them.
Yeah, that's for sure.
They don't!
They're over the top!
And I would like you, I mean, enough of us who remember a time when you would never say, I'm not gonna listen to a comedian or a speaker because they don't share my, I mean, what's happened to us?
You miss out, and what are you gonna do?
Just limit your relationships to people who, and listen, what I feel in my, you know, and I am on the political left, but there are people on the political left who, I can be with them on 95% of everything.
And then there's one thing I don't agree with them on.
And I assume they have the equivalent of that on the right.
But my God!
Shut somebody down because they don't agree with you about every little thing.
We've got to go now.
Very, very immature folks.
Find our common ground.
And, you know, like I say, everybody wants their children to be safe and have a good education.
Let's start there.
That's a great one.
You know, that'll take the rest of our lives to get there, so let's just go there.
And plus, nobody wants slavery, and nobody wants war, and nobody wants debt slavery either.
Okay, that's enough to keep us busy forever, and then we'll get into those other things next century.
Well, the problem is I don't necessarily think what you just said is true.
Unfortunately, I don't think we are living at a time anymore.
The things that you just described were the things which even 20 years ago we could say, well of course we all agree about that.
Okay.
I'm not sure that's true now.
Really?
You don't think most people want Most people, yes.
Most people.
But there are forces in this country who, for instance, don't want children to be totally educated.
I mean, when people are banning books and telling people what they can and cannot learn in school... So, no.
But I think what we're on to that's important is that the majority of us agree, and that's why we have to create a politics of a deeper perspective, because when you're in a deep perspective, you don't expect everybody would agree on every item.
You brought that up about the banning books, because, you know, a lot of parents are bringing these books on Sex education to the school boards and reading out of them.
And they are, in my opinion, and the opinion of many parents, they are purely pornographic.
Talking about anal sex, this is first grade.
Those are largely, these are for third graders.
And they're illustrated.
But those are the ones I've heard about, and the school board refuses to even address the issues.
But those are not the book banning things that we're talking about.
I'm talking about- But those are the ones I've heard about and the school
board refuses to even address the issues.
I've never heard of any other.
I would agree with you on that.
And I actually think most American parents would agree with you on that.
That's not good.
If you look at the list of banned books, we're talking about things like Grapes of Wrath, one of the great, not only of American literature, but of world literature.
Mockingbird.
The things you're talking about, I think, I would totally agree.
But they say that those are, you know, they say that they always update things for the modern culture and they say that those kind of books are obsolete because they were kind of written in the 60s and that, I mean, I don't disagree with you, but, you know, the schools are always adding new authors and new ideas.
They're not changing the words of John Steinbeck.
I mean, these are great.
Yeah, the word changing is different.
You know, and I just think, great, you know.
Well, Huckleberry Finn is a great American novel, too.
And, you know, that was taken out.
It's got offensive words in it.
Huckleberry Finn.
See, I would not take Huckleberry Finn out.
It's Mark Twain.
I would explain to children, you know.
But it's Mark Twain.
My God.
I know.
I know, but that was taken out by the word police.
You've got to know.
I want your opinion on this, honestly.
I just want to hear what you have to say about it.
Well, I won't ask you that way.
When I was interviewed on the Jimmy Kimmel show and he said, why did you, uh, you know, why are you so this and that?
And I said, well, I just feel like the Democrat party moved so far to the left that it just fell off the cliff and left me behind.
And I'm exactly the same as I always was, but it went so far into the minority opinion that it marginalized the majority of its own party.
You must feel something about that.
How do you feel about me saying that?
Well, you asked two different questions.
How do I feel about what you said?
And you also asked, what do I feel about you saying it?
I feel if you saying it, we're having a conversation.
What you said, though, I have a different perspective, but how I feel about you saying it is fine.
But my different perspective, which I appreciate that you asked with a genuine respect, is that my problem with the Democratic Party is almost the opposite of what you said.
My problem with the Democratic Party is that they have become too beholden, the establishment elite has become too beholden to its corporate donors, which is my same problem with the Republican Party, by the way.
And that goes back to what we were saying.
The problem is the same.
My problem is that they, you know, when you come to big oil, I don't care if they're Democrats or Republicans, they fall in line.
When it comes to the defense industry, I don't care if it's Republican or Democrat, they fall in line.
That's the problem.
The far far left stuff, that's the extreme, is not... But they've managed to marginalize the vast middle of their own party, don't you think?
See, to me, that goes back to left, right, middle.
And to me, all of that is hiding.
It's not about any of that to me.
I mean, that's just people who make me want to roll my eyes.
It's just like, whatever, ignore that.
Do you know what I mean?
That's so performative.
That's so politically correct.
That's whatever, whatever.
But that's not reflected in what's really going on.
None of that is denying people health care.
Hi everyone, it's Jake.
Sorry to interrupt this awesome conversation between my mother and Marianne.
We'll get right back to it.
But there is an important message that I want to bring to you.
I've contacted a company and they've agreed to let us promote their product.
And I will be honest with you, I think next to drinkable water and food, this is the most important thing you can have.
And I'll tell you what it is, because if you don't have one, you need to get one.
Right now, this is a satellite phone.
In the event of an emergency, or a do-attack, or Nazis from Antarctica, or what we see happening in Israel, or God forbid, even just a power outage, you can communicate with anyone, anywhere, at any time.
Cell phones work on about 7% of the planet.
These work virtually anywhere.
You'd be out in a boat, out in the ocean, they connect to satellite.
They also are 100% encrypted.
They can't be tracked by big tech or the NSA.
So every conversation you have on here is, is private.
Go to sat123.com or call the number 855-980-5830 and get yourself a satellite phone.
Uh, don't be tracked.
Don't be caught with your pants down and don't rely on corporations to let you talk to your family when they're probably the ones behind the doom machines that have, uh, set your family on fire.
All right.
Thank you.
None of that is denying people the ability to send their kids to college.
In the 1970s, which you and I definitely remember.
Okay.
We do.
The average American worker.
Yeah.
Whoever thought we'd be nostalgic for the 1970s, right?
Things have changed.
Okay.
In the, in the, in the 1970s, the average American worker could afford a house.
Right.
American worker could afford a car.
The average American worker could afford a yearly vacation, the average American couple could afford to send their kids to college, and the average American couple could afford, if they wanted to, for one parent to stay home.
That's to me where we need to be zoning in.
And it's because of the $50 trillion transfer of wealth into the hands of a very few people.
Now, I don't think any political party should feel self-congratulatory right now.
In my view of things, a Republican president started it and no Democratic president has stopped it.
I'm a Democrat, so I feel that the Democrats At least try to have it both ways.
At least they, to me, you know, I'm a Democrat.
I believe in Franklin Roosevelt's Democratic Party.
I believe in a party of unequivocal advocacy for the working people of the United States.
But right now, they call it a corporate duopoly.
Both parties are owned.
Not only, this is what I've seen in my campaign.
Not only are they owned by corporate interests, they are.
Bingo!
Bingo. Bingo.
And they call it a political media industrial complex.
And that's why CNN isn't even having me on, even though I'm a declared candidate,
even though I'm higher in the polls than most of the people on that Republican
debate stage the other night.
And so I'm not on, you know, MSNBC and CNN do for the Democratic Party, what
Fox does for the Republican Party.
It's terrible.
And that's why podcasts like this, independent media, you are independent media, and this is where we can just have a regular conversation, and that's why it's important.
Yeah, it's great to break through that big old veil of keeping us ignorant and silent.
People are in a trance these days.
Can I ask a question, Marianne?
You've kind of said that a few different ways.
What do you think is causing this tribalism?
If you could...
What is causing the tribalism and the fact that...
Well, I...
Yeah, that's my word, tribalism.
But yeah, you've been saying there's this thing going on, the media, we're right, left, we're played with.
Why do you think it's so different?
Now, why are you nostalgic for the 70s?
And I know you're talking about corporate interests, but from a conversational perspective, what do you think is behind it?
Because it's profit-based.
So when your mother and I were young, the same company was legally forbidden to own the television station and the radio.
That's right.
And the newspaper.
Because the diversification of opinion was respected, and it was recognized that that was important for a healthy society.
And there was something called the Fairness Doctrine.
And the Fairness Doctrine meant that you hear opposing views.
So Ronald Reagan got rid of the Fairness Doctrine, and then Bill Clinton, in 1996, with the Telecommunications Bill, there was this conglomeratization.
These a few media companies.
I'll give you an example.
So if we were back, let's say, in the 1960s or the 1970s, a reporter would come in to their editor and say, I have a lead and there's something I want to go investigate.
I think that factory downriver is pouring poison into the river.
And the editor would say, get on it.
Get on it.
And if it was good investigative journalism, there was a very good chance that reporter might get a Pulitzer prize.
Okay.
Today, there's a very good chance that the same company that owns the factory owns the newspaper.
That's right.
And owns the prison.
Pardon?
And also owns interest in the prisons.
That's true, too.
So today the editor would be more like, I say, no, we're not going to cover that.
It's all profit making when this is why you can't, you can either have short term profits.
You know, when the news becomes a profit making venture, it's like health becoming a profit making venture.
Not everything should be profit making.
Not everything should be about profit.
And when you have that, you can either have short term profits as your bottom line and your governing principle.
short-term profits for corporations or you can have people, democracy, humanitarian values, our safety, our health, our well-being.
Don't you think a big mistake was when they passed that Citizens United when they said... That was everything.
That was like the death knell because that has so released all this what's called dark money, corporate influence, That's the worst thing of all, and the only way we can override that is with a revolution of the ballot box.
The only way we can override that is through We the People.
Can you explain what that is?
Can you explain to one of you?
People don't know.
They basically passed a law that a corporation has as much human rights as a human being, a citizen.
And they said, which it had been determined that corporations have the right to pay, which is sick in and of itself.
But they, they, with that decision, they gave these corporations unlimited power to influence political, um, uh, political, um, elections.
And, you know, I tell you, I'm in the belly of the beast right now.
I've seen how it works.
I've there's character assassination.
There's, It's dark.
Yeah, I saw it first hand.
You're aware, Ma.
Yeah, you've been through it.
I mean, I wanted to see it so I could know about it for myself.
But yeah, there's no democracy in it, that much I know.
That's the last thing there is.
So, you know, I'm worried for our country.
I loved that you, when you were, you know, when you were speaking about the problem with the immigrants, you were brave enough to say, well, let's look at the U.S.
drug laws role in all of that.
And what the people are escaping is cartels created by our U.S.
drug laws.
And that's so right on.
I'm glad you said that.
Thank you.
That was great.
You know, Richard Nixon started the war on drugs in 1971, and he called drugs public enemy number one.
Now, once again, we're old enough to remember drugs in 1971 were not public enemy number one.
And John Ehrlichman, who was one of the Watergate people who then worked for Nixon and went to jail, when he got out of prison, he spilled the beans about everything.
And he talked about how, when we started the drug war, he said, of course Nixon knew it wasn't public enemy number one.
And he did it as partly an attack on black communities, etc.
We have spent a trillion dollars on the drug war.
It clearly has not helped.
It has made things even worse.
When I was in college, we had 300,000 people in prison.
We now have 2.3 million.
And almost half of all federal prisoners are there for nonviolent drug offenses.
So we now spend $100 billion a year And we, for a fraction of that money, could create a world-class network of recovery options.
You know, when you and I knew each other in LA, we knew people in AA.
You know, recovery was a corner of things.
Drug addiction now is an ubiquitous problem.
And we're not solving it by criminalizing it.
We need to change it to a health issue rather than a criminal issue.
And that's what countries like Portugal do.
Meanwhile, we take away the black market, because the drug cartels have all this power, because the drugs, as long as there's a hunger forum, Right?
So they have this black market that would make a big dent in the power of the drug cartels, and it would also free us up to address the one drug, which I don't even think of as a drug.
I think of it as a weapon.
I think of it as a poison.
I think of it as something that needs all of our attention, of course, and that is the fentanyl crisis.
It's terrible.
It's like China.
It's like China with opium, isn't it?
Yeah, but people didn't die from opium.
That's true.
I mean, so is the fact that the entire country, you know, people just die.
You're hearing things like kids who order what they think is Adderall on Snapchat, and Snapchat, it's unbelievable.
Snapchat, once again, going because of the greed and the money.
There are times when Snapchat will not hand over the information.
They'll know.
It's truly horrible.
I would be on that.
Well, what would you do?
I'm going to let you campaign here for a minute.
What would you do your first 10 days in office?
First thing I do is cancel the Willow Project.
The Willow Project is an $8 billion ConocoPhillips oil extraction project in the North Slopes of Alaska.
We have got to stop ramping down fossil fuel extraction.
Now that's a place where there's a big difference between a lot of people on the right versus people on the left, but I'm solid on the left on that one.
I believe that we need to make that transition And I believe that we can make that transition because we're Americans.
You know, we have lost a sense of this American can-do thing that we used to have.
And that's not only how we should look at something like that, it's how we should look at even politics.
People are feeling hopeless.
People are feeling, well, we can't change it.
So, I think that we can move to a green economy, to a healthy economy, to a clean economy.
We need to make a massive shift into green, into solar, into geothermal, and it needs to be a just transition.
There are people who have said to me, Ms.
Williamson, I make over $100,000 a year, Now working for the fossil fuel industry.
Are you telling me that you want me to start making $15 an hour to put up solar panels?
Well, that person had every right to ask that question.
And that's why it has to be a very careful transition.
But there are people who work in technology, in manufacturing, in research, whose jobs could easily be moved in a lateral way.
And the oil companies, we now know, new decades ago, the damage that they were doing.
They know this rain of fossil fuels got to end.
They just want to squeeze every last dollar.
Until, while they can.
And I want to partner with them and say, you know, you're going to make just as much money, help us create a green economy, use your technology, use your skills, use your genius, and let's partner and go in another direction.
We've done that in the United States before and we can do it now.
How long do you suppose that transition would take though?
It might take a hundred years.
The transitions that we need to make in this country would not happen during my four years in the White House, but I feel I could get things started.
I feel we can begin a season of repair.
I would also, in my first days in office, would demand that there be an audit of the Pentagon, which, of course, they would fail.
Apparently, 60 Minutes does better oversight of the Pentagon than the U.S.
Congress does.
Did you see that expose?
This is another interesting place where conservatives and liberals are starting to converge.
I think the gig is up.
So you have these corporations, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and the Pentagon is their piggy bank.
And people die because of this.
And I'll tell you when I'm president, if I'm president, when I'm president, there will not be, as there is now, a Secretary of Defense who is a former Raytheon board member.
You know, when you and I were growing up, there would never have been a general who
was a head of the Defense Department, because just like we have a civilian commander-in-chief,
the Defense Department should also be run by civilians.
But when Trump brought in General Mattis, not that he was a bad guy, but it just broke a tradition that should not have been broken.
Biden continued it, although Lloyd Austin, who was a general, took off those clothes.
It's the same thing.
That is what your military-industrial complex is about.
You don't want people who are from the military or from military contractors to head your defense department.
Your defense department should be above and separate from all that.
Making decisions that have only to do with the appropriate use of power and nothing to do with money.
You think the division we have is corporate funded?
Like intentionally funded to make us argue and fight?
Is that what I'm hearing?
The media.
That book, Hate, Inc., remember, and I say this with respect, he had some good things and he's passed, so I don't want to, but Jerry Springer, a lot of money came from all that.
That show, Crossfire, you know, people want to get clicks.
People want to get viewers.
If it bleeds, it leads.
You and I here are having a real conversation.
It's not an accident that this is not mainstream media.
This is why podcasts are important and why they're so, so popular today.
People want just, can we just have a real conversation?
But if we were on a show that was only about corporate profits for a, for a, um, you know, a media conglomerate, I mean, you certainly know this, uh, Roseanne, there would be pressure to make it very different.
Yeah.
Well, it was like that in television, too.
As soon as you accept a sponsor, you're putting the noose around your own neck.
You're better off to pay for it yourself than to pay for people to censor you.
But that's America today.
They've got their tenants and everything.
It's like everything.
It's your healthcare, it's the food you eat, the carcinogens in your food.
Did you read the article that came out recently about the ingredients in a ketchup bottle in the United States versus the ingredients in a ketchup bottle in Canada?
No.
So what happens is that there are food companies that have, let's say, potato chips or ketchup or whatever, that's composed of one thing here, but has to be in another thing in Canada or Europe.
Because in Canada and Europe, they'll say, you can't put that carcinogen in our food.
There are laws against it.
That's true.
Traveling the world, and you've probably noticed this too, when you travel the world, They actually have way better food than we do.
Our food just tastes like plastic.
It is because it is literally plastic.
Do you know 46% and before we finish that people some people say well why is that?
It's because the carcinogens are the thing that give the food a longer shelf life which makes more money for the food company.
So in terms of the plastics, this plastic thing.
So there's this stuff called PFAS.
Have you read about PFAS, the forever chemicals?
And it's horrifying.
And I first heard about it in New Hampshire, but now 46% of all the water in urban wells in America are filled with these PFAS.
They're called forever chemicals.
They don't break down in the body.
And they've even found plastic pieces in human hearts.
Yeah.
This isn't left versus right?
No.
This shouldn't be left versus right?
No.
Do you think it's on purpose?
I mean, do you think that, what about that UN Agenda 2030 where it calls for depopulation?
What do you think of that?
Or is that just a whole right-wing conspiracy theory?
No.
I think that the conspiracy that we should be worried about is very overt.
It's everything I'm talking about.
Like when you asked just now about where does that come from.
So there was a company in New Hampshire and it was a French company.
And this is another thing.
What they were doing in New Hampshire, they would not have been allowed to do legally in France.
So there are all these things which Europe will say, you can't do that.
It's dangerous.
And so the European company will say, okay, we'll go to America.
They'll let us.
So they were spewing these, these chemicals into the water.
in Merrimack, New Hampshire, and the cancer rates were sky high.
Finally, the protests about this were so great that St. Gobain Company has recently said,
it's not worth it, we're leaving.
But now the PFAS are all over the country.
And it's because, you know, when sometimes people say, oh, job killing regulations,
get rid of those job killing regulations.
No, they weren't job killing regulations.
You would actually have to create jobs to actually have people adhere to these things.
They're safety regulations.
I know.
Safety regulations, health regulations, and so European companies that protect their citizens.
So we have all these toxins and carcinogens spewing into pesticides and water and food.
This is not about Left vs. Right, it's about money and those who have it and can influence Congress to make those things possible.
Well, it's about a predator's access to its prey, is how it seems to me.
It is.
It's predatory.
It is predatory.
And that's why I believe those college loan debts should be forgiven, because they should never have existed.
You don't prey on your young.
In the 1970s, going before the 1970s, we had tuition-free college and tech school, which they had in Texas, right?
Remember California?
And it was Ronald Reagan that came in and got rid of it.
And then they said, Oh, he's our guy.
It's predatory.
You don't prey on your young.
You don't prey on your tax base, which that blows my mind.
But that's where we're at.
So we're paying billions of dollars in taxpayer money to subsidize companies that are already making billions of dollars in profit so they can develop products and turn back and price gouge the American people Whose tax dollars had funded what they did to begin with.
That's our relationship to Big Pharma.
That's our relationship to Big Food.
That's our relationship to all of these companies, all of these things.
Yeah, we're paying for our own destruction.
We are paying for our own destruction.
See, I would love to see you in debate with... Biden.
Well, yeah, Biden, but that's... He won't do it.
He won't debate.
He's owned.
He's corporate owned.
I mean, do you feel, I don't know how to even approach it, but you know, maybe you Maybe there will be a really accessible third party someday for American people, maybe.
And maybe it will encompass real issues that we're all pretty much, most of us I'll say, concerned about.
And maybe it will be for the Citizens, and maybe it won't be just for a handful of people at the expense of the many.
Maybe that will happen someday.
I would certainly hope so, but I don't see it in either party.
I just don't.
Well, the problem is the hour is late.
Yeah, it is.
So you and I come from a time when we can talk in long term.
Well, someday.
Well, you're right.
But I see why you... I mean, I don't know.
I just hope everything is... I hope everything gets better and common sense rules the day.
I think each, can I say something?
I think each party needs to look at itself.
And I think when you're talking about the cross-planning being an issue, but I rarely see a Republican, and I certainly do not see Democrats at all doing that self-assessment.
Is our party in bed with the wrong people?
Are we pushing the wrong messaging?
Are we wrong on this?
Just look in the mirror.
I don't see that.
And I know we can talk about, Oh, third party, or we need this, but those are the people that need to do it.
First, the people at the top of each party.
And I don't feel good about that happening personally.
I'm not trying to be negative, but I haven't seen any part of anyone in politics or involved on that level, willing to even consider the fact that they may be wrong.
Well, I really encourage, uh, you know, grandparents to run for office.
That's kind of why I did it because I did something.
I love what you're saying.
I did something that's more, what do you call it?
The thing they present, what do you call it?
Resume.
It would be, oh, I was a beneficial part of my community and I helped keep these kids safe and I was a crossing guard.
That's the kind of resume that should matter, not that I work for this corporation.
We should not vote for nobody like that.
We should vote for people who cared for their own communities and their own children and The things that matter.
I really wish that would happen.
Well, what they say is that you have to have had a career ensconced in the car that drove us into the ditch for us to be qualified to drive us out of the ditch.
What I see as qualification, and you and I would agree on what you just said, that means somebody who's not in the club.
Yeah.
In their club.
The George Carlin thing, you're not in it.
And if you're not in it, you haven't even tried.
And Jake, what you said, I mean, I feel that's why so many of the corporatist Democrats don't like me.
Because I do say the Democratic Party has got to look at its own corporatist leanings.
Yeah.
I would say Democrats today are What I didn't like about Republicans in the eighties, I see that in the Democrat party.
I see a uniparty, I see corporate entanglements.
I mean, Biden, as far as I'm concerned, is one of the most corrupt presidents I've ever seen.
I was born in 1978.
You know, we are now on the verge of World War III.
And people always say that.
I'm like, oh, stop it.
This is the first time where I think, you know, we're very close.
That's a Democrat pushing war.
That's a Democrat involved in a proxy war.
And Trump, whatever you think about him, when he was president, we were not getting involved in proxy wars.
And we were trying to stay off that stage.
And I think The Democrats, I think that's one of the things they hated about him the most.
And I feel like they're using lawfare and things against him.
I'm not saying he's citizen president in all hope.
I'm just saying you can see them wanting to make an example of anyone that isn't pushing a uniparty war agenda.
And I see that coming from the Democrat party today more than the Republican party.
I see Republicans talking about jobs and I see Republicans talking about community much more.
And that's weird for me as a lifelong Democrat to see what I see today.
Yeah, they talk about jobs and community, but their policies do not foster jobs and communities.
And when it comes to lining up with the defense budget, the Democrats and the Republicans are the same.
I expect the Democrats to not do that.
They play their part for the camera.
You know, we have to discount everything they say, I'm afraid, because I don't believe one of them for one minute.
But Marianne, you sound like a Democrat that I grew up with, the way you talk about taking money out of corporations.
I just want to finish this point.
I don't see Democrats today saying what you're saying.
And that is very strange because what you're saying is the Democrat, the real true Democrat party line.
That's what I think RFK said too.
He's like, he's trying to make the point.
I don't know how you think about it, but I feel like trying to make the point that, wait a minute, this party was a Kennedy party and you've chased that out.
Um, you know, uh, so, you know, I feel for you that you're, You know, there, and you don't feel like it's hopeless, but you must feel like it.
I don't know, my wheels are turning, you know.
Yeah, well, I just, you know, I'm just very afraid of, I'm just afraid of the Uniparty.
I'm afraid of being in the court.
But that's the conundrum. People are, they talk about the corporatocracy,
that they're both so dominated. So then you say, well, what do you do? Do you go
independent? Do you go green? But then you have to ask yourself,
are you going to help elect the person that you most don't want to see there?
And I don't think there's a right or wrong answer.
Well, it's the lesser of two evils.
Every election's been about that forever.
It's still evil, but I mean, you know, I do see Trump as a populist, and I see myself as a populist, too.
I don't think of Trump as being a A Republican, he's fighting the same fight within his party that you're fighting in the Democrat party.
He's trying to get rid of, you know, the corruption and the corporate owned people in the Republican party.
I don't think she agrees.
There is no evidence.
I know, but I do.
There is no evidence.
I think it's beautiful.
But to me, someone who's for Americans first and creating jobs here, that hooks me in.
Well, America is a great PR line, that's for sure.
What?
It's a great PR line.
So let me ask you a question.
He passed in 2017 a $2 trillion tax cut, which will never pay for itself.
83 cents of every dollar went to the richest corporations and individuals.
That's not for the people.
So he increased income inequality.
So this idea that he's a man of the people is, um, and he let in the whole economic subject and economic thing.
I'd like to have you back and discuss that when it's not at the end of the show.
I really want to talk about what tax cuts, what the result of that was.
Well, increase income inequality.
Now this is the deal.
What I would like to do is repeal that tax cut.
And then put right back in the middle class tax cut.
The middle class tax cut part of it was a good idea.
That part was good.
I'm all for cutting taxes for the middle class.
But that tax cut that gave the 83% of every dollar to the top earners, that's not man of the people stuff.
That's man of the very, very, very, very, very, very richest stuff.
I don't care what he says, that's what he did. I know, I know, but that's a huge economic
discussion and you know people did get tax rebates from his tax cuts and the Democrats
can't claim credit for that. People got $60 million in their pockets.
And I went.
When Jack was talking about the Democrats looking in the mirror, the Democrats have
to ask ourselves, why didn't we pass that tax cut?
You're absolutely right.
That's what I'm talking about.
He's really pissed off the Republicans with things he's done, like you're going to piss
off the Democrats with things you say.
So I like him because I think he wants to be solutions-based, which is what we need.
And you can't say that there's not a huge machine in the way of any good idea that would produce results for citizens here.
There's a huge machine in the way.
As you've said yourself, a huge corporatocracy that's in the way of anything fair, that's in the way of anything that isn't for the few at the expense of the many.
And that's what's wrong.
And that isn't anything American.
That has nothing to do with the founding of this country and the mistakes that were, you know, inherent in the founding of this country that were since attempted to correct.
And we're still in the process of correcting.
100% amen.
Go back to the Declaration of Independence.
Secure the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Not toward the rights, but secure the rights.
All of it.
And yeah, we need a lot of that back.
But I think, oh, I want to have you back to talk about Nisara and Gisara, which is what I think is the road Trump's on.
And that's a big economic thing.
But I want you to come back and talk to me about that.
But I just want to say thank you so much, Marianne, for being on my show.
It was wonderful speaking with you.
Intelligent.
Meeting you too.
Thank you.
Wonderful to meet you too, and is there a website where people can learn more or donate to your campaign?
Yes, yes, thank you.
Marianne, M-A-R-I-A-N-N-E, marianne2024.com.
And if anybody likes what I said, I hope they'll drop a dollar.
Yes.
And I want to see you in debate because you're very, very good and well spoken.
And thank you very much and God bless you, Marianne.
Lots of love to both of you.
Thank you so much.
Have a beautiful day.
Export Selection