Using Fear to Reshape America | Breaking The Vote

taking power through fear time's running out Richards we're coming after you and every that stole this election with our Second Amendment subpoena's be damned you will be served LED y'all employ your brains out you piece of if you have a hand in this you deserve another person you actually deserve to hang by your goddamn soy boy skinny ass neck [Music] thank you I'm Todd zwillich and this is breaking the vote our Series where we track the growing assault on voting rights and efforts to undermine Democracy in America there's a growing authoritarian movement in America one where Fair elections don't matter winning does where Democratic Norms don't matter domination does and where political consensus doesn't matter power does how do authoritarian movements take power especially in a country where we think of ourselves as Democratic and transparent how do you convince people to trade a preference for fairness for Force fear fear is nothing new in politics after all we're all human fear of crime fear of super Predators fear of moral Decay or a marauding foreign ideology hiding in every shadow today we have new versions of the old fears critical race Theory lgbtq people and of course immigrants the new twist is that your fellow citizens are purposely importing them to replace you Nazis love that one and so do an increasing number of regular old Republicans somebody had mentioned on the radio uh Adolf Hitler and and how he aroused the crowds and maybe get up there screaming these appetits and and these people were just they're they were hypnotized by them uh that's I guess I guess that's the kind of uh uh leader we need today but something's changed the good old politics of fear says support me and I'll protect you from those scary things the New Politics of authoritarian fear says support me or else and fear-mongering is everywhere the proud boys take time off from street fighting and indictments for seditious conspiracy to post up in school board meetings a movement celebrates an 18 year old just because he killed a couple of people that they don't like and a president responds to a violent mob on January 6 not without rage but with intimidation this is what happens how's that for a warning of what's to come through it all the message even though it's cryptic is clear voting is cool and elections are fine but if we lose don't say you weren't warned about what might happen the third of self-described Republicans now say that political violence can be justified more than half say the country could be on the path to Civil War it's becoming increasingly clear to more and more of the American right that that's not a concern it's a threat this week we'll talk about what those looking to end Democratic Norms would have you fear and we'll speak to somebody who is the victim of those fear tactics and successfully fought them off giving others A playbook on how to do just that in the weeks and months ahead but first how fear is being deployed to root out one of the only layers of protection our system has are election officials as they're met with threat after threat for simply doing their jobs causing a mass Exodus our institutions were not built to withstand hey Rick 234 years ago the founding Caucasian fathers of America gave us the Second Amendment times running out Richards were coming after you and every that stole this election with our Second Amendment subpoenas be damned you're going to be served LED you animal enemy Communists you will be served LED we'll make the Boston bombings look like child's play at the poll sites in this County you just effing wait no one at these places will be spared the first email that my wife received your husband should tell the truth or your three kids will be fatally shot cops can't help you cue then provides a link to an image of our home well we started receiving lots of disturbing phone calls my staff is almost exclusively African-American and they started receiving calls laced with racial slurs starting on Christmas day through New Year's Day I received in my voicemail probably it was at least 100 voicemails up to 150. y'all employ your brains out you piece of you actually deserve to hang by your goddamn soy boy skinny ass neck either you're blind or your crooked is so figure it out buddy because which side you're going to be on when the shoot starts brother they started to do surveillance on my staff taking pictures of of all of the individuals that would come in and come go in and out of the warehouse they would take pictures of their license plates and I think at that point especially for for my staff and I the we were we were feeling as though we were under siege so this email is what we had received on January the second it states this election is effing rigged detonations will occur at every polling site set up in this County no one at these places will be spared my first thought was this cannot be happening here this does not happen in Paulding County the first calls I made were to the higher-ups I was told that we had to take this as a serious threat and when you start seeing the plan that the law enforcement has drawn out where we you know have to park our cars up against the building because you know our office is on the ground floor there's glass windows that we you know we're all sitting in front of and the statement that pierced me was when he said if the vehicle were to pull up at least this would soften the blow and when he said that that was when I thought this is real this is real how dare someone pick this County to try to basically scare the voters out of going and casting their vote it was a concerted effort to discredit the results from Philadelphia before a single vote was cast or counted urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully because that's what has to happen bad things happen in Philadelphia joining me now is Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt a republican we might ask me after an interview on CNN my communications director came up to me and said the president just tweeted about you not long after the former president tweeted at me I received the first uh specific threat you lied you're a traitor perhaps cuts and bullets will soon arrive gave my address mentions my wife by name mentions my kids by name including my daughter by her nickname Rhino stole election we steal lives Q I spoke to my wife a little bit after that she had begun receiving threats on her work email so she then took our kids and relocated away from our house after that some days later there was another email message the subject line are my the names of my children and I'm not comfortable reading the rest of it we now had 24-hour police protection undercover outside of our home or wherever my family was wherever they went the real danger to this environment right now and threats and all the rest is you have good people who are very experienced who have been running elections for a long time quitting and retiring so I'm really proud of the fact that in a non-arrogant manner but that I am the highest book geter or was the highest vote getter in Scott County in in the history I like to say Iowa nice you know we're not Maricopa County we're not Pittsburgh Pennsylvania we're not a large populated Community the unfortunate thing is is that I believe Iowa was the first state that imposed a whole Litany of new election laws which was followed by numerous other states a bill that would significantly change Iowa's election laws is heading to Governor Reynolds desk the state senate passed Senate file 413 on Tuesday I think the importance of understanding what this bill is about is the criminalization of election officials under Senate file 413 in Iowa the criminalization of not only election chairs such as myself a commissioner of election but poll workers or election workers that's criminal that could be a misdemeanor or a felony this is simply just saying that you know if you do something unwillfully that you could still be fine ten thousand dollars is a lot of money to a lot of us and we're seeing this across the country as they've moved from Iowa to other states as well where we're seeing election officials actually exit and you're taking institutional knowledge away after a difficult year in 2020 with both the primary and general election I have decided it's time for me to retire the extensive election changes just enacted by the Iowa legislators will only make these limitations even worse I cannot thank the citizens of Scott County enough for their many years of support through my journey in life as Davenport city council member of Scott County supervisor and then the last 14 years as Scott County auditor and Commissioner of Elections sorry I'm capable of taking quite a bit but 2020 was a little too much for me at my office and the criminalization of what might be a mistake just really cemented it for me [Music] we have had a a couple people leave since the election as you have these important elections go on if too many people with institutional knowledge leave that is actually probably more of a threat to election Integrity than the few people out there that may try to commit election fraud I think at this point I've decided to stay because you know if if I leave um I think the the conspiracy theorists they win I won't be running for re-election again a couple years from now I had made that decision before any of this but having gone through it I think it's confirmed that it's the right it's the right decision I think we're at a dangerous spot not only because so many election administrators will likely be leaving after this last presidential election but who could potentially be filling their places we did lose a lot of good people in elections throughout the state um one thing you know if we weren't losing them due to covid and we did lose you know I lost some good friends that are in the election business people were quitting because they were afraid they were um worn out in 2020 election seems to have just not stopped whether it's calls for these sort of sham audits across the country or legislation that's being passed in state houses attempting to reform the election code in ways that will limit or restrict access in the name of increased voter Integrity so I think the 2020 election and its aftermath are still very much with us I don't see any end to it yet Vice News correspondent Alexis Johnson and the producer of that piece Madeleine May joined me now in the studio guys thanks for being here yeah no problem uh Madeline you set out to get in touch with public officials who were really at a low point in their lives I mean threats by text by email by phone all the ways to get your life threatened their families threatened just give me a sense of what it was like to to get them to to talk about their experiences yeah so I got in touch with these officials this summer after the 2020 election and even maybe six or seven months later you could really tell that they were still reeling from these threats they had gotten and for somebody like elections director Richard Baron in Fulton County he actually hadn't listened to a lot of these threats that he got over the phone because there had been so many like the volume of threats that these officials were getting were so high for some of them it was like they were learning about how bad it was for the first time and I think it was very powerful to be there and kind of go through that with them and be in the moment as they were hearing these awful things being said so there's another side to the story Alexis because then you stepped in you guys teamed up for a follow-up story on the public officials getting threatened what what happened yeah so a lot of the people that made those threats to the workers that melon has spoke to left their voicemails when they left voicemails I should say they left their phone numbers they were sending emails from their personal accounts so they weren't really hard to get in contact with so mad almost like let's just call some of these people bad you know on camera and see what they have to say for themselves you know we wanted to find out what their motivations were um how they got the information about the people that they were calling um and did they feel any remorse for it you know we weren't trying to make like a gotcha moment and be like hey like this is advice and we're calling you back because you made this thing like I was kind of just really open and honest with them and being like hey we know you did this I'm going to read the threat back to you like how are you feeling when you made this phone call like what were you thinking so this person called from Indiana and left this voicemail either you're blind or you're crooked so figure it out buddy because which side you're going to be on when you start brother hi my name is Alexis Johnson I'm a reporter with Vice news I'm recording this phone call can I ask you a question what made you call into George are you a Georgia resident what made you call it one American news and they quit his phone number on there and they said give the man a call what did you mean when you said um figure out what side you're going to be on when the shooting starts because what do you see coming you know what happens when they defund the police so when you said when the shooting starts you you didn't mean as that as a direct threat to the people that work here see that's exactly where you're going and I fingers you get that no no no no no we just I just wanted to clear it up because I mean those were the words and it's it that's how some of the people that work here were taking were taking that threat they were pretty fearful well when you got people saying it's time to take the police off of the street what choice do you have at that point looking back do you regret that at all no I pay when I stand behind what I said Alexis I didn't hear a ton of remorse there no they were kind of feeling like it was their patriotic duty to make these phone calls um one person that we spoke with said that you know he wasn't a trump supporter at first but after you know watching Fox News so much or oan and and kind of seeing these lies and stuff be repeated um he felt like a call to Arms to kind of to kind of do what he needed to do Trump won the election he'll win the recount he'll win in court it wasn't just about the people at the top kind of like lying it wasn't about Trump's lives it was all these institutions that had supported the lies repeatedly over and over again that made these people feel like this was their job this was their Duty like nobody else was doing anything so they had to do something to call these election workers and make sure that they knew that they had done something bad which was basically still the election and they're everywhere so Madeline since you did these pieces the justice department is chimed in we will not tell tolerate the intimidation of election workers but in a lot of cases things have only gotten worse back in August we heard about one County in Texas where the entire election apparatus resigned on mass because of threats do we have a sense of why that is why is the justice department not putting more people at least on trial for this yeah I think the reason the justice department hasn't gone after more people who made these threats is similar to why they haven't been investigated or prosecuted on a local level when we talked to former doj officials and former prosecutors they were describing how it might be difficult for law enforcement to separate free speech and also what constitutes a threat if prosecutors and law enforcement don't feel like they can put together a strong enough case to go after somebody they just might not think it's worth it the doj has only really approached a handful of people for an investigation even though there have been hundreds and hundreds of threats all over the country and that was felt very strongly on a local level like even an election Warehouse that we went to in Fulton County the lack of accountability a year later the stress was very palatable still well it just makes me think about a conversation I had with a senior election official in Arizona who's left his job he told me that after 2022 or certainly 2024 he didn't think that he would be able to trust that his industry was fairly and safely and honestly running elections anymore because of this replacement that's going on so Alexis Johnson Madeleine may I want to thank you for your reporting it really means a lot question when we come back the fear-mongering aimed at one specific group and how these attacks are getting worse as we come to the midterms and why they're already leading to violence welcome back to Breaking the vote in the months and weeks leading up to an election politicians of all Stripes look for ways to motivate their base this is the most important election of our lifetime is a refrain you've heard in pretty much every election cycle for the last decade or more but it's one never-ending method of influence that's not just motivating a single base to the polls but causing real violence and divisions in ways the country hasn't seen before fear it's part of a political Playbook that's as old as the Republic itself because in the end fear works it's when that tactic targets A specific group and endangers them that we need leaders to stand up and take notice Eliza Enriquez part of Vice news Peabody award-winning transnational team reports on the growing fear and violence aimed at one community in particular and all for political gain homophobes and trans herbs seem to be making themselves shockingly publicly known recently harassing people at drag story times and gay pride parades I think that anybody who takes their children to a fat Queen Story Time right how to have their head chopped off but this search and hate hasn't been totally organic it's being encouraged by state politicians around the country in the last few years anti-trans and anti-gay bills have been pushed at an alarming rate and while passing them seems to be a little difficult Republican lawmakers seem to be taking a quantity over quality approach with over 300 anti-lgbtq plus bills introduced this year more than 130 specifically Target transgender people according to the Human Rights Campaign that's as laws are written that seem targeted at individual trans kids playing High School sports I mean look no further than Florida where Governor Ron DeSantis has spent years systemically taking away the rights of queer and trans adults and children in the state and in case there was any confusion this was a coordinated effort the Texas Republican party wrote directly in their party platform that quote homosexuality is an abnormal choice they also want to make it impossible for people under 21 to get gender affirming care something that pretty much the entire medical community agrees is of the highest importance for mental health and well-being on its face it looks like a weird tactic just a few years ago Republicans in several red States went on a mission to pass so-called bathroom bills requiring people to use the bathroom that coordinated with their gender at Birth but most people weren't into that politicians like North Carolina governor Pat McCrory who tied themselves to these bills were pretty roundly defeated at the polls and in other states like Texas the bills fizzled under the weight of constant protest but instead of pivoting from the topic we're seeing the GOP double down because they know that one of the strongest tools in the political toolbox is fear attacking a group painting them as a threat to the status quo and using that to get people to The Ballot Box at one point that fear-mongering even got a formal name the southern strategy after President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act Republicans strategist decided to weaponize Southern white sphere that their way of life and all the Privileges it came with were being taken away by black people candidate Barry Goldwater bragged on the campaign trail that he voted against the Civil Rights Act I will never vote for a public accommodations cause in any Civil Rights bill because I think it's unconstitutional I think while it helped him Breeze to a win in the Deep South he didn't win too many other states after that Republicans became a little smoother in their delivery in his 1970 campaign President Nixon talked about states rights bussing and the War on Drugs dog whistles signaling to voters that he let them make and enforce racist laws we must declare and win the war against the criminal Elements which increasingly threaten our cities our homes and our lives but the southern strategy really hit its Sweet Spot during the Reagan years activist Phyllis Schlafly drilled into women that if the Equal Rights Amendment passed they'd be sent to the front lines of wars and their babies to state-run daycares and then in 1988 a group supporting George H.W bush ran what came to be known as the Willie Horton ad despite a life sentence Horton received 10 weekend passes from prison Horton fled kidnapped a young couple stabbing the man and repeatedly raping his girlfriend weekend prison passes dukaka's son crime the commercial only ran for a brief period of time but Bush mentioned Horton throughout his entire campaign by the time the election came Bush destroyed Dukakis in the polls the ad worked so well in fact that we no longer have the quote weekend Pass Program Bale skyrocketed and there was a flurry of Prisons built and who can forget any of this they're bringing drugs they're bringing crime they're rapists and some I assume are good people now the Republican party has latched on to the language of Q Anon and pizzagate calling members of the lgbtq community quote groomers and pedophiles meanwhile anti-trans and queer messaging is getting picked up and spread by traditionally liberal outlets and celebrities on the left those attacks are just getting worse and more frequent as we come closer to the midterms leading to real violence the question going into the future way past these midterm elections is this have so-called political leaders unleash something for short-term political gain that they can't contain and can do real lasting damage to the public if recent history is any indication the answer is pretty simple yes we have much more breaking the vote coming up including the newest side hustle for Rudy Giuliani the pillow guy and all their Pals as they look to leverage stolen election lies into stolen election cash [Music] foreign [Music] it felt like a warning shot that if you dare to stand with them whoever them is this week you're not one of us you're one of them and we're going to marginalize you and we're going to make you the other and it was expected I would imagine that I wouldn't hit back but we have to um and my message to a lot of other people who look like me you know who are straight white Suburban moms who aren't really the ones on the receiving end of the attack is that just because you're okay doesn't mean this is okay that was Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow telling us how her personal response to a political attack went viral giving her party A playbook for how to fight back against the politics of fear we'll hear more from the senator later on but up next from red meat and super comfy sandals use code Rudy to conspiracy filled films and the time-tested political rally how the Trump orbit is doing the trumpest thing they can raking in millions by any means necessary celebrate Father's Day with the best meat America has to offer foreign welcome back to Breaking the vote politicians using their authority to suck in money that's nothing new in fact cashing in in a lot of ways is the story of elected office but what about when familiar campaign money schemes go from political marketing to possibly illegal grips Cameron Joseph has this look at the stolen election money machine since Donald Trump lost the Cash Cow of the presidency he and his cronies have gotten busy finding new ways to turn election lies into personal gain Trump's rallies are normally free to attend and funded by campaign donations but since those don't bring any dough for him directly he's added a new Revenue stream a for-profit tour around a bluish crowd this crowd is and this isn't a rally you know this was just a thing we're coming here this is a uh we call it the freedom tour but as they say freedom isn't free tickets start at 55 and VIP seats go for as high as four grand the tour is supposedly celebrating the four pillars of conservatism Faith Family finances and freedom heavy emphasis on the finance part profits are going straight to him and of course all that money is on top of a cool quarter billion Trump raised in donations in the weeks after the 2020 election he promised that money would be spent on court fees to challenge his loss but it's largely gone to his own political action committee the tour is reportedly raking in millions for Trump and is opening acts and Deputy grifters those include Kimberly Guilfoyle Mike Pompeo and OG conservative grifter filmmaker and ex-con Dinesh D'Souza D'Souza has found other ways to turn Campaign lies into Cold Hard Cash he made a so-called documentary that pushes debunked claims about the 2020 election and is charging 19.99 to stream it and for those of you who prefer to have a physical copy of your election lies a DVD is 24.99 and Trump is giving him plenty of free advertising meanwhile Don Jr has learned at least one lesson from his dad push red meets celebrate Father's Day with the best meat America has to offer bad news for the Mega dads though the Better Business Bureau revoked the accreditation of that company good ranchers because of customer complaints but it would seem that Don Jr's true passion is merch lots and lots and lots of Mega merch elsewhere in the mega merch Multiverse is former National Security adviser Mike Flynn he reportedly trademarked the phrase digital soldiers and is Plastering it all over t-shirts he's also promoted shirt show USA a merch company that sells t-shirts and hats with slogans like fight like a Flynn and the Q Anon slogan where we go one we go all and he's personally selling trucker hats beer koozies and an autographed print that you can have for 250 dollars or four easy payments of 62.50 but Flynn's thirsty self-promotion might be driven less by making a fortune and more by desperation he already shelled out a ton of money in lawyers fees and that was before pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about contact with Russia during the 2016 election even when Trump was still in office Flynn reportedly turned down powerful government jobs so he could focus on paying off legal bills his new grift might be an attempt to pay back some old Griffin gone wrong back in 2015 Flynn got paid by RT the Russian government owned TV station to deliver speeches in Moscow and have a fancy dinner sitting next to none other than Vladimir Putin the U.S army said he never got approval for any of this and it's now demanding he pay back nearly 40 Grand they're just going to reach into my into my retirement and they're going to take some money out then there's Rudy Giuliani who recently teamed up with his election denying buddy and my pillow extraordinaire Mike Lindell the hawk some Croc knockoffs the sandals which really should have been called total Crocs can be yours for the low low price of 49.98 and like Flynn Giuliani might need that money Trump never paid him for being his election lawyer and now Rudy's facing some costly lawsuits over his election lies and that's the thing with a lot of these grifters they're bilking supporters for as much as they can but they're in so much legal trouble they need that money it turns out that trying to steal an election is a bad get rich quick scheme yes they should have kept a grift receipt up next we speak to someone who is the target of political intimidation tactics and successfully fought them off giving others A playbook on how to respond to the politics of fear I want every child in this state to feel seen heard and supported not marginalized and targeted because they are not straight white and Christian [Music] [Music] welcome back to Breaking the vote I'm Todd zwillich inciting fear is one of the oldest best political tactics we've ever invented fear for your safety fear of the other fear of the unknown so how do you do it you can directly intimidate people like poll workers and election officials you can get your supporters to do it for you or you can raise the alarm that your neighbors and political opponents are out to destroy everything that you hold dear Q Anon is a great example one of its core tenants if you even want to call it that is that entire classes of people say Democrats are actively participating in child sex trafficking or if that's a little too heavy for you promoting sexualizing of children by advocating for lgbtq education and support it's an old old idea actually the fear that society's enemies were secretly preying on children luring them into corruption even drinking their blood has deep roots in European history in that case the enemy to be feared weren't Democrats they were Jews but the idea lives on here except now Q Anon fever dreams have migrated closer and closer to the very center of the GOP base here's Republican Michigan state senator Lana Tice back in April dear Lord across the country we're seeing in the news that our children are under attack that the there are forces that desire things for them other than what their parents would have them see and hear and know Senator Tice would continue her fear campaign by calling out Democratic state senator Mallory McMorrow by name suggesting in a fundraising email that Mick Morrow who wanted to quote groom and sexualize kindergartners but then mcmorrow's fiery response to that outrageous claim went viral here's part of it I want every child in this state to feel seen heard and supported not marginalized and targeted because they are not straight white and Christian we cannot let hateful people tell you otherwise to scapegoat and deflect from the fact that they are not doing anything to fix the real issues that impact people's lives Nick Morrow earned instant internet Fame with that response it seemed like fighting back against fear instead of just changing the subject hit home for a lot of people McMorrow earns something else too in the days following tices attack and Mick Morrow's response Tyson added 300 for her campaign McMorrow announced that she had raised more than a million just a few months later I spoke to state senator Mallory McMorrow about how she battles the attacks against her and the marginalized groups that she seeks to defend and what's at stake in these midterm elections Senator Mallory McMorrow of the state senate in Michigan joins me now Senator thanks for being here thanks for having me so those attacks on you senator who was supposed to be afraid in those attacks presumably parents were supposed to be afraid because a groomer who's an elected official is coming for their children I guess that you were supposed to be afraid too yeah so I think we've seen this trend growing and you have to look at a place like Virginia is a good example Glenn Younkin was elected governor by really tapping into a group of suburban white moms and really convincing them to be afraid afraid of changes in schools afraid of changes like critical race Theory which you know Christopher rufo and many others have loudly said is an intentional made up fear-mongering campaign that has shifted into the lgbtq community and tax on trans kids and when I was the receiving end of the attack it felt like a warning shot that if you dare to stand with them whoever them is this week you're not one of us you're one of them and we're going to marginalize you and we're going to make you the other and it was expected I would imagine that I wouldn't hit back but we have to um and my message to a lot of other people who look like me you know who are are straight white Suburban moms who aren't really the ones on the receiving end of the attack is that just because you're okay doesn't mean this is okay not the first time you've been attacked I presume but what made you respond to that particular attack and say uh not again you know I think this one I I learned of the email accusing me by name of supporting grooming and pedophilia on a Monday and that same Monday I was visiting a high school in my district and I was talking to kids you know 15 16 17 years old the first question was from a 15 year old girl who raised her hand and she said to me she said I'm queer why does my state hate me and that hit me so hard because these attacks are really doing real damage to real people for political gains so even if you're not the parent of a trans child if you're not a queer 15 year old girl in Michigan this is hurting everybody and I think what I recognized is by the end of the day I'm fine you know I this really wasn't an attack on me it is an attack on her and the idea that the people who are doing these attacks are doing it in the name of quote unquote parental rights is just and it made me recognize I am the biggest threat to these attacks because I am in the majority group and it's going to take those of us who are in the majority to stand up and say this is unacceptable and you can't scapegoat on on the backs of of kids vulnerable kids there's this whole debate going on in your party about how to respond to a New Politics of power or a New Politics of propaganda I wonder where you come down on that yeah and one thing that I want to make clear because a lot of people became aware of me relatively recently and probably think oh she's got to be in a safe Democratic District she can be aggressive like this that's not true I represent what was a republican District that I flipped the first time I ran for office in 2018 I am in the very purple moderate middle and I think that we have to be able to stand up and be strong and be aggressive and that's not the same thing as throwing insults it's not throwing false accused musicians back it's reclaiming our own identities talking about family community the things that we value and why these types of attacks are not okay because my theory is you know that the strategy of trying to pit everybody against each other is going to have an end point when suddenly everybody turns against you and we have to be that Turning Point there's a lot of people on the national level who point to moderates and say oh they're very tepid they don't want to cross too far over what do you think that national leaders Democratic leaders since that's your party what do you think they get wrong about this so I think that we have the tendency of debating the issue on its merits which validates that they exist critical race theory is a perfect example we know that this is a graduate level Theory it is not taught in elementary schools anywhere and that's what Democrats were debating in response saying this is not taught in schools but what that did was it missed that the strategy is not really about critical race Theory it's about anything related to diversity it's about anything related to the black lives matter movement and once we fall for that trap we're stuck so I think the much better response and where we should all stand up is to just call it out for being a hollow attack that it is scapegoating it is deflecting it is a strategy to get people so angry and hateful and fearful towards somebody else that you don't even realize that there isn't a strategy in the Republican party right now to lower the cost of insulin to tackle inflation all of those economic issues and we have to make that connection to say they're not doing anything on these issues in a closed media environment which is so much of what we have where critical race Theory or drag queen Story Hour or transgender uh transgender kids in schools are reinforced in a way that can be so scary to some people who are voters how do you counter that is it your job to counter that how does your party counter that so I think we have to be really honest with people because it is human nature to be skeptical and fearful of something you don't know about out the reality is there are a lot of people who maybe have never met somebody who is trans and if you really do believe that there is a huge issue of of trans kids playing sports that's going to take away from girls sports for example because I had a woman who asked me as a woman how I could stand up um and Destroy girls Sports in her words in favor of quote biological males and what that misses is the fact that here in Michigan there are two kids every single year in a state of 10 million people who apply for the waiver to play on a sports team that matches their gender identity so I think the better response is to say if these laws were to pass for example and we banned trans kids from playing on the sports team that matches their gender identity that would do nothing to fix the roads to lower health care costs to make your life any better it would just devastate the lives of two kids it's easy to be afraid of something you don't know about but that's not a policy solution that it's going to make the average person's life any better it's just going to do harm to a few kids let me ask you about Michigan you talked about Republicans forming election monitoring brigades going into places like Wayne County and Flint which they certainly are doing they've advertised that this is a place where we've seen several I'll call them Insider attacks on elect election Integrity in precincts even cases where sheriffs in Michigan have been allegedly aiding and abetting pilfering of voting machines and tabulating machines so there's a lot of stuff going on at a lot of levels in your state what's up in Michigan so Michigan when I tell people all around the country if you want to take a pulse on the country all you have to do is look at Michigan we cover the entire Spectrum we're the only state in the country where there was a plot to kidnap and kill the governor uh and we're seeing all of these election fraud lies take hold and continue to be used and manipulated by people for their own gain it's a really scary time and and I think we have to connect with people on a base level you know Michigan has played a a starring role in the January 6th hearings and I think for a lot of michiganders when we learned that Ron Johnson a senator from another state texted Mike Pence to try to turn over an alternate slate of electors there's a real sense of Pride here like you don't go here you don't get to give away our votes to somebody else so I think it's making that connection one-on-one and and you know talking about it on a real human level they're saving democracy which is kind of this high-minded thing and then there's he tried to give your vote away and we are not going to stand for it Senator Mallory McMorrow Democrat of the Michigan State Senate thanks so much for being here thank you that does it for this edition of breaking the vote when we're back we'll hear from one of the former leaders of the Fox News decision desk who's spent months critiquing his former Network and the entire cable industry while also spending some time in front of the January 6 committee plus how well-meaning people have become unwitting participants in attacking democracy and a whole lot more make sure to sign up for our weekly breaking the vote newsletter that's at vice.com breaking the vote we'll see you next time foreign editor-in-chief of Vice news too often traditional news outlets shy away from the real stories and experiences of those living 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Channel: VICE News

Views: 350,680

Keywords: VICE News, VICE News Tonight, VICE on HBO, news, vice video, VICE on SHOWTIME, vice news 2022

Id: zgLxXJoJzbA

Length: 44min 44sec (2684 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 23 2022