This is Rumble with Michael Moore and I'm Michael Moore.
Thank you for joining me today. Last night, Donald Trump tweeted
at me using the middle of one of those big, Twitter, storms and
decided to throw me in, always a pleasure.
I have I responded I won't take up your time with it here and
you can go on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram and check
it out. I've got more important business
here today because I have on the show with me.
One of my favorite people, somebody whom I met just three
days after Chrome selection, we're both on Morning, Joe
together and the things that he said, than what I've listened to
him say sense and what he's written.
He had a book out this year, called winners, take all very
powerful voice that I want you to hear some of you.
I'm sure know him and if you don't, I want you to please get
to know him and pay attention to him.
Because he's saying some very important things about about the
thing, I'm most concerned about which is not just getting rid of
trump, but getting rid of that which gave us Trump.
So, if we don't do that, then we'll just get the next Trump
down the road here, and that's unacceptable my guest today is
Anand, Gare du Das. Okay.
So just so people know, I mean you who were For many years of
foreign correspondent and columnist for the New York
Times, you currently teach a journalism at NYU correct?
Yeah. The certain student teaching
this this year, but last year and what and what are you doing
this year? You know, I published my third
book last year, the fall of last year winners, take all the elite
charade of changing the world and my plan was to go on a, you
know, three-week book tour, the way you normally do.
And Having done this twice before I sort of understood that
that, you know, three weeks might be a little too long
relative to the Public's interest in it.
But, you know, I would do it and something happened with this
book that I had never really experienced before, which is
that? It I got very lucky with the
moment that we were in and the kind of series of moments that
we've been in since last fall, different moments in which the
criticism of a book and the of the book, and then the Summons
of the book, The the Criticism of a world in which plutocrats
have taken over wealth and power and have used the idea of
helping us to entrench, their rule have used the idea of
giving back to deepen, plutocracy have used the gloss
of making a difference to further their opportunities to
make a killing that that I got a lot of help over the last year
from these people just throwing evidence of this into all of our
faces. I mean, starting with the
plutocratic president who literally had a fake Charity ran
with the Sackler family. Being finally brought to some
measure of justice for causing the opioid crisis and donating a
fraction of the spoils to Arts patronage.
So that, you know, people journalists and Regulators who
live in big fancy cities, would only know them for their museums
and not be preoccupied with the thought that they were killing
people. You know, I think a real
Reckoning around Jeff Bezos and Amazon and starting to
understand that as more than a story of convenience.
A real Reckoning around Mark Zuckerberg and Tech and what it
actually means for someone to sell out democracy itself, for a
few percentage points of growth, lust the book, I think exploded
into the the behaviors that were all around us and now into this
presidential conversation. So I've spent a lot of last year
going around and kind of talking and teaching about it.
My old attitude, I don't know if you've gone through this as a
filmmaker. I old attitude used to be like,
this is my work people. Like you drop the work and you
go home, and like, you read my work, it read my work, and I've
realized that we don't live in a read.
My work are anymore. I don't know if you think we
live in a watch, my movie era anymore, but we live in an era
in which you got to talk to people directly.
And my assumption has shifted around his.
Like, I actually I know that most people listening to this
and most people in general, will not, in fact, read my book.
I would love it and read my book, but they're not going to.
And I see the number people playing Candy Crush on the
airplane. Every time I got in the
airplane, I still a rough count, right?
Like the book Market is a limited market, right?
And so I in the, in the kind of tradition of a lot of figures in
American history, who I admired kind of spent much of the last
year, just going around and showing up in places, you know.
And, and having a conversation with people about number one,
the idea that there's a big majority in this country that
wants transformational reform, you've talked about that, some
of those people are on the right by the way.
Way we may not agree on what transmission or frame is but
there's a majority for we had changed the hell out of things.
Number two, that as that has happened, some of the people
most responsible For creating the winner-take-all America,
that has led to that anger and that hunger for reform.
Have somehow Rich splain themselves into the leadership
of social change through philanthropy through.
You know, we're going to Google's going to reinvent the
future of cities on and off his rocker Berg's going to create
community and help kids on the border.
The people, some of the people most responsible and certainly
the class of people most responsible for virtually
everything, you've spent your career chronicling have Oculus
Lee reinvented themselves in the last many years.
As the solution to the problems, they are still busily causing,
right? And I've tried to just have that
conversation over the last year and I've been amazed at.
It's a conversation that, you know, as I think you would
resonate with, I feel people almost on when I go to Michigan
and Ohio and places like that. I feel people get this faster
then people get it in San Francisco and New York.
Because this has been the stick with which they have been beaten
for 30 or 40 years, right? Like, the person shutting down,
the Plant always told him. Let me know.
When said I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to screw you by shutting
down this plant, right? That's never the speech.
The speech is always, this is going to be great for you.
We're going to expand Partnerships with China, isn't
what they go to places like flint and said, we're going to,
we're going to get a deep in a partner, you know, trans Asian
partnership with China. And it's going to A win-win, you
know, and three months later you're on food stamps.
I personally witnessed when they said that in flank, this is many
years ago. And I was there the night that
they were this assemblying, the assembly line at the Chevrolet
plan and packing it on two train cars, it was going to be
literal. Assembly line was going to be
shipped to China. This is when China was just
beginning to have car assembly lines and they didn't Have the
wherewithal at that point. And so and so and everybody was
like, oh, this is actually going to be good for us.
This will be good for us because this will create a new economy.
This will create a different kind of job.
I wanted to do this back-breaking work on the
assembly line. They really pitched, it like
that and a lot of people did fall for it, as you said.
You know what's really interesting when you say that in
so many eras? I mean, you and I both spent a
lot of time writing about inequality but inequality is an
old Story. And there's different takes
different forms, and different. Eras.
It's a different group of people on top and maybe on the bottom
and different eras. And one of the things that you
find is common across history, is that the people on top always
that? They never just stay on top by
pointing their guns, at people on the bottom, in some areas of
History, that's how they did it. But that's not a very durable or
sustainable way of staying on top building Gates.
You know, when you go to Brazil, that's kind of how they do it.
Like the rich people, all live, by an eight Gates.
It's not a very nice way to live Right?
None of them in Brazil. Put them my friend was telling
me they don't put their homes in the GPS of their car like home
location because it's the easiest way for someone to steal
the car. While you're at a restaurant
figure out where your home is, no, you're not there.
And Rob your home like to live in that anxieties on a fun way
to be a rich person. So what rich people tend to do
is to invent a story that justifies why, it ought to be
this way. This is not some Fallen
condition. It this is actually the best of
all world. And in feudal Britain, if you
watch a show like Downton Abbey, there's a there's one story
about that, right? This kind of these are the
natural heirs to the to the kind of Countryside in the land and
that the caregivers in the stewards and they're responsible
for all of you and you just have to do your little job but
they're responsible. That was the story of that time.
And by the way, most people believe that story in that time
which is what's terrifying in most of these areas, everybody
believes the story, that's what makes the story powerful in the
Indian caste system. A lot of, it wasn't just the
brahmins who believed in the caste system, right?
As a lot of people at the bottom who believed in the cast and
that's what's scary. And so I think it follows that
there must be such a story in our time that most people
believe that even people in the bottom believe.
And so I spent a lot of time in this book thinking about what is
that story? What's the story about the
naturalness of inequality in our time that people have been
forced to believe that a hundred years from now school kids will
sit around thinking. Gosh, they believed that they
all Of that they will laugh at us.
And to me watching hearing your story of people thinking that
the dismantling of their assembly lines might benefiting
them the story that I found and wrote about in the book is the
story of the win-win. The win-win is the great story
of our time. The great fraud story of our
time and The Story Goes Like This.
Yes, there are people up above. And yes, there are some people
down below. And yes, I might even concede.
Says that the Divide is too broad.
Jamie dimon might say that today other rich people might say that
but the best way to do right by the people down below is to a
have the people on top lead, the search for better Solutions.
To have them make money from solving those problems to profit
from it. So it's a win-win, you're
empowering people in a way that kick something back to the
powerful. And this is why you have social
Enterprise becoming the biggest Club in all these business
goals. And this is why you have impact
investing where suddenly Goldman Sachs is claiming that it's
going to be able to make money for itself and provide a social
return. This is why you got Tom's shoes
where they claim to be giving a second.
Pair of shoes to someone for every shoe they sell you and
I've traveled a lot in the developing World never seen
those shoes been giving out giving up.
But, you know, it's this is why you're asked to do two dollars
at Walgreens for this cause of that cause and the fantasy of
the win-win is that we can help the people who you spent your
career investigating and and chronicling.
We can help the people down below without interfering with
the people standing on their necks.
We can lift the people down below up.
Without disturbing the people standing on their next.
Now, this is fraudulent as a matter of physics as well, as of
Sociology because, as you know, so well from your work, the
people who had those factories shut down on them that wasn't
done by Nature. That was done by other people.
The people who had the financial crisis visited on them, where
the people who were sent into Wars where they died that we
shouldn't have fought in the first place.
The people down below were down below in whatever condition that
may be whether it's being defrauded or being killed
because someone else made a choice and benefited from that
choice. And so I believe in have been
passionately arguing that the only way to get beyond our
winners. Take all America is to actually
get those people off those necks and that is not a win-win.
I want to say it here, very loudly and code.
I am not in favor of a win-win on this issue.
The only answer to this One is to reduce the wealth and power
of the people on top who have pushed for a merciless economy,
for senseless Wars. And for a society, that is more
and more polarized because of their internet platforms, that
is more and more monopolistic and that has provided fewer and
fewer opportunities for regular Americans.
To make a decent living. Start a great business and take
care of a family. Wow, you know, if we no, you
know, I know, I think a lot of people listening this know that
this isn't going to change, unless we remove the boot off
the neck of those who occupy the lower rungs of the ladder.
The people who wear, those boots aren't gonna be too happy to
hear what our plan is. And the fact that we are
actually vocal and open about what we intend to do.
That is not going to end, isn't it does not go down well with
them? I don't know if you know this or
no. All right.
Advice for another part of mine last year.
Well, yes, you have this famous interaction with Jamie dimon
that was well, you you I was at this panel.
You use sort of told the behind the scenes of this you mind
sharing that story so and explain who Jamie dimon has, you
know so about once every week or two weeks over the last year as
I've been out and visibly talking about these things, I
got a lot of lovely emails and messages all the time from some
regular people who say thank you for seeing me.
Thank you for fighting for someone in my situation, which
is x y z. But every week or two, I get a
different kind of email, or message from a person at the
very, very top. These are people, I don't know
personally, sometimes they've read the book sometimes, they
haven't, some of these emails are actually very thoughtful.
Some of these emails, actually people have read the book, they
don't agree with 80% of it maybe but they feel challenged enough
to say, hey I want to talk You know, and sometimes I talk to
them, sometimes I don't, I got one of the kind of less
impressive in the genre was Jamie dimon.
I don't, I don't know that Jamie didn't strike me after we spoke
as the book reading kind, but he did read a quote that I said in
the New York Times when he announced So Jamie dimon, the
CEO of JPMorgan Chase, biggest banks in the world and in
addition to that he runs an is a chair of a big organization.
That's very important that most Listeners probably don't know
about called The Business Roundtable, which is a club of
the CEOs of 180, something of the biggest companies in
America, right? So this is like the CEOs of this
is the CEO of the CEOs, right? Answer, real Club.
It's a real Club. Yeah, notnot Hair Club for Men
but yes. Generally and to the except they
need to speak in a single voice. They do on something.
This is the organization that speaks As big Corporate America.
So, if Wall Street had a Vatican, yes, this would sort of
be except it's not only Wall Street, it's Wall Street, and
the defense companies, and the tech companies.
So, when we talk about plutocracy or big business or
whatever, like this is the address.
If you want to, you know, the Henry Kissinger question.
Like, if I want to call Big Business, who do I call you
called The Business Roundtable and Jamie dimon chair.
So the Business Roundtable in August made, what some people
thought was a historic statement, The Business
Roundtable until now for Generation has has advocated a
view that the purpose of a corporation is to make money for
shareholders and as you know, so well from your work it is that
singular view. You could trace so much of the
devastation that you have chronicled to that single idea.
Yes, is leave. Told me over the years, we have
a legal and fiduciary responsibility to return as much
profit as legally possible to our shareholders, correct.
Everything else be damned. And so, you know, any CEO could
go watch a Michael Moore film and be like totally with the guy
but I just my hands are tied. My hands are tied.
The purpose of a company is to just crank the money and the
Business Roundtable says so. And that's the law.
So in August, They put out a statement building on a lot of
pressure that's been in the society.
And frankly, this populist moment we're in and the Bernie
Warren moment which we can talk about and they put out a
statement saying, mayakoba, we were wrong that turns out not to
be the only purpose. They basically realize what,
every five year old understands, which is that like, there are
other people in life and you have to take account of them and
they put out a statement saying the purpose of a business is
actually to take care of a bunch of stakeholders.
Shareholders are one stakeholder.
Labour's another. The country is another, you
know, there's various stakeholders and you got to kind
of balance among them. So you know, for a lot of
business people out there although this is a very obvious
thing. This was like a really big deep
thought that they felt they had great and it was reported to us
the masses by our media. Our liberal media papers like
the New York Times. This was written about yes in
such a it literally was if I started to go back to the
Vatican reference but It was like Jesus had come down yes.
To hand out all the Loaves and Fishes to everybody so that
everyone would eat. Yeah.
Everybody would have a seat at the table.
Everybody would be taken care of now because they had determined
that it was wrong to be greedy. Yes.
And we were no longer going to think just about ourselves or
our shareholders. We were going to think about
you. You whoever you are wherever you
live, we're on your side and it's almost worse than I wasn't
even questioned what it was really like was a I make an
announcement on January 1st 2020 Anand will not eat french fries
in 2020. The way to report that is to say
on and in and if I've eaten french fries like every year
until then the way to report that story is despite years of
eating french fries on and has made a the sun verifiable claim
that he will not eat french fries in the year to come at the
present moment. There is no way to independently
verify this and history suggests that it's unlikely, okay?
That's the way to report that the wrong way to report in the
last line for the anchor who's who just said what you said.
Yeah, before they go to commercial break.
Well, we shall see. Exactly.
That's the way to report that in mocking you.
And essentially, the essentially what I just did with fries, they
did with rapacious profiteering. Except the way it was reported
by a lot of folks was big, business has turned a corner.
And will no longer be rapaciously profiteering, they
wrote the end of 2020 story. When all that had happened was
the Pledge. So I was included and there
however their gesture from any of these Outlet their gesture to
skepticism was having an unquote in the story.
So I was the kicker quote in the New York Times a role that I'm
happy to play having written many kickers in my lifetime and
the kicker quote was basically pledges of voluntary virtue
Aren't going to fix this, right? Jamie dimon must have read that
story. And there's an accompanying
story in Fortune, which I also played a similar gadfly roll.
Somebody read it for him and gave him the right summary of
it, right? Exactly.
As to be clerk, admit picture PowerPoint PowerPoint about an
article is probably what he gets and he emails me.
So, give me a call when you have a moment to discuss.
Never never met this guy, my life, you know.
But he did, you know, he has, he has committed.
Various, you know, his bank has committed, various forms of
fraud on an epic scale, so while he didn't have my respect, he
had my attention, right? And so I called him while I was
on vacation and I actually was like, you know, I'm on vacation.
You may be on vacation, but I appreciate the reaching out to
have a dialogue. I believe in dialogue, I'll send
you my book, he made clear. Very he's like, you know, and
opening moment. He's like, you know, I've read
your book but, uh, but yeah, I heard about it.
So, yeah, it's good. So, you know, And okay, hearing
about a book is the new reading. It sounds like, how about this?
I'll send you the book, Let's when both in New York, in a
couple of weeks after our vacations, after you've actually
read, what I'm? Where I'm coming from, let's
have a dialogue and he was like, no, no, that won't be necessary.
Let's just talk now and well, you know.
Well, well well, well we'll see if it makes sense to ever
further car to get on the phone then, or I was on the, yeah,
that was on the phone. All right, is on the phone.
So then we just talk for half an hour.
Hmm. Because I thought you know what?
Further exposure to my ideas is not going to increase the odds
of a conversation. Meanwhile, you know, a
journalist friend of mine is texting me.
Come telling, what's happening is like, remember you're a
journalist unless he says it's off the Record, it's not off the
Record which is a useful, you know, useful thing to remember.
And we had a half an hour conversation that was by turns
revelatory and maddening maddening because It just felt
like this was a guy who thought he was calling to acquire ideas
or perspective. He didn't yet have but who is
almost constitutionally incapable of absorbing
information outside. His corporate libertarian,
Banker framework. There was there were just no
cracks, right? The Leonard Cohen line that
there were no cracks for the light to get in in this guy.
And so, just a couple of the exchanges that, you know, so So
he says at some point you know I treat all my workers well and
I'm not sure why they're making all this fuss about regulation.
And I said, okay, let's stipulate which I may not agree
with that. You treat all your workers.
Well, at JPMorgan Chase. There's a bunch of companies in
this group and we know many of them from well reported public
reporting. Like we know many of them do not
treat workers. Well, you can't deny that.
So how do you reckon with the fact that you got these CEOs of
sign this pledge this week, saying they're going to treat
everybody well but We know how they're training them now and he
says to me, you know, and I know a lot of those CEOs.
They're good, guys. They I know them, they would
never treat workers badly, I mean, I don't know how how
unthoughtful you have to be to say that but what came next was
what was really surprising. And he says, you know, a lot of
people just don't like to work. Wow, I took my breath away.
This is a man who is the keeper. Of the hard-earned deposits.
Of millions and millions of people who are hanging by
fingernails to dignity. He is holding their money.
He's holding their mortgages. and the fact that he thinks so
little of many of them that issues of worker exploitation or
wage theft or underpayment that are so rampant in this country,
May, in many cases, just be issues of people being lazy.
And it the conversation led me to this place where it really
helped me understand something. Which is I think you are.
I would sit around and and, and easily malign, the Koch,
brothers, the Dead one, or the alive.
One, whichever one you like more and that's an easy one.
I think what the conversation helped me understand was that I
think someone like Jamie dimon genuinely believes that he is
not a slightly handsomer. Third Koch brother.
I think Mark Zuckerberg genuinely believes that he's not
the fourth liberal Koch brother, right?
He's not one of the bad guys in his head in his.
I'm sure it Mark Zuckerberg thinks he's not a Coke brother.
Hmm. I'm sure if you called him right
now and said do you think you're a Coke brother?
He would say I think I am meaningfully different from a
Coke brother. I think if you put a lie
detector on him he would pass that if you ask them that
question. Yes.
And if he eats I'm nothing like the Koch brother, nothing like
them, it would show true. True, true.
True. Well, the only things you might
be honest about and yet what that conversation revealed to
me, is that a lot of the people who we think of, as kind of,
like, Democratic plutocrats are in some ways, more dangerous
versions of the Koch brothers, because they are the Koch
brothers in costume, right? They are the wolves in sheep's
clothing, proverbially and it really helped me understand that
we're not going to be able to count on the whoa.
Woke liberal do-gooder billionaires to save us from
billionaire capture. All right, I have a not a
similar encounter but this story really resonates with me.
I I ran into Lloyd blankfein who until recently was the CEO of
Goldman Sachs. Yeah.
And now a DJ is in charge Yes, we'll get into that later.
The I was at an event at the Oscars.
I was on the board of the academy and so there is this
event and he walks into the event with Harvey Weinstein,
just not to not to not de la Mi onto this story.
Any more than what you're about to hear.
He sees me, he walks out with one scene after the Weinstein
Revelations. No saw before, okay?
For and he sees me and he comes up to me.
And he said, I don't like what what you said about Goldman
Sachs in your movie. First of all, I'm like, wow, you
actually watch my movie. The movie is referring to is,
capitalism a love story titled, probably fooled him into the
theater. Yes.
Well yes, I was. He thought you were finally at
toning Michael? Yes, I was told very early on
with my first movie. I was warned actually that I
need to Ember that 50 percent of Americans don't get irony.
If you make the ironic statement they will think you're that's
how you actually feel. So, yes.
So it is not a love story, by the way, capitalism.
It's a story of mass destruction and tragedy.
You will get a refund on your tickets.
Yes. If he did, usually think it was
actually, if you did. If you are out there and you're
listening to this and you want to capitalism a love story,
thinking it was going to be a love story, you took a date and
that ended up being the last date.
I will refund that too. Kit for you.
He comes up to me. He says I don't know why you
attack Goldman Sachs. You know where Democrats Sesame.
Wow he said. Now a lot of firms on Wall
Street aren't. But we're Democrats at Goldman
Sachs and and I said well well actually I know that Goldman
Sachs was the largest private contributor to Barack Obama's
first campaign for president. Yes, that's right.
You know we helped to bring about Obama and I said, well,
you know, if you want to have this conversation, now I can
tell you why. First of all, you can call
yourself a Democrat all you want, but if you, if you are
calling up the what people in my family, grew up with is Union.
People as people whose my father's first vote was for
Franklin. Roosevelt or if that's the
Democratic party. You think you're aspiring to
your actions. Don't show any of this.
And he said, well is it enough that we mean the good that we do
the money that we give to the candidates that you mister more
support. I said I want to live in a
system where you're not giving any money and they're not taking
any money from you. And it's what I'm not like this.
And then finally he says I want to give you a Rorschach test I
said I'm huh? Sure.
You know. I don't like that for a second.
Try to remember what that was and I actually did.
Like, is that some painting you? Oh no, no no.
I want to I did go to a year of college at the Flint branch of
the University of Michigan. So I did take a look, you took
classes in the Rorschach drawing Center took a while 101 and
psychology article, 101 and philosophy.
You know, I have enough before I dropped out, so he said he said,
Bill Gates his Tombstone. What does it say?
On his Tombstone, Bill Gates, Bill Gates, the, the founder of
Microsoft or Bill Gates, the man who eradicated malaria on the
planet Earth. What, what's going to be that?
That one line, if he gets one line on the tombstone and I said
both except will be an and it'll just be one sentence.
It was no, you can't say that. You have to pick one and I.
So yeah, I think your point you're getting to, is it?
You're talking to me? Thing I'm going to say malaria.
Of course this is a great thing that he did.
But you know, all of our lives are going to be judged whether
we judge them ourselves or others will judge us on the
balance between the good and the evil that we do.
And I hope that all of us are going to end up on the good side
and more having done more good things than bad things and he
said, yeah, I knew you wouldn't. I knew you wouldn't answer this,
the answer. Correct answer is Bill Gates
founder of Microsoft. Because I could prove to you
that that's saved more lives than the work he's done with
malaria. I said, wow, you really believe
this, don't you? Wow, you turns out Lloyd,
blankfein is a lot like the character Lloyd, blankfein.
Yes. And this was at you as this we
were in public, I mean, we're in public.
It was like, whoa, you know, you are now.
But well, that's true. Well, yes, like you said about a
I mean nobody should talk to me unless you know, I am not here
to be the keeper of your secrets especially if you're the head of
Goldman Sachs and it was just but it was such an amazing
moment of that is he he said it with such Force.
Yes, his belief in it was so strong and the belief that he is
a Democrat is doing good. Their only hope for this ruse to
be successful is if we We fall for it, you know.
And what's really is, this this takes it to a slightly dark
place but I think it's worth going there for a second because
one of the comments that people, you know, when you write a book,
people come to you with, as they rated the meaning they make out
of it, that may be beyond your own contemplation and one of the
persistent things that I've heard from people very moving,
is that people who spend a lot of their lives in different
types of abusive relationships, have said, to me, You know
whether parental or spousal or whatever else that the Dynamics
that I'm describing about plutocrats and regular people.
Very much mirror, a lot of the you know, on a grand scale,
large numbers scale. The abusive Dynamics within
households within families. And when I hear Lloyd, blankfein
sing to you, I can't be hurting People because I'm on the team
with them. That's there's an abusive like
almost domestic kind of vibe there of like I'm in your, I
can't be hurting you I'm in your family, right?
Why would I abuse her? She's my wife.
And what we all understand from that situation in the abuse
context is it is precisely the proximity that gives you the
Alibi to keep doing it. And so, the reason why blank
fine is dangerous is precisely because he's a Democrat.
I think people see the Kansas chemical industry magnates from
100 miles away. We're not defenseless, we're
not, we're not totally, you know, impervious to their to
their you know, pretensions but I think we see them for who they
are and we understand that they are strangers to us coming to
try to pillage. Hmm, it's the Democrats that
have this Stick relationship to us the Zuckerberg, the blank
finds the probably presumably Jeff Bezos others, who are
people, who believe that things, that many of us believe they're
for gay rights there. They don't like these kids being
locked up on the border. There awoke they use the right
terms for transgender people. There on the right side of what
feels like The Winds of Change they don't you know they're not
white nationalists. No.
In fact, T'. He puts as the slogan on the
front page of his newspaper everyday, democracy dies in
darkness and I think all of that is genuine but what it does and
this is sort of my point, is that what it does is it gives
them an opportunity to do a second thing.
Also, which is to justify and entrench a system, a set of
economic political social Arrangements that continues to
generate our social problems. On a scale must vaster much
faster than than any of these fixes that they're engaged in,
it would have been actually where you're saying is that I'd
be more relieved. If blind finally, just said he
was a republican. Yes.
Then we regulate him a lot better, then we can, yeah, we
can deal with that, but if he comes off as a Democrat funds,
the Democrats and has his Democratic candidates in his
stable. That's that's a far more
dangerous thing. As it's in the same way that
people say, oh my God what if we get rid of prompt?
Whoa will have pounced and I'm going good good because now it's
out it's we can deal with Pence. Yes because Pence is very honest
about his belief that the Earth is only 6,000 years old and Adam
and Eve wrote on dinosaurs that gay people can be converted into
heterosexuality every point, that pain.
It's brings up. Let's have the great debate.
We will win the debate with the American people.
The American people will side with us on the side effects
science and human decency. And he, and he mr.
Pence will be defeated, don't be afraid of that.
Yeah. Be afraid of the one who comes
the first time I met Donald Trump after my first film and
came to move to New York, he was either the co-host or he was
attending a benefit. For Planned Parenthood in New
York City or one of the one of the you know, women's
reproductive rights groups or whatever the irony of it.
Again is is so listen this this issue that you're discussing the
the way that the rich try to pass themselves off as one of
us. You know, some of the great
science fiction, great horror films of all time including the
one from this past year us. The Jordan Peele film is, is
when the alien the enemy whatever is able to take our
shape and form and talk like us. That's when it's most dangerous,
because we don't know who the real humans are.
And who the other ones who are gonna kill us our, and And so,
so the successful Rich who figured out how to do that and
you can you can go down Broadway are just a few blocks from here
every day when I walk by it. There in Lincoln Center is the
David Koch. New York City Ballet.
Dance theater. Yep.
And Lincoln Center made a decision to take money from him
obviously so he could have his name on that building.
And in his mind, the more that he can do.
If things like that, people will be a little less anxious to go
after him. I hear this about Bloomberg.
Now people say well Mike you know you met Bowling for
Columbine audience's, he's been so good on guns, he's funded all
these mom's groups and he's anti-gun groups Mike he's you
know he gets climate change. You down the hall are two lists
of this whole thing and I'm like, okay, number one, please
understand that he's doing many of these things.
As the cover, at the end of this movie, we call human life on
planet Earth. He and others, like him will
pull up that rubbery thing off their face and reveal themselves
as the people who benefited by making our species go extinct.
Even though They themselves were posing and were one of us.
The short-term gain and pleasure was far greater than anything.
Totally. And you have to and we need to
talk about Bloomberg for a second because as with your
Gates example, when I have gone around talking about the book
and talking about the problem with different billionaires are
with the billionaire class in general, the pushback you get is
sort of the pushback when you talk about white supremacy and
then someone brings up the fact that they know like one white
guy who's not racist and that's the rebuttal writes.
The not all white people, not all Billionaires right argument
and the two of the kind of trump cards in the not all
billionaires argument are Bill Gates, and Michael Bloomberg.
Right. Because they're for climate,
therefore, this other stuff. So let's talk about Bloomberg
for a second. First of all, how did he make
his money? Now, it's not opioids, it's not
making money by killing people granted, but he sold those
terminals to the financial industry.
During the Great financialization of American
life of the last 40 years, right?
So he wasn't the banker himself, but he was a very important like
informational lubricant in this engine of financialization.
That is behind once again, like everything you've gone after and
your movies that engine of financialization is why the car
industry turned out the way it did.
It's why the gun and private prison world ended up the way it
did. It's why climate change is Now,
where it is. It's why senseless Wars have
been fought all of those behind. All of those things.
Is the rapacious profiteering. We talked about.
Now behind all of those things is the growing power of
financial institutions relative to us as people but also
relative even to the management of companies, right?
The investors over the last 30, 40 years became more important
than the companies. They were investing in in their
ability to dictate terms and drive these companies in the
directions they wanted and force them to do to grow more and do
more. So Michael Bloomberg.
Burg without being a guy who pushed for those things to
happen, made his fortune. By selling motor oil to people
who were stealing the future from America and its really,
really important to say that and understand that.
I don't see anybody out there talking about that.
That fortune is skimming a little bit off.
The top of the spoils of financialization was one of the
worst things to happen to this country in the last 50 years,
right? That's the money that we're
talking about when we talk about Michael Bloomberg.
Number one, number two, what he has done philanthropic lie, Yes,
it's it's causes that you and I might agree with.
I agree with him on the guns issue.
I agree with him on climate but there has been evidence that
I've seen his story from 2008. And then again he's doing it
this time where he has used his philanthropy and the
organization's he gives money to Arts institutions, other
institutions and in 2008 was found through interviews by the
New York Times by Michael barbaro's.
Now the Great host of The Daily was reporter, at the time.
Found that a lot of these institutions of Bloomberg, a
given philanthropic money to had been pressured.
To advocate for him, getting a third term as mayor of New York
City. Wow, I think about that to my
mind that should be illegal, right philanthropy.
A lot of things that are legal. When done through the
philanthropic route that I actually don't even think, would
be legal if done as a business, right?
You, you're giving money to Civic organizations in New York
and you're urging them to then testify to essentially change
the law in a mini Urban dictator level thing where you like
Christmas was in terms of term limited to term.
If you're a mayor of New York. Yeah.
Terms he Coming to the end of his second term and he wanted
the third one. Yes.
Jeez. Who does this sound like Kim
Jang, Hoon. I mean, I don't know.
Donald Trump, he care pick your poison but that's exactly what
because he's a more moderate guy and he got and he and he bought
off a lot of the establishment of New York City through these
contributions that he made. In other words, if I can just
put it this. Yeah, he used money for
essentially extortion, purposes. In other words give me my Third
term, he used money or held back money from people who weren't
playing ball with him, in order to interfere with the election
system of the city of New York, what sounds familiar?
Well, I'm just saying, this is what drives me crazy about
liberals Democrats or whatever. When they can't own up to that.
This site has also done it. Yep.
And maybe we do it in a Kinder gentler way.
Maybe the outcome is the ballet gets more money.
About yeah, from isn't trying to help out any any when liberals
do it, it's a lass here. It's classier.
It seems smart. You know, it appreciates the
cultural intellectual ality of the city.
Yeah, etcetera etcetera. But it's still the same thing.
And I just read this past week, what you were talking about that
there was a story. I think it was in the times
where, how many mayors exam? The country are endorsing him.
It's his biggest. Endorsements.
And why are they endorsing him? It turns out all of the mayor's
all according to New York Times of the mayors of endorsed.
Hell yeah, have gone through this mayoral program funded by
his foundation and so that's so I actually saw that story first
and I tweeted about it. And then and then someone sent
me this 2008 story is like he did this back then to now
they've gone through his mayoral bootcamp or whatever.
This thing is there The government that he's yes, trying
to support. And also, I believe a number of
these mayor's have done what he has done.
Or did do they have to, they essentially have to support his
program. So, they've done things like,
push for local gun laws, push for local climate change, makes
statement saying that, even though Trump is pulling on the
Paris Accords, our city is going to stay in the Paris Accords.
Now, if you're listening to this, you could say well Mike
isn't I mean, okay. Yeah, he shouldn't have to do it
that way. He's buying their support but
look at the end result. May be less gun murders, maybe a
cleaner Planet. So if that's how he has to do it
and I say to them really, is that the world we want to live
in. Now, we're the only way we can
hope to get the few crumbs of the things that we believe in is
if if billionaires by off other Mayors in order to get their
support when he or she runs for president.
I mean, Bloomberg solutions, to the issues are the kind of
solutions that deep in the problem, right?
Like there are and I think we all understand this in personal
life if you are you know like I have a health problem you're
dealing with or if you are trying to raise your kids in a
certain way like there's certain ways of solving a problem that
deep in the fundamental problem are you can stop your kid crying
by giving them a cupcake and it will stop them crying.
It will absolutely stopped him. Right.
Right, right. You've depleted And the problem,
you've entrench the prop, the real issue there is your kid,
like, not being able to self-soothe, are not being able
to, you know, regulate and you've now made them quiet in a
way that increases the likelihood that problems going
to come back worse tomorrow or later that afternoon.
I have a nearly five year old and two-year-old.
I understand this intimately. And so similar to use the
cupcake method I use, the I can't say, I haven't used, I've
you, I used to use the juice box.
This box is incredibly effective because I hit because then I
could rationalize well it's healthy.
Its fruit. Yeah exactly.
And I'm really sugaring. Correct.
I'm up. Correct and so these are these
are what we might call Juice Box Solutions where someone like
Michael Bloomberg is stepping in on climate.
That is true. And so we do stop crying for a
certain period of time, but what he is the deeper thing he is
done is in trench and just Fi the notion that billionaires
know, best in trench and justify the power of billionaires to
dictate public priorities justify and entrench the
reputation of him. And his class of people in a way
that on balance is going to fuel and and help secure the power of
the people who are also causing climate change.
I think what someone like Michael Bloomberg and doesn't
understand that every time he makes it something better on,
Climate change and is another part of what he is doing.
Is helping the people who run ExxonMobil stay in power, and I
know that Michael Bloomberg was here or Howard Wolfson who works
with him. They would Soviet Molly disagree
with this, but I'm trying to urge him to understand this at a
deeper level. It's not that what they're doing
is not what they're doing. It is it's just giving off a
byproduct, which is justifying the very system of plutocracy
that is behind these problems and and when you think about,
you know, Bloomberg used to do this thing.
When he Mayor of New York City, where he would propose something
and then that would historically been funded by the city.
But to save the city money, quote unquote, he would fund it
through Bloomberg philanthropies and there's actually some of
these things all around the city.
Certain Museum things that normally would have been public
priorities and it was a little bit of a show.
Like I want to do this as mayor and I don't need to nickel and
dime on it the same way I would, if it was public money because
I'll just do it now that might It seemed nice to people and
saving them taxpayer money. When you now hear these stories
of how the price of that was, people actually being forced to
speak up for a third term or now endorse him, you know, forced in
the classic Mafia way. Where seemingly you have a
choice? It makes you understand
something very profound about philanthropy that I have been
trying to argue, which is a philanthropy isn't only.
Only a kind act big philanthropy.
It is a kind act, but it does a couple other things going on.
Number one, it provides a powerful means of extending the
power. Of a rich person in addition to
being a kind act. It's allows you to, you know,
get people to say, you should have a third term, that is an
exertion of power, right? And a tax-deductible, once you
get a tax deduction for that philanthropic gift, but you're
reaping a very personal reward which is a bunch of allies out
there on the society who depend on your checks, right?
You're reaping benefits that actually you, you can't buy
these benefit. No, but in the, in the giving,
Of the chef's. The generosity has this ripple
effect that comes back to you in a wonderful?
Yes for yourself that and that is unregulated in a way that a
lot of business transactions are actually not unregulated.
You said there's at it, you get a tax deduction for it to
Second. You get to clean your name.
Now that might be most may not be most relevant to Michael
Bloomberg but you seen people like the Sackler or others Jeff
Bezos where you really have you know you have a PR problem on
your hands the way you've made your money is intrinsically.
You don't just have one little oil spill like that the Exxon
Mobil, like the intrinsic Act of the business is a big fat
reputation problem, right, right, right.
The only thing you can do that's not like getting a better
publicist. That's not going to solve that
problem, right? You have to do some pretty Epic
do-gooding. To cleanse that name and
philanthropy has come to function for many plutocrats and
big companies as a kind of drive-thru reputational
laundromat for that problem and it works.
It does work. Even in just the way that they
Walmart, the commercials that they run.
Now we are. Well you would call them if you
want to put a label on them, incredibly Progressive.
They show gay couples gay families.
Yes they show gay people. Kissing each other?
Yes. In the Walmart commercial they
do things. You're thinking this is Walmart.
Yep. Oh my God.
They've joined the human race and this is the new woke manic
hyper capitalism. Right?
The woke manic hyper capitalism is a company like Walmart.
Now supporting the right of a broke-ass man to love a broke
ass man. Right?
Right, right. Love Whichever other fellow
broke-ass person. You want to love, right?
And that's this way in which sometimes identity politics can
be used to entrench economic exclusion because it gives you
this easy way of rhetorically seeming like you're part of the
future, right. But you know what, to pay those
that gay couple anymore than you know, you might have before
Bloomberg you know it's we're talking about this here in in
December of 2019, we don't know. Quite exactly where this is
going to go with his Run for the presidency.
But I'm going to share something.
I've never revealed publicly before.
Back in somewhere in the late 90s, he asked me out on a date,
not a traditional date that implies sexuality, but Gordon.
Yes, we have any make that clear, right, yeah.
Right. The start here.
We knew we did know. He dated?
Why? Oddly, yes.
Well he called me first. I know if you knew who I was
this is you know it's back in the 90s.
This is before you know I wrote stupid white man or Bowling for
Columbine wrote made a 911. This is all before.
This is my early Roger and me TV Nation days and he said I'd like
to I'd like to ask you I'd like to ask you to hold a dinner with
me except the dinner is the White House Correspondents
Dinner. And now, this is the thing, one
case. But you've probably people will
see this up right here in the White House, Correspondents are
mainly because they usually have a comedian up there.
That is really hopefully Stick it to the people in power and he
and so the way this dinner works is that it set up by the White
House correspondent so it's a journalism function to raise
money for their Charities, but what they do is they get to
invite celebrities to be at their table.
So Bloomberg, At that time, they had a Bloomberg News, has called
me to be his to walk. The red carpet with him into
this thing so long before he's, you know, mayor And I'm, I'm of
two minds immediately, but one, I don't want to go to anything
where I have to dress up, right? All right, as is clear from you.
You can see me, right? Sitting here right now, you're
fairly casual. He's being polite.
It's the middle of December. And I mean shorts, and we're in
New York City, their breathable shorts, but they are you've
noticed this, but that's are breathable.
I'm a writer. I, you know, I observe, it's
very good. I get paid by the observation.
The, so he so right away. I don't want to do it.
I don't want, I don't want to, I don't know what I'd say to him,
but then when I thought that, I thought, wait a minute, what I
would say to you, I want him to talk.
This is a what Golden opportunity to do and just
listen and observe and just Lou Who.
So I said yes and I show up there with.
Well, it turns out I'm not saying he was two-timing me but
he invited more than just me to be his date at the table.
Well, so I have to share him with Bill Daley with that time
was the Secretary of Treasury. He was the he's the brother of
the mayor of Chicago at the time.
Richard Daley. A junior and but he was, he's
the guy in charge of the money. Bloomberg has got the secretary
of the United States Treasury here.
You know, just as I say that now I think wait a minute, it was a
Commerce or Commerce treasury. Yeah.
It was Chief of Staff the worst, yeah.
Okay, even worse. Yeah, because if Ali was was
just counting the money in the gold.
Yeah bricks. One job.
But to be the Secretary of Commerce & 2 & 2, Mike
Bloomberg, stable, like, we're you guys on either side of him?
Yes, yes. Well and there was one more.
He was actually three timing. Well, I'm here.
It was him and the Secretary of Commerce, Bill Daley and Charlie
Rose. Wow.
Now this is pre me to Charlie Rose.
Well, look at his pre to well, we to Revelation Revelation,
correct. He was he was very much a
participant and and The a proficient participant in me me
to behavior. As we now know, but of course,
none of us knew that the time in and I see him at the table with
us, he's walking the red carpet. And my first thought is with him
is I had been blacklisted banned from a show for almost 10 years
at that point. Well, it's a long story.
I don't need to get into it, but suffice it to say he kept
calling me Roger Moore. During the interview not an
unusual dyslexic. Issue, dyslexia is a common
thing with us. All of us.
Some of us, my film is called Roger and me.
My name is Michael Moore and I look like James Bond, I guess?
So so here and finally, I just, I interrupted him.
All right. During the like interview, I
just because I'm just again at home people, I'm not worried
about me. I didn't call me anything you
want. I don't care what people are
thinking. Is this guy an idiot, right?
And he was so, So upset that I essentially interrupted in stop,
the interview to get him to call me by my given name.
Not one. That's hard to pronounce.
I was put on the list of, don't we have him back?
I'm sorry. Now I understand why he never
had someone named on and together with us on the show.
No police. Yeah.
So I went over and sat beside him and had it out with him in a
nice way, though. Like, this is You can't keep a
grudge like this, this is crazy. First of all, you're not even
Irish, you know, I mean, we, you know, the old joke that I suffer
from Irish Alzheimer's disease which means I forget everything
except holding The Grudge. It's like you don't have a right
to be mad at me. 10 years later because I just wanted you to
call me by my name is he acknowledged that he was mad
about that. Yes and he said you know I
really have a clear memory of this and your right eye.
I have not thought about it now and years, but at the time I
thought, well I don't need that on my show and I will have you
back and he had me back. Well, okay, so the dinner was
starting to have, you know, certain benefits at the table
next to us was Susan McDougal. Who was caught up in the whole
Whitewater thing with the clintons, had a long talk with
her about Bill and Hillary and their days as friends together
and Arkansas. I never got to make a film about
that. But it's always, you know, I
store all this stuff. So my point with Bloomberg is
that this is the kind of thing where I'm I'm afraid that people
will, wow, you know, of all the people you could have taken to
the Correspondents. Dinner, took Michael Moore.
That's how cool he is. Yep, that's how open and
Progressive. He had a woke guy.
He's so he was woke before. It was woke.
Yes. And nobody was going to invite
me in the establishment to their dinners or their geillis or
whatever. But Mike Bloomberg, Yes, and I
also know how that's intended for me.
He doesn't know what I'm going to go on to do this is all again
before the, the large movies in the Lorry, all the stuff that,
you know, but don't don't think for a second that that hasn't
always been in my mind when I was somebody way out on that
left, limb perceived as somebody that was had to be persona non
grata at an event like this, that he brought me in and he had
me at the table. I'm probably next to me and
said, yeah, I'm sure. Next to Michael fucking more,
like it, or lump it. And what do I, what am I
supposed to do? Ten years later, you know, when
he does want that third term? Am I going to speak out against
that actly? Am I?
You know, you've helped. I would, you know?
Or was if I was in the, I was back in.
Michigan them, but still and what you got to think about to
take it from an intimate story to although not too intimate.
Fortunately to you, too. The scale of the society is that
you got to remember, there's about 400 something billion
dollars being given away philanthropic lie every year in
this country. Much of it concentrated at the
top at the people with those kinds of Fortunes and you got to
think about when you zoom out from that one story, how many
silences are being bought? How many testimonies to go help
someone boost their power are being ordered up how many
endorsements are being ginned up?
What is the cumulative effect of those who are out there, making
a killing using making a difference to protect the right
to make a killing. And the people who are using
this rhetoric of changing the world, using it to entrench the
right to actually keep their world.
The same. And we've seen this and maybe we
should talk a little bit about 20/20 since we're both kind of
interested in politics, you know, I think we're starting to
see in 2020 both with Bernie Sanders, campaign animals with
warrant, that the billionaires are freaked out.
I've named this the great pollute freak out of 2019.
Fortunately, the years coming to an end, but it will continue
into the next year's off to rename it.
And what is happening is they are basically saying to go back
to the win-win conversation. We had they are not saying If
Bernie or Elizabeth wins, it'll be bad for me.
Billionaire, they're not saying that.
That's the truth and by the way I respect that if that was the
argument, I may still vote anyway but I respect that.
I get that. I actually think
self-preservation and wanting to hold.
What's yours is a very normal human instinct and if you said
to me, I don't like these wealth taxes things because I got a lot
of wealth and I'd pay more and I don't like that.
I disagree but respected, they don't say that.
What they say is, if you do this, this will be bad for you.
Mark Zuckerberg, I call this economic concern trolling,
right? Where you're pretending, you're
really worried about the other person but in this paternalistic
way that's really about you. So you say Mark Zuckerberg came
out and said, you know, the problem with these wealth taxes
is there would be less money for medical less diversity.
In spending on medical research because right now billionaires
are funding all these different medical research things because
billionaires always fun like their disease, right?
Bill Gates may be an exception. They have some weird heart thing
that the sun is the center at UCLA for that weird heart thing.
So it's biographical giving right and so Mark Zuckerberg
exclaim is like you're not that the subtext is like you're going
to get some disease some day and there's not going to be a cure
for it because all the government funding was
centralized on medical research. And it wasn't billionaire
sprinkling, their different ideas, diversely Leon cooperman,
the tearful billionaire who Elizabeth Warren makes cry every
time she drops. A plan Leon cooperman says, you
know, I'm going to give so much money away.
Me and my friends, to all these good causes and those good
causes will be hurt if you tax my wealth.
And Michael, Bloomberg says, if you do medicare-for-all, it
would bankrupt our country for years.
He's not saying I want to keep my money, which is normal.
Right? If they just said the hip-hop
video thing which is like they like their money and they throw
it up in the air and they like it, they like having it around
them, right? No one would begrudge that.
I mean, we might vote against them in or begrudge them or
think they're frauds. But instead, I'm concerned, it
would bankrupt America to do the health care program that all the
other rich countries already have that didn't bankrupt them.
And this kind of behavior is so transparent.
And what is exciting to me about 2020.
Is it actually think people are Waking up to it and seeing
through it and seeing through the neoliberal smoke in a way
that I do, not think certainly in my lifetime, we have seen the
Democratic electorate. Do I think that's because these
wealthy people who claim to be somewhat liberal or Progressive.
Have taken it too far. Taking it too far to the point
where people realized and I saw this really starting back in 08
with the housing collapse, so many people's lives Livelihoods
were ruined already. People have been losing their
pensions and everything but boy when it comes to their home and
how many people were evicted and in how many of those, the
children of these people who might have been eight or ten
years old at the time and and had to suffer as a result of
this their voters. Now, these young people have
seen it. Yes.
The rich expose their hand, you called them trolls in the way
that they try to put. Use this fear like you.
Do you tax be too much? I won't.
I'm not going to have the money to fund the finding the disease
that's going to save your mother when she's old and broke because
of the other stuff I did in my business.
Well, that's why I call it terrorism.
It's a form of terrorism. Its economic terrorism.
They are terrorists because they do exactly what a terrorist
wants to do. Scare the shit out of you so
that you'll behave in a certain way.
And, and do little things that really, they don't necessarily
ultimately have the power over you, a terrorist, but if they
can get you acting in a way where you make your decisions
out of fear and that you or your family or loved ones, will be
hurt as a result of that, then they've won.
And, and this is what they're hoping to do.
There's like a bergson etcetera. There, hoping that by
instilling, this fear, they will stop themselves from being taxed
and and they will elect People that they want Empower.
I think it's, it's one of the most evil and Insidious things
that takes place these days. And it's often done in the name
of, I'm a Democrat, I'm a liberal, I'm a progressive, you
know, look at me, look at what I've done, trust me, trust me, I
have earned your trust by doing this.
I've also participated in creating an economy that has
such an enormous gap between the Haves and the Have Nots.
That you probably will not be able to pay off your college
loan. I mean the pitch is please let
me rub you. I'm woke, right.
Wow. Can I just say that again?
What their pitch is is please let me Rob you, because I'm
woke. Let Mark Zuckerberg.
Rob you. Of a free and fair election.
That is not the platform for Russian cyber War operation.
Let him do that, because he cares about immigration, the way
you do, let Michael Bloomberg, deep in the hold of the
financial industry and of billionaires over public life
and literally attempt to purchase a federal presidential
election. Because he's woke on climate
change and gun rights. Let someone who in the financial
industry has wrought Devastation on Michigan and other parts of
this country through the housing crisis.
Let them reinvent themselves as revitalizing America's Urban
centers and go on 60 Minutes talking about how they're
helping Detroit, come back. From the thing, they literally
did to Detroit a second ago. Let them do that because there
were there woke, and we have to stop allowing ourselves
consenting, which is what I believe, we're often doing
consenting to being robbed by people who are woke.
When you wrote that op-ed this summer, and you got the email
and then the call from Jamie dimon JPMorgan, Chase Bank.
That you made a correct that. So I was it was not up, is a
quote in the New York Times article quoting.
Our times aren't ya? I don't think it was a month or
two later when I'm watching 60 Minutes one night.
Correct? And, you know, they usually if
they have three segments on 60 Minutes of three stories that
they follow others, sometimes like strong piece of Journalism,
then there is kind of a lighter fare and then there's maybe a
profile on a concert pianist. That's the generally the gist of
it. And they should let you run 60m.
You got the whole formula. Yeah, you got bang.
These things out. I could do it in my sleep,
seriously. Yeah.
But they save a little time called 30 minutes.
No, I would, I would try to get a second row called 30 minutes
and it would be basically, you know, you and I and Naomi Klein
and a few others. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. We telling the other side of the
truth. Exactly what they call the
truth. No but they did not one, but two
segments that night on Jamie dimon, I think that's what I was
referring to. Like walking walking around, was
it Detroit? One of the first segment is how
woky is right in his business. And there, they brings them into
Chase and they walk around and they do what they do.
No child labor, no, no, yes, they're very good about all
these things and good guy, good politics, good Heart part two.
Segments to is Detroit, he goes to Detroit with him and shows us
how he is trying to save the Right?
From the Jamie dimon? Yes, yes to Jamie dimon trying
to save Detroit. Yes, I'm Jamie dimon.
Correct. Yes, no.
Not once has, he asked while they were walking around Detroit
of this, this Devastation and destruction that we're looking
at. Didn't you really have a role in
this? Are you being serious that that
didn't come up as a question? Not that what know it was kind
of? There was the sort of softball
liberal? Yeah.
But you know and then And then he was very quick to deny that
they had anything to do and then they actually well, but there
is, you know, and then he immediately as it was so.
So this actually should be, they should teach this in all these
awful. Colleges now have journalism
schools, but they're really for students who are going to be
publicist, right? And marketers, not real
journalists. And the way he spun that Around
and being from Michigan myself and caring deeply about Detroit.
I could feel the sort of okay I know who you are.
But you're going to save that person on the Block, you're in
the ambulance on the way to save that person.
I'm not going to stand on the street and stop you in that
ambulance it was so skillfully done I'll basil.
We should see if we could put this up on the website this week
for rumble, the link so you can watch the Jamie dimon twofer on
that night and you can't help but leave it thinking that,
okay? Maybe.
Maybe he's done some bad stuff and maybe his a rich dude.
But you know, he's trying to do something to guess and I think
what's thinking about it relative to your movies.
Like I think, what's I think in a way and that you've revealed a
few times that these people despite not being intellectually
aligned with, you have watched your movies of engaged with your
work. And I think I would say, They
clearly understood from work like yours and Naomi Klein and
others over the last year's like this wasn't going well right?
The the hollowing out of America for the purposes of buying a
fourth home is, you know, it was going well for them economically
but it was a gathering PR crisis over the last 20-30 years and
the movies were coming out in the books were coming out and it
was painting a pretty unkind picture.
If you think of where this Station was 10 years ago.
And I think part of where I come into this conversation is 10
years ago. I don't think there would have
been the second segment on 60 Minutes.
Right? I think, 10 years ago, I really
just been like, here's the financial crisis and here's this
bank and like what, what's the story man?
Like, what how do you feel about it?
Why'd you pay that fine. Ten years later.
There's now this second segment and a lot of my work is on the
use of the second segment which is seat.
Jamie dimon's, doing all this nice stuff, the use of the
segment to protect your right to keep doing the thing that they
detailed in the first segment but didn't really push you on.
And another part of my project is to also say that you have to
understand the social networks that keep all of this running.
You have to understand that those Folks at 60 Minutes, some
of them or just that kind of more General class of very Ultra
Elite journalists are hanging out with people like Jamie
dimon, or the people who work for Jamie dimon at the Aspen
ideas festival, or at Ted, or at Davos, or at, you know, various
other confabs like that, their kids are interning at each
other's places, right? The bankers kids are interning
with the journalist because they've kind of rebel against
their Banker parents and the journalists kids are, you know,
trying to intern with the bankers because they don't to be
poor like their parents were in their early part of their
childhood or whatever. And it's this This club and I
tried to write about from my own view.
I there were moments when I was inside that club and inside that
Citadel and got to see how this happens.
And the truth is, people are not sitting in that club in Aspen or
whatever. Thinking about how do we screw
people there watching your movies and thinking that is
awful. That's terrible.
We're on their, a failing to make a connection between how
the Institutions and systems they're part of our their reason
for what happened in your movies, right?
And And B, they are proposing. Then, the kinds of remedies that
worse than the Disease, by by deepening, the power of the
Aspen Davos class over public life.
When that in fact, is the root of so many of these evils can I
tell you that what you're saying?
You're not just assuming this your this actually happens p as
need to know you know you and I have been given these Peaks
behind the curtain so we know yes who's dining with who And or
is it home? I don't know again, if I'd gone
to college, I know. But I so I made a movie called
sick about the healthcare system and I was later told that a
meeting was held in Philadelphia.
They sent the VP in charge of public relations, or consumer
markets or whatever to this meeting each of the each of the
pharmaceutical companies. And I think some of the
healthcare insurance companies were at this meeting.
How are we going to deal with Michael Moore?
How are we going to stop him? How are we going to discredit
him? It wasn't the first time that
this had happened. I'd been through this with Karl
Rove with Fahrenheit 9/11 and you know the plan that he and
the people are in the White House had to put together to
make sure that we wouldn't affect the election that
November and and Wendell Potter who was a vice president of
Cigna. Basically later he quit he
couldn't take it anymore. His job actually for the group
for their Roundtable was I fly to Michigan and go to the small
town that I lived in to, I was having a little Premier for the
town and I don't think there's 6,000 people in this town.
And he brought his son and came because nobody had seen sicko
yet. So it's like an early screening
and he came there to watch, it brought a ticket, I didn't know
where he was. You know, it's just in there,
one of the people and we had an after party afterwards in the
restaurant across the street. He came over to that little
extra And he later told me, he said the drive back with his son
is 12 13 years old after watching that movie.
And the movie is not about people without health insurance,
is about people with health insurers and all that great
Private health insurance. We have how they're set up to
screw you and two when you do get sick to pay as little as
possible for when you are sick, even though you have health
insurance, his son all the way back in the car, how could you
do this? Why would you do this?
You know, just challenging his death.
And he said, I became so ashamed that I was part of what I you
just showed in your film. I couldn't take it anymore.
He went he, I don't know how many weeks or months later, he
quit, he quit, and is now running.
One of the Medicare for all I know this because this is a
remarkable thing that you just told the story.
I didn't know who he was until a week ago.
He literally just reached out to me a week ago.
Wow, yeah. And said that he'd read my book
and and that he recognizes these moves, right?
Because Like him. We're trying to make these
moves. Right.
And can I ask you about
something that I know? I know it's your podcast, but
yeah, do not worry anything that's been.
Yeah. Concerning.
So I think back to your warning in 2016, which was so prescient
about the ways, in which Trump was successfully, selling an
awful thing in a way that was resonant with people and that,
that spoke to people when I think about both Bernie Sanders
and Elizabeth Warren. Yeah.
And when I kind of just are my own ideas on these topics that I
get a lot of pushback from people who are sympathetic
Democrats, I think who essentially say like yes on and
you're right in theory but you're just gonna you're just
going to get Trump re-elected like you know that it's the
sensible moderate slightly racist Joe Biden.
Who is our best shot and like this is not the moment to both
try to beat Trump and do huge things.
This is the moment to choose Between trying to do huge things
and beating Trump. Now, I do not buy this one bit,
and I personally feel like if you want to beat Trump, you have
to sell people who have been shafted, some of the people he
spoke to and others sell them. Something that is equally an
oppositely exciting which is a bigger swinging Vision.
But part of me does feel pause about this question of the twin
goals of beating Trump and massively transforming America
at the same time and I just wonder how you how you think
about it I believe that getting rid of Donald Trump, if that's
our only thing that were up to, it will, the long game of that
is that we're going to end up even worse off.
We have to do two things at once.
That's just the answer. Here we have to get rid of trump
and we have to, we have to get rid or fix or do something about
the rotten system that gave us trunk.
That made impossible. Exactly.
He did not fall out of the sky. Yeah I'll call him up.
I call him a puss. Boil on a diseased body.
Politic right? That's that's it.
And yes. Remove the boil.
Yep. Yes.
But you're not you're not well now that you've removed the boil
but there's just going to be another boil.
And next time the boil won't be as stupid as he is.
It might be able to read. They will read the next Trump
will read and and will will be a lot smarter about it in the way
that we've watched as Zuckerberg and Bloomberg and others.
Try to be smart about how to get away with what they're getting
away. Madam president Tucker Carlson
and I don't like the guy, but he's that's a smart well-read
guy. Yes, it's same platform, but
literate. One of the things that might be
saving us from the total collapse in these four years
with Trump. Is that two things?
In my mind, his lack of knowledge and his lack of
ability to have anybody stay loyal to him.
He can't keep a good Cadre of loyal lieutenants Who will do
anything from. I don't mean the little, the
lawyer, their loyalties getting in Congress during the
impeachment, all that because they want to get reelected and
they think that he's their path, I'm talking about all fascist
regime regimes in history, have been able to have a large
contingent of loyal people and that's how they were able to
keep going. This Trump doesn't have what the
Hitler's in the Mussolini's or the Pinochet case or the think
of anybody That has stayed in power there.
Authoritarian regime, you can't do it alone, you you need quite
a number of people that are so consumed with their love and
loyalty for you again. I'm not talking about the
politicians in Congress. That's a fake.
It's a fake loyalty. Believe me.
I think a lot of them dumped him as quick as whatever if they
could, if they could, if they thought that they could.
But I'm talking about what does he have in the White House?
His daughter? Maybe her husband.
Stephen Miller, one or two others?
That's Much yeah, yeah if you've talked to people who work in the
White House and work in the West Wing or work in the Press Corps,
it's like a ghost town in there many days because first of all,
they haven't filled many offices in the executive branch, you
know, and those are filled are acting.
So, and so he's the acting he's theirs.
So this is, this is, I think in part saving us, but it's not
enough. If you were to say to me right
now, look in the crystal ball. And if we all get behind Biden,
we're going to get rid of trump and just do that.
I would say to you stop first, I'll stop looking in the crystal
ball because it lies. You have no idea where we're
going to be with Joe Biden in a month or two or five, but
understand that the only way that Democrats are going to get
out the base. The excited base to excite the
base to get them to vote on November 3rd.
Next year is because whoever is running is talking about these
issues that you. And I have been talking about,
yes, and policies that are going to fix their lives in some
better fashion. Yes.
If If, if the, if you listen to this right now, if on November
3rd, next year, you wake up on Election Day, if you're not
feeling like you felt. If you're old enough to have
voted for Obama, the first time in 08, everybody remembers that
nobody that I know woke up that day and said oh God I got to go
vote for Obama. It was bodily.
It was like a bodily feeling. It was a bodily feeling and it
was it was it was after eight years of George W, bush.
And man, people couldn't wait to get to the polls, and we are
going to stand there for as long as we need to stand.
We're going to vote in Michigan. It didn't matter how cold it
was. And I think that that's its
wrongheaded thinking and if you're if you're one of these
people but Mike we got it, we just got to play it safe this
time. I like Bernie Sanders.
Well, this kind of fearful liberal Democrat, has been the
undoing of us in the past and I want to just encourage people to
Just I always start by saying this, I believe the top four and
I believe that I actually do believe the polls in a
head-to-head. We didn't have an electoral
college. The top four would be Trump
today. So maybe not worry so much about
that trust that the yes and and hope that the DNC has a plan now
and has studied the electoral map.
Like there's actually some thinking that's going into this.
Yeah, and then everybody especially in the primaries vote
for the person that most Lights your flame.
You don't don't not do that, but you don't play Stratego here or
something, right? You know, just you've got to
this is not the time to bring out your college game theory.
If you took Game Theory and college.
Actually exactly if you know if you love Cory Booker goddamnit
vote for him. Yeah.
In the primary I that really resonates with me and I think
part of what I'm concerned about and I have been, you know,
offering this free Consulting To, to any Progressive, who will
listen, and, you know, who am I for them to listen to.
But but here's what I think, I also think the way in which the
Bernie and Warren campaigns, but also Progressive at lower levels
and electoral politics have been pitching, their ideas has
limited the potential support and excitement for them.
And here I'm talking about really language and framing, not
the substance going, the substances is solid, and would
really change a lot of people's lives.
Sighs. But I think the substance and
you tell me if I'm wrong about Michigan, but I grew up in Ohio,
went to college in Michigan. I think the way the Bernie and
Elizabeth Warren programs, reading a lot of those places is
scary. You know, over transformative
like vaguely European. And what I have been arguing is
that I think both of them and others who want to achieve this
America need to employ Two languages that they don't use
enough that do work in those places, which is a language of
patriotism and be a language of personal transformation, both of
which are deeply American languages.
So on patriotism I kind of want to hear the word
medicare-for-all the phrase Medicare for I can want to hear
that less that's a policy phrase that's a wonk phrase that's a
think tank for he's fine. I want to hear about freedom
from illness as a vital American.
Freedom I want to hear about like I was saying the other day
and I was sort of as a joke but also seriously like I think the
Battle of Normandy should be invoked every time someone talks
about health care. I think someone should find a
story of some dude who ran eight times back and forth from the
waterline to the cliffs to drag people.
He didn't know to safety. People he would never see again
and we should understand that as a metaphor for the kind of
health system that soldiers deserve to come home to and
everybody else deserves to have. I think we should undersell that
as like, this is who we are, right?
We take care of each other. We have taken care of each
other. This is who we are.
This is patriotism and we should flip on the first point.
We should flip this Dynamic, where ruthless Capitalism that
leaves people on the street is American somehow and is the
policy of like hot dogs and apple pie and actually having
the back of your fellow Americans even though you don't
know their name is somehow vaguely European.
So that's number one. I think I want to hear way more
than patriotism patriotic to do that.
Yes. Yeah and I want to hear and I
think what's funny on the left is because of the war thing and
because of Realism, like, there's this shyness around
patriotism, and I think we had left me to actually get over
that, a little bit on, on the right issues, right?
I don't think we should go be fighting stupid Wars because of
patriotism, but I think there's a language.
The language of Justice isn't. The only language to sell some
of this stuff that's kind of Point.
Number one, point number two on is, is the, you know, almost the
opposite. Another very powerful American
language vernacular is the language of personal
transformation. Follow this diet, you'll Change
your life, drink. This shake your marriage will be
saved, right? Take this pill, your love life
will be enhanced right? We love that.
You go to the grocery store. What did nine out of ten
magazines? Right?
At the end the ones that they're trying to hope you buy even
though you didn't want to buy it you know, the budget for it.
What are they trying to sell you?
You can change your life can change.
Now this whole American rhetoric of personal transformation is
personal, it's normally like you personally do this one thing.
And your life will be better. You pretend?
It's all the responsibility is all on the person.
I'm sure they went to people in Flint and said, you know.
Yeah, you lost your job. This, not.
But if you, you know and I'm sure you can't eat healthy
options now but if you do this you can change your life.
What I want, some of these progressives to learn to do, is
to co-opt this language of personal transformation, but for
Grand public policy, And to say, not what would you do?
But who would you be? Who would you be?
What kind of self would you have?
If you didn't have student debt? What kind of marriage would you
have? If Healthcare anxiety was not a
part of your marriage, right? What kind of relationship with
your children? Would you have if you could work
one job instead of three and actually invite people?
Because a lot of this stuff in the Progressive Movement, sounds
a lot like the way I sound frankly, a lot of time which is
like corruption is bad. This is bad, this is bad.
I think we have to do better myself.
Included of showing people what life will be like if this
succeeds. What will your life be?
Like, I think what no one says, what?
I don't hear Elizabeth Warren saying enough.
Bernie Sanders saying enough is like life will be so much more
fun in America if we win, right? Like let's not let's not let's
not bury the lead here. Yes yes yes, yes, transitions
phase it. Yes sure all of it right?
You know what's really fun to like not think about Health care
for the rest of your life and where it's going to come from.
That is fun. It's a better more fun life,
call your friends with that half an hour.
You don't have to stare at a medical bill, right to have the
money to take a vacation. Grab the time off to have any of
the things that we should have as human beings money.
As we know, is a leading stressor that causes divorces.
Right? Right.
How many think people go to therapy?
People try, you know, as an Indian person I can say, you
know, people try Tantra, people, try all kinds of stuff, spice
up, your marriage, you do, you know what to really spice up
your marriage, not having student debt, or to pay for
health care, right? Right.
And I think part of why not, when I think about how do you
not have had you not have the repeat of 2016 in places like
Michigan. I want to see progressives going
to places like that. Unapologetically pushing for the
policies we've been hearing, but Talking about it in a language
of patriotism and talking about in the language of personal
transformation and helping people see that this is the
American thing, what we're pushing and this is the thing
that will make your life. Thrilling, fun, Full Of Love
Hole. And do not lose this argument to
some of the most ruthless greedy mercenary people on Earth.
Wow. I think if we did what you just
said after, I think you and I, we should, we should make some
short videos. Let's do it.
You know, that if you just think differently about the selection,
it could mean better sex. That I mean, how about just the
chance to have sex instead of Doing so wiped out because you
are working at third job because you didn't even get to see the
kids tonight if we're going to bed because you were, you had to
stay over Layton. You did have a choice.
Yes. All the things that just make
life so hard that I have, this is such a brilliant thing that
you're saying and those who are listening, play it back if you
need to share it. With people, tell people this
that Because I don't know what happened to the liberal side of
the fence. The left.
We we used to be that were, we were the party people.
We were the people enjoying life, sex, drugs and rock, and
roll. All the stuff that we, that that
what we now have, and what we are giving our children is a
pretty sad State of Affairs and in, you're right, I think if we
just talk it, if we continue to talk About just how sad and
wrong it all is. First of all, it shows that
we're not even in touch with the people we're talking to because
they already know what's wrong and they already know their life
sucks. And and so what if we were to
give them a window into it, not sucking how exciting that would
be. You know, it's wow.
I really, I think that you are such a Force for good.
This book. Winners take all is just it's,
I've encouraged. People, my sister just told me
that she gave it this this fall to her husband for his birthday
and I said, wow, how did you know about it?
I see my morning Joe with you. Yeah, yeah.
Well, you but but, but you go on these you go on these shows and
you don't sound like a pundit. We don't get to hear this.
You understand, we really don't get to hear this but I am shit
that well I and I think a lot of people listening to this
appreciate It and I hope you come back and we can continue
this conversation. There's so many other things I'd
love to talk to you about. I want to tell you just one
quick story. If this is helpful at all, these
anecdotes are these stories of what is in this book and how
true it is, in terms of how they have successfully bought off the
working class for so many years with this so-called generosity.
And I've been thinking about this, since I was 16, I could
never, you know, quite put my finger on I couldn't articulate
it but I knew something was wrong in Flint.
Michigan. There are or were at least a
half a dozen General Motors factories and General Motors was
founded there in 1908 within three years.
The people the town thought this is the most dangerous thing
that's ever happened. That this company was formed
here in Flint and they are controlling the town and so the
Socialist influent ran An individual for mayor in the next
election. Anyone this freaked out General
Motors. So in the next election, Charles
Stewart Mott. You might have heard the name
because he's nothing like those Foundation funds.
A lot of good in PR stuff all that ran and they were they put
out, they have the daily paper was on the GM side to put out
all the stuff on the Socialist mayor and scandalous.
You know, rumors about him and whatever and and they put a lot
of money into electing. Ding one of the founders of
General Motors as the mayor of the town.
Because they knew, if they didn't put a stop to this right
now, all hell is gonna break loose, they literally needed to
own the town. They they and, and they did, it
was a company town and they you bought your house from General
Motors. You finance it through GMAC.
Your car was from Germany who built the car than you.
They charge you for to buy it. And the whole thing was circled
around to more money in their pockets.
He remained mayor. He was elected.
I think three different times remain mayor for quite some
time. Time, and he and others.
Hence, why he set up this Foundation, very early on the
trail storm. Uh, Foundation.
He said if we if we keep them down, if we make life, so
miserable for them, eventually they will rise up.
That's what history shows. So we have to start doing things
to make things better. So they made the public schools,
he funded so much of the way Beyond his tax dollars to make
them some of the best public schools in the country.
In fact, people used to come to Flint to study the public school
system. But this is where I first To
think about it because my dad and all the all the factory
worker. Dad's you work for shift.
That means you work from 6:00 a.m. to 2:00 or 2:30 p.m. that's
it Euro and General Motors and the various powers that be
decided to build golf courses public golf courses across the
street or next to or nearby each of the factories.
So I and all my friends. So we're teenagers were out
there on our dads would bring us out.
To work and teach us how to play golf.
And they all want. Every factory worker won't be a
golf ball and to be a golfer. Now, this is the support of the
for the rich, but they were so genius about this that you're in
this one, little case, let's give them a piece of what we
have. Let's make them all golfers and
and only charge it a quarter 50 cents to play golf.
And then they in turn brought their sons.
Me being one of them onto the golf course to learn golf.
And to be golfers, and eventually, there weren't as
many strikes eventually things, you know, people forgot about
well idea of socialism was, you know, you start to think of
yourself as a future, yes. All playing executive.
Well, and you buy, what is the American dream?
That anyone can be the head of General Motors.
If you apply yourself, you can invent something.
You can create something, you can have the good life.
And and just to give you a little taste of the good life,
here's a set of golf clubs and golf course, you just have to
walk across the street. You walk out of the factory
after this back-breaking work all day but they're all nine
holes. By the way there, I don't think
there's sound throws 180 because they got to get home, you know,
I got a dinner, you know, back then you dinner 5:00 6:00 so,
but they all played a round of golf in the name.
When their sons were old enough, they taught us to play golf and
it's a city of friggin golfers in East.
That is working class. That is that was back then half
and half black and white and now majority, that's an amazing
example of you have philanthropic Lee funded golf
that is entrenching the power of the people stealing the future
from those people. Think of the genius of that.
And it's such a little thing. Yep, other less smart rich
people would. Well let's let's write a check
to the local YMCA, you know, or whatever.
But this was like no, let's literally build five go.
Of courses, they'll be owned by the city of Flint.
It won't cost, hardly anything to play and and these workers
will be able to walk around for a couple of hours thinking, I'm
rich, too. I'm playing the rich man's game.
And, by the way, that's also a few hours where they were
talking after work. And organizing going to
political meetings, going to Union meetings, well, on that
level to think about this golf is one of the sports.
That is not team sport. It's an individualistic Sprite
years that I mean, you're not, you're not having to Not be
communing, not commuting. And are talking how we gonna We
gonna win this game. That's just about you me,
myself. And I, well, I thought about
this as I read this in your, you know, the sort of the concept of
this in your book. There's so many examples in this
is just my own personal example, very powerful.
And I again thought about it since I was a teenager but it
took it took a decade or two before I figured out what the
scam was here, how beautifully it worked to the point where
many of these Auto Workers Would end up voting for republicans
and having conservative values, you know.
In other words it's mimicking in the way the gulf did the values
of the wealthy class and you know, you started out by talking
about how you know that boot is on the neck, all these people
and that that you aren't you were going to be blunt about
this that the boot has to be removed from the neck.
How we going to do that? It can't just be elections,
right? I think elections are the
Consequence of doing this, not the activity in itself.
I think the way to do it is they're going to need to be Mass
popular movements that are powerful enough to counteract
the role of money in elections that are going to be powerful
enough, to put pressure on various institutions to put
pressure on government in between elections.
And I think, particularly look at young people today in
America, there is a a real deficit of joining and you know
I've been reading Jia Tolentino is really excellent book trick
mirror and she said of talks about clicking as a substitute
for joining in American life and the rise of clicking in the
death of joining and the point she makes, which is a very dark
and powerful observation is that when we go online to these
platforms, whether it's Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, two
things happen, the actual thing that's happening is we are
actually do Eating our time which is our most valuable
resource for free to what are essentially advertising
companies. Monopolies in many cases that
literally use the revenue generated by our attention that
we've donated to further polarize us.
Right? So we're donating time
institution that's like making our society worse and shorter
attention span whatever. But what we feel we are doing
when we go on those platforms is we feel we are being Civic at
these Platforms have generated a false Civic Center.
And I having read that in her book, I will say, I completely
resonate with that when I spend longer than I should on Twitter
in a day. I feel like I voted.
Mmm right now. I feel like, I talked down the
bad guys, and I amped up the good guys and I spread certain
ideas. No, you haven't done that.
You haven't done any. You've been stuck on your juice
box, correct? Yeah, exactly.
And I think one of the things we're really going to need in
this country is to remember, the clicking is not the same thing
as joining and we need a new we didn't kind of new era of
joining and it's not going to look like the old Arab joining.
I think it's going to be unions, but it's not going to be the
Union's whose demise you've chronicled.
I think it's going to be some new thing, right?
The Union's you've explored in your work are never going to
help Uber drivers but there's going to be more and more
workers who look like that, right?
Then the people, you know, Make cars in Flint.
And so, what's the future of unions and collective
bargaining? That has a future that has not
been invented yet, but it's an exciting problem to think about,
you know, or if you think about political joining, I'll give you
an example sign. It Madden's me sometimes by
choice sometimes just because people adieu to mailing lists,
I'm on a bunch of different Democratic party.
Email lists. The national one, local ones,
Brooklyn ones. Until you know, you know the
ones where it's like hey this is President Obama chip in five
bucks, you know, whatever to local stuff whatever.
I will tell you much to my shock in the two plus years.
Almost three years since Donald Trump became president.
I've gotten countless emails from those Democratic party
accounts saying some version of chip into box, watch this live
stream of this thing and then tripping, five bucks, whatever.
I'm not sure that in. One of those emails since
January 2017. I've gotten the following
President Trump today. Demeaned the following countries
that probably is a lot of people feeling down.
Join us since you're in this ZIP code, join us in Fort Greene
Park in Brooklyn. This afternoon for a drum circle
and sing along. We're going to celebrate some of
the songs of those countries and show solidarity with each other.
I'm not sure I have been invited to any specific place at any A
specific time ever by any of those Democratic party emails
since Jerry 2017. I've been asked for quick online
transactions. I'm not sure.
I've been invited to a, you know, a bar talk with people,
I'm not sure. I've been invited to a picnic to
reflect on our own immigration stories and I see it.
Now in the 2020 campaign, the rallies, you know, great
rallies, great crowds, but our people being connected to each
other actually being fused. Used together are people
actually being turned into a movement.
The people in the Civil Rights Movement, a generation ago, they
actually knew each other IRL. They were actually friends, many
of them. That's why they bailed each
other out of jail or willing to die for each other in certain
they were, actually they knew each other and I think there's
been this real problem and with my generation the even younger
generation where we've been, and maybe it's like those golf
courses. We've been sold a vision of
joining that isn't joining at all.
And we need to see through the golf course, so to speak.
And really invent a new generation of joining and
joining Technologies and joining forms, and joining institutions,
and to actually be part of things and no longer just be a
kind of mass clicking public. One of these days come to Flint
with me. I would love to.
Where'd you go to Ann Arbor, just?
Yeah, yeah, I don't know if I ever made it 60 miles north.
I think I. Yeah, I did a couple of times
I've but, um, I just had this idea that if we if you and I
just did a short film walking these golf courses.
It's a great and use it to explain the larger idea in here.
What's the name of the course you over?
Oh, I know that I can recite all of them.
There is mocked golf course. Of course, worth there's Pierce
golf course. There's the Flint City.
Golf Course, their Swartz Creek Golf Course.
And I'm doing you guys, I'm remembering these, I'm lining it
up with the factory. Is that one's by the Factory.
That's why the Chevy factory. That's why the AC spark plug
Factory? That's all that's out there by
the turn stud Factory and it's it is a meat now because flat
has been through such hard times and because because of the
poisoning of the water you you know watering the golf course is
what you have to do kills the golf course.
So so the city has had to abandon the majority of these
He's at this point whether they still golf courses or then, I
think there's one now that's still functioning as a golf
course. It's still owned by the city to.
Here's the, here's the idea, you and I should play around of
diamond. Sounds like you are an actual
golf player. I am not, I played like three
times. Yeah, so it'll be that we have
comedy in the movie intrinsically, really giving
able to play. And me not being able to play,
right? That'll be a nice part of.
Okay, we'll just do a full round of nine.
I will just talk about these issues.
Yes, Yeah, I'll playing this very lopsided game of golf.
Yes, I love this idea. Yeah, and we won't get happen.
We won't bet. I won't take any of your money,
it's all. But at the end, I think we're
really going to need a couple of drinks because the, the, the,
the, the story is fun and can be told in this entertaining way.
But ultimately, you see how so many of people's dad's, the way
you're young, people talk about how they just can't stand going
back. To their parents or their
grandparents because they could box, news is on, you know, 18
hours a day, but they didn't just get that.
They just didn't happen one day. There wasn't just something, you
know, no pun intended in the water.
This was well, thought out by very smart people, who I'm sure
thought they were doing a lot of good.
Some of your favorite NPR shows have been brought to you by the
trash term a foundation. So, I mean, people, you know
what's so deeply sad and ironic about that?
As, you know, presumably, they went out and bought golf shirts
that made them look a little bit, like a CEO and about the
accoutrement of playing golf, and they may be imagined that
they were golfing their way to the top.
But I think when you understand the system, they were golfing
their way to the bottom. That's right.
And actually, there was a little
Golf Apparel section at the local gym, JC Penney store,
where you could, you could, you could never afford a course what
the ritual wearing, but you could afford that the JCPenney
discovered this Market. For at least the store in Flint.
Did you know? I was because literally
especially the men there. Everybody if you worked in the
factory, there's a pretty damn good chance you golfed and that
was true for white and black General Motors Assembly line
workers. Look this, this is the movie.
The public needs. Okay.
Boy, that was the easiest movie. We've never really got to do a
shoot. This is like, we just have to
fill that we've just greenlit it.
Yeah, once the snow melts, right, exactly.
Thank you. So much.
Thank you very much for doing the really, really enjoyed the
conversation.