Team Trump “Rabid” in PA, and Rep. Dingell on the State of Michigan
37:19 Share

Okay, this is a true story.

I have a friend who once faked his own death so he could have more time to watch his favorite TV show. In my new podcast, Truthless, I'm talking to people about the lies they tell, from forging new identities to taking their love of Game of Thrones a little too far. From Spotify and the Ringer Podcast Network, I'm Brian Phillips. Listen to Truthless on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. ♪

This episode is brought to you by Coca-Cola Creations. You love the taste of Coca-Cola and love the cookie crunch of Oreos. But what happens when the best drink and the best cookie in the world get together? The best becomes besties. Try the new Coca-Cola Zero Sugar Oreo Limited Edition. Besties for a limited time. Taste it while it lasts. Copyright 2024. The Coca-Cola Company. Copyright 2024. Mondelez International Group. ♪

Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Tuck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win. On this show, we're going to talk to Congresswoman Debbie Dingell about the battleground state of Michigan.

Congresswoman Dingell is known for keeping it real about what's happening on the ground there. She was the first one to ring the alarm bells and say that Hillary Clinton was losing in 2016, so she's got a ton of street cred.

Before her time in Congress, she was president of the General Motors Foundation, and she's a descendant of the Fisher brothers. So Michigan is in her blood and in her soul. Her late husband was one of the longest serving members of Congress. When he died, she took over his seat. She is Michigan through and through. Right now, most of the polls show the candidates within a margin of error in Michigan. Although a new CNN poll that just came out

on Wednesday shows Harris with a narrow five-point lead in the battleground state. My sources in Trump's team even told me a few days ago that they were ready to lose Michigan and possibly even Wisconsin, although they could still win if they lose those states as long as they win Pennsylvania. And we'll get to that later, why Pennsylvania is driving them rabid.

Yes, rapid is the word, even crazy. With Michigan specifically, they don't think they can get past the gender gap. And they're seeing a large number of people from the colleges come out to vote in these early voting figures. On the flip side, the Republican mayor of Dearborn, a predominantly Arab American community, just came out and endorsed Donald Trump. And let's not forget that during the primaries, 100,000 voters came out in protest to Joe Biden,

They voted unaffiliated, many of which were Arab American voters who were angry about the war in Gaza. So who knows how they're going to vote? Are they going to go out for Kamala Harris? Are they going to vote for Jill Stein? Or are they going to even vote for Donald Trump? Who knows? Debbie Dingle knows a lot about this. But based on my conversations with Team Trump, all they want to talk about is Pennsylvania, which may explain why they've become privately and publicly rabid.

about the idea of fraud in Pennsylvania, a state that they admit they will likely only win on the margins and that it could determine the entire race. After all, imagine if Donald Trump was your boss. And as I reported in Puck.News a few weeks ago, he had told you and the entire Republican National Committee and the chairman, Michael Whatley, that the only way that he could lose the race is if they drop the ball and are

unable to prove fraud. So they're already sowing doubts about the election results coming from Pennsylvania with explosive and misleading claims. Trump himself tweeting or truthing, sorry, Pennsylvania is cheating and getting caught at large scale levels rarely seen before report cheating to authorities. Law enforcement must act now. It's gotten so intense that I'm hearing from my sources that they're talking about criminal referrals.

I mean, criminally prosecuting poll workers who they feel are engaged in voter suppression after there were reports of poll workers telling people that the lines were so long that they should come back on Election Day. In fact, they sued Bucks County, a suburb of Philly, over this, and they were able to extend the mail-in ballot voting days to November 1st based on poll watcher telling people to come.

back because of long lines. I reached out to the Trump campaign and the RNC to see if they're really serious about referring poll watchers for criminal prosecution, or if this is just some workshopping or fever dream among some of the more extreme members of Trump's quote unquote election integrity unit.

They haven't gotten back to me yet, but I will update you when they do. It just makes you think that if they were actually feeling comfortable about Pennsylvania, they wouldn't be acting like this. And of course, it's laying the groundwork to say that they were cheated if Trump loses. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris had a pretty flawless closing argument in front of the Ellipse in Washington. But...

Within hours, she was served up a shit sandwich by Joe Biden, who called Trump supporters garbage on a phone call with Voto Latino. He walked it back and he said he meant that the comedian who called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage was garbage. But it was way too late. And Trump had already seized on it and hearkened it back to when Hillary Clinton called his supporters deplorables.

All of this is shit. All of this is terrible. Let's not forget that just last week, Joe Biden said that we need to lock him up and then had to walk it back and say, lock him up politically. But it's just a reminder that A, Joe Biden can barely speak and is in terrible condition. And Democrats were trying to run him as a president, keeping him away from the press. And that there was a consensual delusion that they could actually cross him over the finish line. And number two,

that he's still president. And right now he still wants to be out on the campaign trail. And number three, that Kamala Harris is really struggling with distancing herself from Joe Biden. She doesn't want to insult him, but she's asked over and over again, how would you be different than Joe Biden? And it's really hard for her to say definitively how she would be different from him. And of course, Trump's team is seizing on that. Bye.

Biden reportedly wants to be on the trail with Harris, but her team is in a bit of thanks but no thanks land. But at the same time, they're trying to manage a president's ego. So yeah, it's been tough. All right, let's get down to it and talk to Congresswoman Debbie Dingell.

Congresswoman Dingell, it is such a pleasure to have you on the show. You have been a truth teller for many election cycles about what's going on on the ground in your battleground state of Michigan, which we know is an all important state in the blue wall that Donald Trump managed to flip in 2016 by just 10,000 votes.

in 2020, Joe Biden won by 2.8 points or 250,000 votes. So that was a pretty substantial swing back for the Democrats. But you were one of the first people to sort of ring the alarm bells in 2016 and tell people that, hey, we've got some problems on the ground. Our voters just are not buying Hillary Clinton. And there was a lot of criticism that she didn't spend enough time in the state.

You know, there was also Jill Stein on the ticket who took a lot of the votes. She's an independent candidate who is back on the ticket in 2024. So I just wanted to get your feeling about what are you seeing on the ground right now? How are you feeling? It's always great to be with you.

It's tight in Michigan. I'm just going to be very candid. At this point in the election cycle in 2016, I knew that Hillary Clinton was in trouble and was not likely to win Michigan. In 2020, at this point, I knew Joe Biden was going to win. And I do not believe either candidate has won Michigan yet. They're out there.

There are a lot of complicated feelings. Michigan's a unique state for a variety of reasons right now. So I think it's really going to come down to who votes, which votes turn out. In the end, I think I'd rather be in our shoes than President Biden.

former President Trump's shoes, especially given what happened at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night. And that has not been playing well in places that I've gone. What comments particularly aren't playing well and to who? Well, clearly to women. But in the Hispanic community, the Puerto Rican comments are not

playing well there were racist comments that aren't uh playing well and i refuse to repeat any of them uh but i even think it look every it's you know we've got you got to talk to the union workers you got to do the comparison that's who hillary clinton lost in 216 i think that i have been in the halls i keep talking to uh

The men and women, I'm going to be in a lot of union halls between in the next week, seven days. But who's counting? And I have seen, OK, I do see the difference. She is going to fight for me. Not everybody's there. We've got to keep working it. The young black men, I think, are coming back, I think, between his insults of Detroit and

And the doubling down on his insults of Detroit and things that were said on Sunday. Young black men are like and they're understanding their vote matters. Sitting home is not an option. And, you know, many of them heard President Obama. So I think that's coming home. Young people are starting to realize that is their future. Young women are.

are getting all of a sudden things they took for granted and never thought about. They can't take for granted. They don't want to have to experience what people like me, their mothers, their other family members have experienced. They want to have control. They don't believe the federal government should be interfering in decisions that they're making. Young people are worried about the environment. It's one of the issues that

driving them the most. In the Mideast, it's a very complicated situation, quite frankly. Yeah, I wanted to go back to what you said about how the comments from Madison Square Garden are offending people in Michigan, because we know that in Pennsylvania, they have almost half a million Puerto Ricans, and a lot of them are Trump-curious, right? Hispanics have become increasingly conservative. Is there a large Latino community that was specifically offended in Michigan that could make a real dent in

In this, is it the African-American community because one of the comedians made a racist joke about a Black man in the room carving a watermelon for Halloween? I mean, is it that particularly? Are those clips being sent around and talked about? Or is it just the general vibe that, ugh, we don't like this, this is offensive? I was just wondering if it's like a specific demographic that's been hit by this that could be crucial. All of the above. In Michigan, it isn't one demographic, it's every demographic.

We need to increase the numbers by which women vote. And quite frankly, while what he said about Puerto Rico was horrific, the crudeness of what he said and the way he said it, which I will not repeat. Oh, about Latino people, right? Yes, was crude and offensive.

And offensive. So that's going around all of the women and reminding people about what his history is with women. We have a significant Hispanic community in Michigan. They live in many different areas of the state. They're not all Puerto Rican, but...

It just is totally like it just shows how he demeans people. Right. It's a reminder of the divisiveness. It's a reminder that an event like that with the tone that it has is what this country would return to. And I think people are thinking twice about whether that's what they want.

want to go to. But look, it's competitive. We got to turn out every vote we can. And I'm not making a prediction yet. Well, we do have some early voting figures that have come in over the weekend.

Michigan has smashed expectations I've seen in your local press. 265,000 people came out this weekend. What are you making of these early voting figures? So numbers are numbers and you need to understand what's within the numbers. I was asking these questions yesterday and we were still getting numbers. How many of the voters that have already voted? It means they are turning out.

But are they new voters or are they just voting early? Are they voters that would normally vote? Are they sporadic voters? What we need to be doing is turning out those sporadic voters. So I'm looking for those kinds of statistics. Ann Arbor, I'll just give you one example, which is one of the tough ones.

10 top largest cities in Michigan, had 2,100 voters on Saturday, which was the largest number in the state. And it's a traditionally Democratic area. Again, are they new voters or are they just voting early? Looking at Detroit's AV return to absentee ballots, and actually the African-American community has had a higher rate of return on their AVs than any other demographic.

Again, is it new voters or is it just they're voting early? I'm very focused on one, making sure people that

normally vote. We got to turn up those regular numbers. But two, we need to get the sporadic voters and we need to get the new voters. We need to make sure people are voting. Are you seeing anything in the Republican numbers that are concerning in terms of their returns? I know it's up across the board because Republicans have been encouraged to vote for the first time. First time. So and this is really the first time we've had a

a general election, early voting election, let alone a presidential. In Michigan. Other states have had it, but Michigan specifically. Yes, I'm in Michigan, but I analyze. I'm the Michigan number person. Yeah, right, right, right. So, you know, I track it.

I mean, I take the sixth district, which is my district, as the highest number of Democratic votes of any congressional district in the state. At the highest number in 2022, in the presidential primary, we had more uncommitted votes than any other district and more Biden votes than any other district. And we had more Democratic votes in the August primary. So we went into the weekend and my AV returns weren't where I wanted them to be. But weekend in-person voting,

addressed many of the anxieties I was feeling, but I am using the governor's base numbers for 2022, what the Dem turnout was, and we must meet that number and exceed it. And if we don't meet that, the state's going to be in trouble. So I get the numbers for everything.

city every day in person, AV, what city do we got to focus on? What do we have to drive? Do you feel like the momentum is going that way? Are you feeling like it's a little too slow? You know, this is an hour by hour thing. I'm almost afraid to say to you today feels like a

you know, a momentum day. I mean, I'd rather be in our shoes than their shoes, but this turns on the flip of a switch. One bad incident, one bad statement, one, this is really...

Things are being impacted by a lot of factors right now. Are there any bright spots for Republicans that you're seeing right now? Look, we get a lot of competitive races. I mean, we've got we must keep the Christian McDonald rivet seat, which is the Dan Kildee seat. And Curtis Chattel is running for the Melissa Salkin seat. Those are competitive seats, totally competitive seats. Suburbs of Detroit. They are more outstaked.

quite frankly. You know, Lansing's and Curtis's and Flint's, Saginaw Bay City are in the other. I-75 corridor, even when I ran the Al Gore campaign back in 2000, that was the corridor that was... It flipped both ways. Back in those days, it was...

NRA white men too, that were worried about gun control. So there are a lot of factors that impact this. And then, you know, Republicans are protecting John James seat and that's competitive. So I would say to you that I've talked to my Republican colleagues, everybody knows this is a competitive race and nobody's making any predictions. Got it. Well,

What counties are you going to be looking at on election night to know if the Democrats are having a good night? Well, I clearly will look at Wayne County, which always has as a county some of the highest Democratic votes. What is the turnout? And then what's happening in part of my district known as the Down Rivers, which is.

goes into Monroe County in Ohio. And I always say Ohio's been bleeding into Monroe County had the highest shift

from Obama voters to Trump into 16, 28% swing. So I'm always looking at Murrow County. I'm looking at Wayne, but looking at those downriver votes, the very contested state legislative seats down there as well. So watching that, watching Western Wayne County as well, home of Ronna, Romney, McDaniels, those are in my district. Genesee County, which is Kristen's

McDonald's and Macomb County, which is the John James seat. And how does Donald Trump do their Kent County, which is Grand Rapids, which is where Gerald Ford is from. We flipped a seat there. So that's where you're looking. OK, I know you were talking to voters on the ground. You said in the union halls, auto workers, I'm assuming. Right.

Well, not just auto workers. I've been with the laborers. I've been in the IBEW. I've been with the painters, the bricklayers, operating engineers. I'm talking to everybody, the nurses. Yeah. I mean, these were reliable Democratic voters for a really long time. Right. But what are their top issues and why are they suddenly being drawn to Trump or back to Trump again? I think there really is a demographic issue at this time. And

I think Donald Trump's expertise is playing to people's fears and anxieties and stoking resentment and making people resent each other. So what we really have to do is to talk to them, talk about the promises he made, the promises he didn't keep, how many jobs we lost when he was president. Just say in the auto sector, 8,900 jobs alone in Michigan, the plants that were closed.

But, you know, he makes promises. He says, I'm not going to tax. We won't tax over time. But

What people don't realize, take Project 2025, which clearly lays out his agenda. And what he said, he's not going to tax overtime because he doesn't believe in paying overtime. He thinks an employer can just require somebody to work 60, 80 hours and they're not going to be paid overtime for it. Yeah, I guess you can't be taxed if you're not being paid it. So that, you know, just really talking issues. He wants to give...

Billionaires tax cuts incentivize corporations who are putting jobs overseas and rip away the Affordable Care Act from millions of working men and women here. And on top of that, go back to the days of people being denied. Affordable care has been there for a decade now, almost. Yeah, people are used to it.

People forget that there was not that long ago that people who had pre-existing conditions could not get health care. You know, one of the more compelling arguments I've heard for a lot of these auto workers, they fear that, well, Trump has...

has caused them to fear that electric vehicles will cause them to lose their jobs, right? Do you think that this argument is really as pervasive as it appears to be? I think it's one of the things that I've had to talk about. But I go in and I talk about, I'm not old, but I'm seasoned. And in the 70s, when Japan...

was ready for a small car market when gasoline prices went up and the domestic auto industry was not, the three domestic manufacturers lost a decade worth of competition. They were all in trouble because they weren't ready. EVs are being demanded in the global marketplace. People aren't being told they have to buy an EV. But if we are not making...

competitive electric vehicles, we are going to, we'll lose our companies. And I say that to them. I'm not ceding our leadership in America to any other country. And the fact of the matter is, China's making

twice as many EVs as we are now. We have to compete with China, not run away from China. And you know a lot about the auto industry, right? You were a head of the public affairs for Ford, was it? General Motors. General Motors, yeah. Do these auto workers see the hypocrisy and the fact that Trump is so close with Elon Musk, and yet he says that electric vehicles are going to take their jobs away?

I think sometimes those of us in bubbles in Washington think we know all these things and the everyday working person doesn't. But Elon Musk is so visibly his supporter, gives him $100 million, even more. They know that, but they don't know that he does, that Tesla is non-union. They don't know that he doesn't pay decent wages. They don't know he's got

on people that aren't happy. So you've got to talk about, you've got to educate people. You cannot assume the things that in the Washington bubble, everybody knows that that's something that people talk about every day.

Something that's always been strange to me is like Trump can go into cities and completely trash the city, say that it's a terrible place. And yet some of the people there agree with it or are fine with it. You were there when he said that Detroit made America like a third world country and Kamala Harris was going to make America Detroit. What was the reaction to that like?

I heard it and I was in the room. I first thought it's just Trump again. Kind of gets away with this stuff in a lot of ways, right? He does get away with it. And we are normalizing, in this country, we are normalizing too much behavior. This bullying, this vitriolicness, what people can say to each other should not. We need to really take a deep breath and understand what we're doing to each other. I want to say that.

So, you know, I had this great debate afterwards of was it part of his prepared remarks? Did he plan on saying it or was it just Trump being Trump, which we should never normalize, by the way. But he's doubled down on it. He's tripled down on it. He's repeated it multiple times. Yes, people are taking great offense and it is not helping. And so he's losing voters for those comments that he's doubling down on. He's losing voters now.

It just doesn't make sense, like from a political strategy point of view, why you would go out of your way to offend people, especially if there's an erosion of African-American support for Kamala Harris. Right. So let's talk about the 100,000 uncommitted voters who during the primaries refused to vote for Joe Biden. Are they going to vote for Kamala Harris? Some will.

And so, I mean, you know, let me be clear. No demographic is monolithic. Well, let's talk about these voters a little bit. These voters, they were protest voting Joe Biden because of the war. They were protests. Some have said they're going to vote for Harris. Some have said that they're going to vote for Trump. Here's the reality.

that's exactly some will vote for Donald Trump. And everybody was talking about how a mayor of one of the communities that significant population endorsed him, endorsed president, former president Trump on Saturday. He was a Republican mayor. It shouldn't have surprised anybody. Yeah. But these are Arab Americans, many of them Palestinian Americans. Yes, but he's still a Republican Arab American. So he's a Republican. But you

You know, and there are some voters are the AIPAC. One of their American political groups said don't vote at the top. Another, the AIPAC said vote for Jill Stein and M gauge said vote for Kamala Harris, that there are different organizations supporting and all those positions will be taken by those in the uncommitted category. How do you think it's all going to shake out? I think that it,

We got a lot of work to do in the next seven days. We have to educate people. We have to make sure they know the things that have been said. And we just have to turn out every vote that we can. Is there a particular argument that you find to be more persuasive when you're trying to get them to consider voting for Kamala Harris rather than not voting at all? You know, I try to... She is someone that has shown that she cares deeply about Gaza. Uh...

I tell everybody to believe Donald Trump and what he tells you. Remember, he says he wanted to ban Muslims. And one of the very first acts he tried to do when he became president last time was a Muslim ban and a Muslim registry. So he's got a history. He's got action. That's what I remind people of. He says he's going to deport Muslims.

immigrants, including those in the Arab American community. I tell people, believe what he says to you. Yeah. And they don't take him at his word. Some do. Some don't. Which, by the way, it's not just them. That's what's happening across America. Some do. Some don't. All right. Let's talk about those third parties on the ballot in Michigan.

Michigan has a number of third party candidates that have pretty wide name recognition, right? You've got RFK Jr. still on the ballot there. You've got Jill Stein and Cornel West. How do you think this is going to impact the election? Look, I've been very clear. None of those candidates are going to win the presidency and a vote from

A vote for Jill Stein is a vote for Donald Trump. And I just think it's important that people realize it. And obviously, we've had a history in the past that third party candidates have been impacted who has won a state. So, yes, third party candidates can be spoilers and can help elect someone. Because Jill Stein is specifically speaking to the Arab American community.

Do you think she has more momentum than even someone like an RFK Jr. or Cornel West at this point? In that community, yes.

Because she's working in the community. But she doesn't, she's going to get some votes. So she's not going to be president. But she has gone in. She's had a rally. She has people speaking for her. She's done mailings. She's joined social media. She's been on campus. She's working it. She's not going to win. But a vote for her is a vote for Donald Trump. That's what happens.

I tell people so. Do you think her numbers will be better than 2016 this time around? I don't know. She's working at heart. And the situation on the ground is different. The issues are different, right? Very different. In 2016, the issue was great. It was the union house.

And that I've said to every Democrats did a terrible job of talking about trade. Trade is still an issue here. People are so worried about their jobs, but it is not the only issue. You've got union hall issues. You've got trade issues. You have the Mideast. You've got young black men that are tired of Democrats taking them for granted. Young people need to be energized. They need to convince their vote matters and we need to turn them out.

And we need to make sure women vote and we need to increase turnout with them wherever we can. What about tariffs? Like, how do people in Michigan feel about tariffs? Look, I think we need to put a tariff on Chinese EV vehicles because here's the reality. We're not playing on a level playing field. China subsidizes its manufacturers. It pays taxes.

ridiculously low wages. We should be setting the bar for wages for working men and women across the world, not

be the low bar. They don't have environmental standards. They don't have occupational safety standards. We're not playing on a level playing field. And what they're trying to do is come in, capture the market, harm other companies, and then take over. So I'm someone that strongly supports a tariff on Chinese EVs. And by the way, that we're going to have to renegotiate USMCA because China should not be allowed to build plants in Mexico and then bring them into this country.

you know, when Donald Trump talks about a tariff on everything, that is probably not good economic policy. You have to have good, strong business reasons for why you're putting tariffs on. When you're competing unfairly, a tariff

helps fix that competition. Who are the remaining undecided voters in Michigan, if there are any? Quite frankly, they're in a lot of categories. There are still union workers. There are still people in the Mideast that may not vote at all for the Mideast background and Jewish community. Both of these communities are super hurting. They're very angry. They're very hurt. They're scared. I can't... I feel...

on certain days, the Mideast wars come to my home and I see people just hurting that. And quite frankly, relationships are being destroyed. That'll never be, they'll never be the same again. And I don't know, I don't know what to do to fix it or help people or what you do. Uh,

The African-American young males in particular, I think they're coming back. But we've got to why should they vote for a Democrat? You've got to get them at the polls and young people. You still have young people looking at it all. Really? OK, so they weren't completely enthused after the flawless Kamala Harris rollout.

thing is like you really only have a few more days left for messaging right and you just got a lot of time to get those votes out and you just take every second you have and you don't stop working and more people are paying attention now or wishing that the television ads would never be played again on television so they want it over so I think you have more people paying attention yeah I mean I'm certainly seeing that as well but there is sort of a struggle to like get that

last argument. And you're even reading it in press reports that there's been a bit of a division over, okay, do we lean into economy or do we lean into the anti-democracy message? And polling kind of shows that the economy is a stronger argument. What would you say if you could only get one message out? But we're not going to only get that. So I'm not into right now

We're at the end of a very long election season. There are a lot of people hurting. There are a lot of people that are worried about the future of this country. And I'm not into what ifs. I want to watch what she does tonight. I know she's going to do a good job. And...

I hope that those who are watching her will take time to reflect upon the issues and who they want to see lead us, who will pull us together or push us apart. And they remember, united we stand, divided we fall. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time, Congresswoman Dingell. This was great. Please keep me posted if you see anything happening that you think is another alarm bell that should be going off. I mean, do you feel the same way you felt in 2016?

No, at this point, this point, I knew Hillary was going to lose this point. I knew Joe Biden was going to win this point. I know I'm not Debbie Downer. I'm Debbie determined. I'm determined we will win the state of Michigan. Well, from what I've heard from my sources inside of Trump,

They don't feel that great about Michigan, to be honest, but they feel good about Pennsylvania. So we just keep my job's Michigan. Right. I'm keeping my eye on what my job is. And frankly, like, I think they're also aware that all their polling shows them within the margin of error. So even the best internal pollsters can't really tell you exactly what's going to happen on Election Day. So...

Let's keep working. That's what I do. I don't do what ifs. I stay focused on doing what we can do. Well, I appreciate your time. I'm sure you're going to be out there hitting the ground again. So, and I see you all over the news, making tons of news about what's going on in Michigan. So thanks for your time again. Thanks, Tara. Take care.

That was another episode of Somebody's Gotta Win. I'm your host, Tara Palmieri. If you like this podcast, please subscribe, rate it, share it with your friends. If you like my reporting, please go to puck.news slash Tara Palmieri and sign up for my newsletter, the best and the brightest. You can use the discount code Tara20 for 20% off a subscription at Puck. That's uppercase T-A-R-A 20. See you again this week.