Why Economic Inequality Hurts Your Business Growth | Marianne Williamson DSH #1135

There's tremendous yearning for hope and possibility.

I mean, what should the Democratic Party be thinking about right now?

The Democratic Party should not be thinking about the past.

The Democratic Party should be thinking about people like you who are about to get married, who want to have children, and the cost is so prohibitive.

That's where our attention should be, and that's where it will be if I win the chair of the DNC.

All right, guys, Marianne Williamson is back.

It's been a while, and she just announced she's running for DNC chair.

Thanks for coming back.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

And welcome to Washington, D.C.

Yeah, it's only my second time here, but I'm taking it all in.

So, did you do the sightseeing stuff?

Did you do that when you were a child?

No, I've just been filming.

You know, I come out here to film.

Well, those monuments are moving.

Which one would you recommend?

All of them.

Really?

See the Lincoln, see the World War II, see the Jefferson, see the MLK, see the Roosevelt if you can, see the White House.

I mean,

it's Washington.

It reminds you of that which is eternally true.

Yeah, history is important, right?

I just had on an ancient coin person on the podcast, and he was showing me all these coins.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, and it was really cool to touch it and feel the coins.

Wow.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

There's something about just holding it or being in that historic location.

You feel it within you, right?

I think sometimes we,

I suppose most generations do that, but we sort of think we're the first ones to figure anything out.

And I think that historically this will be looked back on as a time

of a level of dark ages in many ways,

in terms of our having forgotten those things which are most true.

I think that we're coming out of that phase now.

I think we can come out of that phase.

And that's what the sort of collective yearning is, but we don't have everything figured out.

And sometimes it's looking back where we see some of the greatest wisdom, find some of the greatest wisdom.

Dark Ages, when do you think that sort of started?

Well, you know, as soon as

the Industrial Revolution started revving up in Britain in the late 1800s, then came here.

And that began a mesmerization of the Western mind with all things external.

And that turned in, of course, it had some positive results, the 20th century, technology, scientific revolution, industrial revolution.

I mean, this is not in any way to take away from some of the progress has been made.

But as many artists and philosophers at that time here in the United States, Walt Whitman, the transcendentalists,

and people in Great Britain were trying to sound the alarm that this is a bad idea, what's happening here.

We are focusing so much on the outer life that we are going to

reach a profound imbalance.

And what they warned us about is exactly what happened.

There's been so much focus on what's happening outside us that some of our internal musculature has withered away.

Concentration on ethics, concentration on character, concentration on doing the right thing by people.

And of course, the extreme example of this is this kind of corporatist mentality, whereby we have shifted from a recognition that an economy is here to serve the people to a place where we act as though people live their lives in order to serve an economy.

And corporatism, of course, which places short-term corporate profits before

people and planet.

And, you know, you don't feed a child because it's going to make money.

You feed a child because it's the right thing to do.

Not everything should be based on financial gain for someone.

And that is one of the results.

of this disconnection from the soul, disconnection from the most important aspects of humanity that have come about in this period.

So it's, don't get me wrong.

I'm not saying that everything that's happened in the last 150 years has been a bad thing because it's not.

It's just that I think we are realizing now there is has been a profound imbalance and it's time now to correct that.

Yeah, that's such a good point though, because people are chasing money these days more than ever.

Chasing what?

Money.

Well, there are two things about that.

Some people are chasing money

because

I think you and I would agree that there's a greed factor there.

But some people are chasing money simply because they have been forced into a survival mode by an unjust economic system.

So I can't blame a single mother of two for chasing money if, in fact, if she doesn't chase the money, she might not be able to pay her rent or feed her children.

Yeah, it makes sense.

It's two things.

Yeah, there are that.

that greed though is what I'm talking about that that capitalism.

Oh yes, and unfortunately it is now enabled by the US government.

So the problem we have is the government should be in always.

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At all times, an advocate for the people.

Now, to some extent, of course, that should mean

supporting a healthy economy, but a healthy economy is a win-win economy.

A healthy economy is not one in which a few are constantly given more capacity to gain at the expense of the many who are struggling to survive.

So that's the problem we have is that greed is

too often in too many ways systemically enabled at this time.

Do you think the large companies in each industry have gotten too powerful?

That's almost like a joke that somebody's doing.

I can't believe, you know, duh, yeah, yes, sir.

And they are called, let us name them, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, big food companies, big chemical companies, big agricultural companies, gun manufacturers, big oil, and defense contractors.

And then you add to that financial institutions, big banks, and in certain cases, big tech companies as well.

I wonder what the fix would that...

for that would be though because well one of the worst problems was when they when the supreme court passed citizen you citizens united the supreme court had already said uh that money was free speech that was bad enough but with citizens united unlimited power was given to money forces called dark money to unduly influence our political system and in ways that sometimes we don't even know who they are because nothing has to be registered.

So the undue influence of money on our political system is the cancer that underlies all the other cancers.

Right.

So that being said, are you excited for Doge to optimize some of this government spend?

Well, we don't know that that's what they're going to do.

And they've never said that they were going to do what you and I were just talking about.

What they have said is that they want to save some money.

And listen, everybody knows that, you know, there's a lot of fat that needs to be cut off.

But a lot of what they're talking about, I feel would cut into the bone.

When they talk about efficiency, we all want the government to be more efficient.

Nobody wants the government to be wasting money.

Everybody wants more efficiency.

There's no doubt about that.

But efficiency should not be our highest goal.

Auschwitz was efficient.

I want things to be good.

I want things to be humanitarian.

I want children to be fed and educated.

I want every American who works hard to and works an honest day's labor to be able to work with dignity and with safety and to be able to live on the money that they earn and to support a family.

I want people to have universal health care.

So this,

to me,

goodness and ethics and humanitarian values and democratic values are what we should all be excited about generation after generation, no matter who's in in power.

Yeah, times have changed.

My grandparents grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania.

Wow.

And my grandfather worked the farm and he was able to make a living off that back then.

Thank you.

Without his wife even working, my grandmother, she just cooked and stuff.

That's not possible anymore.

Okay, so I have two things to say about that.

First of all, and that's to be very clear about, first of all, what years was that?

They both passed, but they would probably be 90 today, so maybe 60, 70 years ago.

Okay.

You said 60s, 70s, you said?

60, 70 years ago.

Yeah, about 60s.

Right.

So

once the big banks and the big, big ag,

you know, probably when your grandfather owned his farm, probably he was dealing with a local banker.

And if he didn't have a good year, if he didn't have a good yield, he'd go to the banker and say, hey, it wasn't such a good year.

And the banker would say,

That's okay.

You'll pay us next year.

But then what started happening in the 80s was that that small bank would be gobbled up by the big banks.

And so your grandfather would have gone to the

banker to say, I didn't have a good year.

I need some help.

And that banker doesn't know your grandfather.

Yeah.

And he says, well, maybe you better sell off to one of those big agricultural concerns.

Wink, wink.

Everything became go big or go home.

And then farmers have to work for people who've never even walked their land.

And then there was so much destructiveness that came into that, monocropping, the way the land itself would be treated.

so that farmers who had been told by their fathers and their grandfathers how to treat the land with reverence, with respect for the land, for food, and so forth, so much got just

thrown out of harmony.

And the other thing I just want to say, as a woman, I just do want to add that your grandmother did more than just quote-unquote cooking stuff.

I'm sure that what she was doing, raising children, including your father, right, and holding

five children was more than just cooking stuff.

I'm sure you know that, but just want to always make sure to

the language matters.

Thank you.

What I meant was like, she didn't work like a yes.

No, I understand.

It's an important point you were making in terms of, yeah.

Yeah.

But now I feel like I don't see that anymore.

Well, that's.

Of course you don't, because in the 1970s, the average, we had a thriving middle class.

Yeah.

And farming was part of that.

So in those days, an average American couple could afford to own a house.

Today, the average American couple sees that in too many instances as an almost unattainable goal for this lifetime, the way they see it.

And so like your grandparents, that couple could own a house, could raise children.

They raise five children.

and could take a yearly vacation and could send their kids to school.

We have seen over the last 50 years a $50 trillion

transfer of wealth into the hands of 1% of Americans

through an absurd

tax change.

And we're going to see more of that, actually, because the president-elect wants to extend his 2017 tax cut.

83 cents of every dollar went to the richest Americans, the richest corporations, and it's already determined that that will add $4 trillion over the next 10 years to our national debt.

So, this idea that, so you've got Musk and Ramaswamy saying we're going to cut

from the debt, but then you have Trump wanting to extend the tax cuts that are going to add four trillion more a lot of smokes and mirrors welcome to washington dc yeah i'm just getting acquainted h1b visa stuff was interesting to see it play out yeah because that kind of a lot of internal battle there actually which i think is good yeah i mean i i actually hear musk on some of that you do i do side more with him on that well i think it well it's a complicated issue however yeah i mean i think if somebody comes here from another country let's look at what's been happening we get these kids who come here and they get the best of an American higher education.

And then we tell them they have to go home.

And so then they go home in many cases, particularly to countries like India, and they say, okay, I'm going to take the education that I got from you in America and I'm going to screw you economically.

So act because they take that.

That contributes to their being able to be successful entrepreneurs in the countries they came from, which ultimately hurts the American worker.

So you're not siding with the American worker in that case, not really.

And also they give something like 200,000.

We're talking about 65,000 of those visas.

And

there is a regulation there that this cannot be given in a case where a native-born American has equal qualifications for the job.

And it cannot be given any less money.

So there's a lot of ruse behind that issue.

And it's being used as a...

Yeah.

Yeah, it got super hyped up.

What do you think of Trump announcing possibilities of the external revenue service?

Did you see that?

No, tell me about that.

He tweeted out he wants to launch an external revenue service.

What does that even mean?

When was that?

It was a few days ago.

We'll find out what that means.

Unless it is meaningless.

I don't know.

Well, you know how pro-tariff he is.

So he wants to, I don't know if it's him, but there's people that are saying they want to eliminate income tax.

Right.

Right.

So.

We'll see what happens.

Well, I'm sure it's the oligarchy's wet dream.

Yeah.

But I don't know what the external revenue service means.

Yeah, I'd have to look more into that, but you got a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck.

It's pretty crazy when you see this.

We have over 62% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck.

That's crazy.

62%.

Was it always that high in the past?

Oh, my God.

No, absolutely not.

Like I said, in the 1970s, there was a thriving middle class.

We now have four, we have the average,

you know, because it's all about income inequality that's been created.

So now the average CEO makes 400 times more than the average worker in their company.

And back in the 70s, it was tiny compared to that.

Really?

Yeah, some of these salaries are pretty insane.

Yeah, that's why when politicians talk today about serving the middle class, the conversation we have to have is how many people are struggling to call themselves middle class.

Yeah, because at this rate, there won't be any middle class if we keep going like this, right?

No.

And I grew up middle class, so I could definitely relate to it.

Yeah, so for all their talk about they're going to help the little guy,

that's not what they're here to do.

Yeah, we got to figure out something.

I don't know if taxing the rich more is the right way, though.

Why not?

Why shouldn't there's loopholes?

Well, well, you close those loopholes.

So first of all, the very, very rich, if someone has $10 million in the bank, I'm sorry, I don't have a problem with a little bit more taxation.

A wealth tax, for instance, $50 million in the bank, and you're going to pay an additional 2%.

I'm sorry, this won't affect your day.

Yeah.

It will not affect your day.

And if you have a billion and there's an added

1%, this would not affect your grandchildren's day.

And as far as loopholes are concerned, you know, the Democrats wanted to hire more IRS agents to be able to

exactly.

And the Republicans fought it because the Republicans didn't want the U.S.

government to be able to track down all these

people who are basically,

why should we be enabling that?

Why should we be enabling that kind of

white-collar theft it doesn't make sense to me well all the richest people know the loopholes I mean Amazon paid zero in taxes exactly so why is it so Amazon pays and yet Jeff Bezos paid what a million dollars to the inaugural committee donated

they all did you know millions to the inaugural committee no this this new um administration has just opened the door they just uh see this is the way i look at it

first of all we we want to stand for healthy wealth creation healthy wealth creation is a good thing and that's that is part of the american dream but you you should not want to make money at the expense of other people getting a chance to that's all everybody to me the american dream means everybody if they work hard enough should have a shot Just have a shot.

But if people don't have health care,

the moral problem we have here is how many people are shut out of the game before they're even 10 years old.

So the problem is how many people are shut out of the game

before they even reach puberty.

For instance, we have millions of American children who go to schools where they don't even have the resources to teach them how to read.

And if a child cannot learn how to read by the age of 10,

the chances of high school graduation are drastically reduced and the chances of incarceration are drastically increased.

When you have people having to work two and three jobs just to make it, when you have people who work as so many Americans do it, jobs that they basically hate, but they have to do it just to get the health care benefits.

When you have 70 to 90 million Americans underinsured or uninsured, these people are locked in.

These are internal shackles.

These are not external chains.

They are internal chains and they are based on an unjust economic system.

So no, I don't have a problem saying to somebody with multi-tens of millions in the bank.

make

give a little more.

And there are a lot of very wealthy people, including billionaires, who agree with that.

Not every rich person in America is a greedy bastard at all.

Yeah, we can't be careful generalizing, right?

No, and that's not what we're, you know, none of this should be personalized.

Yeah.

Wow, 70 to 90 million underinsured or not insured.

I did not know that.

So what you're talking about is the millions of Americans who have the insurance.

to go to the doctor.

What their insurance will not cover is the tests that the doctor says that they need or the operation that the doctor says that they need.

And for 18 million of them, their insurance will not cover the prescription drugs that the doctor says they need.

I've had doctors say to me, I don't even know why I bother practicing medicine anymore.

The doctors are horrified by this.

One doctor was saying to me,

if it was 25 years ago and I said, you need this particular treatment, the question that I would get asked by a patient was, what are the side effects?

Now, more often than not, the question is, what would it cost?

Because once again, the insurance paid for that visit to the doctor,

but once the doctor gives you a treatment plan or says, I need this test or that test, no can do.

Starts adding up.

That's called underinsured.

I'm looking into, so I'm getting married this year.

Congratulations.

And, you know, we want to have kids next year or so.

And we're looking into the cost of having a kid in the hospital.

Hello.

Oh, my God.

Hello.

$20,000 to $30,000.

So we just got the best insurance, and it's still going to cost thousands.

Thank you.

This is outrageous.

So

in every advanced nation of the world except for us, they have universal health care.

You know, when my daughter had her baby, my daughter lives in London.

And of course, she had the child and I, you know, ran over there.

And I was thinking,

I was feeling a psychological difference.

Being in a hospital like that where money wasn't on anybody's mind.

You shouldn't even have to think about it.

Yeah.

And we have the most expensive healthcare system.

It's not like we're producing great results.

They're not great results, actually.

No, no, all it.

This is just a system of greed.

It's a system of institutionalized greed, whether it's the insurance companies,

there's no need for that middleman.

The insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and now the hospitals.

It's a whole complex, right?

And I think we saw with that horrifying murder,

people are the reaction to that with the United Healthcare CEO.

The reaction tells you something.

People are

people have had it.

Yeah, people have.

Are you optimistic about RFK and Trump attacking big pharma?

I like Bobby Kennedy.

I consider him a friend.

And I think this was an example of the mistakes of the Democratic Party.

We just let that,

how the Democratic Party has allowed

the Republicans to now own

health and health creation

and sickness prevention.

It was unnecessary.

But that was in the past, time to go forward.

And I do support the things which will,

you know, the other day, it's interesting.

So before Biden left, they did outlaw that red die.

I saw that.

But this should have been done a long time ago.

And now there's more than that.

So the very fact that there is a larger question in the United States, you know, I come from the health and wellness field yeah so we've been having that conversation but now that it's broken out and will have more to do with possible uh government behavior in support of greater health i think it's great yeah i'm a fan of that movement for sure um how are you feeling overall with the democratic party obviously a lot of big players left right this election you had rfk you had elon Well, let's be very clear.

Bobby only left because he felt sort of kicked out.

Right.

You know?

But a lot of people changed their votes, as you saw with the election.

Yes, there is no doubt about that.

And that's why I'm running for DNC chair because I want to help the Democratic Party course correct.

We can't afford for the Democratic Party to fail.

You know, some people have said, I've had it with both parties.

I'm going third party, which I respect.

It's not like I, you know, everybody has to go with their own conscience.

But for me, we don't have time over the next two years

to

mount the kind of counter force via a third party that is going to be necessary.

The fact that Trump now has the White House, the fact that the Republicans have the House, the Republicans have the Senate,

there's going to have to be a force of loyal opposition to much of what they are proposing.

And I'm running for DNC chair because I feel that all my accumulated experiences professionally and personally actually

give me insight and perspective and skill sets and expertise

that would enable us to begin again.

The Democratic Party needs to throw out the old playbook

and start over a much higher ground.

Yeah, I was rooting for you last election.

I wanted you to get a fair shot at debates.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, it was unfortunate.

And I think that there are a lot of Democrats now who realize how

corrupt.

Well, the fact that we didn't have debates, the fact that we didn't have a robust primary, the fact of the suppression of all of that, I have certainly had to work through personally.

And now I've worked through publicly.

I've told people how I feel about that.

The word is out.

People get it.

Now it's time to move forward.

And so that's my eyes are on the future rather than the past now.

And I think the parties has to be as well.

Yeah, that's important, not to dwell on the past, right?

Yeah, there was a lot to learn there.

Very unfortunate, had horrible results, led to abject failure.

Okay.

The people who

thought that was a good idea should not be the ones in charge going forward.

And those who would continue that status quo were not the ones who should be leading us going forward.

And now it's time for a whole new path.

Having learned from what we went through, you know, for an organization, and I think for a nation, just like for an individual, The only real failure is the failure to learn from something.

And there's tremendous yearning for hope and possibility.

I mean, what should the Democratic Party be thinking about right now?

The Democratic Party should not be thinking about the past.

The Democratic Party should be thinking about people like you who are about to get married, who want to have children, and the cost is so prohibitive.

That's where our attention should be.

And that's where it will be if I win

the chair of the DNC.

I love it.

It's needed.

I grew up Democratic.

I grew up in New Jersey.

And I feel like I haven't changed much at all, but I feel like I've been forced to the right a little bit.

Well, let's look at your grandparents.

Your grandmother gave birth to five children and they didn't, hello.

He had a farm and they were able to afford that.

Yeah.

So

that's really what we need to be looking at.

And that's what the Democratic Party needs to stand for.

The Democratic Party needs to stand for you being very clear and also being very clear of how many Democratic policies had helped create the situation that resulted in your grandparents being able to have the life that they had on that farm.

Absolutely.

When you look at Trump saying saying he wants to get rid of the Department of Education, does that scare you?

The way he would want to do it and the reasons he would want to do it for, it scares me.

Under some circumstances, it might not have.

But with all the white supremacists, the Christian nationalists,

extreme right-wing forces that are wanting to ban books and

not

feel a responsibility to teach children the real history of this country, particularly, for instance, when it comes to Native Americans or in terms of race.

That scares me because

I know that there are some states where very extreme forces are in charge of

their state houses and their

school boards.

Yeah, it's a tricky situation because each state is different.

Each city has different systems.

Well, at its best, that's a beautiful thing.

At its best, that's why a federal system is is in theory a good thing you know alexander hamilton said that the states are the laboratories of reform i love that but we should be able to agree that you guys are going to teach history right yeah

you know there should be some standards and um you know i think a large one of the reasons we're in some of the problems we have some of the problems we have is because

There are states where they don't even require a half a year of American history, American civics, and American government.

Oh, wow.

So, if a child doesn't learn about the Bill of Rights, then when that child grows up to an adult, to be an adult, how can we be surprised that that adult isn't horrified when the Bill of Rights is under assault?

And the only

one of those 10 amendments that they've even heard anything about is the Second Amendment.

Well, there are nine others, guys.

Those are the areas of concern I have about just giving it all over to to the states.

Not that the Department of Education was fixing all that anyway.

Listen, Eisenhower said that the American mind at its best is both liberal and conservative.

There are high-minded conservative principles and high-minded liberal principles.

And I do believe that people in all the states

have legitimate concerns when they feel that these rules are coming out of Washington that don't necessarily apply to their circumstances.

And I feel that the balance between the two is extremely important.

There do have to be some standards that we agree on as a nation, which should include, once again, that we teach our children what's actually happened in this country.

And banning books should be

trying to ban.

I'm not sure.

You don't know about that?

Oh, well, listen, if you're going to be a daddy soon, you need to know about this.

There are people in this country who want to ban great American classics.

They want to ban books like The Grapes of Wrath.

Look it up, the most banned books.

They want to ban books like To Kill a Mockingbird.

I remember that one.

They want to ban books like A Portrait of Dorian Gray.

Some of the great works of American literature they want to ban because they might have some hint at homosexuality or some hint at even heterosexual sexuality, or they might have some hint at

you know, what they do in some states, like this is what was going on in South Carolina.

And this is really, really terrible, actually.

There is this thing that's happened in this culture.

And both left and right do this.

I don't want to have this conversation.

It makes me uncomfortable.

Hello.

Part of growing up is

understanding some of the most important conversations are not comfortable.

It's part of being an adult.

It's part of being mature.

And that's true not only about our personal lives.

It's also true about our national existence.

Race would be a perfect example.

No, it doesn't make anyone comfortable to read about slavery, but we need to understand slavery.

This was the enslavement of human beings, millions of human beings.

Better believe we need to grow up understanding that.

You know, at the end of World War II,

an agreement was made

between the German government and the Jews of Germany that the history of the Holocaust would be taught in perpetuity to all children.

This is important because history repeats itself when people don't understand.

And they knew at that time there were already Holocaust deniers and so forth.

Well, there are people in the South, actually, they're not going so far as to say slavery didn't happen, but they are saying ridiculous things.

Like their phrases like

unpaid labor or something.

I've seen that on Twitter.

Yeah.

Right.

I've seen that.

Right, right, right.

Which is total propaganda.

That's all coming from the Holocaust denial group.

We know exactly what happened because the Nazis actually kept very good records, right?

As did the Inquisitors, interestingly, during the Inquisition.

We also know what happened during slavery.

And historians are pretty clear that between,

that at the end of

the Civil War, there were somewhere between four and five million formerly enslaved people.

Now, you've got to remember, the first people brought over in those slave trade ships was in 1619.

Wow.

So that's generation upon generation upon generation.

And then it really revved up with

the intensification of the cotton trade in the late 1800s.

So if at the time of the end of slavery, at the end of the Civil War, there were four to five million, think how many millions had preceded that.

A lot, yeah.

In other generations.

Yeah, because we're talking about almost 250 years of slavery in this country.

Now, is it comfortable for you and me to hear those numbers?

No.

But is it absolutely necessary for us to be responsible American adults, for us to understand that, and then to look at the rest of what is going on in America

informed by facts from the past?

Absolutely.

So going back to South Carolina, so this woman in the teachers association there was telling me that they've passed a law where all a child has to do, and think how children are told by their parents.

So if a child comes home and says, we are reading this or that book, if the parent says to their child, you have to tell the teacher tomorrow that book makes me uncomfortable

then they can't any longer teach it in class whoa just one student

i mean that's thank you this is what's happening so the idea of just saying even though in general yes education is in the hands of the states the fact that there is no um

way to stop that.

Now, on the other hand, it's not like Department of Education could stop that because that's in the hands hands of the state.

Everything that we need to happen, have happened, it's ultimately rooted in

a revolution of consciousness,

in a revolution of ethics.

But I don't, and this is why my friends who are in the health, the wellness, spirituality world, I think have such an important part to play.

Because there has been...

Because there's so much toxicity in politics, because there's so much corruption, I think some of the best and the brightest in America haven't wanted to have anything to do with politics.

Agreed.

So then what happens is that you have things like I'm mentioning here and people and some of the smartest people in America going, really?

I didn't know that was happening.

And you get what we've got.

And

so many of the things you and I have already talked about are not good.

Yeah, you get so wrapped up in it.

People don't give their spiritual side a chance to shine, right?

They kind of put it on the back burner.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But that's what makes you really unique.

Thank you.

Have you always been pretty open-minded in terms terms of spirituality?

Well, the spirituality, yeah, it was something I've been involved with my whole life.

I was always interested in politics, and I grew up in a home where political conversation was definitely part of the daily,

the daily

dinner table conversations.

Yeah, but I felt

in terms of my own personal career, that my skills and my

contribution lay in the area of personal and spiritual transformation.

But I saw things change in this country because I grew up at a time where I could go off and do whatever I wanted to do.

Just make sure you vote for the Democrats, support the Democrats, do what you can.

And more than not, the Democrats are holding aloft in the political sphere the values that you believe in.

But I saw things begin to change in this country when

so much of the suffering that I bore witness to that in the 1980s, let's say, was a crisis in someone's life, but it wasn't, it was the exception, it wasn't the rule.

I saw so many people around the year 2000 where the suffering was the rule and not the exception.

The problem wasn't just that someone had cancer.

It was that they didn't have health care.

It wasn't just that they couldn't find a job.

They found a job, but that one job can't support their family.

So I

was bearing witness and in close touch with people who were going through terrible things that were at least indirectly due to bad public policy.

And I thought, no amount of private charity is going to fix this, no amount of spiritual transformation, you know, no, our job should not be just to make people resilient.

Why should people have to be so resilient?

Why in the richest country in the world is the situation so unjust?

Yes.

That so many millions of people are having such a hard time.

When you have, for instance, $7,

our minimum wage in this country federally is $7.25 an hour.

You have a third of the working force in the United States is living on less than 15.

And in every major city, the living wage is over $21, $22 an hour.

Yeah.

So, and those, that one-third of America's workforce can't find a place to live, half of them.

So

it is so built into the cake right now

that a few, you know, if you're in that, if you're in the club in America, this is a great place to be, right?

But that club is ever shrinking.

So that you have to have,

you know, if you have a certain amount of resources, yeah, you can get access to, you know, easy access to health care.

If you're in that club, you can get.

easy access to higher education.

But our job as citizens is to ensure that there is as much universal possibility for a fair shot as possible.

This isn't just supposed to be about what I can get.

It's about what we can create together.

America should be a collective mission.

That's it.

We have a national purpose.

If you say all men are created equal, if you say that we have unalienable rights given by our creator here

to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,

If you say that governments are instituted to secure those rights, and if government isn't doing its job, it is the right of the people to alter it or to abolish it.

You know, you and I are talking in Washington, D.C., right before an inaugural.

This is big, big stuff.

America trying to govern itself and America trying to do its best.

And

these are.

I was talking to a man yesterday.

I was in Detroit.

And we were talking about the inauguration.

he told me that he had not voted

he said I did well who do he asked me if he knew I was coming to Washington he said are you going for the inauguration I said no I'm a I'm a Democrat I didn't support the you know the president but it's an it's an exciting ritual still you know he said

I said did you vote for Trump he said no so but I won $500 because I bet that he would win I said well that was almost an easy bet at a unfortunately at a certain point he said

I said, if he said, he said that he hadn't voted because he had moved to Michigan from Illinois and just hadn't changed his registration yet.

I said, would you have voted for him?

And he said, yes, I would have.

And he was a very nice man.

And I said to him, very respectfully,

does it not bother you

that he's in many ways a bad guy?

That he's such a liar?

That he's so mean to people?

And the man looked at me in a kind of bewildered way,

and he said, let me put it this way.

When I lived in Illinois, I was a doorman at a hotel, and I had a limo company, and my wife did not have to work.

I was making over $100,000 a year, and we raised three great kids.

Since I've been here,

I'm a doorman.

My wife also works, and we can't make anything near what I made before.

And he started going into great detail about the price of the steaks that he can no longer buy.

Wow.

And I said,

do you think

that Trump is going to fix that?

And he had a kind of pained look on his face, like,

and I said so what you're telling me is that you don't know if Trump can fix it

but you know that what's happening now

is not acceptable right

and he said

yes

and I think that there are millions of people like him tens of millions and I respect that

I respect

I respect their experience.

And that's why I want to be DNC chair because I want to, I want that man to know that we do have his back.

And I want to make sure that we do.

I love that.

Yeah, what a story.

And that's so relatable.

I also know a man, and I think this fits into that.

His name is Paul Dolman, and he has a podcast out of Martha's Vineyard.

Great guy, very smart man.

And he told me, I went to a Trump rally, he said, because I wanted to know why.

And he said, as I was leaving, I said a a little prayer.

And in my heart, I heard, people will go with false hope before they'll go for no hope.

That's deep.

But that's true.

If there's no hope, I mean, why would you want that?

Or to tell people that the economy is basically doing well

when

they can't buy eggs anymore?

Yeah.

That's invalidating their experience.

Yeah.

It's disrespectful.

And they've done multiple studies on trust levels with the government and how it's at an all-time low right now.

Sinking like a stone.

I think the lowest it's ever been or something like that.

This is crazy.

JFK said, those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.

Governments, the political class, this town's

better start delivering for people.

Yeah.

Or we're going to be in big trouble in this country.

Yeah, it's getting harder to earn the consumer's trust, I think, because also the media too well a lot of misinformation on the media absolutely

absolutely the disinformation the misinformation the and now you know things like zuckerberg saying we're not going to do fact-checking anymore

and that has to you know they're all all those guys are just sucked in they're all at mar-a-lago and they're

so you're not a fan of that move the fact-checking removing that huh

what do you think of that no listen I whether you're on the left or the right, I don't want you telling me what you think.

I will tell you that.

But I do believe that

there are some things that are absolute that are, that are facts.

And I'm not saying that the Democrats know what the facts are in the Republicans don't.

I'm not saying that.

I'm not saying that's a right-left issue.

But there are some historical facts and so forth of what really happened.

For instance, Holocaust denial.

I'm sorry.

There's a fact.

Six million.

It's a fact.

And that's been all of that.

It's not an opinion.

That's a fact.

I know.

It's been everywhere on X, the hate on Israel and Jewish people.

That's the one side effect, I guess, of allowing total free speech.

Well, as I remember Sasha Baron Cohen saying, if Hitler were alive today, he'd be taking 30-second ads out on Facebook.

So to me, it's not a black and white issue, but it also goes back to what we were saying earlier.

Ultimately, it's going to have to be a revolution of the heart, a revolution of ethics.

Ultimately, we have to be a world in which not enough people would ever want to lie about things like that.

Right.

Absolutely.

I do want to get your opinion on the fire situation.

Gavin Newsom's under a lot of heat.

There's like a petition with over a million signatures asking for his resignation.

How do you think he handled that, that incident?

Well, I think that there are problems on the level of symptom and on the level of cause.

I think a lot of that conversation is a deflection from the role of fossil fuel extraction.

This is exactly what scientists, climate scientists have been telling us was going to happen.

So I'm not interested in anything that would deflect from the conversation.

A lot of those people who are complaining about Newsom and Karen Bass have been also signing petitions, you know, the drool baby drool crop now.

And

absolutely, it is outrageous

on a level of government, on the level of where there was brush and vegetation that was not cleaned up, on the level of the reservoir.

There's some people say, well, they knew they had to close it before repairs.

This was the time to do it.

I don't know how anybody could say that this was the time to do it.

So clearly there has been on the level of of government and on the level of cause, severe irresponsibility.

You cannot ever, and I've lived really most of my adult life in Los Angeles, you can never look at, you can never in any way drop your guard.

on issues of fire prevention.

And that has to do with the budgeting of the fire department.

It has to do with the reservoirs.

It has to do with vegetation and brush.

So obviously,

things were not handled well on the level of government, but they were also not handled well on the level of government regarding climate change.

So, neither side should be self-congratulatory at this point.

Right, because there were warnings, right, that this could happen.

Well, listen, the warnings that could happen, you can never consider a day in Los Angeles in which this is not a possibility.

Right.

But, yes, there was particular high wind conditions, and that's where some of the

criticism of the mayor comes in.

Yeah, I saw that.

Not a moment to be

a little bit or whatever.

Yeah.

Bad timing.

I mean, we should remember that there are such trips as that, which mayors make.

And that clearly, they say that she'd been warned,

you know,

there were mistakes, I think, on all levels.

And like I said,

don't leave out climate change, though.

Yeah.

And the insurance companies pulling out.

I mean, I feel for these guys losing their lives.

I think there will be some major in the rebuilding.

I mean, this doesn't take away from the horror of now, but in the rebuilding, there is a lot to look at in terms of building materials.

There's a lot to look at.

One man

whose house remained standing, and he just had some cheap sprinkler system around the edge.

I mean, I think that there will be fire regulations, just like we've learned to

have building regulations in terms of earthquakes.

I think going forward, we will have building regulations in terms of

fire prevention as well.

Pardon?

It's needed.

Clearly.

Yeah.

Well, you know, this is how life is.

You learn from tragedies.

Absolutely.

Phenomenal podcast appearance on Aubrey Marcus's show, by the way.

Oh, you're so sweet.

Thank you.

That Austin crowd is

great people that, you know, I come from Houston, native Eustonian.

I've lived in Austin.

And

there's just some wonderful, sort of the best of Texas consciousness going on with some of those people there these days.

Yeah.

It's the capital.

It's the podcast capital of the country, actually.

You got Joe Rogan there.

You got Aubrey Marcus.

Luke Story.

Yeah.

Cody Sanchez.

Yeah.

A lot of the comedy podcasts are out there.

Yeah.

Shout out to Austin.

I'll be there from South by Southwest.

Yeah.

I'm excited.

Yeah, I've been there before.

Yeah.

Well, Marianne, this has been really fun.

Thank you.

Where can people support you?

Okay, thank you.

You can go to Marianne4DNC.com.

MarianneNumeral4DNC.com.

So that's, you know, we don't have much time on that, but any support you can give.

And,

you know, on my social media, I'm everywhere.

So

best of luck to you.

And she has podcasts to you guys.

Check her out.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.