DNC Shorts: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer & Rep. Maxine Waters

Published Oct 1, 2024, 7:00 PM

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and California Rep. Maxine Waters sat down with hosts Angela Rye, Tiffany Cross, and Andrew Gillum, joined by Charlamagne Tha God, during a special live broadcast on day three of the 2024 Democratic National Convention in August. Big Gretch taps into the white women voting mentality for November and talks about the impact Kamala Harris is already having on younger generations. And longtime politician Rep. Waters compares Trump vs. Hillary in 2016 to Trump vs. Harris today. 

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Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome.

Welcome, Hey, fam You're about to hear a replay of one of our interviews from our live stream at the Democratic National Convention. If you want to listen to or watch the full stream, check out the links in the episode description. You can also find a full list of all the guests we interviewed.

Welcome home, y'all.

We're welcoming to the stage Congressoman Maxine Waters. This is a very special guest because she happens to be Angela Rized Mentor, so this is an exciting time to have her join. She's also the ranking member of the Financial Services Committee in the House of Representatives. And when we say ranking member, that's because Democrats do not control the lower chamber in Congress right now.

So when should Democrats.

Take back the House, she will become the Chair of Financial Services.

But what touches me about.

This moment, Angela, is that we are welcoming your mentor to this set. And I know how much of this moment must mean to you to have her.

Here, absolutely, and and and just so you all know, as you see her walk up here in her stilettos.

She still got her.

She she put a little bag up.

She does her marches and her protests like this.

Honey, that's that's right, Queen. I'm good.

I'm absolutely enthused for the first time in a long time. You know, I usually don't get excited, you know, I usually don't get with the masses when they're talking about yeah, ya yay, things are so good.

But I am inspired, you know, I really am.

And I feel like a cloud is being lifted because Trump has been just such a nasty, dirty, deplorable human being that he has caused us to build almost pressed and so I feel that this cloud is being lifted and we have an opportunity to go forward with some hope.

As an Ogmus Waters, you know, who has seen America change so much throughout your lifetime. You know, how does it feel as a black woman to see another black woman in a position to potentially be the next brother?

Well, you know, I really do feel that change has come about.

I really do think that we're in.

A period of time where we're seeing America face the truth about the citizens of this country and the fact that they have been excluded and denied. And you have competent, capable, talented women men and women, but black women who have really been undermined us consistently in this country now rising to the position of power and influence. So I feel really good about being a black woman right now.

Yes.

Well, you know the thing that I think is so important about this moment, congress Woman, is I've watched you labor a long time, and before that you were still laboring. You've done the work from divestment in apartheid in South Africa to paving the way for moments like this. Yes, do you feel like you can celebrate some of your work? I know you're not done, but do you feel like, you know what, I'm just gonna take this all in because I know this wouldn't have happened without my contribution.

Well, I'll tell you what I feel. I really do feel.

I want the young people to know and understand the history from which we have come, and the struggles that we have faced and the sacrifices that we have made. Oftentimes, you know, they think that everything is new, that it's just happening now, or because they have arrived. But I am grateful for their arrival. But I want them to know what has gone into them getting to this point.

Yeah.

Yeah, I asked Secretary for it the same thing. And I want to ask you as well, how different is this moment now as opposed to twenty sixteen with Hillary.

Well, I think if the fact that it's a black woman is different, you know what I'm saying. This is something that America never dreamed really about.

I never thought about the possibility of.

And so yes, Hillary was a woman and had women behind her, Black women, white women.

Women, you know, hoping that she could be president.

But to have a black, capable, competent woman whose career has led us to this point, who has done everything anybody could have told her that she should have done in order to get to this point in her life, in our lives, it's different, and it's inspiring, it's motivational, and it's like, you know, you can sit back and you can watch it and you can say, yeah, we knew that someday it might happen, but we weren't sure.

But we're gonna keep on fighting for it.

Yeah, that's it, Congresswoman. I'm across the hall over here. Well, we've we've been joined by a woman, a guest to be a graduated.

I love it to be a movie I feel like.

But before before we get to the governor, I just want to say, growing up in Florida and where I grew up, I didn't have a black representative in Congress. I didn't my my member of Congress uh uh was a Republican and I you know, we never met him, but I was. I was a nerd and would watch c Span as a sixth grader all the way through high school, and any time I would talk about my member of Congress, I would name check you because you were the voice for not just folks in southern California. You were advocating for black folks all over the country. When you took banks to task, when you took mortgage lenders surceass, when you when you held folks accountable for their racism, their redlining. You were doing that for everybody, not just South Los Angeles.

That's right.

So we want to thank you for that dedicated service. And now I want to ask you, because you're about to be the chairwoman of the Financial Services Committee when we take back the House of Representatives. I'm curious to know whether or not you've got a top three that you just got to when you get there, that you're going to be dismantling, raising up, expanding as you take leadership. There.

Oh my goodness, thank you so very much, Firt. Thank you for thanking me for the work that I have done. It was just part of what I signed up for, and I enjoyed every minute of it, and no matter the sacrifice, so the toughness, sometimes it was what.

I was prepared to do. But let me tell you, I.

Served as chair of the Financial Services Committee until we lost the House, and now I'm hopeful that I'll get that gabble back because once I got it back, I know what to do. And so let me tell you. Top on my agenda is housing. We have a housing crisis in this country. Every night in the Los Angeles Greater Los Angeles area, there's seventy thousand people on the streets. In this country, there are seven hundred and fifty three thousand people sleeping on the streets at night. We have a housing crisis in this country, and we can do better. As a matter of fact, in addition to the bills that I have one hundred and fifty billion dollar bill, I've had a bill for three hundred and fifty billion dollars. It was killed by cinema and mansion, but we now have the bill redone one hundred and fifty billion dollars. We also have the President Biden who's already talking about creating new units, affordable units, and doing something I never thought I would agree to, and that is given tax credits to the developers who are willing to build affordable units and do it in such a way that not only are therefore, but they're safe and they're secure. They're not only in the inner cities, but they're in the rural areas, in suburbia and in all of the country because it's needed everywhere. So that's one of my top priorities. The second thing that we've got to do is we've got to make sure that the banks and financial institutions of this country, first of all, a paying the affair taxes. Number two, that they're not ripping us off with predatory lending. We've got to do more than we ever did with the Dodd Frank reforms and make sure we bring them in and we make sure that we move with diversity and inclusion and get some black people up in the c suites so that the influence that they can have to make things right in some of our banks. We've got some gangster banks, talk about oh absolutely.

And they're stealing from us every day. So I want to make sure I do that.

But we've got to move forward with AI, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency and all of these things that are new to us that we've got to get more you know, learned too mad to learn more about. And so it's a lot of work that you have to do on financial services. But I'm ready to do it.

Thank you so much.

Congress, are you saying I know that we that we that we have not limited time because they have you doing all the things. I see her team over here and you're okay, they said, but Governor this as well.

So this is Governor Breten a big miss and I'm gonna make Angela a little jealous over here because I got a gift.

I got the whole.

I got the whole, so I get to hold this.

Yes, the governor has very kindly brought us a gift.

This is the lip Bar.

It is a black owned business CEO Melissa Butler, who's a friend a member of Delta Sigma Theta. They say, I give a lot of d nine love. But this is a wonderful the lit bar. We give you free advertising. A girl amazing, Yes, she has been so supportive.

To us, called big Gut brought. I love it. It's literally.

So thank you so much, Governor. We're so honored to have you with us. You were the talk of the town for a while when all this conversation came. And I want to ask because we have a very diverse audience listening tonight, and it's so significant to have Vice President Harris as sind to this level. There is some conversation about a divide among us as women. You know, will women who you know previously supported Trump white? Will will white women consider thank you, Leonard. I appreciate that white women who had previously not voted in their interests, or perhaps voted in their interests, if we're honest about what some of their interest is, will they consider this a victory for them as well, that a woman has ascended to this ticket. Not that you speak for all white Let me real quick disclaimer.

I do not speak for all white women. This wait woman, this white woman is so excited. My kids are excited.

I'm here with my two daughters, are twenty two and twenty years old, and I remember driving to Philadelphia in the twenty sixteen convention and my kids were in the backseate. I thought, Oh my god, these girls have only known eight years of a black president, and we're on the cusp of a woman president. And these are two things I never could conceive of growing up in this country. And obviously twenty sixteen did not turn out the way I was hoping it would. We're as excited, if not more, about Kamala Harris and Tim Walls.

I mean, this is a huge, huge.

Chapter in America leaders who And yes, I'm excited because she's going to break the last very but I'm excited because she is the most qualified kid. She is strong, she has smart, she knows how to get shit done, and she is the type of person who's lived a life that we can relate to.

You know, she's a normal person.

She took care of her mom at the end of her life, she took care of her sisters' kids.

At the game, there's she's going to deliver.

And so I do think we can pull a lot of white women who maybe were on the sidelines or maybe went the other way thinking Trump would make their lives better than they realized.

That's not the case, and.

We're going to pull people more people into the pold. Right now, we're excited, we're feeling it. We got a lot of hard work to do in the state of Michigan. It is a dead heat right now, which is a vast improvement from where we were a month ago. But it's sobering when you think about how much work we got to do.

I want no one to ask that said she had a the vice president had a three point lead on Trump in Michigan. What can she do to keep that momentum going and not fumble Michigan the way Hillary Clinton did in twenty sixteen.

Well, hiring, we're on the ground in Michigan.

I don't think anyone's gone I was gonna get that. No one's gonna take Michigan for granted. But you know, doing that voter contact it's so important. We cannot write anyone off. We can't make any assumptions that people, Okay, the black community is just going to show up because it's Kama Hairs.

No, we got to do the work. We got to show up.

We got to earn people's support, and that is true in every community, and so that's what we're doing.

Yeah, I got a question for you and Queen Vaccine. You know, we know that a lot of Republicans probably won't certify the results of the election coming over them, But if it gets to the Supreme Court, in light of a lot of their recent rulings, I think they might overturn it if the Vice President wins. How concerned are y'all about?

Are y'all about that?

I'm very concerned that Trump has been able to put in place people in several states are in charge of the election system, and that's real. And some of them are going to be turning people away, some are going to be finding they did not dot the I across the t all kinds of little tricks, and so we've got to be on top of this. Not only do we have to have monitors, we have to anticipate when we learn things are going on. We have to move very quickly to get our lawyers out there, you know, challenging because I think this is real, that's right.

Yes, I want to.

Because Charlie wrote up a point about a fumble in Michigan, and I think it speaks right to the question about you know, will people accept election results that they don't like. You know first hand, Governor, about the dangers of fanatics and what I would call cult members who literally tried to kidnap you. Thank god their plan was foiled. But also in twenty sixteen, the seventy five thousand votes out of Detroit that were discounted. As you know, Hillary Clinton lost Michigan that year. Had she carried mission and she lost by ten thousand votes. Had she had those seventy five thousand votes out of Detroit been counted, she would have won Michigan and thus won the presidency. How concerned are you about the infrastructure of this country and voting voting rights and voter suppression when it comes to November and it being a fair playing field.

Well, I am concerned about it. But I want to make a couple important points.

We know, four years ago, when Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden by one hundred and fifty thousand votes, a landslide comparatively, he challenged the votes in Wayne County, not the other eighty two counties, but Wayne County.

Where Detroit is based.

So we know the game that they want to play. I'll just share this in twenty twenty two, I won reelection and we flipped both the House and Senate, and in the wake of that was just a one seat majority of both chambers. We enhanced our election laws. We made it easier for people to participate. You can vote three weeks in advance in person, no reason to absentee, Greater penalties for people that mess with and threatened election workers. These are good strides we've made. All that being said, we got to get ready because, as a Congressman said, now, one thing that I want to point out that I think should give us all, you know, some hope, not false hope, but some hope. Is in the most important swing states in the country. We got Tony Evers as the governor in Wisconsin. We got Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania. We're Katie Hobbs in the Arizona. We got Roy Cooper in North Carolina, and me and Michigan. We got Democrats who are going to make sure these votes are protected and counted.

It's still going to be a challenge, just going to be a challenge.

If any of our opponents had been in the position were in I'd be a lot more work.

I agree with you, Governor, and I think the beauty of it is is that we do have you there as hopefully feel safe. My concern is, as you know, most of these elections are run municipally at the county level, and you may have these conservative counties that may.

Want a flaun.

You know, the rule of law.

You've got great secretary of State, so on and so forth. I am having been in Florida in two thousand, come from the state where the US Supreme Court waiting three four and said this is not President said it will.

Never be repeated.

We have got to be on guard. I think we've got to let everybody raise the symbol before they ever do. And I just want to say you have been an outstanding governor, holding the banner, look at these terrorists.

Straight in the face and letting them bring it.

I'm big wretch, was worried about making angry.

Thank you, Thank you so much come.

To Michigan as we get closer to this election.

We welcome you to do that.

Thank you, congress woman, Thank you so much.

We know that you have to go with your cons We love you so much.

You guys, thank you so much. Hey, y'all, thanks for listening.

Remember to rate review subscribe and tune into our regular episode that drops every single Thursday.

Welcome Home, y'all.

Native Land Pod is the production of iHeartRadio and partnership with Recent Choice Media. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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