'Dictator Trump': Senator Slotkin Reveals Trump's 3-Step Plan To KILL American Democracy | US News

What I saw in Hungary and what I feel like is increasingly important here is we have to have our own channels of communication that don't rely on these outlets that may owe more to Trump or whoever's president than they do to actually telling the truth. so out of control. I mean, I just have to say, there's literally people who are pardon brokers who are being paid $300,000 to get close to Trump to get and buy a pardon. Ban the presidential pardon. Ban the presidential pardon. It's not hard. Both parties, okay? And there's just a straight-up marketplace for it now. So this president isn't waiting till the end of his term. he is creating a marketplace again because of this dark vision this cynical vision that like like i'm just here to get mine because this country is declining i i believe that he has a dark apocalyptic vision about our country because only someone like that could be doing the things he's doing about that how do you explain the threat the danger of of democratic decline and of the rise of corruption to ordinary voters. Yeah, well, I mean, I think unless you can make these big names, these big words relevant to someone's pocketbook or their kids, you know, people are, they have a hard time hooking into it, right? It's hard, and I think, you know, here we can talk about these big sweeping things. So I spend a lot of time talking about, like, if the rules of the game are rigged against you, you can't succeed. Michigan is a place that's obsessed with sports. That's our religion. And so everyone understands that if your kid is in a game and the rules are rigged, then they're not going to get ahead. And I think it's taking that corruption that we see at a very high level and make it very impersonal. So this is the example I gave on electricity prices. It does not take much to get Michiganders talking about the price of their electricity. It does not take Michiganders a lot to talk about the price of their health care. But connecting that to corruption, political corruption, financial corruption is the way that we make it relevant to them. That's a hard thing to do. It's a hard translation to sometimes do. But I think what I was taken about back by in like a place like Poland is, you know, everyone was talking about the previous government before 2023 was affecting the courts, you know, and putting their people in the courts. But the average people weren't really feeling it until it created such gridlock at the courts that you couldn't, like, get a divorce for years because you couldn't get an appointment at the courts. Like, it had to become personal for people. And I think it's the same thing here in the United States. I think there's also the issue of symbolic cases, right? The thing that was striking to me is, like, the reflecting pool or the East Wing in the ballroom, right? Or the Don Jr.'s wedding. Or Don Jr.'s wedding, right, which they now had to pay back. So in dollar figures, the reflecting pool or even the East Wing of the White House doesn't compare to the cryptocurrency money that the Trumps have made. But it's symbolic and concrete to people. It's something they've looked at their entire lives, right? We've seen pictures of the reflecting pool since we were children. So how do we find those symbolic cases combined with connecting it to people's lives? Those are the ways that I think you get to a tipping point. That is actually what Peter Magyar did in Hungary. That was the most important line of his election campaign. He talked about the corruption in the case of Orban and his family, and he linked it to the decline of the Hungarian economy. And in his case, it was also powerful because it was true. There had been a decline in the Hungarian economy and it was partly because the the system was rigged for certain companies to do well and for others not to do well. Yeah. I mean, look, the thing that I it's kind of entertaining, too, that I really enjoyed about the Hungary story was the zebras. I don't know if people are tracking the zebras. Well, I was not. But right. It's like as as Orban kind of got more and more down the rabbit hole as an authoritarian and he had, you know, wealth and power. um some of the opposition groups like flew a drone over his dad's house and found that he was hiding a like a herd of zebras and um and they took pictures of it and it's just so absurd in the country of Hungary to have a herd of zebras and they said this is this is nuts and um he was like we don't have a herd of zebras like the the public had seen them um and he was trying to tell them you shouldn't believe your own eyes. And the absurdity of it became the symbol. And at every protest and in every organization, they had literally zebras, stuffed animals and balloons and all these things. And I think it's an interesting thing. What is the equivalent of the zebras here? What are these symbolic, almost comical things? And it's a very serious topic when you have an authoritarian leader, but sometimes to galvanize the public, you need something so absurd that it's almost humorous. No, I think that's true. Another tactic that authoritarians use successfully during election campaigns is smear campaigns. They focus on an individual. They make up stories about them. They use real stories but twist them. And these can be, I mean, I've seen this work in real authoritarian countries. I mean, in Venezuela, in Iran, in Russia. They, you know, fake corruption scandals, fake sex scandals. And in a world where people have a lot of difficulty knowing what's true and what's not true anyway online, I think everybody has that difficulty. How do you, as a politician, how do you think about that? How do you confront that? I mean, you've had a version of this. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, first of all, I think there's, you know, most people can't stand them, but political ads and, you know, hit ads on TV that I think are playing pretty fast and loose with the truth in general. That's part of our unfortunately part of our politics. And and then look, I mean, I think a version of this happened to Senator Kelly and I and and I think the president not only tried to smear us and tell this negative story, But weaponized threats against us and mobilized kind of a group of people to follow through with his threats in like literally bomb threats at my house and swatting my dad and his last month of life and those kinds of things. I think what I saw in Hungary and what I feel like is increasingly important here is we have to have our own channels of communication that don't rely on these outlets that may owe more to Trump or whoever's president than they do to actually telling the truth. And I think Magyar did this brilliantly of just kind of creating his own channel, his own direct conversation. And I think you're seeing American politicians do the same thing, right? Some of our most successful recent politicians have created a way to just go direct to people and do it in entertaining ways that capture attention. And it's not perfect, but it is the most immediate way to try and beat back false attacks on you. I mean, my view is that one of the sources of this rise in authoritarianism over the last couple of decades is the media system itself. Not not just social media, but also the way other kinds of media have declined and become more sensationalist and have difficulty making money and so on. and it's it's something nobody ever wants to talk about because it's too big and also it's like the fish talking about the water they swim in i mean we just live in this world now where the most extreme views travel the fastest and where true stories that have taken somebody a long time to investigate and write down are harder to read and harder to reach than you know invented sensations you know i mean first of all how do you live in that as a politician and second of all is it ridiculous to think we could ever reform that or change it well i mean i think um i mean i think it is the media is a real issue i will say um i for me it's impossible to disconnect from social media because i think we need to be very very clear um that the social media companies use their algorithms to monetize extremism and hate that's what i mean and they're making money because of these extreme things and and being clickbait um and i think that's i think that that should not i think we need to clamp down on that i think that's a real problem if you're monetizing hate even in a society that believes in free speech you can say what you want sending that thing to a hundred million people at a time because people click on it more is a choice by these companies um but um i think there's a lot we could actually do but you it requires political consensus that crosses party lines. And most people feel like we're at a hard moment on that. Now, I think things are changing. And I just want to say, we're in a town where, what, 10 days ago, there was a giant AI conference that was co-led by Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon. Most of the issues that are really rising up fastest from places like Michigan are not one party against another party. AI, data centers, flock cameras, surveillance, social media, concerns about social media um uh concerns about health issues like there's a lot of crossover and this is what i think is an important lesson um is that like i think in the next couple of years we're gonna we're gonna be forced by the american public to get beyond this kind of democrat republican thing and i think that's where you could actually try and get back on some major things money and politics can you know clamping back on social media dealing with ai it's going to come from, frankly, almost a popular demand to do something that people have to answer to. Let me now ask you a little bit about the recovery process, which, you know, theoretically could happen, but we don't know yet, depending on how people vote in this year and also two years from now. And specifically this question, I mean, I know you grappled with it in Poland and Hungary, and I know there's a version of it here. The use and purpose of congressional investigations explorations um you know we had one after january the 6th which i thought was excellent actually it was a you know it was very well run there were excellent witnesses um it you know the it did was it was even timed and organized in a way that was constructed for television i mean they they really thought it through and and yet it didn't didn't have the impact it should have had in other words a part of the country remained convinced that january the 6th wasn't real or didn't happen or wasn't a crime. Is there, how does one think about, I mean, if there were to be investigations after the midterms, if they're, you know, in a theoretical world, how do you think about that? How is, are they, is this something that's useful? Is it a distraction? Will it be used by, you know, by the Trump administration? Will it be flipped around and, you know, they're obsessed with us, they're conducting retribution against us? How do you think about that? Yeah. I mean, I think this is what I was, was trying to get at in, in my speech a little bit is like, of course, I mean, if you steal, abuse or waste taxpayer dollars to enrich yourself or your friends, um, that is against the law and you should be held accountable for that. So I don't think that there's like a free pass and like in this, for the sake of, um, of us getting past this moment we just let everyone have a free pass but you should be thoughtful and strategic about which um cases you bring forward right and in the congressional setting you know if democrats flip the house um we will have gavels um for a bunch of different committees and all of those committees are going to be thinking to themselves we got to provide some accountability. So what are we doing? And I think, I guess my, my, um, kind of headline message is be smart and strategic, but that cannot be the only thing the American people see when they voted against the president's party. They have to actually see something good for them, for their pocketbooks and their kids, not just an accountability agenda. So it's a yes. And, um and i think the that is going to take discipline and you know if people haven't noticed like democrats are still on their heels they're still trying to figure out who they want to be um and you know it's going to take some real um leadership conversations to figure out how to calibrate you know accountability with progress forward and one other question on this topic, you know, again, theoretically, after 2028, if there were a different administration, I think we can also we can assume there would have been a lot of pardons of the previous administration. You know, the outgoing president will pardon a lot of people. Is there pardons are so out of control? I mean, I just have to say, like, there's literally people who are pardon brokers who are being paid $300,000 to get close to Trump to get and buy a pardon, ban the presidential pardon, ban the presidential pardon. Like it's not hard, both parties. Okay. Just, and there's just a straight up marketplace for it now. So this president isn't waiting until the end of his term. He is creating a marketplace again, because of this dark vision, this cynical vision that like, like I'm just here to get mine because this country is declining. I believe that he has a dark apocalyptic vision about our country because only someone like that could be doing the things that he's doing. I was just going to ask, in those circumstances, are there other formula? I mean, is there a truth and reconciliation formula? Are there other ways of getting to this problem of accountability other than using the criminal justice system? Can you imagine that? I'm open to all kinds of things, but the Supreme Court has created a situation where the president can do almost anything and not be held accountable for it. There is no such protection for the people around the president. And the only reason that he can do the things that he's doing is because there's an absolute network of people who are more loyal to him than there are to the Constitution. And that is not OK. I think it's important to send a signal to people who are thinking of joining any other administration that if you're asked to do something illegal, if you're asked to move a federal contract towards someone's son, if you're asked to do these things, the answer is no, because you will be held liable for that. And the good news is that's the law. So we don't have to make it up. So, yes, I'm open to other things. But I don't think the answer is, well, let's kiss and make up because we sort of did that. We tried that after Trump won. The only structural change, you know, that really happened after Trump's first term where we said, you know what, what we just went through was really bad. We've got to fix it so that no other president can do that. The only real place we did that was after January 6th, we changed the Electoral Count Act. Thank God. So we certify elections in different ways. And as someone who barricaded herself in her office on January 6th, I think that was an important one to do. We did that experience of being like, you know what, that's over. Let's put that aside and look forward. That was a Biden thing. But that didn't work. We're back here, and the second version, the sequel, is worse than the first one. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water. Yeah. No. A couple of questions from the audience. One, the first one is you spoke of Trump proofing the government. Allies abroad talk about Trump proofing their nations. How can we avoid the risk of our allies going from Trump proofing to America proofing in a way that undermines our foreign relations? Look, I mean, if you're an ally of the United States, you've been on a roller coaster for a while, right? Just after, you know, World War II and a good 60 years of consistency on foreign policy, kind of whether we had Democrats or Republicans in power, we went from Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden to Trump. Like, that's a nausea-inducing pendulum swing for them. I'm getting nauseous watching you do that. I'll take it down. The good news is our allies want to believe in America. Many of them look to us as an example in how to rebuild their countries after coming out of the Cold War. So they want us to be that leader in the world. But at this point, we have to acknowledge that words are not going to be enough. A new president can't come in with great sweeping speeches and convince our allies that we are ready to work with them and not kind of punch them in the teeth every chance we get. We're going to have to let our actions speak for themselves, and we're going to have to rebuild some of that trust. Now, our allies have done important things to make sure that they have other kind of a hedge against the United States. I think it's bad for the whole world if they turn away from the United States and go to China or Russia or whoever. I think that's to the detriment of our national security and the globe's national security. But at this point, I understand why they're doing that hedging. And the rebuilding process will have to be one of actions, not words. Here's a question about big corporations that are unaccountable to the public, have been pouring their money into politics and elections for years, pushing the government to work for private and not public interest. And the questioner says, how can we ensure these large corporations are aligned with democratic norms? I mean, I have a kind of rider to that question, which is also we are moving into a world where some of these companies are more powerful than the U.S. government. Yeah. I mean, and how do we, how do we think about, you know, it's not just a question of regulation. It requires some fundamental, I mean, the, the, the, for example, the media ecosystem and the social media ecosystem we were just talking about is controlled by, you know, a few companies. Right. How do we think about regulating them? How do we make sure they're aligned with American values? Yeah. I think at, at this point, again, it's going to be an upward push and a demand signal that crosses party lines to get us to do things. So I mean, I think, again, this is just September, but in this month, I think we've crossed the Rubicon on issues of AI and we're having an American cultural conversation about the future of AI in our country. You couldn't say that five months ago, okay? The private companies release, you know, the bare minimum. They start publicly fearing their own creations and the American public is demanding that we do something about it. Eventually, that pressure forces some real work on these issues. I don't think that many politicians in Washington are going to do it on their own accord. I think they have to be forced. I think the same thing is happening on data centers in a related way and other things. There's an upward pressure. And I think the same goes for campaign finance. Um, you know, I don't take corporate PAC money. Um, uh, and I think it is, um, like the unity that's building around not allowing stock trading by members of Congress and their spouses, um, to ban, um, uh, corporate PAC money in general. Like there's a movement there. Um, but I think it's going to be upward pressure. I think relying on the people who benefit from, um, the system now to change the system without them fearing their jobs is not going to happen. And it sounds like you have faith in American citizens and voters to push these kinds of movements. I mean, I'm watching it. I mean, I think we all are. I think the, look, I mean, I've been asked by people in other countries, including on this trip to Poland and Hungary, like, why aren't we seeing a mass movement in the United States? We're going to have to think about that and understand why in the face of all of of this there wasn't and and other times in our history we've had mass movements right civil rights movement anti-war movements like and and i've i've tried to unpack that but i think that um um i think that what i've seen is that the fastest growing issues are the ones that are starting at the local level right the ai issue is part of a data center conversation that went from zero to 60 in a place like michigan very quickly you know small town council meetings are being swamped by 400 people angry about things there's only 1400 people in the whole town okay so i i think that that um i'm watching that upward pressure um and i do have faith in the american people that they are not in this, like, death cult where they think we're over as a country. I just refuse to believe that. What lesson, this is another question from the audience, interesting, it's a question I don't have the answer to, what lessons are there from Poland and Hungary about how to reach voters who are siloed in media ecosystems that only amplify far-right perspectives? So that's a question about how you reach people who aren't listening to your YouTube channel or following you on Instagram. Yeah. So what I think was really interesting, um, about, um, Peter Magyar in, in Hungary is yes, he used his own YouTube channels, his own social media to get directly to people. Um, but in a siloed world with a lot of misinformation, I don't think that would have been enough. He literally visited like 700 towns and cities. And he was pretty aggressive about it, right? If Prime Minister Orban was doing an event in Town X, he would hear about it and show up in Town X and do like a counter rally. So I think it was the combination of social media with that straight up retail politics of going to places where they're like, the opposition is showing up here. You know, there's someone like, and I think that's the equivalent in the United States of like, are you doing everything from your keyboard? Right. And I think there's plenty of people who think that you can still run campaigns exclusively online. That may be true in some parts of the country. It ain't true in Michigan. he combined that digital outreach with traditional retail politics going to places showing up particularly in the equivalent as Trump voting areas and saying like I'm here and I'm going to tell you my message directly he also created a kind of show so he had a he had a sort of truck and he put speakers on the truck and he would drive the truck to a town and stop in the middle of the square and start making a speech using his speakers right so i think it's it just to me that combo um the showmanship certainly helps um in a world of reality tv and all that kind of stuff but um i don't know that he could have done it just from budapest right no obviously not i mean actually there's a Donald Tusk equivalent too he also did a thing of going round and around the country and going to small towns and making a point of going to places where people weren't going to vote for him. So it's critical. So I think that's I think that's also correct. Right. Well, these are now I'm going to give you I think maybe we don't have that much time. I'll give you the large existential question. I hate being asked these ourselves. So I'm going to inflict it on. It's nice to be able to not have to answer it. How do you make sure that after a Democratic turnaround, history doesn't repeat itself? Yeah. I mean, this is this is the whole conversation the trump proofing right and that has to go on and um i i want to be clear like i remember that moment because it was right after january 6th um 2021 so um those of us who had been in the capitol were like what is our agenda to make sure these kinds of things never happen again and there was a suggestion of putting together a task force where this is all they did it's actually a group of people that should not be in the limelight they should be really thoughtful somewhat wonky people who understand that what we thought were laws were actually just norms and um a president who wants to completely obliterate our norms can do that easily and Trump has so we need laws so we need laws and we need things like it's amazing to me um you know we would try in in Trump one you know to subpoena an official to come up and speak before Congress and they would sort of refuse and we would say like what is our recourse um and someone found some old law that said you could actually send the the sergeant of arms to their house and bring them to the the capital and keep them in a makeshift cell in the basement of um the capital okay that's not applicable to today that doesn't make sense to today but it just demonstrated that Our system is based on decency in both sides, kind of respecting the Constitution above their own, and that's gone. So we need to turn norms into laws in some particular ways. So we need a task force that would take a real thoughtful look at what are the two or three or four first things we need to do to put into law. um and um that is the only way because it it may not be Trump but it can be somebody else it can be a Democrat it can be it can be anything um but again like i said like fool me twice shame on me um last question um another another broader one the Trump administration has produced ruptures in traditional U.S. posture around the world um after this do i'm going to rephrase the question do we do we do we seek a return to if if there is a change of administration do we seek a return to what we had in the past or are we now rebuilding something different how do you how does America now look at the world and look to the world yeah i i think i really meant what i said that the tectonic plates of politics are fundamentally changing under our feet. Trump is a symptom of a problem that people, whether you're a recent college graduate or a guy working in a Flint engine plant and an auto plant, you don't believe you can work hard and get ahead the way your parents did. You don't believe the American dream is still a real thing, okay? And people feel despair and shame about that um the the reason he was able to get elected um was because people were not satisfied with what the federal government was doing in their own lives and if we do not hear that shame on us so no we are never snapping back to the way that it used to be and i say that as someone who is in the government right who was in the federal government who like was trained in that system. You got to get out of that. We're not snapping back to anything. We have to take it as a moment to wipe the whiteboard clean and say, what do the American people actually need out of their government and how are we going to deliver that? And let's build a government that does that. That doesn't mean taking a machete to everything, which is what Doge did. But I worked in the federal government my whole life. Anyone who tells you there is not fat on the bone in the federal government hasn't worked in the federal government. OK, it's just we need a scalpel not a chainsaw so i i just i think we need to open our minds to the fact that the public wants something different out of their government and we don't have a vision of from the past of what that looks like we have to write um and that's why we need like the project 2029 for the middle class like we need to be extremely disciplined about what we want to deliver for people it's not every tom dick and harry if we do not get at that existential issue around the middle class, they're just never going to buy in to all the other things we care so deeply about.