Running for Congress and Standing Up for Girls' Sports
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Words per minute
189.92162
Harmful content
Misogyny
15
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Toxicity
2
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Hate speech
4
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Summary
Michael Markey Jr. is running for U.S. Congress in Michigan s Third Congressional District. In this episode, we talk with him about why he decided to run, how he got into politics, and why he thinks women should have equal access to abortion care.
Transcript
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This podcast was created to highlight and share and spread awareness
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of the growing number of stories that are adversely affecting women and parents and children.
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This is someone who is actively fighting back against that
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in a place, in a climate where it is desperately needed.
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Well, Mike, thank you so much for joining the Gains for Girls podcast.
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I wanted to give you the opportunity very briefly to introduce yourself,
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talk about what you're doing now, and what your future looks like.
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I'm running for U.S. Congress here in Michigan's 3rd District.
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It's what they call a D-plus-1, but it's been a Republican district for 100, I think, out of 103 years.
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So it is certainly one of the districts we can take back.
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The NRCC has labeled it as one of the top take-back.
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But I can tell you the moment I got in the race, my opponent, Hillary Skolton,
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she said her very first act in Congress was saying a baby who survives a failed abortion
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So oftentimes people say, well, that's an abortion issue.
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Clearly it's not, because to have a failed abortion, you had to have access to abortion.
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And it is just absurd to me that you could say a baby who, against all odds,
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survives a failed abortion wouldn't deserve medical care.
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I had a lot of people telling me that, hey, Mike, you've got to get in this race.
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Let's see what kind of congresswoman we have.
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But that really told us everything we needed to know.
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But before we get into anything else, I have to ask myself,
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knowing that you're a Harvard graduate, what is your institution doing?
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Yeah, you know, like I've told people before, I was a Division I baseball player.
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And over the course of my career, as it kind of evolved,
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I started getting some negative feedback when I tried to kind of go into more of the academic circles.
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People saying, well, I mean, Mike, come on, you've got a degree.
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You've got an undergrad, a bachelor's from Eastern Michigan.
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And so I got sick and tired of having the negative feedback.
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I really never thought I was going to have to defend that decision.
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But again, here's, I mean, one of the themes, and we talk about it a lot in our district,
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in our campaign, though, is that what Democrats do is they want to take the good of something,
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They just want to take, you know, this one piece.
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And so what the president at Harvard did, I mean, number one, she got into her role by plagiarizing.
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But her speech in Congress was, again, almost as abhorrent as Hillary Scolton's.
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Yes, you cannot create a culture of instability and not take the side and put a safe environment
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So myself and Elise Stefanik, I think we were some of the first to come out asking for President
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And I imagine even, of course, the state of Michigan, you have University of Michigan.
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There's a lot more, I think, that needs to be exposed in higher ed, and especially our
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Did you have any sort of political background before this?
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Or were you someone who just kind of saw a need and was willing to put yourself out there?
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So I actually had a quick background, I guess, in politics.
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I was one of the ones who ran for governor in the state of Michigan last year.
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They disqualified our campaign due to signatures, which is a different conversation.
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You know, we had entire petition sheets that they said were obviously fraudulent and where
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every single person on the sheet signed a sworn statement saying it was their signature.
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I've had games where I would say the ump made the wrong call.
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You can concentrate on how they, you know, they messed up the call.
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And then you can let that flow into the next game.
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And so instead, I mean, it was harder for me to say this a year ago.
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But it was, all right, the ump made a wrong call.
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It's time to lace up our shoes, our spikes, and let's get out there again.
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So I created a super PAC helping try to defeat Gretchen Whitmer last year, traveling the state
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And then when Hillary Skolton flipped our seat, a lot of people said, Mike, you got to
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And again, I said, you know, she ran on a very message that said, I'm going to hold
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And I'll be really an ally to Republicans on some common sense issues.
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And then her first, you know, her first weekend, it was babies who survived failed abortion don't
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She then ran an appointment ad that said, white males strongly encouraged not to apply.
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I was like, well, I wasn't planning on it, but come on now.
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And from there, she supported a bill that said the government should have the right to censor
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She then voted for a bill that would take away gas appliances, gas heating and cooling.
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And so, I mean, here in Michigan, we just had a little bit of snow.
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Where I'm at, we had almost, you know, maybe 20, 25 inches.
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And a lot, I think 172,000 people across the state of Michigan were without power.
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I'm very thankful we had a gas, you know, furnace.
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I know neighbors had gas generators to keep everything running.
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And so this is the, you know, it's a common approach by the Democrats that they know better
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Not necessarily here in Western civilization yet, but that's the goal.
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You look at other countries that have really taken on this Marxist socialist regime,
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But Michigan, especially, is so interesting to me because it's one of the few states that
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has so many women in these elected official roles.
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You have, as you said, Gretchen Whitmer as governor, unfortunately.
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And if I'm not mistaken, I think women make up a very large portion of the legislative body
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Yet, despite having all of these women in these powerful positions, Michigan seems to be one
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of the leading states, along with others like California and Massachusetts and these other
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blue states, in actively and openly discriminating against women and girls.
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And they use the abortion issue as kind of like this guise, as if they're trying to protect
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So I guess my question for you is, why does it most commonly seem to be women trying to
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dismantle and being successful in dismantling women's rights to privacy in our bathrooms and
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locker rooms and our rights to safety in our sports and in prisons, an equal opportunity?
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I think sometimes there's a assumed credibility, like women can talk about women issues different
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than men can talk about women issues, and men can talk about men issues differently than
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But I think more succinctly or more importantly here, this is a big difference between Republican
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I mean, within my district, there's a community called Rockford.
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And in Rockford, the public schools just hid the fact from a set of parents that they were
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helping one of the parents' kids, they were helping a kid transition and weren't letting
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the parents know because that was the right thing to do.
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The parents should always be involved in decisions, especially something such as that.
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Like my experience as a behavioral advisor says, kind of talk about issues, but in something
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that maybe we're more familiar with, people would be out, you know, Democrats would be
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If a teacher took a 16-year-old to the mall to get this big old tattoo across their back
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So I think of like, we just watched it the other day.
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Can you imagine a kid coming home and say, hey, look what I got back here.
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People would go, I can't believe it, but you can, you can get rid of a tattoo.
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And by the way, you can put a t-shirt on and you won't tell, but transitioning is completely
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And so thankfully those parents that have gotten a lot of support in our district, they're,
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they're suing the school district over it as they should.
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But first there, the last one, enjoy a Coca-Cola for a pause that refreshes.
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The tattoo incident is far less severe than what's actually happening.
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And that our elected leaders, Democrat leaders are voting for.
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We just saw this week in Maine, they introduced a trans trafficking type bill that Michigan
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Basically saying Maine will be the sanctuary state, blah, blah, blah.
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There was a couple of emails that were sent to leadership.
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Actually, I would argue thousands of emails.
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Ultimately, they postponed it because they're cowards.
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Their vote where they were going to decide if they wanted to advance with the progression
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She is a sitting Democrat member of Congress now.
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Last year, the RNC polled that she is 70% more extreme than the average American.
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And, of course, we've talked about her voting record on abortion and the gas issue and different
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But she voted in opposition of protecting women and girls in sports when this bill was voted
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That can't, I mean, I can't imagine that represents Michiganders.
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And do you think she really believes that she's on the right side of this issue?
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I do think she believes it, which just shows how delusional they can be.
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And, by the way, we shouldn't be trying to legislate just because it's popular opinion.
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Probably the most common counter argument I get from people is,
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Well, you know, when something's right or wrong, you don't wait for it to be a big issue.
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And you step up and protect, especially we're talking about young girls.
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And also, when you normalize radical ideas, you know, I've got a firm believer of this.
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When you normalize radical ideas, what once seemed radical will seem normal.
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But we've got to work on how we message this, work on how we explain this.
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And, again, I'll use my experience as a behavioral advisor.
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Like, if we just talk as advisors, financial advisors, we just talk math, people are like,
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So we've got to use, again, analogies and things we're familiar with.
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So the example that I use, I've been using it in district a lot, and it's worked well.
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And it's worked well with some of these middle voters who we've got to bring to our side.
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And so when Michigan came out this year, the NCAA said Michigan's been stealing signs.
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The very next opponent on the schedule was Michigan State.
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And Michigan State's coaches and athletic directors said, we're not sure we're going to play Michigan this weekend.
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Because now that, you know, they potentially know our signs, they've got an unfair advantage.
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I mean, I was, again, a former Division I athlete.
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These kids, these boys, men, really, right, they're in the finest athletic shape they'll be in their lives.
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These are a couple hundred pound, you know, athletes.
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And their coaches are looking out for them saying, hey, if we put them in an unfair situation, they might get hurt.
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And so, and outside of Michigan fans, there's a ton.
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I mean, I saw an article the other day saying Michigan should have an asterisk on this national championship because they had an unfair advantage.
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You know, you don't see people saying the same thing, you know, in your sport.
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You have an uproar that Michigan had an unfair advantage.
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Now, instead of making this a values issue, let's make this an unfair advantage issue.
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We had this uproar that Michigan was stealing signs.
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What about men transitioning into girls and playing against female in their sports?
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And we're putting them at risk of getting hurt.
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And, you know, she wants to play every sport there is under the sun.
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I'm not having her in a locker room with a former guy, a biological male, who's suddenly going to say that's not who I am.
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You're not stepping in the locker room with my daughter.
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You're not stepping on the court with my daughter, unless maybe you're the referee.
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But we need to uphold these standards, because I'm going to go back to it.
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When you normalize radical ideas, what once seemed radical will seem normal.
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I mean, even if you think five years prior to where we are now, there's no way we could have imagined that we would be legislating on if men should be allowed to compete in women's sports.
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Heck, even the definition of a woman in the U.S. House now, the Women's Bill of Rights has been undertaken by Representative Debbie Lesko and Representative Diana Harshbarger, and it's literally a bill that codifies the word woman.
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It kind of makes you question, what are our limits?
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If we're willing to deny this, what's the next thing?
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But I don't know if people realize, just as of recently something I've noticed, I don't know if people realize how quickly the Republican Party can lose the majority in the U.S. House.
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I mean, even right now we have one Republican member actually from Kentucky who's out after a car accident.
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We have two Republican members who are receiving treatment for cancer.
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We've seen several over the past few weeks Republican members who have announced their retirement.
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It is crucial that we not only keep our red seats in office, but flip the blue seats to red seats.
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So I guess my question for you is, what can we as common sense Americans, every day, your average person, what can we do to ensure that we have people in office who represent our pro-America, pro-parental rights, pro-child safeguarding, pro-truth values?
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And one of the things that I hear from people is they'll say, well, Mike, I'm not in your district.
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You know, if you're not in my district, it just means simply you can't vote for me.
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But it doesn't mean that my votes aren't going to represent you and your ideals, our ideals, right?
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And so what we need to do a better job as Republicans, and this is an area where Democrats beat us, is that they'll get behind candidates across the country.
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And they'll do these small-dollar donations, $5 here, $1, $10, and they get behind these candidates and really help push them past the line.
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I've been running a business for over 20 years, which didn't really seem real until my team.
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But, you know, what I've been telling people is go online, go to michaelmarkeyjr.com.
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But put it on reoccurring, because what I want you to do is hold us accountable.
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And in three months, if we're not doing our job, we're not upholding those values that you, you know, put a little bit of that support.
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Like, if what we've said today makes sense, which I hope it does, then put five bucks, ten bucks behind us.
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And then if we, you know, if we fail at that trust, let us know.
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And that's how we start beating Democrats, because we've got to have everybody doing this, everybody getting behind candidates that make sense so we can flip seats like mine.
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I mean, here's a seat that was Republican for the last 50 years, 100 out of 103 years.
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We've got one of the, I mean, Hillary's, we talked about Hillary Schoolton's voting record.
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She's voting in lockstep with Rashida Tlaib.
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But we need money to let everyone know, here's what she's been voting on.
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Because she's, of course, not going to admit to some of these things.
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And if for some reason you feel like we didn't, let us know.
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And that's how we win seats like this across the country and let Democrats know how radical and extreme they really are.
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And I was telling you this before, but every time, it's so unique.
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Every time I'm in Michigan, it's different than any other state.
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Really in the best way possible, though, because it's very clear to me that they're ready to roll up their sleeves and do something about it.
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And I've also said time and time again, it is crucial for people to financially support in whatever way you can the people who are actually on the ground doing the work.
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No, not everyone can be involved in the same way that you are and that I am in front of a camera on a stage.
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That's not everyone's forte, but everyone has a role.
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It's necessary and urgent to restore sanity in this country.
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So one more time, I just wanted you to be able to plug your website.
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You know, how can people find out more information about you, you know, your key issues, your congressional race, and ways to support you in your efforts?
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You can find us on, I was going to say all the social media things, but we are not on TikTok, and nor will we be.
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So you can find us at Michael Markey Jr. on Twitter.
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But the best where you want to get all the information is Michael Markey Jr., M-A-R-K-E-Y-J-R.com.
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I'm not saying we're going to, you know, we're not pandering, so we're not going to change just because you go, I didn't like you said that.
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I love doing it when coaches are like, hey, I'm not playing you today because you didn't do these things.
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And that's really what we need more is accountability, which is a form of feedback, certainly.
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That's how we unite, ultimately, which is what this country is desperately in need of.
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This is a pretty important year for our country, for the state of Michigan, a lot of these blue states.
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So we're grateful for you and your efforts, and we will be following along.
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It's important we get behind people like Michael Markey, people who are doing the work to combat this movement we're seeing across America.
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It's crucial that we flip these blue seats, whether that's the local level, the state level, the federal level.
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It's crucial and urgent that we flip them red if we want to maintain sanity, common sense, and normalcy in this country.
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Like, subscribe, anywhere where you get your podcasts.
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And we will see you on the Gains for Girls podcast next week.