Opposing [Donald]Trump aligns you with Hamas.
There're a lot of places that I can serve. And I'm going to serve. I'm going to be fighting to rebuild the Democratic party no matter what. I'm going to be fighting to make sure the Democratic party is known among working people that we are their champion no matter what. So I'm looking for a place to serve.
Worked hard on [our message of strengthening the middle class, working people], but it didn't come through in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania.It really should have, because people are struggling. And the Democratic message and the Democratic platform would help them, but somehow it didn't come up the way it should have. But it will.
I want to avoid sounding like I'm criticizing because I don't have all the facts in front of me yet. And I am trying to be a unifier.
Now [in 2016] I have the highest turnout in the state of Minnesota. And Minnesota is the highest turnout state in the country.
We had Jesse Ventura in Minnesota win the governorship, nobody thought he was going to win. I'm telling you, stranger things have happened.
We want to be making clear that if [Donald Trump] tries to deliver on his word, that we will be there to say no.
The main thing I've learned is that we're better together and that our society needs inclusion - right? - not exclusion.
Do you have the vision to help empower and channel the energy at the grassroots level?This is not about one person; this is about millions of people all working together to protect and advance the interests of working Americans.
Donald Trump was tainted every kind of way you could imagine. I mean, no way in the world that Donald Trump is a champion of working people. He has hurt workers in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Florida, multiple bankruptcies, never showed his taxes. I don't know any good thing this guy's ever done. And yet, because he was able to throw hate and poison on Hillary Clinton, he was able to somehow prevail at least until the Electoral College. I think he was skilled at just sort of, like, keeping the attention on anyone but himself. He is the most outrageous person ever to win a presidential election.
Here's what I'm saying, that there is now ongoing a post-mortem review of what could have gone better [during Hillary Clinton campaign] and what mistakes may have been made.
What I'm saying is we [Democratic Party] need to get much more granular.
I didn't pay close enough scrutiny to some of the other things that Louis Farrakhan was saying, that's something I just live and learn.
I'd say the most important criteria is vision. What is your vision for the party? Do you have a vision to strengthen the grassroots and help them turn out people in their local communities? That's the real thing. The real question is not about one person. It's not about an individual. It's about millions of people working all over this country to reach out in their local communities. And the DNC chair has to help them do that and have a vision for that and have the energy for that.
You have to talk about the issue of race, but I can talk to white constituents about racism, if I at least acknowledge that life is not a crystal stair for them either.
To strengthen the grassroots at the party - at the party unit, at the county level, at the precinct level, and then to help motivate and facilitate the local grassroots to get out there and turn out the vote and boost turn out. And then to help govern in places where we do hold city councils and state legislatures.
I - to say the word "scared", I don`t know if I`m scared because, I have faith that we will see this through. But I take Donald Trump seriously. He has literally millions of people who support him.
I've been talking to people all over the country, city council members, grassroots leaders, party leaders, members in Congress - and you know what? The truth is I'll have something to say real soon.
Trump himself stands to benefit dramatically from the tax cuts. One of the things they're cutting is the alternative minimum tax. Last time we have tax returns for him was in 2005, where he paid about $31 million because of the alternative minimum tax. He won't have to pay that, if this tax bill goes through. So, not only is he reordering our constitutional democracy, he is personally enriching himself - which is not new, because, of course, he's done it ever since he swore an oath to become president of the United States.
For activists who want to preserve constitutional democracy, who don't believe in hereditary aristocracy, who believe that teachers ought to be able to deduct the 250 bucks of school supplies that they bring - they might spend their own money for in a classroom, then you still have time to fight a horrible piece of legislation.
What I hear people talking about are things that anybody of any color or any religion or any sexual orientation can get with. They cannot earn a decent living if they`re working class folks. They`re worried about retirement if they`re in their 40s and 50s. They`re worried about sending their kids to college. If we focus on what really matters, we can get there.
Vehicle emissions standards directly sparked the development and application of a wide range of automotive technologies that are now found throughout the global automobile market.
We do know that [Hillary Clinton] was probably attacked and smeared as much as any candidate ever has been. We know that.
After I win the job and even in the course of seeking it, we're going to be building bridges. And we're going to be meeting people and addressing the concerns that they have.
I've been winning with 70 percent of the vote, and if you look at my district, you know it's a majority Christian district, and yet we've still been winning with high margins, so I don't feel like I've had any disadvantages for being a minority.
We think all over this country we need to rebuild everything from transit, fiber optic broadband in our rural areas and urban areas.
The real question is not what one person's going to do, what are we all going to do? How are we all going to pitch in to fix this party to make working America know that the Democratic party is absolutely on their side? That's the real question.
The First Amendment says that we can protest and call to - on our government to address grievances.
I'm not here to cast aspersions on anyone. I'm trying to unify the party, not find fault.
If you put everything, your heart and soul into a campaign, it might take you a while to come around to the realization that, you know, another person has won.
Trump is trying to tell all of us Americans that we are our own problem, not him. And that's not true. He's the problem.
I raised my right hand and placed my left on the Quran, which was being held by my wife and mom. Suddenly, I was blinded by a cascade of camera flashes.
This is what people do in America. They get out. They demonstrate. They let their voices with heard.
The conversation should've been about middle class people. The conversation should've been about how to raise the minimum wage and strengthen Social Security. But then we started talking about this whole email stuff again. And now the outcome is that, you know, Donald Trump has somebody who he's looking at to put on his Cabinet who's a lobbyist to privatize Social Security.
If people are given a TV-educated idea of what Islam is, I have the opportunity to push back on that and say ISIS does not speak for the Muslim world, and in fact, you have people right here in front of you who are much more representative than homicidal maniacs.
I'm particularly good at turnout. So in my district, I had the lowest voter turnout in 2006. And now I have the highest turnout in the state of Minnesota. And Minnesota is the highest turnout state in the country.
Hopefully folks will look at the good things that I've done over the years, you know, my 10 years in Congress, my 12 years in state legislature, my many years of community organizing for the environment, for police accountability, for criminal justice reform, economic empowerment, trying to fight for small-business people, all these things.
We need young people to be involved, and we have to expect that young people are going to be impatient, they don't want to wait, and they've got new ideas and new ways of looking at problems.
We'll see if [Donald Trump] really means it though; he will get a chance to deliver on that promise. And if he doesn't, we'll make sure the people know about it.
The fact is, is that Americans don't hate their Muslim neighbors. They don't hate their Latino neighbors. We have got to build human solidarity in this country, because human solidarity is what's going to allow us to come together to protect our democracy and to protect our economy. So reject the hate. Turn it away. Don't buy it. And reach out to a neighbor. Trump is trying to sow division so that he can distract us from what he's doing to us.
Look, rich people already have a lot of money. There's literally trillions of dollars in cash held by corporations, their stock valuations at an all-time high. They do not need a tax cut to do anything. They can invest now, if they wanted to. They don't want to, because they can make more money just by mergers and stock buybacks and stuff like that. So, this is really just sort of a travesty.
I think that people have been looking at 40 years of flat wages. You know, the reality is you've got folks in diners and hair shops and barber shops all over this country who look at their own lives and think, you know, "My parents did better than I'm doing and my kids might not do as well as I'm doing." And that's because wages have been slashed for so long.
People feel like there're two systems of justice, you know? Over there at Wells Fargo, you know, you had the scandal going on there, but the CEO leaves with a big, giant package. And other folks get in a whole lot of trouble for doing a lot less. The truth is that we have got to make America work for working people again.
I think that Donald Trump picked on people's fears, their anxieties and he gave them somebody to blame, and some folks just really turned out for him for that.
Americans used to be able to depend on their jobs to provide a stable retirement.
I'm an optimistic guy.It's just as much the case that people will come to me and ask my opinion about how to properly include the Muslim community, as it is that people will come with some hateful stuff too. When people come to me about my religion, it's not always a thing of "we don't want people like you here," which happens sometimes. But mostly it's people who would like to know more. I get a chance to help people understand the religion better.
The most important criteria for a DNC chair is going to be vision.
All I want to say is that anybody, well, from the Democratic side of the fence who thinks that - who's terrified of the possibility of President [Donald] Trump better vote, better get active, better get involved, because this man has got some momentum and we better be ready for the fact that he might be leading the Republican ticket.
San Bernardino involved two killers were actually radicalized before they started courting or dating each other online, and online as late as - as early as the end of 2013, they were talking to each other about jihad and martyrdom before they became engaged and then married and lived together in the United States.
Even Hamas - Hamas is a terrorist group - do you know that Hamas came out in opposition to [Donald ]Trump`s statement? That puts the Republican Party, the Democrat Party, and everybody else in the establishment and [Barack]Obama on the same side Hamas is on. And over here all by himself is Donald Trump.
If you ignore somebody's record and only focus on something that happened 25 years ago when all they were doing even then was trying to stand up for a minority group that felt excluded and discriminated against, then I don't - I think that is a distortion of a person's record. I mean, a person's record is full, not just the parts that you want to use against them.
Donald Trump is using an age-old trick of right wing populism, much like George Wallace, much like Joe McCarthy, Pitchfork Ben Tillman who in the 1880s and `90s was a rabid hateful racists who whipped up hate and hysteria for his own political benefit.
We've got to build a durable relationship of trust with voters around the things that they are most concerned about.
[ Big infrastructure investment mentioned by Donald Trump] that would be a welcome development. We'll see if he wants to deliver on that. The truth is that if he does, we want to see infrastructure development too.
I'm looking for a place to be of use and benefit. And every single Democrat in this country better be thinking the exact same way. How can we help the average American worker, you know, right out there, worrying about whether that plant's going to close? Fighting for them, standing up for them. That's what the story is.
I'm particularly good at turnout. So in my district, I had the lowest voter turnout in 2006.
The fact is, is that Donald Trump knows that as he rifles money from the working and middle classes up to the super rich, he has to sow division among working people, because if working people and middle-class people really take a look at his economic policy, they will come together, and they will stop it. So, what he has to do is to promote racism - hate the Muslims, hate the Latinos, hate the blacks, you know, have male - men and women at each other's throats, you know, make sure we repress the trans people.
One of the most important things we can do right now is empower ordinary working Americans who really do deserve a fair shot in this economy. But I'm not afraid to talk about any issue. But I do believe it is a distraction.
Environmental spending creates jobs in engineering, manufacturing, construction, materials, operations and maintenance.
If you unpack the statistics on who is supporting , Donald Trump, it means that there is a lot of people who hold very bigoted racist ideas and there is a lot of them.
I think that you need all perspectives to reflect the needs of the country. If you only give people one perspective, inputting their views into the congressional process, you're going to have a skewed outcome.
I like Paul Ryan, and to a certain extent, I feel bad for him. But this is a moment of moral choice. And if he says that Hillary Clinton is worse than a openly racist, Muslim-hating misogynist who wants to build a wall to exclude Mexicans, who thinks that a judge, an American judge because of his Mexican lineage cannot be fair to him, if you`re saying that Hillary Clinton is worse than all that, then I just think that that just is ridiculous, it`s absurd, and it really starts to damage the speaker`s credibility.
One thing that I'd just remind young people of is that when John Lewis, who's a member of Congress today, defied George Wallace and led the march from Selma to Montgomery, he was 23 years old. Martin Luther King was the old man in the bunch, and he was 35, so young people need to know that they've always been an important part of our society, have always been at the forefront of pushing for a more just America, and we can't be successful without the impatience, the vigor that young people bring to the fight for social justice.
I was very proud to be part of the Million Man March. I think it's one of the best things that I ever did. Just the fact that, you know, at the time I didn't pay close enough scrutiny to some of the other things that he was saying. You know, that's something I just live and learn.
Over the course of the last quarter century I've learned a lot. And the main thing I've learned is that we're better together and that our society needs inclusion - right? - not exclusion.
I don't feel that I've been hampered by [ racism or discrimination], and the reason why is that we reach out to people on the basis of where everyone meets, and try to build common cause on that basis. Because of that, I think we've cut through some of the issues that normally divide people.
This is essential that we have a resurgence in democratic participation. And I don't mean big-D Democrat, I mean small-D democrat. I mean getting involved in your neighborhood, your community. This is no time to say, "I'm not into politics." This is a time to go headlong into the welfare of this nation.
We need to invest at the local party unit and focus our energy on turn out. That's how we come back, and we can come back.
I know that everybody who supported Bernie Sanders supported him because they believe that college debt is too high. They believe that the minimum wage needs to be increased. They believe that we have to take on climate action.
We have to have a shared prosperity. We have to make that our job number one. People want a better economic playing field for working Americans. And they're voting for it. Our job is to make sure that people know that the Democratic party is the party that is going to deliver that for them. And that means strengthening the grassroots. That means strengthening the local precinct county level and making sure that we're all channeled on massive turnout for that program.
Obstruction, basically, is whether you corruptly influence, obstruct or impede the administration of justice. You tell a chief law enforcement officer get, you know, back off my friend - or I hope you back off my friend and then when he doesn't, you fire him, clearly, that isn't - that is - fits the behavior of obstruction. The question of whether or not you can prosecute the president is open.
We have a chance for racial solidarity because all of us, unless you`re in the top 1 percent, are really struggling in this economy.
As chairman of the DNC, [Keith ] Ellison says he would replicate that kind of turnout on a national scale. But we spoke yesterday about some history that could stand in the way.
Our message of strengthening the middle class, working people, we just didn't penetrate well enough and we didn't have the kind of turn out that we really needed or expected.
Progressive economic policies lead to a sustainable economy.
I think it's a good idea to be - to fairly identify where things could have gone better once you get the facts, once you get the data and once you're able to review.
[Coming back for Democrats] is simply a matter of energy and resources.
I worked at McDonald's. I cooked. It was one of the toughest jobs I've ever had. These people earn every single penny they get. In fact, they earn way more than they get.
I'm happy to talk to anybody about anything.
Can't be all men, can't be all white, can't be all black, can't be all straight. [It has] got to be a wide range of people. Can't be all people of one faith group. We need diversity so we can have the views of all Americans reflected in congressional outcomes.
I think that Paul Ryan could be a great leader for our country. But I think that he is in a moral choice moment, and so far, he`s choosing wrong Donald Trump.
You know, the elites always want to shame the poor - right? - and everyone else. I mean, the fact is, this economy is based on 70 percent of the people driving consumer demand. If people do not purchase goods and services, this economy will grind to recession. And that is why, if you are going to do a tax cut, it ought to really be aimed at low-income and middle-income people.
The fact is, yes, statistically, African Americans and Latinos are getting hit harder, but it`s something that we can have real solidarity across racial lines on, to raise the minimum wage, to lower the cost of going to college, to make sure there`s real consumer protection.
I hope what we can talk about is something that happened, you know, within the last 25 years, the things that are relevant to our country right here, right now, including all people, fighting for the rights of working people, fighting for the rights of people struggling for dignity and respect in our society.
Here's the real thing. Democrats got to understand that the first line in the Republican playbook is going to be smear, you know? And there's nobody who's going to be able to avoid it.
Publicly criticizing people, even when I don't have the facts, is not that good of an idea.
You take for example the environmental movement is a big deal in my district. You know, you might say, yeah, more African Americans are suffering from asthma and air pollution-related illnesses, but there`s a lot of white folks, a lot of white kids with inhalers. So, you just got to talk to the reality of everyone, not exclude anyone. And make sure that people know that you care about them too. I think if you do that, we can get there.
I love the donors and we thank them, but it has to be that the guys in the barber shop, the lady at the diner, the folks who are worried about whether that plant is going to close, they've got to be our focus. They've got to be a laser-beam focus on everything we do, and everything we do should animate and empower them at the grassroots level for working people across this country. That's how we come back.
Vision and the ability to mobilize and inspire people at the grassroots. That's what the most important criteria is going to be for any DNC chair.
I'm not against trade...but they're not really trade deals. They're really investment deals between international corporations...They're saying we want to get a race to the bottom so we can exploit the most unfortunate worker.
These folks are telling Donald Trump that if he tries to move out on his plan to have a deportation squad, to harm Americans, and if he does - and if he has - he tries to do that, we're going to be there to stand and say no. We don't - we oppose his misogyny. We oppose his picking on people of different ethnic and religious groups.
I was very proud to be part of the Million Man March. I think it's one of the best things that I ever did.
I'm not here to say what [Clintons] did wrong. I mean, there's going to be plenty of post-mortem review of what should have gone differently.
I do believe that we should have to - make the voters first; not the donors first.
I'd rather frame [Clintons] in terms of what I think we need to do going forward.
One time, the Library of Congress was giving books to local libraries around the country on Islam. The library of a guy named Walter Jones, who's a member of Congress from North Carolina, got some books and resource materials, and he got up in the press and said he didn't want any Muslim books in the library. And the people said, "Wait a minute, that's kind of anti-Muslim." He said, "Oh no, Keith Ellison is a friend of mine." And I said, "You know what? We are friends, but you're wrong about this.
I'll just say, you know, over the course of the last quarter century I've learned a lot.
