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To read more about Episode 256, visit the main episode page.

Michael Moore [00:00:15] Hello and welcome to Rumble with Michael Moore. I’m Michael Moore. It’s good to talk to all of you today. I’m actually recording this on Sunday, September 25th — 44 days away from the midterm elections. And that means come Tuesday here this week, September 27th, that will be the six week mark, six weeks until the November midterms. The election day is November 8th. Many states have early voting that will start in October so find out from your local city clerk, county clerk, find out when you can start to vote and you can vote early. Many states now have very easy ways to vote by absentee ballot so you can find out about that, too. But I thought what we’d do today is I want to kick off the 44 days that we have now before this election, and on today’s podcast, I want to tell you what I think is going to happen come Election Day. And what I’m going to tell you, a lot of it, you haven’t heard much of in the mainstream media. I mean, this is the story of my life basically for the last 30 plus years of making my films, writing my books, being on social media, my TV series, everything I’ve done all these years, a lot of it is based on the fact that I just felt like we, the people, we’re not really being told the truth about what was going on. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes just because our journalist friends don’t really have it figured out. And so they present analysis and ideas that I don’t think are correct. And I don’t live in a bubble. I don’t live in the Hollywood bubble, I don’t live in the mainstream media bubble. I feel like I’m connected to the world that we all live in. I grew up in the working class. I maintain all of those values. I have been blessed to be able, though, to have this platform, to be able to reach millions of you. And so that’s what I do here on my Substack, with my podcast, with my columns that I write, etc. And today I want to share with you a bit of a manifesto that I wrote here yesterday about these last 44 days, the last six weeks before the midterm election on November 8th. 

[00:02:36] Just to give you a taste of why I’m doing this, I’m so tired of listening on television, on the news, online, the nonstop punditry of how the Democrats are going to lose the House. The Democrats are going to be lucky if they get to maintain their 50/50 control of the Senate. And it’s just, you know, Biden, all of his horrible approval ratings and everything, you know, “lose, lose, lose” is the tone. And I think that that’s maybe not so correct. And that’s what we’re going to get into here today. Just to give you a taste of this, back here earlier this month, on September 7th, The Washington Post, a reporter for The Washington Post, his name is Philip Bump, he wrote a story, an election analysis. And the headline of the story was, “Most enthusiastic about voting? According to polling: Republican Men.” Let me just quote from Phil Bump’s article here in The Washington Post. This is what he writes, “On Tuesday, I looked at the growing murmurs that American women in particular are going to flood the polls in the wake of the Supreme Court decision of Dobbs versus Jackson. Protecting access to abortion in the wake of the dismantling of Roe v Wade quickly became a rallying cry aimed at November. But,” says Phil, “polling doesn’t indicate that Democrats have seen a big surge in support from female voters.” I’m trying to keep a straight face while I’m reading this. “In fact,” he says, “data provided to The Washington Post from the polling firm YouGov indicates that the group that reports the most enthusiasm about voting is the polar opposite of what you may expect. Republican men. And this,” he says, “this enthusiasm has grown.” 

[00:04:42] Republican men. I read that and I thought, “Oh, yeah, of course they are because, you know, they’ve been so abused and downtrodden. And there’s all these Supreme Court decisions that have gone against men. You know, men have had their rights taken away. Men are being told what they can do with their bodies, what they can do with their reproductive organs. Men. Yes. Men are the most enthusiastic group of voters come November.” Like Phil — have you been around for the last few months? Have you spoken to any women? Look, I know you mean well, and I know you’re basing it on some polling that’s been done. I’m not against all polling — I think the polling that’s done oftentimes when it involves issues, when we’re trying to get a sense of what does the public really feel about the climate crisis, about abortion, about guns, you know, the issues I think the polls are generally fairly accurate. When it comes to candidates and elections — meh, not so much. And this sort of setting the tone right after Labor Day that it’s a man’s election once again. Men, men, men, men, men are going to swarm to the polls to protect their rights. And remember, every piece of bullshit does have a kernel of truth to it. And the kernel of truth here is, in fact, yes — but I think enthusiastic is the wrong word that men are the most enthusiastic group wanting and needing to vote in November. Phil I think you’ve got the word wrong. I don’t think what you’re seeing is enthusiasm. I think what you’re seeing is men who are frightened. You’re seeing fear. That’s what’s afoot here. Men are frightened as they have been now for some time. We’ve seen this not just the January 6 riots and all that, but long before that. White men, especially, men who have controlled the world since, I don’t know the Ice Age? For 10,000 years, white guys, which includes me, have had a good run here. We’ve been in charge, called the shots, benefited the most from it all. And now that’s changing. And so when men see the change, they light up their tiki torches, hold demonstrations. “We shall not be replaced. We shall not be replaced.” And they fill in different words for who won’t replace them, whether it’s Black Lives Matter, Jews, women, anything that they feel threatened by, because white privilege has been the rule of the day for a very long time. And you know, when you have power, you don’t like to give up power. Who wants to give up power? Power, you know, means you got a better life. But now men, white men, are very afraid. And that’s not enthusiasm. 

[00:07:47] They’re coming out to vote because women, black people, people of color, young people are now the ones that are going to take control. The scientists who do the demographic predictions, right now they’re saying around 2042, about 20 years from now, white people will be the minority in the United States. I think my tone of voice switched there to one of glee. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a self-hating man or white person or whatever. I’m just saying, you know, we’ve had our shot at it. We’ve done some good things. We’ve done a lot of not good things in these hundreds of years. And maybe it’s time that the power is shared, especially with the majority of the world. The majority of the world is female, not male. The majority of the world is of color, not white people. So this isn’t such a bad thing and it’s not something to fear. It’s something to embrace. The fact of the matter is, is that nearly 70% now of the eligible electorate, the voters, of this country, United States of America, are either female, people of color, or young people between the ages of 18 and 35, or a combination of the three. That is now the make up of the voters of this country. And that is why, according to The Washington Post, men are enthusiastic voters come November. I’m going to unpack this a little bit in this manifesto that I’ve written. I want to read it to you. It’s not long, but I want to lay this out and then I’m going to make a promise to you — what I’m going to do over the next 44 days and I’m going to provide to you on each of these days as we kick off here the final six weeks before the November elections, the midterm elections. So I’m going to get into that in just a second. 

Michael Moore [00:09:46] First, I’ve got to thank our wonderful underwriter for today’s episode of Rumble, and that is Shopify. So if you’ve listened to this podcast before, you’ve heard me talk about Shopify. They are a longtime supporter of this podcast — not only of this podcast, but they were also instrumental in helping us set up the Moore Store last fall. That’s my online store, which I use to help raise some money for causes I care about. If you haven’t yet, check it out. A portion of the proceeds from every t shirt or ball cap or whatever goes to support movements to end voter suppression and also to bringing back civics classes into our public schools. So Shopify, it’s the online commerce platform and they helped me make this happen. Shopify gives access to resources once reserved for big business, and it makes it available to all of us so anyone, anywhere can start, run and grow their own online shop. So if you have an idea for an online shop, a little home business, whatever, or maybe you want to do it through your school to have a school store. I mean, any of a number of ideas you can join myself and the millions of others who use Shopify. Go to Shopify.com/rumble, and make sure rumble is all lowercase, and you’ll get a free 14 day trial and get full access to Shopify’s entire suite of features. So grow your own business, be your own boss with Shopify today. Go to Shopify.com/rumble right now. Thank you Shopify for supporting this podcast and my voice. 

Michael Moore [00:11:22] Okay. So welcome back here and we’re ready to go. This is my midterm manifesto that I wrote yesterday and that I want to share with you today. I entitled it “Mike’s Midterm Tsunami of Truth”. In 44 days, the tens of millions of us who have had enough are going to descend upon the polls en masse. A literal, overwhelming, unprecedented tsunami of voters. And nonviolently, legally and without mercy, we will remove every last stinking traitor to our democracy. Well, maybe not every last one, but I think we can get rid of a lot of them because I think we are the majority of this country. So for the next 44 days, I’m going to give you the proof of my belief that this is actually going to happen on November 8th. Here’s what I’m going to do. Each day on my Substack, I’ll give you one quick, solid, shareable reason how and why the anti-democracy forces are going to go down in a bonfire of defeat. I’m going to post here on my Substack and you’ll get it in your email if you’re a subscriber. And if you’re not, you just go to MichaelMoore.com to subscribe. It’s free. Just sign up. So each day I’m going to send you a very brief two minute daily read. That’s it. Each day I’m going to have 44 of these. This is the first one where I’m going to explain to you how we’re going to win in November and why you should start feeling good about it, good enough to get out and participate, because actually it won’t happen on its own. Unlike Trump, who can actually declassified documents just by thinking about it, just through his brainwaves, his special powers. He’s able to declassify things by thinking. We can’t win in November with you and I just thinking, we have to do. Back in the Catholic school that I grew up in, starting in first grade, we had these books, these workbooks that we had every year, and the workbook was called “Think and Do”. “Think and Do”. It’s a great title for a little kids workbook in elementary school. So, yes, we’re going to do some thinking and I’m going to tell you what I’m thinking right now. But then we have to do. We all not only have to vote, we have to bring five people with us to the polls. We have to convince another ten people to show up on their own. We’ve got to remind them. We’ve got to knock on doors. We’ve got to make calls. We’ve got to participate in our local towns or neighborhoods to Get Out the Vote. 

[00:14:31] What I’m going to do for you every day in these 44 days is just send you a couple of paragraphs to prove to you how we’re going to win, how this can happen, how we’re going to stop the onslaught against our democracy, how we’re going to remove these Republicans from office, the pundits and the Trumpsters. I mean, they have been on a daily rampage to convince you and me that we’re going to lose the House. How we hear this every day. I was watching it last night on the CBS Evening News. Said that the Republicans are going to have 11 more seats than the Democrats come November. Constantly telling us that we’re going to be stuck with a gridlocked Senate. It’s going to stay 50/50, if we’re lucky. Oh. And nonstop telling us that Biden is such a loser. Horrible approval ratings. He’s not going to make it. Inflation. Everything that’s happened. Right? We listen to this every single day. Well, I’m going to tell you something. And I’m sorry to use such harsh language here, but they’re lying to you. The pundits. The Trumpsters. Many in the media that don’t get it. They know exactly, though, what they’re doing when they keep telling us all this defeating, depressing news about how we’re going to lose. And the reason they think it’s going to work is because, well, they’re convinced, thanks to our own past behavior, that we are frightened of the Right. That we believe we’re going to lose. That we’re filled with pessimism and cynicism and are justifiable doubts that the often lame Democrats are experts, experts when it comes to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. This we know to be true. They know we know that. And so all they got to do is drop a few little pieces of information at us every day or two telling us how much, how bad we’re going to lose. And we buy it. We believe it. 

[00:16:48] But I’m here to tell you that the tide has turned and it has turned massively. Much of what many in the media are telling you is just patently false and/or just plain wrong. They are simply regurgitating the old narratives and the stale scripts. Maybe they’re just too overworked, or they’re too lazy, or they’re too white and too male to open their eyes and see the liberal, left, progressive, working-class and female uprising that is right now underway. So here I am today, here on Rumble to do for you what I’ve always tried to do for you since I was elected to public office at the age of 18. I’m here to tell you the fucking truth. Good or bad. And believe me, my friends, this year, it’s very, very good. I know, right now you’re going, “No, Mike, it’s not. No, no, it’s not.” I know why you feel that way. We’ve been through a rough period here. Four years of Trump. Covid. Now, there’s a war in Europe. I mean, just on and on and on. And so it starts to feel like it’s never going to get better. But I want to say this to you: while the pundits and your Republican brothers-in-law are deflating you by having you believe that Trump will be back, when in fact he’s actually never left, and that there are millions of MAGA heads out there armed with millions of guns (and there are), and all of that is supposed to make you feel defeated and scared so that you might just decide, “Well, I just don’t have the time to waste on politics these days. We’re going to lose anyways. I’ll vote. I’ll vote. But that’s it. Because we’re all doomed anyways.” Well, my friends, stop. Stop with this. This is exactly where they want you. You have to resist this. No matter how much evidence there is, how bad it is, and how bad they are. There are many more of us than there are of them. That’s just a fact. That’s just the truth. I mean, since the 2000 election where Gore won the popular vote by half a million votes, the trend has only kept rising. Gore wins by half a million votes. Hillary wins in 2016 with over 3 million votes. And then Biden wins with 7 million votes in 2020 from a half a million in 2000 to 3 million in 2016 to 7 million in 2020. Do you see where this is heading? You need to put this on your refrigerator or something on a magnet, something that just says to you that the Republicans have only won one a presidential election by the popular vote. They’ve only won it once in the last 34 years. So only once since 1988 when George the first got elected. Every election that after that other than one — the 2004 election were W won by one state, 150,000 votes — that’s all he won it by. That’s how close we came. Every single presidential election and I believe — how many is that? Let’s see, after ’88 there’s like ’92, ’96, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020 — that’s eight presidential elections. In the last eight presidential elections, the American public has overwhelmingly — now by the millions — said, “We don’t want the Republican in the White House. We don’t want a Republican running this country. We don’t want a Republican in control or having the power. We want the Democrat. We want the liberal.” Seven of the last eight presidential elections. And I know you’re saying to yourself, “Well, Mike, if it’s been so good, why are the Republicans in charge? How are they able to stop everything in the Senate, and the House? How do they control the Supreme Court? How do we end up with eight years of Bush and four years of Trump in these last 20 plus years?” Well, you know the answer to this: cheating, gerrymandering, rigging, voter suppression. All these things that we have to change once we hold true and full power. 

[00:22:04] And that’s what’s going to happen in November. I’m here to tell you the truth. That not only have our numbers grown so large in these last 20 years, but especially in the last two years. And not just because we’ve done such a great job of building our numbers — we’ve been helped. We’ve been helped by Mr. Trump, by his MAGA heads, and by the crazy decisions that the Republicans have made that have told the American people that these characters are out to lunch, they are nuts. And I’m telling you, my friends, I believe that there is now going to be a landslide on November 8th. And the idiots in our decimated media — I’m sorry, they just don’t have a clue. So many of them are wrong in their predictions. And if you really don’t believe that, I’ll just give you one reminder. This is what The New York Times wrote on the morning of the 2016 election, okay? 2016 election where Trump became president, on the morning of the election, here’s the headline in The New York Times: “Who will be president?” And then the big, big box, it says in big, bold letters: “Hillary Clinton has an 85% chance to win the presidency today.” This is November 8th, 2016, and they got a little picture of Hillary and under her it says “85%” and under Trump, “15%”. The New York Times on Election Day in 2016 told the world that there’s only a 15% chance of Trump becoming president. And this is The New York Times. 

[00:24:09] I’ll give you another example. In that same year, in 2016, during the primary season, the media told us voters in Michigan on the morning of the Democratic primary in 2016 — in the Detroit media and on the Channel 2 News in Detroit that morning, I was watching the morning show, the local morning show, and they had a poll. And it said, that morning, that Hillary was going to win our state of Michigan in the Democratic primary. That day, she was going to win by 26 points. Wow. She was ahead of Bernie by 26 points. 12 hours later at 8 p.m., the polls closed in Michigan. And they had the votes counted somewhere between 10 and 11 p.m.. And guess what? Bernie won the Democratic primary in the state of Michigan. We were just told that morning, we’ve been told all week and all month before that Hillary, Hillary, Hillary was going to win. By 26 points. This is why you have to turn whatever the knob is in your head that listens to the pundits — you have to turn that knob to off. I mean, they’re the same people who told us earlier this year that Biden’s goose was cooked. Oh, he’s down to 32% approval rating. And now where is he? 49%. Gets all of his stuff passed. There’s the same people also told us, right, that Manchin and Sinema would never vote for any of Biden’s plans. Sadly, they got their compromises, but they ended up voting. We got all those things passed, and signed by Biden — who was “a cooked goose” six months ago. “Oh, inflation! That’s going to kill Biden.” It’s the same nonstop drumbeat, isn’t it? The same people told us — do you remember when when the Ukraine War started earlier this year? “Oh Russia. The tanks are rolling in. They’ll be at Kiev within a couple of days. Russia will probably — they’re just going to take over the Ukraine.” Some said it will be a week before the Russians have the country, or two weeks. The more conservative ones gave it a month, and Ukraine would fall. Do you remember this? Do you remember what we were told? I mean, my friends, just pick any topic. And sad to say, the pundits are usually wrong. 

[00:27:04] And sadly they also seem to feel no sense of shame. What they’re really up to is to protect the interests of the owner class. They’ll never admit it. But they go with what they think is the conventional wisdom. The wisdom of who? The wisdom of black people? Black women? Young people? Women in general? No. No. That’s not who owns all of this. They have a vested interest in having you think that you fighting back is useless and hopeless. So for these next 44 days, I’m going to give you a brief, honest daily dose of truth, and the real optimism that these truths offer us. I will clearly show you how we are going to achieve victory in November. Of course, you and everyone you know will have to do your part. Hey, like I said, we can’t just think this in the happening. You’re going to have to vote. You’re gonna have to knock on doors. Make calls. Get five friends to vote — whatever it is you can do. And spread these searing truth bombs that I’m going to send you each and every day until the election. So let’s get fired up, my friends. Tune out the cynics. Tune out the naysayers. This is no time to be depressed. This is no time to be sitting around going, “Oh, I don’t know, Mike. I, it’s just they’re, they’re just look at the, his rallies. They’re so large and they’re it’s all and you know, I got to listen to my relatives and they’re just there’s more these people.” Yes, there’s a lot of them. Yes, I know. I live here, too. You know, Trump got what did he get? 64 million votes? That’s 64 million people who after having lived, lived through four years of Trump as president, wanted more of it. And then, according to some analysis that I’ve read, as you know, 53% of white women voted for Trump in 2016. According to some reports, the number actually went up two percentage points in 2020: 55% of white women voted for Trump. I know. “See Mike. See how bad it is? He’s convinced the majority of white women.” It’s okay. It’s okay, because we don’t live in the white country we used to live in. I mean, white people still have the power. White men still have the control. Even though women are the majority gender, as I’ve told you. They’re 51, 52% of the country, and they’re only 26% of Congress. So, right, women don’t have the power. They’re not paid the same as men in many jobs where they’re doing the same job. All of this still has to be fixed. That won’t happen until we’re in power. 

[00:30:30] So I’m not trying to say, and I know a lot of you are thinking, “You’re on some kind of drug, Mike. What makes you think that we’re going to win?” I think this way because I’m part of the ‘we’. We are the majority — the majority who believe the climate the climate crisis is real. The majority who believe that we need strong gun control laws. The majority who believe that no government should have a right to control a woman’s body. We’re in the vast majority. Go down through all the issues. The American people agree with us. Right there. The work is done. You know, back in the day, back when I was a kid, back before me, when the Civil Rights Movement, when the Women’s Movement, when these movements didn’t have the majority of Americans with them — only had a few percent of the American public on their side — think of how hard that was to convince them. Think of how hard it was to convince the American public in the mid ’60s that the Vietnam War was wrong. The vast majority of Americans supported the war. That took hard, hard work. But eventually — and I always think of this one statistic that I love: every year, 4,000,000 17-year-olds turn 18 and legally can vote. And you know what’s great? You know this about young people — whether you’re one of the young people that I’m speaking to right now, whether you’ve raised young people, you know this about them. They don’t like Trump and they don’t like what he stands for, and the vast majority of young people are not haters or bigots, misogynists. You know, you’ve got to trust this. I’ll say it again. 70% of the American voting public is either female, people of color, or young, or a combination of the three. That’s the country we live in. 

[00:32:45] My friends, Rovember is coming. Roevember is coming, baby. And we are going to party like it’s 2029. I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen in 2029, I’m just trying to rhyme with a Prince song here, so… No, but I mean this. I mean, I’m not laughing — I mean, I am laughing, but I’m only laughing because I am filled with a very good sense of joy that we may be on the precipice of turning this country around. I know. I know. Every bone in your body is going — you’re resisting hearing this. “No, it’s not true. We’re fucked. Everything sucks.” Yeah. A lot of stuff does suck. And a lot of people in this country are still fucked. That’s correct. And, oh my God, those who want to keep us in the place that we’re in, they must hate the fact that it’s still one person, one vote. And that’s, of course, why they do everything they can to pass these laws, to suppress the vote, to make it harder to vote. And you may be saying to yourself, “Yeah, that’s why we’re not going to win, Mike, because they’ve done that. Whatever Trump tried to do with the 2020 election, they’re going to do more of that in 2022.” Mm hmm. Yeah, they’re going to try all right. But so what? They’ve got to go up against us — the vast, angry majority. We’re angry — and not in a January 6 sort of way — we’re angry because we’ve had to put up with this, and we’re lucky that we still have a chance to stop it. And this is why we have to get out there and vote on November 8th or vote early or by absentee ballot if you can. 

[00:34:45] Thank you for listening to this. Thanks for the time. This has been number one of Mike’s Midterm Tsunami Truth. And if you’re on my Substack, you got the written version of this yesterday. So you’re going to get number two actually tonight. And then we’ll be caught up in our 44 day extravaganza, our campaign here to take this country back. Number two is tonight. Look in your email for it, in your Substack. And I want you to share these things again. They’re very brief. Just share these little bits with your friends, your family, your neighbors. Don’t spend a lot of time trying to convince a Trumpster to change their mind. That’s not going to happen. Sadly, they’re lost for now. We’ll get them back once we are in power and we’re giving them the things that they deserve to have in this society. So let them go for now. Our job is to really the 90 million nonvoters, the people that don’t vote. We need to get them registered here in the month of October and we need to get them out to vote. So think about that. Think about a neighbor, a friend, a classmate, a coworker, maybe somebody who gave up on voting and tell them why you understand why they did, and here’s a reason to come back just this once, just this once, here on November 8th. If we do that work, if we do that outreach to just the few people that are in our lives — think about how that can multiply and how we can create this tsunami of voters for the November 8th midterm election. Please be sure to read it or listen to it and share it with friends and family. Thanks to my producer and editor Angela Vargos. Be well. This is Rumble with Michael Moore. I’m Michael Moore and I’m getting excited about this election. Let’s just friggin do this!

[ MUSIC: “1999” by Prince ]