McMorrow on CNN: “Michiganders Want A Fighter Who Can Beat Mike Rogers”

McMorrow calls out Trump’s blatant corruption in blocking the Gordie Howe Bridge and how she’ll take it on in the U.S. Senate

MICHIGAN — Tonight, Michigan Senate Majority Whip and U.S. Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow joined CNN’s “The Story Is With Elex Michaelson” to discuss her new ad demanding Trump stop blocking the new Gordie Howe Bridge for his billionaire backers –– and the importance of beating Republican Mike Rogers, who sides with Trump over Michigan every time.

Excerpts of the interview are below:

Look, this is a symbol right in the heart of Michigan of the corruption of the Trump administration. This was a bridge that has been built for years—more than two decades have gone into bringing this bridge to life. This is a crossing that is responsible for 25% of North American trade. The current crossing is owned by one family. It's a 100-year-old bridge.

So, under a Republican governor, Rick Snyder, the process of this bridge was started. Canada paid for the entire thing. The bridge is finished. Thousands of union men and women built this bridge, and the Moroun family that opens the other bridge made a million-dollar donation to Trump's super PAC. They got a meeting with Howard Lutnick, and then, all of the sudden, they finally found a guy to do their bidding in President Trump, who is now railing against this bridge. We were supposed to have a ribbon-cutting just a couple of weeks ago. It was abruptly canceled, and it is a symbol right there of international cooperation of all of the hard work, and Trump is blocking it for his billionaire donors and not for a lot of the same people that voted for him.

[...]

Part of the ad is exactly this: it is raising awareness. You've got the Trump administration, who hopes that people don't speak out on this, that they are walking on eggshells, so that he can do his bidding behind the scenes and get what he wants. And we need to raise the alarm, because this is an issue that cuts across Democrats, Independents, and Republicans. You can see it every time you drive by: the signage is up, it's ready to open. There's only one man blocking it, and that was why it was important for us to go up with this message to shine a light on this corruption, and to encourage people to contact the president to say: open this bridge.

[...]

What is clear across the country is that people are looking for a fighter, that the status quo is fundamentally broken, and there is an outcry for a new Democratic party that actually meets this moment. And I've been saying the same message for a long time. We have to acknowledge as a party that Donald Trump didn't create this mess. He is the result of years, if not decades, of decisions under both parties that continuously left more and more people out of the American dream.

Now, the bet that I'm making is that Michiganders want a fighter who can beat Mike Rogers, the Republican running in November, and who also knows how to do the job on day one. We don't have to accept this false choice, that is either the status quo with Congresswoman Haley Stevens or somebody with Abdul who, a ton of energy that I love that he's bringing into the race, but has never won an election or passed a bill. I googled how to run for office after the 2016 election. I flipped a district in my first-ever run, beating a Republican incumbent. I helped flip the entire state senate for the first time in 40 years, and as majority whip, I've delivered on everything from civil rights to voting rights to health care to housing, you name it, we've done it. And as we think about our kids' future, my daughter is five. As I think about her future, I want to know that we're sending somebody who, yes, knows how to fight and knows how to stand up, but also knows how to get the job done, and that's the bet that I'm making for Michiganders.

[...]

I just want to set the table here, because yes, the President, you know, in the Oval Office said that he loves inflation, and he doesn't care that gas prices are high, he doesn't care that people are hurting, he only cares about himself. And we've got a guy in Mike Rogers who is Trump's handpicked candidate for this race, who, when the president posted that he was going to annihilate an entire civilization never to be seen from again, when he started the war in Iran, Mike Rogers said, "Good, that's peace through strength.”

So, number one is beating Mike Rogers, because we cannot afford to lose Michigan, we cannot afford for somebody who's going to be loyal to Donald Trump to get into this seat. But number two is Congress has to take back its power as a coequal branch of government. I have built up a track record here in the state of not only working within my caucus, the Democratic caucus, but working across the aisle to get things done for people.

[...]

That is how you build a coalition to fight effectively and make sure that we take our power back to get our tax dollars out of these forever wars overseas and put it back into daycare and Medicare and Medicaid, and the things that the President told us we cannot have because we're paying for his war.

###