Democrats Can't Stand Free Speech, Paralyzed by Challenging Opinions, Republican Campaigner Says
12:20 GMT 06.11.2022 (Updated: 13:03 GMT 06.11.2022)
© AFP 2023 / KAREN BLEIER
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As the midterm elections are approaching, Republicans believe they have a good chance of taking over the House of Representatives and boosting their position in the Senate and state legislatures across America, while the Democrats hope to prevent the red wave.
Sputnik discussed the expectations and fears voters have ahead of the Tuesday elections with Adam de Angeli, President of the grassroots campaign Rescue Michigan Coalition on the Republican Super Rally which was held in Michigan before the election.
Sputnik: Republican "super rally" was held yesterday - could you please tell more about this event - why was it held and what were its main goals?
Adam de Angeli: It's pretty common for campaigns to hold rallies. The governor campaign has had many. This was a big one. The candidates for attorney general and secretary of state were there, a couple thousand people showed up and the candidates for Congress were there. They had some candidates for state Senate.
So it was a pretty big event. We went because we had a good amount of campaign literature that we needed to distribute, and that would be the best way to do it, because the election is just three days from now. So we went out there and people were arriving and leaving. We gave out as much as we could, because we wanted to support the ticket. We achieved that objective and got all the literature out.
Sputnik: What was the atmosphere of the event? How many people gathered?
Adam de Angeli: It was a couple thousand people. Some people came from all across the state. I actually drove over in a convoy, so they made a whole day out of it. I only came from my house, which wasn't that far away, so it wasn't that long of a drive for me. But I saw some candidates that I knew that are going to be elected to the state legislature. People are very optimistic. I think they're expecting that it's going to be a very good election for the Republicans on Tuesday, which is not something I think we really thought was likely even as recently as just a few weeks ago. So a lot of people are getting very optimistic as the polls are going our way and that's kind of exactly where we want to be.
Republican Super Rally, held in Michigan before the midterm election. November 5, 2022.
© Photo : Adam de Angeli
Sputnik: Does the Republican establishment support your efforts?
Adam de Angeli: Oh, no. The Republican establishment has actually been quite hostile to our efforts over the past year. They did not support the candidates that ultimately won for attorney general or secretary of state. And in Michigan, we had quite the upset in the race for governor, where five candidates for governor got thrown off the ballot this year. And as a result, the candidate for governor that ultimately won the nomination was someone that they didn't know and had never even heard of. They did, I think, warm up to her, but there was a lot less financial support for the Republicans in this race than there had been in ordinary years. Nonetheless, I think they really did realize they don't want to lose everything this year, including the legislature so financial support eventually came. But even still, it's been difficult this year.
Sputnik: How have the people's sentiments changed since the last elections in 2020? What are people's main concerns and demands now?
Adam de Angeli: I think the main attitude that people have right now is “throw the bums out.” And a lot of that really comes down to the COVID policies. We had the most radical deprivation of our civil liberties in our history in 2020, and I think people were even then kind of willing to put up with it because of the deadly virus that was out there and everything. Now people are realizing it was all a power play. It has nothing to do with public health. It didn't do any good. None of it did. Thousands of businesses were closed. People's lives were upended. They were interfering with people's ability to see their relatives, to go to funerals even.
People's children were kept out of school for months and months; the governor lied about that, claiming she was only keeping kids out of school for three months, which everyone knew was complete nonsense. And of course there's also multiple incidents of hypocrisy. The Governor told everyone: don't leave the state, don't go to Florida in particular because Florida didn't lock down their citizens. And then she and her staff were found in Florida. In fact, the governor herself went to visit her father, who was sick, the very reason she told us we couldn't leave the state. She did the same thing. None of them believe anything they were saying, and everyone knows it. That’s the main attitude driving the election right now - that the people that were allowed to do this can't be allowed to return to power.
Republican Super Rally, held in Michigan before the midterm election. November 5, 2022.
© Photo : Adam de Angeli
Sputnik: In your opinion, are the on-going midterm elections transparent and fair?
Adam de Angeli: We won't really know until Tuesday, but I think there will be fewer issues than there were in 2020. There's some vote fraud that happens, but it's not as pervasive as people think it is. It's not like the machines can just steal the elections. Voter fraud typically happens through absentee ballots, and there's some amount of it, but not a huge amount. And in particular, in this election, number one, Donald Trump is not on the ballot. And I think that was a big thing that motivated a lot of people to cheat in 2020.
And secondly, people are a lot more aware of election fraud than they were in 2020. When I was a poll worker in 2020, one of the things that we found out they were going to do in advance of the election was to use social distancing rules to impede poll challengers, which we ended up suing the secretary of state over. And they actually got a judgment against her about that. But then they went ahead and did it anyway. But this year there is no social distancing anymore, so they can't do that. We've recruited probably close to a thousand people to be poll workers and poll challengers.
So people know what to look for and they know what to expect. I think there's going to be just less of it in general. I don't think we're going to see a significant amount of fraud on Election Day. There may be some of the usual with respect to absentee ballots, but I mean, it's only going to be at worst a percentage point or two, it's not going to be enormous. Election fraud tends to be limited to blue collar areas, places like Detroit. It's not going to be happening all over the state.
Sputnik: You have a Democratic governor in Michigan - what are the main complaints about her? Do you think life would be different if a Republican were in the governor’s office?
Adam de Angeli: I think the biggest and worst thing about the governor was the lockdowns. That's certainly the thing that I think is motivating people now. That was probably the biggest thing. And the other thing, too, I would say, is the state budget increased enormously in the past four years. It went from a budget of something like $50 billion four years ago to now it's almost $80 billion. So it's been a huge growth of government. And I don't think it would have increased that quickly if we had a Republican governor. But that's probably the single biggest issue.
There's other ancillary issues here and there. The big thing in Michigan right now, too, is we have some extremely radical proposals on our ballot this year. One of them is to not only grant a right to abortion up to the moment the baby would have been born. But it would also define "individual rights to all matters relating to pregnancy," which includes sterilization. And what a lot of voters don't understand is when they say all individuals, that includes children. So they create an individual right for children to commit acts of sexual self-mutilation. And that's actually on the ballot this year.
So we've done as much as we possibly can to inform voters about what this is and what it would do. Because there is, bizarrely enough, a radical transgender lobby that's actually supporting this and pushing for it. The hope is that voters will realize how radical these proposals are. There's another one which would remove just about every last remaining safeguard to fair elections in Michigan. It would create a ten-day early voting period, which would make it impractical and impossible for there to be any transparency in the voting process.
What we've been doing is informing voters about these things that are on the ballot and doing everything we can to inform people and mobilize them to understand that there's radical proposals that are on the ballot to put these things into our state constitution. And the governor, for her part, has been endorsing them. We can let people know that these radical policies are things that are A: things to oppose when they show up to vote, and B: things that the governor has been lying to the people about.
Republican Super Rally, held in Michigan before the midterm election. November 5, 2022.
© Photo : Adam de Angeli
Sputnik: You say that the radical Left and their allies in the mass media are doing everything they can to mislead and outright lie to Michigan voters - what is it that they are doing?
Adam de Angeli: That's precisely the thing. They are not telling them what is in these two proposals. There's a third proposal that we don't even talk about much because the other two are so bad. But the third one relates to term limits for lawmakers and they say, ‘oh, this is a proposal to shorten term limits’. Well, it's actually a proposal to lengthen term limits, in the practical sense, because what the proposal does is that - right now, the law is, a lawmaker can serve for up to two terms in the Senate and three terms in the House, which is 14 years.
The proposal says they can serve for a total of 12 years. They go, oh well that's less than 14 years. So that's a shortening of term limits. Well, most lawmakers never get to serve in the Senate because the Senate is much smaller than the House. So from a practical perspective, it means some senators can serve three terms and some members of the House will get to serve six, so their careers are actually doubled.
With proposal two, about the election, they're running ads saying this will make elections more secure. They're even saying this'll make it so that people have to have ID to vote. It does the exact opposite. It says that they cannot require ID as a condition of voting. So they're trying to pass a proposal that will remove all of the safeguards against election fraud. And they're saying it's for election integrity.
Then the third proposal is the one that they say is just to codify Roe versus Wade, which is the abortion Supreme Court decision that got struck down. And the reality is, this does things that are far more radical than Roe v Wade ever condoned. It would say, you have a right to abortion up to the moment of birth. And you cannot pass a law to prohibit that, if, in the sole opinion of the abortionist, the abortion is necessary for the mental health of the mother. In other words, you can't have any meaningful abortion law at all, because all the abortionist has to say is ‘mental health of the mother! Done.’ So it would literally prohibit any regulation of late term abortion.
Demonstrators gather outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Friday, June 24, 2022. The Supreme Court has ended constitutional protections for abortion that had been in place nearly 50 years, a decision by its conservative majority to overturn the court's landmark abortion cases. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
© AP Photo / Jose Luis Magana
And then, as I mentioned earlier, thrown in there is just the fact that it allows for child sexual self-mutilation, in there, which they're not talking about at all. And as we've been talking about it and exposing it, the Democrats on the left are saying, ‘that's not true. That's just not true. That's not in there at all.’ And the problem is that a lot of voters don't understand the legal meaning of the words of the amendment, and that when it says every individual has a right to control all decisions relating to pregnancy, including sterilization, it means all individuals, including children.
So it's been a challenge to explain to people what this actually does, because the average person does not understand the legal meaning of a constitutional amendment. But we've been getting the word out and a lot of people are hearing about it, and a lot more people have been talking about it recently. We made the point early on about this last constitutional amendment. There is a good number of voters for whom any argument about abortion is unavailing because they're pro-abortion. But not every person who is pro-abortion, is in favor of allowing children to have sex changes. We think that's an important point to highlight because the people that wrote this amendment knew what they were doing, and they did know what the legal meaning of those words were, and why they put them in there.
Sputnik: How strong is the split in American society now?
Adam de Angeli: It's pretty profound. I mean, Democrats and Republicans are different people. And Democrats in particular do not even want to talk to Republicans.
One of the big issues we have in this election is free speech. And Democrats are paralyzed by ideas that challenge their opinions, they can't stand it.
That's why there's been a huge push for censorship online. Of course, the big story recently has been that Elon Musk bought Twitter and wants to bring free speech to the platform. And so the Democrats are freaking out and saying, ‘you can't do that. You can't allow these people to express their opinions.’
I actually once met somebody who worked for YouTube. And we were just having a polite discussion about gun rights. And the guy gets up and storms out of the restaurant. He couldn't even talk to me about these things. They have become invested in ideas like that it's a good, positive thing to lock down the entire economy, the entire country over a disease that's slightly worse than the flu and nothing more. And they've become committed to it. And that makes it very difficult for them to accept that they're now a party that's endorsing everything from late term abortion, which in most people's mind is the murder of babies to the damage that they've done to their own families.
That they've accepted lockdowns, the complete destruction of the economy, the complete destruction of civil society as some kind of fair price to pay. And we're in a position now where they have to support all this stuff.
They have to support what the governor did. They have to support what President Biden is doing. And to an ordinary person with common sense the president of the United States is a lunatic.
These people are completely insane and completely incompetent and destroying our country. And so we don't get along very well.
Sputnik: By the way, there's no mention of your rally in Google searches (as of 5 November - ed.note) - why is it so, how biased are the mass media now?
Adam de Angeli: It's pretty bad. We were distributing flyers and a friend of mine distributed a flyer at the rally. He noticed Dave Weigel was there. And Dave Weigel is a professional propagandist for The Washington Post, so he gave him one of our flyers. It's really bad. We did see NBC News was there. So there was some media covering the event. There was a guy there videoing for Reuters. By and large, a lot of people don't realize that our press has always been controlled. This is not new. The mass media has been beating the drums for wars for many, many years. And people that were hostile to those things were just not heard in the news media. The difference now is we have the Internet where people can find the news that they couldn't normally get at all. And that's why censorship of the internet has been such a big topic. And of course we've seen Google and Facebook and Twitter and these other companies colluding with the government to censor speech.
But that's supposed to be completely illegal under the US Constitution. The government is not supposed to have any right to censor speech, but they've clearly been doing it and it's all in violation of case law that's been going back for years. There was a Supreme Court case that said the government even going to a bookstore and saying that they may be under investigation if they don't take a book off the shelves. That was a violation of the First Amendment. Whenever the government is directly involved in censorship, it's a First Amendment violation. There's no case law contradicting that. But they do it anyway and they get away with it.
