RFK Jr.’s former running mate, Nicole Shanahan, has thrown her support behind Donald Trump in the 2024 election. She joins Glenn to explain why a liberal like her has endorsed Trump over Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party. Shanahan lists her biggest issues with the current Democratic Party, including why she no longer believes the Democrats are the party of true liberals. Plus, she reviews her viral “TDS” ad and explains how to cure people of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: Welcome to the program, Nicole Shanahan. We are thrilled to have you on, Nicole. How are you?
NICOLE: Hi, I'm very good, Glenn. How are you doing?
GLENN: I'm good.
You know, I'm excited on it talk to you for multiple reasons. But we're not going to really talk about policies.
Because I'm sure we disagree a lot on policies. But there is a -- there is a bigger umbrella, that we both really agree on.
And that is the Bill of Rights.
And what is happening to our country right now. Can you take us from where you were, when you first signed up with RFK? And what changed you to the point, to where -- you're now saying, yeah. I mean, Robert is right. He should be running with Trump.
NICOLE: Uh-huh. Yeah. You know, I have been, I'm a lifelong California Democrat, liberal.
And worked really hard, over the last 15 years of my life. To try to do the right thing.
Create, you know, a merit-based society.
I've -- I do it with a lot of love.
I do it with a lot of desire.
And I do it with a lot of science as well.
I'm an AI developer.
In Silicon Valley. Affiliated with Stanford now for over ten years, went to law school, in Silicon Valley. Was an IP lawyer. Entrepreneur.
So I -- you know, was very comfortable within the Democratic Party for many years.
But I have to say, something happened in 2016, that started a cascading series of events. That has led to amorphous, in the Democratic Party, that make it immoral, in my opinion.
Unprincipled. Lacking honesty, lacking transparency, lacking competence.
And they feel entitled, to throw away revery important principles. Principles like the Bill of Rights. Principles like the, you know, our First Amendment. Free speech.
Principles like not using sabotage in Democratic processes.
It's -- and they feel entitled, entirely.
And I've done this investigation.
I did this investigation. Prior to leaving for the party. Because I tried to reform the party.
I tried for years, to find someone at the DNC.
You know, they gutted, you know, any real leadership, at the DNC.
They put in, a guy who is just -- you know, they don't even bother to talk to the official leadership of the DNC. Because they think it's irrelevant.
It's just a carry along program now.
It's just a carry along group, that is just almost an administrative pocket, for the Pelosi contingent.
And so I -- saw it falling apart from the inside. With a great deal of concern.
And, you know, at some point, as a donor, they kind of just push you into a corner. And they say, well, if you don't want Donald Trump, you have to support us.
And that's their bottom line. That's all they have left, as a policy.
Is not Donald Trump.
And my last response, in the weeks before I left the party, was that is not a policy. That is not leadership.
GLENN: Yes.
NICOLE: You can't run on a platform of not Donald Trump.
GLENN: Nicole.
NICOLE: And, you know. Oh, go on.
GLENN: It amazes me, that so many people, are willing to say, to the person who was the lowest ranked vice president, really despised by the -- she couldn't hold anybody in her office.
Her policies were all upside down. For -- for America in 2020 when she was running for president.
And now, people are saying, oh, she's the greatest. Oh, she's great.
They don't care about the policies. They're voting for an oligarchy.
They're voting for a machine. They don't care!
NICOLE: Yeah. And, you know, I think that the thing that makes me really sad is that they're using, these wonderful American sensibilities.
And they're abusing them, to manipulate their voter base. And, you know, she's a woman of color. She -- you know, it's selling that. For everything it's worth right now. And that to me, is the kind of thing that goes against the very liberal principles, that I was raised with.
I was raised with, you know, yes. We should have a social net. We should not be racist.
We should fight for the underrepresented.
But that is not what this is. This has morphed into, something else, entirely.
That tells people, that it doesn't matter, how -- incompetent you are.
If you can check a box of a minority, on a sheet, that is enough.
And you should be celebrated for that fact.
And the -- and that to me, is really sad. And that's why when people say, oh, the Democratic Party is all of these liberal progressives. That's not what this is.
That's actually a form of racism, in my opinion. Because it creates a hierarchy based on race.
GLENN: Yes! It goes against everything Martin Luther King taught. Everything that Martin Luther King taught.
NICOLE: Everything.
And all of the things I was raised on in Oakland as a little girl coming up, and I'm a brownish woman.
Like, I -- like, I have -- I grew up in Oakland. And Oakland public school systems. And you was in a very multi-cultural place. And these are not the principles I was raised with.
So this is coming from someplace else.
And it -- it does ring more closely to what my mother grew up in. With -- in communist China. Which is this single narrative, totalitarianism.
Which uses phrases and slogans.
And really kind of a form of cultural brainwashing.
To really solidify power.
GLENN: So talk to me about -- look, I really don't mind, there's opposition in all things.
And we should be having debates. I don't want my way or the how.
And I'm perfectly willing to accept that America might disagree with me, and go another way. And vote for another candidate.
If we're actually talking about the issues.
You know, if we're actually talking about real policies.
We're not lying to each other, you know. We're not, you know, just operating with chaos. And confusion.
Or, you know, rigging the system.
But that's I think what's happening.
And I don't know how, Nicole, we can reach out to our -- you know, our neighbors. I believe Democrats are good people. I think some of them are bad. Just like some Republicans are bad.
But the average person that lives on my street. That votes differently.
I don't think they want totalitarianism. I don't think they want another war. How do we talk to them, to get them to wake up and go, wait a minute.
This is not what they say they are?
This is -- this is not the democratic party, anymore.
NICOLE: Yeah. I'll just be honest with you, Glenn. My lived experience now, running for office, with RFK Jr., as a third party, and seeing how low the Democrats went and how they qualified their behavior with these beliefs. That, you know, some of them know, are just not true.
Like, let's talk about what Rachel Maddow said about, if Trump wins, he will be a dictator, and he will send people like me to camp.
That is a big statement, for someone on the mainstream media to say.
This is not a joke. And so, people who respect the mainstream media, are watching this. And taking it as truth. And it really -- so, you know, I feel like my job has been trying to take statements like that. And unpackage them for the -- for the Democrats, who are listening to that.
And only receiving their news through those channels. And telling them. I'm really sorry you believe this. It's a scary thing to believe.
I know you believe it fully in your being right now.
But she's lying to you. And let me tell you why.
So I just --
GLENN: Okay. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Can you unpack that for us here? Let me take a break for one minute. Then we'll come back. Then you unpack it. Tell us -- do what you do.
And convince people, who are dead asleep, why that's a lie.
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You know, we are lucky enough to be in the situation, where we are the world's reserve currency.
But that can destroyed.
And I think it's being destroyed by using Cloward and Piven's strategy of collapsing the system. Just -- just get everybody on to the dole, as much as you can. That's why, you know, we're I guess in California, now. They're just, if you're an illegal. Or you're -- you know, an undocumented, you can now get a loan, through the government.
That's insanity! Insanity!
So what is going to happen?
Well, eventually, we will lose our world reserve currency status.
And that will mean, we will be Venezuela, overnight.
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Ten-second station ID.
And then....
GLENN: So how do you convince people, Nicole?
Go through that, and unpack that.
NICOLE: Yeah. So I've been toying with different ways of doing this with my team.
I don't know if you saw the ad we released last week.
GLENN: I love it. Love it.
NICOLE: You know, I had never even heard of that term, until I went on Tomi Lahren, and she used that phrase.
GLENN: Wow.
NICOLE: And after my interview with Tomi, I had to look it up.
GLENN: Wow.
NICOLE: And I thought it was really interesting. Because when I -- when I paired, this idea of like, you know, people are so afraid. Of Donald Trump. For these reasons.
For the reasons, that, you know, Rachel Maddow is propagating.
It really creates a -- an environment of psychosis.
So I try to approach it, in the same way, I approach somebody, who is having a really hard time.
And maybe it's because they don't have full information.
Or they've been shaken by something. Or someone.
Or there's peer pressure around them. And I -- you know, humor always breaks through, that first layer. If you can get people to laugh, they -- they loosen up.
It sends these either happy chemicals through the body.
And it actually opens up the brain for receptivity.
So we -- I was just -- like, we produced that video, for I think under $10,000.
And it's gotten 65 million views.
We didn't have to buy influence or anything.
GLENN: It's fantastic.
NICOLE: We just had to be good. We had to be funny. And we also had to kind of show truth in it. If you go through that TDS commercial, there's a lot of truth in it. We don't mince words.
GLENN: Right.
NICOLE: We're really gentle. We don't even endorse Trump at the end of it. We're just calling for people's independence, to return to them.
Their critical thinking.
And they laugh. Even the Dems, truly showed it to -- laugh. You know, some people were resentful.
There was a -- my father-in-law is actually a never Trumper. And he was a little resentful. But he still chuckled.
So that opened up a conversation. That then allows us to dig a little deeper.
And that next layer is really going, point by point through.
All of the top ten things that Never Trumpers believe. They believe that January 6 was an insurrection, and innocent service members on Capitol Hill died, as a result.
And so you have to unpack that. Megyn Kelly did a really, really good job with that one.
But there are certain facts that are just being kept from Democrats, about January 6th, and the insurrection.
You know, for one, that Trump called for peace.
He said, go forward peacefully.
GLENN: Right.
NICOLE: And then issues around the National Guard not being deployed.
There were so many inconsistencies. And unpacked there at that. You have to do it patiently. There are really smart Democrats. They take time to get through.
But once you get through that first layer of TDS, you can start to be -- the second one is that -- go on.
GLENN: No. Go ahead. No, no, go.
NICOLE: I'll just go through the top three.
GLENN: Okay. All right.
NICOLE: The second one, I keep hearing, about Donald Trump.
Is he's bad for women.
And gays.
And I've had many of my gay community, come to me, and say, how can you be supporting someone who could hurt me.
And I -- my response is, you know, he was actually one of the first presidents on day one, to -- to say gay marriage was okay.
He never attacks gay marriage. And they don't know that. People don't know that. And then reproductive freedoms I hear a lot as well. And this is one in which I think that the Democrats really screwed themselves. Because it -- it was the Supreme Court. The highest court in our nation, handed down effectively constitutional reframing of reproductive freedoms, from being a federal issue, to a state issue.
That's all that happened.
GLENN: Thank you.
NICOLE: That's all that happened.
So when people say, he took away my reproductive freedoms.
And I'm like, what state are you in?
New York. Well, my sister works at Planned Parenthood. I'm like, how many -- how many abortions did she do last year? And they're like, oh, she's done a lot actually.
GLENN: Right.
NICOLE: So I'm kind of just, you know, trying to level it in the most compassionate way I can. Any time you're dealing with somebody, out of fear, the best thing to do is to have compassion.
GLENN: Nicole, I would love to have you for a podcast. I find you fascinating.
And I hope, that more ask more people catch on to what you're doing.
And wake up. Our republic depends on it.
Nicole Shanahan. Thank you. God bless.