I got you a present.
I made-- I designed you a shoe.
Whoa!
I'll give you that later.
You don't have to carry it around.
From a good Massachusetts company.
Oh, is that right?
Someone's from Massachusetts.
What brings you to Los Angeles?
What are you up to?
Well, I have grandkids out here.
Oh, nice. Oh, that's-- how old are your--
- I came out-- - --grandkids?
--to see family. Youngest one's seven.
The oldest is 16.
Enough to have fun.
Enough to have-- do you take the kids to Disneyland?
Are you a fun grandma?
You bet.
Yes.
The last time I was out here we did Disneyland.
It was a make up for someone's birthday.
And we had a ball. - You did?
It was fun. Yeah.
- Did you wear the mouse ears? - Yes.
You did?
Because that's dangerous, to put on a hat
when you're a politician, right?
They can make fun of you afterwards.
Life is too short.
No, you've got to get out there and do what you want to do.
All right.
That's good.
Because most of the time when we see, you're grilling somebody
or you're letting somebody have it.
Lightly fried.
Are you from an argumentative family?
Are you guys like fighters, a rough and tumble type
of people?
You know that's actually a good question.
I would describe it not fighters in that usual sense.
I'm the baby I have three much older brothers.
And boy I tell you, you grow up in a household
with three older brothers, I mean, it's kind of root, hog,
or die.
They're in there.
But it is the case that I watched the women in my family
really fight for how they saved our family.
I grew up in a paycheck to paycheck family, all three
of my older brothers going off to the military.
Family starting to get a little bit ahead,
and then my daddy has a heart attack.
And he's out of work for a long period of time.
They repossess the-- we lose the family station wagon.
My mom was 50 years old.
She never worked outside the home.
And I remember at nights she put me to bed
and she closed the door and she'd cry
about what was going to happen.
And finally one morning I walk into the bedroom
and she's got that best black dress laid out on the bed.
The one, you know, for weddings and funerals.
And she's crying and she's talking to herself.
She's saying, we will not lose this house,
we will not lose this house.
She pulls on that black dress and she blows her nose,
puts on her lipstick, puts on her high heels,
and walks to the Sears to get a minimum wage job.
And that minimum wage job saved our house
and it saved our family.
And I learned about women who fight to save their families.
Wow.
That's some story.
Now we barely even have Sears anymore.
I know, I know.
Yeah, it all changes.
And yet the part that doesn't change--
this is what really gets to me.
The part that doesn't change is that middle class families,
working families, people who work hard, play by the rules,
they work harder and harder and harder
and just take one punch after another.
It really is the case that, at least when I was growing up,
that minimum wage job my mother got was at a time
when a minimum wage job would keep a family of three afloat.
You could make a mortgage payment.
Today a minimum wage job won't keep a mama
and a baby out of poverty.
And you know why that is?
It's because Washington once upon a time
wrote the rules through the lens of,
what helps middle class families?
What helps poor families get opportunity and move up?
Today Washington writes its rules through the lens of,
what helps the donors?
And the donors don't want to see a higher minimum wage,
than Washington does not produce a higher minimum wage,
and that is fundamentally evil.
It definitely seems to be the case.
And you even have instances now with Mick Mulvaney where
they're actually admitting it.
They're openly saying it. - You saw this.
Mick Mulvaney shows up in front of thousands of bankers
and says, you know, back when I was a congressman,
when the lobbyists came in we had a rule in my office.
When the lobbyist came in, if they hadn't given me any money,
I didn't see him.
If they'd given me money, then maybe I'd talk to him.
You know that's called pay to play.
And that's what's gone wrong in Washington.
That is a Washington that's working for the lobbyists
and not working for the American people.
When there's something that Americans care about,
and we tell them, maybe I tell them
or other people say, call your congresspeople,
call your representatives, your senators,
does that have an impact?
Is that even worth doing?
Oh man, yes, and I'll tell you how we know that.
So think about it.
I went to watch Donald Trump be inaugurated.
I actually wanted to see it.
I was no further than here to the band.
And watch him-- and it's good, because it's now burned
on the back of my eyeballs.
I'm serious, listen.
If I ever get tired or a little discouraged, I think gee,
I ought to be working on other stuff.
I lean back, I see Donald Trump getting sworn in.
I'm back.
But I'm thinking about, after he gets sworn in, I'm thinking,
this is it.
The Republicans now have the House, they have the Senate,
they have the White House.
And they've already said umpteen zillion
times they're going to roll back the Affordable Care Act.
They're going to roll back health
care for millions of Americans.
And we don't have the votes to stop them.
We don't have a way to stop this.
And so you think about what happened.
The day after Donald Trump was inaugurated--
look, his inauguration, the historians
are going to write about it for a long time.
Because it was so big? There was so many people there?
That's right.
First fight he wants to pick, how many people
came to admire me?
His first fight was with math.
But not his last fight with math.
But the next day, what happens?
The biggest protest march in the history of the world occurs.
All those women, all those friends
of women, all those kids who got out and said,
my voice will be heard.
And they protested, they took to the streets,
and then everybody else starts coming out.
We start doing rallies around health care.
You start talking about health care.
People all across this country, people
come off the sidelines-- shoot, the scientists
came off the sidelines.
Right?
When the nerds come out, you know this is it.
They heard it was a women's march.
They're like hey, let us in.
You know, the best sign up--
you have to admit, they had great signs.
- Oh, the signs were fantastic. - Oh, the signs.
Yeah.
My favorite from the scientists
was the one, beer, brought to you by science.
But think about it.
People kept coming out.
That summer I was back and forth in the Senate.
I watched mamas show up with babies
with complex medical needs.
They'd have a baby in a stroller and be pulling a wagon that
had breathing equipment and feeding equipment,
and all kinds of special emergency stuff.
And they would get right in the faces
of these Republican senators who had
announced that they were going to vote
to roll back health care.
And remember, now it was not only the Affordable Care Act.
They were going to rollback parts of Medicaid.
And they would get right in their faces
and say, that's the face of Medicaid.
You roll back Medicaid and this baby does not get the therapist
she needs, does not get the equipment she needs,
does not get the operation she needs.
This baby's life is on the line and I
want you to think about her when you go in and vote.
And remember how it is by the end of that summer.
The House has already voted to repeal health care,
to rollback parts of Medicaid for millions
and millions of people.
When it comes over to the Senate and you
remember how that vote got?
51, 49.
We saved health care for millions
and millions of Americans.
But here's the deal.
Oh, it's to celebrate-- but here's the deal.
We didn't have any more Democratic votes
than we'd had before.
What we had was a change in democracy.
What we had was a change in the people who said,
democracy is not just something that happens like every four
years or every two years.
Democracy is not just, yeah yeah,
I'll kind of pay attention to the one or two offices
and go and vote.
How many millions of people across this country,
whether they had health care or not for themselves, said,
democracy is up to me.
I got to be in this fight.
And they got in the fight, and that's the thing.
It's been another group that's come in off the sidelines.
The latest, the kids from Florida following the shooting
and all across this country.
14-year-olds and 16-year-olds and 18-year-olds that said,
I'm in this fight.
That's democracy.
The new democracy.
And that's all thanks to Donald Trump for energizing us.
There we go.
Right?
I know everybody asks you if you're
going to run for president. And I know--
No.
--you're running for senator right now--
I am.
--and that's what you're focused on.
Yep.
But on the chance that you do one day run
for president of the United States,
have you ever paid off a porn star?
- No. - You have not?
- I'm quite sure. - That's an unequivocal no?
- Equivocal no. - All right.
And also I'm not running for president.
I'm running for Senate.
Massachusetts 2018.
Senator Elizabeth Warren.
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