As Donald Trump prepares to enter the White House for a second term, the reasons people voted him into office are becoming more clear.
For Micki Witthoeft, it’s cause for celebration. Her daughter, Ashli Babbitt, was shot and killed by a police officer after storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Today, Witthoeft is confident Trump will stand by his word and pardon everyone involved.
“He said his administration’s going to be one on ‘promises made and promises kept,’ ” she said. “I felt like he was talking right to me.”
But it’s not the same sentiment for all voters. This week on Reveal, we look at the many contradictions behind Trump’s victory, with stories from hosts Hanna Rosin and Lauren Ober of the new podcast from The Atlantic, We Live Here Now; Mother Jones reporter Tim Murphy; and Reveal producer Najib Aminy. We delve into January 6ers seeking pardons, “messy middle” voters who split their ballots, and members of the Uncommitted movement who wouldn’t vote for Kamala Harris despite being opposed to Trump.
Dig Deeper
Read: How Ruben Gallego Defeated Election Denier Kari Lake in Arizona’s Senate Race (Mother Jones)
Listen: A Little Bit of Power (This American Life)
Listen: We Live Here Now (The Atlantic)
Credits
Reporters: Tim Murphy, Hanna Rosin, Lauren Ober, and Najib Aminy | Producers: Nadia Hamdan and Ashley Cleek | Editors: Jenny Casas, Brett Myers, and Marianne McCune | Fact checkers: Nikki Frick, Kim Freda, and Michelle Ciarrocca | Production managers: Steven Rascón and Zulema Cobb | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Original score and sound design: Jim Briggs and Fernando Arruda | Production help: Claire Mullen | Legal review: James Chadwick | Interim executive producers: Taki Telonidis and Brett Myers | Guest host: Michael Montgomery | Special thanks: Ethan Brooks, Claudine Ebeid, and Adrienne LaFrance at The Atlantic and Sophie Hurwitz, Noah Lanard, Jacob Rosenberg, and Jeremey Schulman at Mother Jones
Support for Reveal is provided by The Reva and David Logan Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Park Foundation, The Schmidt Family Foundation, The Hellman Foundation, and Reveal listeners.
Transcript
Reveal transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. Please be aware that the official record for Reveal’s radio stories is the audio.
| Michael Montgom…: | From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Michael Montgomery in this week for Al Letson. A few days before Donald Trump’s election victory, his running mate, JD Vance, held a rally in Scottsdale, Arizona. Mother Jones reporter Tim Murphy was there. The race in Arizona was expected to be close, very close. Tim went to the rally to talk to voters, and he heard many of the same talking points he’s heard throughout his reporting on Trump. He says it like it is. He’s good for business, he’ll close the border. And while Tim was standing there baking in the sun, waiting for Vance to take the stage, he overheard a conversation between two voters that surprised him. It was a civil but passionate debate over Arizona’s Proposition 139, a referendum that would guarantee the right to an abortion in the state. One person was against it, the other was very much in favor. Her name is Stacie Bouchier, and when Tim talked to her, she told him something he hadn’t heard at one of these rallies before. |
| Stacie Bouchier: | That’s why I can’t call myself a true Republican. Stay out of my bedroom, stay out of my uterus. |
| Michael Montgom…: | Stacie describes herself as 100% pro-choice. That’s why she told Tim she can’t call herself a true Republican, but she’s at a JD Vance rally, a man who has described himself as 100% pro-life. Tim wondered, how does she square these things? We’ve heard from a lot of Trump diehards. We’ve heard from plenty of Never Trumpers, but this election was defined by another kind of voter who sits somewhere in between, a place Tim calls the messy middle. We brought Tim in to hear what Stacie and voters like her can tell us about this election. Hey Tim, thanks for joining me. |
| Tim Murphy: | Hey, thanks for having me. |
| Michael Montgom…: | Okay, so like all of us, you’ve been on a wild ride with these elections, and I know you went to Arizona expecting the sort of post-election chaos that we saw back in 2020. |
| Tim Murphy: | Yeah, I was out there planning to cover a contested vote, but found something else. I’ve been calling it the unsettled electorate voters who are in that messy middle that aren’t as neatly red or blue as the maps make it seem. Trump won the election and states like Arizona because he had the support of people who didn’t necessarily define themselves as part of his base. Stacie’s own split ballot told a complicated and some might say contradictory story. |
| Michael Montgom…: | Yeah, I mean this election was full of contradictions and we’re still trying to talk to voters to understand the results. That’s why I’m curious to hear what you learned from Stacie. |
| Tim Murphy: | So Stacie lives in Fountain Hills, Arizona, which is just outside Phoenix. She’s 52, divorced, and lives alone with her French bulldog, Zorro. |
| Stacie Bouchier: | Hold on. Zorro, come here. Sorry guys. I have a dog that’s being grumpy. |
| Tim Murphy: | When I interviewed her after the election, she told me some of the same things she told me that day at the Vance rally. |
| Stacie Bouchier: | I will forever stand on my soapbox about being pro-choice. That is something that has not changed in my entire life, and a lot has changed in my life over a lot of different points of views about different things. |
| Tim Murphy: | Stacy told me she cried when Roe was overturned. And remember, this is the first presidential election in half a century without Roe. So when Proposition 139 came up for a vote in Arizona, she was an enthusiastic supporter. |
| Stacie Bouchier: | Once Roe v. Wade was overturned, my only option as a voter was to protect it in my state constitution. That’s it, and it’s why I didn’t vote for Kari Lake. |
| Tim Murphy: | Lake was the Republican candidate for US Senate endorsed by Trump, and she’s called abortion, the ultimate sin. For Stacy, those kinds of views are a deal breaker. So she split her ticket and voted instead for Democratic Congressman Ruben Gallego. In part because of his support for abortion rights, not only did Gallego win, but Prop 139 passed overwhelmingly this month with nearly 62% of the vote. |
| Stacie Bouchier: | And yet Trump won in the state. So I do think there are a lot more people like me. I mean, the few close friends that I have here in Arizona that I do talk politics with, they’re very much centrist like me. I don’t even think they would consider themselves Republicans or Democrats. |
| Michael Montgom…: | I’m curious. So when Stacie describes herself as a centrist, what does that mean? |
| Tim Murphy: | Stacie thinks of herself as a moderate. She gets her news from all over the political and global spectrum, CNN and Fox News. She reads BBC, The Guardian, Al Jazeera. |
| Stacie Bouchier: | I vote based on what I think is going to be best for myself as an individual, but also for the state. And I truly hope that the people representing me are staying true to what their constituents are asking them for. And if they don’t, I will vote them out. I have no problem. |
| Tim Murphy: | So Michael, she’s not loyal to any party and though she voted for him in this election and the last one, she’s not a Trump loyalist. For today’s Republican voter, some of Stacie’s views seem more liberal. |
| Stacie Bouchier: | Equality for all. For one, I’m big on… I have friends that are in the LGBTQ+ community that I’m a hundred percent supportive of. They deserve every right that I deserve. |
| Tim Murphy: | And of course being staunchly pro-choice. |
| Michael Montgom…: | So I totally get why she is interesting to you as a reporter, Tim. But Stacie’s key values seem to be in such contradiction with what the Trump campaign is promised to do like key figures in Trump’s circle take a very hard line against abortion, for example. |
| Tim Murphy: | Stacie told me that she thinks a lot of what Trump says is awful. She wants to tone down the rhetoric on sides, and you hear this line that voters take Trump seriously, but not literally. That is sort of what Stacie is doing. She thinks she’s correctly reading between the lines on what the Republicans say they’ll do and what Democrats say they’ll do. Neither completely speaks to her, but she’s more comfortable with what the right was offering, at least in regards to the presidency. |
| Stacie Bouchier: | Do I think he’s going to put in a national abortion ban? No. He has too many other things that I think are a priority on his agenda to focus on a national abortion ban. |
| Tim Murphy: | Michael, I think this is a really important point. A lot of people just didn’t believe that Trump was going to do the things that Democrats said he would. They weren’t even sure Trump was going to do all the things Trump said he would. It was the same thing with immigration. |
| Stacie Bouchier: | I don’t agree with all of Trump’s messages about deporting everybody and everything he said he was going to do, but there needs to be immigration reform. I don’t agree with the way the Biden administration basically just opened the border with no rules. I mean, we need to allow for immigration, but there needs to be checks and balances. |
| Tim Murphy: | Now, this isn’t actually true. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris backed an effort to expand the border patrol and even continue building Trump’s wall. Stacie isn’t really accepting either candidate at their word, but she feels like when it comes to Trump’s rhetoric, she’s correctly reading between the lines here too. |
| Michael Montgom…: | And Tim, what if it isn’t just rhetoric? As you know, many voters view Trump’s plans as authoritarian, and they’re worried that a second Trump administration could do real long-term damage to our democracy. |
| Tim Murphy: | Stacie says she has faith in our democratic system and that Trump’s worst impulses will be kept in check. |
| Stacie Bouchier: | I’m not worried about it. It’s four years. I truly believe that our founders built this political system so that things don’t swing too far left or too far right and it’s why our election system is set up the way that it is, so that we can prevent fascism, communism, and we can have a democratic republic. |
| Tim Murphy: | And it’s not entirely irrational either. There’s a lot of evidence that Trump often fails to deliver on what he says he’s going to do. There was a sense going into the election that Americans wouldn’t elect Trump again because they’d lived through his first term. The reality was that they were ready to elect him because they had lived through the first term. I think Stacie is also indicative of something else that’s really important. The selection really came down to the cost of living. Stacie has been laid off twice in the past four years and has been unemployed for a year now. She’s mainly worked in tech on the marketing side of things. When we last spoke, she’d just come from a job interview and was really hoping for good news. |
| Stacie Bouchier: | I mean, I’ve been living on my savings, my 401ks that I’ve had to sell off. I have my real estate license, but the real estate market isn’t what it used to be either. So it’s been a struggle. |
| Tim Murphy: | Part of the reason Stacie moved to Arizona from California eight years ago was because of housing costs. It’s something that was brought up by almost every voter I spoke to, both Democrats and Republicans. An NBC news analysis found that Trump overperformed in counties where it’s hardest to buy a home and that struggle is something that Stacie and so many others are feeling right now. And that’s why the economy is one of our biggest issues. |
| Michael Montgom…: | I mean, we know from exit polls that inflation was a huge issue in these elections, and it’s also something we’ve seen in elections around the globe. But Tim, the fact is that Trump grew the national debt more than the Biden administration. And many economists say Trump’s economic plan, and in particular, his emphasis on tariffs are likely to grow inflation even more. |
| Tim Murphy: | Yeah, that’s true. But for Stacie, the discussion around tariffs is “all speculation at this point.” She’s more concerned with what she sees as out of control, government spending and blames democratic policies that are putting more money into more social programs. Obviously, it’s a bit more nuanced, but for Stacie feeling the impacts of high inflation, soaring housing costs, and seeing news reports of immigrants receiving government assistance, it was easy for her to connect her situation to policies from Washington Democrats. |
| Stacie Bouchier: | It’s not about, “Oh, we need to keep raising taxes so we can pay for more programs.” It’s let’s work within what we have and then make the adjustments as needed. It’s what we do in business. It’s what we do in our personal lives. I don’t understand why the government gets a pass. |
| Tim Murphy: | That’s why she voted for Trump. It was the economy, stupid. |
| Michael Montgom…: | Right, and that’s a line we’ve been hearing that goes back to the Bill Clinton administration. |
| Tim Murphy: | And Stacie says that she actually voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 on his promise to balance the budget, and he did. She says it was an amazing accomplishment, something she hopes to see this time around. |
| Stacie Bouchier: | I just think there are so many more opportunities with a strong economy, which comes from, I won’t say necessarily a balanced budget, but a budget where spending is not out of control. |
| Tim Murphy: | Socially liberal and fiscally conservative is kind of a cliche, but she’s not preaching some kind of austerity gospel, something you hear a lot in Washington. She doesn’t think this kind of spending is translating into real benefits downstream. It just feels like common sense, and it’s not necessarily a partisan frame to her. Stacie also says her vote was more anti Harris than pro-Trump. I mean, when I first met her she called Harris the devil. As a transplant from the Bay Area, Stacie said she was really put off by the sort of California liberalism that she felt Harris represented. And Stacie says she’s often felt dismissed by many on the left as if her concerns weren’t as important. |
| Stacie Bouchier: | I mean, a perfect example is the fact that you have people like Jimmy Kimmel and The View and the whatever going, “You people don’t know what you did.” That’s where I think people feel insulted. They’re not feeling heard. I mean, you want to feel heard. To have celebrities who make millions of dollars, they are so self-righteous and so just oblivious to what the normal person has to go through day to day to put food on the table. |
| Tim Murphy: | In the end, Stacie just thinks that Trump presidency will be better for her in the long run. And as we all know, she’s not alone. |
| Stacie Bouchier: | I think the biggest thing that drove change in the way that the votes were cast is the fact that every day Americans that have normal jobs with families with normal salaries can’t afford to put food on the table. And that is first and foremost, I think, more important to a human being than any other issue. And when that’s put in jeopardy, they’re going to think and possibly change how they voted. |
| Michael Montgom…: | Okay. So Tim, you cover US politics and I want to know what you’re reporting in Arizona and in particular, what Stacie’s experience tells you about these elections. |
| Tim Murphy: | Yeah, I think one of the main takeaways you get from talking to someone like Stacie is that it’s messy. The electorate is messy. You tend to look at it in these hard red, blue binaries, but when you actually talk to somebody in kind of the middle of the electorate, what they’re saying doesn’t necessarily map easily onto either party’s talking points. So I think it’s worth understanding just how unsettled the electorate was that actually voted for Trump. The Stop the Steal crowd is real and it’s troubling. But there are also a lot of people out there like Stacie who just made a judgment call not through any allegiance to a cult of personality, but based on their desire for a course correction. And there’s a lot of people who will find this confusing and they won’t understand Stacie’s vote, and she’s not concerned about that. |
| Stacie Bouchier: | If somebody stands that firmly in their belief and believes I’m wrong, I can’t change their mind and I’m not going to try. I want to be productive. I want to do things that are for good. I’ve stopped trying to convince everybody in the world that I’m right. This is just how I feel. |
| Tim Murphy: | You write off people with these kinds of sentiments at your peril. As for all the talk that you get from the loudest voices on the left and the right and think, you could say that voters like Stacie swung this election, and it’s very possible that they’ll swing the next one too. |
| Michael Montgom…: | Tim, thanks so much for sitting down with me. This reporting is super interesting and super important. |
| Tim Murphy: | Thanks for having me, Michael. |
| Michael Montgom…: | Tim Murphy is a reporter with Mother Jones. Voters like Stacie don’t think Donald Trump will do everything he said he’s going to do, but in his victory speech, Trump said his administration would be all about promises made, promises kept, and some of his supporters are banking on that. |
| Micki Witthoeft: | I don’t need anybody to think she’s a hero. I just don’t want people to Google my daughter’s name and see “domestic terrorist.” |
| Michael Montgom…: | January 6th and Trump’s promise of pardons. That’s up next on Reveal. |
| Michael Montgom…: | From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Michael Montgomery in for Al Letson. Two years ago, not long before launching his presidential campaign, Donald Trump called into a nightly vigil held outside the Central jail in Washington, D.C. |
| Donald Trump: | Okay, well, Micki, it’s an honor to be with you. And to everybody listening, it’s a terrible thing that has happened to a lot of people that are being treated very, very unfairly. |
| Michael Montgom…: | The people Trump’s talking about are the so-called J-Sixers who’ve been arrested for their involvement in the January 6th insurrection. |
| Donald Trump: | We love Ashli and it was so horrible what happened to her, but we cannot allow this to happen to our country. So God bless everybody. We are working very hard. |
| Micki Witthoeft: | Thank you for calling, President Trump. I know the men inside appreciate you as I do as well. |
| Michael Montgom…: | That last voice is Micki Witthoeft. Micki’s daughter, Ashli Babbitt, was shot and killed by a police officer inside the Capitol building on January 6th, and it was Micki who started these nightly vigils outside the jail. She’s also helped create an alternative history, one that Trump has embraced in which the people who stormed the Capitol are not criminals, but rather patriots. That alternative history is at the heart of a new podcast from The Atlantic. It’s called We Live Here Now, and it’s hosted by Hanna Rosin and Lauren Ober. The podcast takes an intimate look at the people who are hoping President-elect Trump will fulfill some very real promises he made, including pardoning many of the Jan Sixers now in custody. Lauren and Hanna spent more than a year reporting this story, so I asked them to come into the studio to talk about it with me. Hi Hanna. |
| Hanna Rosin: | Hi. |
| Michael Montgom…: | Hey, Lauren. |
| Lauren Ober : | Hello. |
| Michael Montgom…: | So first I just wanted to ask some basics about Micki. Lauren, you’ve been getting to know Micki for quite a while now, so tell me about her. |
| Lauren Ober : | Sure. So Micki Witthoeft is the mother of five children, including Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. She has four other living children. She’s from San Diego. She was very much apolitical. |
| Micki Witthoeft: | I was lucky enough to live in the same house for 24 years and raise my children. And then my husband and I moved onto a boat and we lived in the San Diego Bay and my life was good. I was happy. |
| Lauren Ober : | Until Ashli returned from her military service, she served in the Air Force and she returned a Trump diehard. She started talking about MAGA and QAnon, and for the most part, her mother was, Sure, sure, yeah, yeah. That’s great that you feel that way. That’s really not for me. And I think Micki had a shift in her political leanings after the 2020 election, and she felt that there were inconsistencies that led to the wrong results, and she got a little bit more politicized, but not radical in any way. Not like her daughter. She wasn’t that interested. |
| Micki Witthoeft: | I didn’t even realize what was going on in DC was going to be such a big fricking deal. I was very much removed from that. |
| Lauren Ober : | And after her daughter died, she really took up her daughter’s cause. |
| Micki Witthoeft: | Ashli was a beloved daughter, wife, sister, granddaughter, niece, and aunt, she was the quintessential American woman. Today is a dark day for our family and this country for they have lost the true patriot. |
| Michael Montgom…: | So Hanna, I want to turn to you. A lot of people have seen the video of Ashli’s death. Do you know if her mom has actually seen it? |
| Hanna Rosin: | Well, she told us that she hasn’t been able to bring herself to watch the videos. That people have explained to her what’s in the videos, but she hasn’t been able to actually watch them, which you can understand why. |
| Micki Witthoeft: | We are walking to the Capitol in a mob. There is a sea of nothing but red, white, and blue patriots and Trump. And it was amazing, you could see the president talk. |
| Lauren Ober : | So on January 6th, Ashli breached the Capitol and somehow she found her way into this hallway that led to the House Speaker’s lobby, which is where all of the lawmakers were certifying the election. She gets to a series of doors that are locked, they’re barricaded with furniture. Somebody breaks the window on one of those doors with a helmet. Ashli attempts to climb through. In the videos, you can see that there’s a plainclothes police officer behind those doors and he is holding out a gun. Now, whether Ashli Babbitt saw that police officer, or heard him, or not, nobody knows. She climbed through the broken window and immediately that police officer fired once, hit her in the shoulder, she fell back and died. |
| Michael Montgom…: | And as you point out, it turned out this group was very close to lawmakers. |
| Hanna Rosin: | Yeah. From a distance and knowing the context, it all feels very threatening. Like you see the congressman in the background, you can actually see them through the window panel of the door that she’s jumping through. So this police officer is in fact the last stand between the mob and the lawmakers, quite literally. So it looks like an extremely thin line. So when you know all of the information, the threat is clear. But if you weren’t there and you aren’t taking in all that information and you aren’t seeing the videos like, what you know as a mother is, my daughter is five foot two, she did not have any weapons, and who could she possibly hurt? Why would you kill her? |
| Michael Montgom…: | So after her daughter’s death, Micki is in deep mourning. She’s calling lawmakers all the time trying to see if she can get more information about her daughter’s death and kind of getting nowhere. And then you show in the podcast, these two things happen. First, a far-right congressperson, Paul Gosar, starts publicly talking about Ashli. |
| Paul Gosar: | Was Ashli Babbitt armed? |
| Michael Montgom…: | And asking questions about how she died. |
| Paul Gosar: | Was the death of Ashli Babbitt a homicide? |
| Speaker 1: | Congressman, I’m not trying to be unhelpful here, but I just cannot comment. |
| Paul Gosar: | I understand. I understand, but I mean we’re coming to my time, as the death certificate says, it was a homicide. |
| Michael Montgom…: | And then Micki has a dream where Ashli comes to her and says something like, “I’m gone. You can’t help me, but you can help the people who were arrested for January 6th.” And so Micki transforms her life. She moves from California to DC into your neighborhood. Tell me how you first met. |
| Lauren Ober : | Sure. So Hanna and I were walking our dogs in the neighborhood as we do every night. And we walked past a car that we had been seeing in the neighborhood for weeks that had stickers that don’t exactly fit our neighborhood vibe. So there were Justice for January 6 stickers and militia stickers. And we walked past the car this time with the dogs, and I happened to say, “There’s this militia mobile again.” And it turns out that there was somebody in the car who clapped back. |
| Hanna Rosin: | Just to be fair, Lauren has a very loud voice. She cursed at the militia mobile. I mean, just so that we’re fair about how this altercation started. |
| Lauren Ober : | Okay, fine. Fine. There was use of an F word in there to qualify the militia mobile. And then the person in the car said “Justice for January 6th,” to which I immediately responded, “Well, you’re in the wrong neighborhood for that, honey.” And then she responded, “We live here now, so suck it…” not nice word. |
| Michael Montgom…: | So these are your new neighbors. And it turns out the person in that car was Micki’s roommate. And in August 2022, they start hosting those nightly vigils outside the D.C. jail, where they’re demanding that some of the J-Sixers be released. I know Lauren, you went to this vigil, I don’t know, like a dozen times. Describe it to me and why it’s become so important for Donald Trump and his supporters. |
| Lauren Ober : | So the vigil takes place on this patch of sidewalk that these folks who run this vigil call freedom corner. So there’s six to 12 people who stand on the sidewalk and there are speakers and flags waving and January 6th propaganda, and they have a regular routine. The men from inside the prison call out through loudspeakers to talk to them. They sing the national anthem. |
| Speaker 2: | (Singing) |
| Lauren Ober : | And so, it’s this very routinized operation every single night from 7:00 to 9:00 P.M. |
| Hanna Rosin: | And then how it starts to swirl and attach to the national consciousness is that Trump himself starts to become the subject of many prosecutions and he begins to see himself as victimized. |
| Donald Trump: | I am the political prisoner of a failing nation, but I will soon be free on November 5th. |
| Hanna Rosin: | So, you can see how this all swirls and becomes a very powerful force, which in my mind culminates in his campaign appearance in Waco, Texas. He uses the version of the national anthem and melds it in a recording with himself saying the Pledge of Allegiance. So you have a literal audio melding of all of their voices, and that becomes his core identity as he’s really kicking up his campaign. |
| Donald Trump: | I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. |
| Michael Montgom…: | Micki at some points is kind of skeptical towards politicians. She seems to understand that they have their own agenda. And so as Trump starts getting involved using her name more and more, how does she deal with that? |
| Lauren Ober : | She understands the instrumental nature of their engagement. Like, I get something out of you talking about my kid. You get something out of us being on the corner here. There is some symbiotic relationship there, but I don’t think that she… she’s not enamored by politicians. She doesn’t have stars in her eyes when she hears about Trump. |
| Hanna Rosin: | Now that said, purely practically speaking and people’s feelings aside, Trump could help her. One, he could pardon the J-Sixers, which is one of her missions, which he said he’d do many times and he could. I mean, he could just demand another federal investigation into the person who shot her daughter. Those are all within his purview. So he is the fastest path to get what she considers justice. |
| Michael Montgom…: | So, Lauren, so Donald Trump is elected and you have another conversation with Micki. |
| Lauren Ober : | That’s true. I interviewed Micki at her home the day after election day. I wanted to gauge how she was feeling in this sort of post-victory glow. |
| Micki Witthoeft: | I feel amazing today, and I think that your lack of faith in President Trump, it’s not just me. I know you guys want to paint us all as wackadoodle cult followers, but I mean, it’s over half the country. It’s a sweep of people that are just sick at the status quo. And last night in his acceptance speech, he said his administration’s going to be won on promises made and promises kept, and I felt like he was talking right to me. |
| Lauren Ober : | One of the things that Trump talked a lot about on the campaign trail was, I’m coming for my enemies, retribution. That didn’t necessarily seem to move the needle with voters, but it was something that he talked about a lot at his rallies. And I wonder, is there a version of retribution that you would like to see? |
| Micki Witthoeft: | I would like to see an investigation and see people held accountable for their crimes, which I do believe includes a lot of our government officials, Christopher Wray, Merrick Garland. I think all of those people have behaved arrestively. |
| Lauren Ober : | What does that mean? What’s “arrestively” mean? |
| Micki Witthoeft: | I mean, I think they’ve committed crimes. |
| Lauren Ober : | Such as? No, we’ve never talked about this before. I’m curious. |
| Micki Witthoeft: | Well, we’re going to have to talk about that some other time. |
| Michael Montgom…: | Okay. Micki wants to see Biden administration officials prosecuted, though it isn’t really clear for what, and then there’s the legacy of her daughter. How does she want to see Ashli be remembered? |
| Lauren Ober : | So I think Micki feels like she just wants her daughter to be remembered as a patriot. |
| Micki Witthoeft: | I don’t need anybody to think she’s a hero. I don’t need anybody to think she’s a martyr. I just don’t want people to Google my daughter’s name and see “domestic terrorist,” ’cause she loved this country and she proved it with her actions most of her life. |
| The thing is, the elation of the situation is tied up with such sadness and such lost time. And even if I get exactly what I want, I will never have what I lost. So I’m happy for the country and I think that it’s going to mean a lot to all the Jan Sixers, myself included. And so, I am happy about that. This doesn’t look like happiness, but it’s happiness. It’s a hope. It’s hope and hope can be a dangerous thing ’cause you just never know how these things are going to go. | |
| Michael Montgom…: | It’s really clear how raw this still is for Micki, and January 6th remains an incredibly loaded emotional day for a lot of people, even if they weren’t directly impacted. I’m wondering, after reporting this story for a year, where does it leave your kind of reporter-neighbor relationship with Micki? |
| Lauren Ober : | I don’t know yet. I mean, it’s hard to say. I don’t mean to laugh, but it’s really a sort of up in the air question because the dust is still settling and I think it will for some time. Micki asked me a question, why did I not like Donald Trump? I said, I’ve never indicated that to you, but let me tell you about my concerns. And she listened to those concerns and she didn’t try to tell me that I was wrong, and I felt in some small way like that was progress. I was able to hear her about why this moment meant a lot to her and what she was hoping that this moment might bring and look, I mean, we’ve still walked our dogs past their house and said hi. |
| Hanna Rosin: | I think for me, it’s going to depend a lot on what actually happens like, the day Donald Trump takes office, is he going to pardon the J-Sixers? What is he going to do to Washington D.C.? How are we going to start to write about January 6th in our school textbooks? There are a lot of things that I’m going to be watching that I feel are going to determine my mood about my neighbors. I mean, I’ll always wave to them. I’ll always say hi to their dog, Oliver. But deep in my soul, I’m a little unsettled. |
| Lauren Ober : | Also, we might have changed our dog walking route on some mornings where we didn’t necessarily feel like engaging. |
| Hanna Rosin: | It’s true. It’s like, there definitely have been mornings where we’re like, not walking in that direction. |
| Lauren Ober : | Not today. |
| Hanna Rosin: | I’m not in a howdy neighbor kind of mood right now. |
| Lauren Ober : | Right. |
| Michael Montgom…: | One thing that’s interesting is that in many ways you were following a fairly small group of people. The vigils were sometimes pretty small. And people who, some Americans, maybe many Americans kind of just wrote off as fringe thinkers, conspiracy theorists. But that’s kind of changed now that Trump’s been elected. I’m curious how you look back on this year of reporting now that we’re beyond the elections. |
| Hanna Rosin: | So, when Donald Trump becomes president, he could decide, Ashli Babbitt is a great American hero, and then a lot of truths follow from that. If Ashli Babbitt is a victim and a hero, then so are the political prisoners. I mean, we are not exceptional. I say this to all of my American friends. We are not exceptional. It happens in so many other countries that history gets erased and retold in different ways. There is no reason why it wouldn’t happen to us. And then a couple of generations down the line, that’s how it’ll be remembered. |
| Michael Montgom…: | Hanna Rosin and Lauren Ober are hosts of The Atlantic’s newest podcast, We Live Here Now. And I should add that Hanna also hosts The Atlantic’s weekly podcast, Radio Atlantic. |
| In a moment, we’re going to meet a group of voters who had problems with Donald Trump’s policies and Kamala Harris’. So on election day, they did something that for many people was unthinkable. | |
| Layla Elabed: | I 100% understand how that confuses people. I’m confused. |
| Michael Montgom…: | That’s next on Reveal. |
| Michael Montgom…: | From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Michael Montgomery in for Al Letson. For Micki Witthoeft, Donald Trump’s win was a huge victory for her and all the January Sixers who fought for it. Now we turn to a group of voters who also lobbied hard for a cause they believe in, the Uncommitted movement. That’s the group that made waves pushing hundreds of thousands of voters to withhold their support for the Democrats. They wanted the party to commit to concrete policies to end Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, but that power plate didn’t work so Uncommitted voters were left to make their own choices. Reveal’s Najib Aminy landed in Michigan the night before the vote to follow how the election would play out for one of the Uncommitted movement’s leaders. |
| Najib Aminy: | Where am I right now? It is the Blue Moon Hookah Lounge in Dearborn Heights. It’s just like giant TV screens everywhere and then all the way on the side facing the windows. Layla is just sitting down, has a laptop open and is in the middle of a Zoom call. |
| Michael Montgom…: | Palestinian American activist Layla Elabed has an ornate hookah pipe next to her laptop. The water makes this bubbling sound with each inhale. |
| Najib Aminy: | What’s the flavor? |
| Layla Elabed: | Red, white gummy bear, white mint. This has been my stress relief for the last year. |
| Michael Montgom…: | Layla is a Democrat and over the past year she’s helped grow the Uncommitted movement from just a few volunteers to 700,000 voters across several states and more than 30 delegates who attended the Democratic Convention this summer. Now, the night before the election, she’s bracing herself for the results. |
| Najib Aminy: | Her body language is a little bit tired. She’s wrestling with her own like, well, what’s my role in this? Did I do right by my people? |
| Layla Elabed: | Can’t wait till this is over. |
| Michael Montgom…: | One thing Layla was anticipating was criticism, mostly from Kamala Harris supporters, but it was already coming from former members of her own movement in an online story that just dropped. |
| Layla Elabed: | This is not what our community needs right now. This is not helpful. |
| Michael Montgom…: | Meanwhile, at home her youngest daughter, Rosie, was also putting her on blast. |
| Rosie: | You’re always on calls when I’m trying to watch something and you have to be in the room that I’m in. You’re like, “The delegates are so mad.” The delegates, the delegates. |
| Michael Montgom…: | Even Najib caught some heat from 10-year-old Rosie. |
| Rosie: | Wait, I have a question for you. |
| Najib Aminy: | Shoot. |
| Rosie: | Why are you stalking my mom this whole week? |
| Michael Montgom…: | Najib did indeed spend the whole week, not stalking but following Rosie’s mom. He brought back this window on what it’s like to stand your ground when so many people wish you wouldn’t. |
| Najib Aminy: | On election day, I met Layla at her polling place early in the morning. How was your sleep last night? |
| Layla Elabed: | I haven’t slept yet. I think there’s just an overall feeling of anxiety. Not so much about my vote in particular, but the overall outcomes. |
| Najib Aminy: | I got to watch Layla cast your ballot and I could see that it took her a good chunk of time. I saw you took a photo of your ballot. |
| Layla Elabed: | I took a lot of photos of my ballot. I did post the picture of the top of my ticket. |
| Najib Aminy: | She shared it with her followers on Instagram so they could see her final decision. Which was… |
| Layla Elabed: | Which was blank. |
| Najib Aminy: | No vote for Harris. No vote for any presidential candidate. How do you feel? |
| Layla Elabed: | This decision to skip the top was not an easy decision to make? Because I want to be principled and my ethics and morals are really, really important to me. And one of them is being an allyship with Black and Brown communities and immigrant communities and with women and being in sisterhood and all of that, and I know the dangers that a Donald Trump presidency presents. |
| Najib Aminy: | You’re still thinking about this even as you- |
| Layla Elabed: | I’m still thinking about this. I’m still thinking about this. Yeah. |
| Najib Aminy: | The Uncommitted movement didn’t endorse Harris, but they also advised their followers not to vote for Trump. And during my week with Layla, I saw over and over how seriously she takes a question she’s asked all the time. If you don’t want Trump to win, why wouldn’t you just vote for Harris? |
| Layla Elabed: | I 100% understand how that confuses people. I’m confused. I’m confused because we played the good part of Democrats, we signaled, we gave a gift on a silver platter. Hey, you don’t have the support you need to defeat Donald Trump, do something now. |
| Najib Aminy: | The Uncommitted movement tried pushing for smaller things like a speaker slot at the Democratic National Convention and bigger things like the promise of an arms embargo on Israel. They were looking for some kind of pivot, something they could take back to their supporters. The night of the election, I met a Pakistani American who painted a vivid picture of the kind of pivot this community was looking for. |
| Amin Hashmi: | I was not happy. I was holding my vote, and I was waiting Kamala would change. |
| Najib Aminy: | We were at a packed watch party in a halal food hall and Amin Hashmi told me about this scene in a Bollywood film. It’s where the actor Shah Rukh Khan is at a train station. |
| Speaker 2: | [Foreign language 00:06:03]. |
| Najib Aminy: | Watching as the woman he loves walks away. He’s hoping she’ll turn around and look him in the eye before she steps onto the train. |
| Amin Hashmi: | The girl was going away from him and he was saying palat. |
| Najib Aminy: | Hindi for turn, turn. And at the very last moment, she turns. |
| Amin Hashmi: | And it took little time, and then she turn around. And he clipped that eureka moment. That’s what I was hoping with Kamala, palat, palat, palat. |
| Najib Aminy: | Instead, the palat he was looking for came from someone else. |
| Amin Hashmi: | The guy we hated so much, he showed up last week. |
| Najib Aminy: | It was Donald Trump who came to Dearborn. |
| Amin Hashmi: | He hang around with Muslims, fielded all the stupid question that we ask. Every damn question that we had in our mind for last one year, he answered it. I wanted that even Muslim word coming from Kamala, that would have made me a little more convincing. He looks angel to me. |
| Najib Aminy: | Trump looks like an angel. I also visited with Layla on election night. When I stopped by her home in the evening, her daughters were upstairs and asleep. She still had to do the laundry, the TV was turned off, but she knew Trump was leading Michigan and many swing states. Is this what you wanted? |
| Layla Elabed: | Trump leading in the polls in Michigan? No, it’s not what I wanted. What I wanted was Vice President Harris or any Democrat at the top of the ticket to do something, to adopt a policy that said that they were going to end the bombing of people that we care about. |
| Abbas Alawieh: | My name is Abbas Alawieh. I’m joined here by my sister, Lexis Zeidan. |
| Najib Aminy: | The day after the election, Uncommitted held a press conference at this popular Yemeni coffee shop in town. |
| Abbas Alawieh: | Thank you to members of the press who joined us. I’m happy to take any questions. |
| Najib Aminy: | Reporters were throwing all the same questions Layla’s been asking herself. |
| Layla Elabed: | Are you staying as part of the Democratic Party? |
| Najib Aminy: | Will you try and work with the Republican Party? |
| Layla Elabed: | Is there any plan to also bring those concerns to the Trump administration? |
| Najib Aminy: | Are you going to include members of your community who voted for Trump? |
| Abbas Alawieh: | Do you feel that you have listened to them? |
| Najib Aminy: | And of course there was the question of blame. |
| Layla Elabed: | There’s some finger pointing, oh, the Arab American community caused this loss, but what it is… |
| Najib Aminy: | Now that all the votes have been counted, it’s clear many more Americans than those who pledged Uncommitted were disillusioned with the Democrats. Countrywide, Layla’s followers weren’t the deciding factor. But in Dearborn and statewide in Michigan, the group did have a significant role in Harris’ defeat. She lost the state by 80,000 votes. If Layla had convinced every uncommitted voter to choose Harris, the Democrats might’ve won Michigan. |
| Layla Elabed: | I’ll put it on speaker. Hello. |
| Speaker 3: | Hey, how’s it going? |
| Layla Elabed: | Hey, it’s going… |
| Najib Aminy: | After Election Day, I got more time with Layla riding shotgun as she drove back and forth across Dearborn hopping from one call to the next. |
| Speaker 3: | You’re not being interviewed by somebody right now? |
| Layla Elabed: | I am actually. How’d you know? |
| Speaker 3: | Are you? |
| Layla Elabed: | Yeah. |
| Najib Aminy: | This call was from one of the delegates who voted Uncommitted at the Democratic Convention in August. |
| Speaker 3: | Oh, no. I was just calling to see how you were doing, to be honest. |
| Najib Aminy: | She tells him something one of the co-founders of the Uncommitted movement told her. |
| Layla Elabed: | He was like, I hate talking about this in the way that Uncommitted failed, when there was so much that we actually did that did move the needle. |
| Najib Aminy: | In some of Layla’s calls and conversations, I could hear her looking for a silver lining. |
| Layla Elabed: | The way that people are talking about the issue of Palestine shifted because of what we were able to do through Uncommitted and all of it. |
| Najib Aminy: | When she wasn’t on the phone, I asked what her kids made of all this. |
| Layla Elabed: | When we were at home, Rosie asked, “Oh, what are you going to do now about Uncommitted after the election?” And before I could answer my daughter Maya is like, “What do you mean? She’s not going to have work to do with Uncommitted now that Trump is elected. She’s going to be in jail.” |
| Najib Aminy: | When we picked up Rosie and Maya from school, I got to hear their side. You basically said your mom’s going to get arrested. |
| Maya: | Yeah. |
| Najib Aminy: | Maya, who is 13, was bringing up a real concern. Trump allies have suggested prosecuting anti-Zionist groups under a special program called Project Esther. |
| Rosie: | But I don’t have to worry about it. |
| Najib Aminy: | That’s Rosie, the 10-year-old. Why not? |
| Rosie: | I have a dad. |
| Najib Aminy: | Layla? |
| Layla Elabed: | These kids are ruthless. They’re so ruthless. |
| Najib Aminy: | Yeah. |
| Rosie: | We just cooked now. |
| Najib Aminy: | Cooked? Do you feel like your mom made the right decision? |
| Rosie: | Yeah. |
| Najib Aminy: | And are you worried that she might get blamed? |
| Rosie: | Maybe. But if she does get blamed, it’s not her fault. |
| Najib Aminy: | Why not? |
| Rosie: | Because she said what she was going to do from the start and she stayed true to that. |
| Najib Aminy: | Blame, no blame, the more pressing question for Layla and Uncommitted is what’s next? And do they even stick around? |
| Layla Elabed: | We could shut down. And we’ve talked about this. We’ve talked about this. But why would we when we are actually in a lot of ways had been incredibly impactful? |
| Najib Aminy: | Layla is well aware of the potential risks of a Trump administration, not just for her group and her community but for others who feel threatened by his policies. |
| Layla Elabed: | But I think we are in a very difficult situation, and the best thing that could have ever happened to any of the major political parties is somebody like Trump. |
| Najib Aminy: | Did I hear that correctly? You said that Trump is possibly the best thing for both parties. |
| Layla Elabed: | I’m not trying to say he’s the best for both parties, I think that came off wrong. What I’m saying is I think the leaders of the Democratic Party have tried to get away with bad policies and bad campaigns because they use the threat of Donald Trump to be like, we know we have bad policies too but you don’t want the guy that’s worse than us. So it’s like telling us to pick between worse and worse. And because Democrats have done that, it has left open so many voids in especially marginalized communities for somebody like Trump to sweep in and lie to that community and essentially pick up that base that the Democrats have left behind. |
| Najib Aminy: | Layla’s hope going forward, not just for Uncommitted but for other groups like hers, is that Trump’s victory will be a short-term loss for a longer-term gain. |
| Michael Montgom…: | That was Reveal’s Najib Aminy. He produced today’s show along with Ashley Cleek and Nadia Hamdan. Nadia was our lead producer. Marianne McCune, Brett Myers, and Jenny Casas edited the show. Special thanks to Ethan Brooks, Claudine Ebeid, and Adrienne LaFrance at The Atlantic. Thanks also to Sophie Hurwitz, Noah Lanard, Jacob Rosenberg, and Jeremy Schulman at Mother Jones. Fact checking by Nikki Frick, Kim Freda, and Michelle Ciarrocca. Legal review by James Chadwick. Our production managers are Steven Rascon and Zulema Cobb. Score and sound design by Jim Briggs and Fernando Arruda. They had helped today from Claire Mullen. Our interim executive producers are Taki Telonidis and Brett Myers. Our theme music is by Comorado Lightning. Support for Reveal comes from the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, the Schmidt Family Foundation, and the Hellman Foundation. Support also comes from you, our listeners. We are a co-production of the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX. I’m Michael Montgomery. And remember, as Al likes to say, there is always more to the story. |