 Hello everyone, I am here with Makayla Wilkes. She is running against a political behemoth known as Steny Hoyer in Maryland's fifth congressional district, and she's here to talk about her campaign. Makayla, welcome to the show. Hello, thanks for having me. Thank you for coming on. I've been watching your campaign since the beginning and I knew that there was something special about you. One, because anyone who's running for Congress, you know, that takes a lot of work, but anyone who challenges someone like Steny Hoyer, that takes even more work. And you are going up against a machine, a Democratic Party leader. What made you want to run for Congress and take on Steny Hoyer? Well, for one, my life experiences and also feeling like there are people who are left out of the conversations in the halls of Congress. I feel like for the last 40 years, we have not been represented and we need someone who's going to represent our interests other than the interests of corporations. Right. And you're actually running a very principled campaign. You're not taking corporate PAC money. This is grassroots funded. So you are admittedly at a disadvantage. You're taking on someone in leadership position who has, you know, these institutional advantages and monetary advantages. How do you think you're going to be able to pull off an upset like AOC did? How can you beat him? What tools do you have at your disposal that kind of gives you the advantage in terms of grassroots activism and whatnot? Just the fact that I resonate with so much, so many of our constituents and not only that, you know, it's all about getting out there and speaking with the people. And with this race, a key to it is going to be increasing voter turnout for sure. So basically, for me, it's just getting out there, talking to voters, talking to people who are politically disengaged because I can't see Steny Hoare knocking on doors or standing in the middle of a mall or, you know, a parking lot trying to talk to people, seeing what their issues are. And for me, that's what grassroots is because if you're not taking money from corporations, you don't owe them anything. If you're only to money from the people, those are the only people who you owe. And what I love is that you really when you look at Micaela's platform to speaking to speak to the viewers for a moment, her platform is more fleshed out than most 2020 presidential candidates. And that it shows that she is grassroots because you don't have to walk on eggshells so you don't offend this particular industry or this special interest. You are for the people. And it shows now contrast you with Steny Hoare. This is basically I've argued for a while. He's the worst of the worst. And what's horrifying about Steny and why we need to take him out is because he is poised to be the next speaker of the House. Yes. And he's worse than Nancy Pelosi. So can you explain to people why we have to prevent this from happening? We have to prevent this from happening because Steny Hoare is just for one. He's horrible. He all the way up until maybe recently, I think it has something to do with what I said, but did not support the impeachment of Donald Trump. And he's just he's a centrist and he's just such a horrible person. You know, he he puts his nose in other people's and in and other people's races like Amy Valela and one guy who they had a recording of him in the intercept. He's just horrible. He's against Medicare for all. If you look at his funding, less than two percent of his contributions come from small donors. And if you look at how much he gets, hundreds and thousands of dollars just in the first quarter of a loan, only one hundred and eighty five dollars came from small contributors. So, yeah, that he is just absolutely horrible. And I feel like right now with the progressive movement, because this is a movement, I feel like having a centrist Democrat as the speaker of the House to be the something that we just absolutely do not need. We cannot risk that in this moment in time, especially right now when there is a potential that Donald Trump may be president again. Like there's people actually are they they're going to vote for him again. Do we want a standing whore as speaker of the House if this happened? No. Yeah, he's bad in every conceivable way. I mean, on the policy substance, it's just it's not there. He's not looking out for the constituents in Maryland's fifth when it comes to holding Republicans accountable. He doesn't support impeachment when there's 10 different instances of obstruction in the Mueller report. He's weak. He is a shill for special interests. And I just like if you know about Mikaela Wilks in this district, it's a no brainer like I'm voting for you, you know. And unfortunately, I'm not in this district, but I think that if people learn about you, if they just know who you are and what you stand for, that's going to be enough, even if you have this monetary disadvantage. So one thing that I wanted to ask you about because, you know, if you run for Congress when this is a really politically volatile time when there's so many issues, what do you focus on? Because you have a great, robust platform. But if you were taking like three issues that you're going to fight for within the first year, what do you think those would be in terms of like what you're going to prioritize and push for? My three issues would be Medicare for all, the Green New Deal. And then, of course, criminal justice reform. That's great. That's great. Now, let me ask you about a couple of other issues. This is just rapid fire questions. If you can give like a yes or no, maybe I try to do this with the candidates to put them on the spot because I think people like this and I think it's fun. So, OK, when it comes to student load that cancellation, would you support that? Absolutely, because I have a lot of it. So that's good. OK, what about rank choice voting? Absolutely. Reparations for American descendants of slavery. Absolutely. How about electoral reform? So we move from a one party or two party system to multi party system. So we basically get more people elected to each district, more than one. We get two or three. Would you support something like that? I definitely would, because one thing that's with me, I always say that representation matters and having a multi-party system would definitely mean multiple representation for other people other than just Democrats and Republicans, because that's needed. Right. Absolutely. How about breaking up big tech like Facebook, Google? Of course. When it comes to the legalization of marijuana, I know that you support that. Would you support the decriminalization or potentially legalization of psychedelics? Absolutely. Just from the research that I've seen about it, you know, how it helps people suffering from PTSD, I think it's definitely worth putting in the time and research and the efforts to see how that can help us because to me, I think it would be more natural than pills, you know, something that's manmade just just as marijuana. I mean, I'm all for that. Anything that will help us out and then not contribute to the OVA crisis. That's great. Now, let me ask you a little bit about foreign policy. So when it comes to Venezuela, do you support any type of sanctions or are you just basically unequivocally no meddling? I would not. I don't want to meddle with anything that they've got going on. I think we've done enough of that. I think the outcome of us doing that has not been good. So I don't think that we need to meddle in what's going on in Venezuela. So when it comes to Israel, Palestine, there is a push to ban BDS. And this has been something that some of them have been doing. I know that Ben Cardin, who was Chelsea Manning's opponent in 2018, he tried to push for criminalization of BDS, meaning that if you support BDS, we're not going to give you these types of government contracts. Would you be against that? I would absolutely be against that. I feel like that that is that's unconstitutional. You cannot do that. That's taken away someone's right. I can't. No, I would definitely be against that. That's a no for me. That's great. So you're a free speech warrior in the true sense, unlike the people who claim to support free speech, but are silent about that. I like talking about all these issues because as we go through these issues, I think that a lot of people who watch, they realize, oh, this person basically checks like all the progressive boxes. You're not taking corporate PAC money. And I think that it's clear that you're the real deal. So if you were to get in and you defeated Steny Hoyer, we already know, like we saw what happened to AOC, you would be the new Fox News target, you know, until the next wave of candidates. How do you think you would fight against that? Like going on against like the right wing and all of these progressive policies that you stand for. How do you think you would combat that? And how would you also stand up to the opponents within your own party like Nancy Pelosi, because she's going to try to twist your arm and say, Mikaela, vote for me. Otherwise, I won't give you, you know, this committee appointment. How do you fight these establishment forces as a progressive and how do you remain principled? Like, can you just give me a little bit of information about your background and why you think you are? You're a strong enough person to be able to resist all of these evil forces in government. For one, if I was to be told, like you said, oh, we're not going to give you this appointment on this committee or whatever. I've always been an outcast my whole life. My background, I'm an outcast, probably right now. You know, I was previously incarcerated before. And now I'm running for Congress. So that's going to be nothing new to me. I will always stay true to my progressive values. I have no choice to because this isn't about politics. It's personal to me. So it will always come back to my roots and it will always come back to the reason why I'm running and the people that I'm fighting for. And as a matter of fact, I'm not even fighting for them. I'm fighting with them because I'm still with them. Like it's me, my family, my mom, my sister, my neighbors, you know, my friends. We're all in this together. And that's basically that's what I that's what I plan on doing. It's just go back to my roots and go back to why I'm, you know, running. And as far as Fox, I'm not really worried about Fox. They're a joke to me. So I mean, free advertising, free advertisement. Hey, I mean, you know, like I said, I've always been an outcast my whole life just because I don't have the typical background of what a politician may be just off of my upbringing and things that I've been through. But I mean, I feel like like with AOC, there's always going to be someone or there there's always going to be people that are going to doubt you. And especially when you're going against the establishment, you're going against the machine, you know, because I always tell people this one lady told me, yeah, we need a fresh set of eyes in Congress. We need new ideas. These are new ideas. And I'm like, these aren't new ideas. These are ideas that I've been around that I have been ignored. But now people are upset because we're bringing these ideas to light and we're bringing awareness to people and finally letting people know that you're getting screwed and we have to do something about it. So it just comes with the territory. I mean, I'll always be a social justice warrior. So bring it on. Hell, yeah, I love that. And the reason why I like to ask candidates this question is because just seeing, you know, that change, like with AOC, she was a regular person and then she became this political, you know, target psychologically speaking, that's got to take a toll on people. And a part of the reason why people are frustrated with politics is that they see these people who they talk a big game, but then when they get in, they either become co-opted or they kind of just become silent. So I think that part of vetting candidates is really seeing how they will be able to stand up, what will be inevitable, just harsh scrutiny and quite frankly, just getting basically beaten over the head every single day. It's tough. But, you know, people like you, the fact that you are, you know, a self-proclaimed outsider, I think that's a benefit because everybody loves a good underdog story. Like I love the underdog story. I'm always rooting for the underdog who is less likely to, you know, make it than someone who has had a silver spoon like, you know, Steny Hoyer. So let's talk campaign infrastructure frequently because I want to know where you're at. I know you've been running for a couple of months. Can you talk about how many people you have volunteering and what it's looking like so far in terms of donations and what we all can do to help you? Because we may not live in Maryland. So tell us where you're at and what is needed, how the movement can, you know, help benefit your campaign. OK, so right now we have just a little over 30 volunteers that are staffing for the campaign. Right now we are on the groundwork of the campaign, getting out, canvassing. I've been going to malls, shopping centers. I've been going to various meetings from different organizations just spreading the word about this campaign. So that's what we're doing right now, because going against someone so such a so entrenched as Steny and he has so much unnamed recognition, it's important to get out there fast so that people can know who I am and know what's going on. But as far as if anyone wants to help out with the campaign, definitely donations are always welcome because we are grassroots. And so the people definitely like are a big, big part of this campaign because I need their dollars to make this campaign work. But not only that, I need for people to spread the word. If anyone is interested in phone banking, that's fine. Just retweeting stuff on Twitter, sharing stuff on Facebook, just getting the word out to anyone and everyone that you can will definitely help this campaign because if this happens and what I won't say it, but when this happens and when we beat Steny Hoyer, this will be the beginning of a political revolution for sure. Yes, and I love to hear that. And one thing that I always like to stress is this isn't just about people in Maryland's Fifth Congressional District. Like we just saw how Ilhan Omar sponsored student loan cancellation. That doesn't just affect people in her state and her district. That affects me. That affects you. So this is a nationwide movement, and it's so important for all of us, even if you have a dollar to spare, that is one more dollar that goes towards this movement that could potentially help get someone like McKayla in Congress, who's going to be a fighter for you. So what do you want to just end on? What's your last pitch to my viewers in terms of why they should support you over Steny? I don't think you have to do much to convince them. But what do you want to end on? I just want to let people know that I always say that represent. Sorry, here's Sasha. That representation absolutely does matter. I feel like we've had enough of the corporate politicians. It's time to take our government back and make it work for us the way that it was intended to. I think that we need to get the corruption out of politics so that people can trust us again. And that's what this campaign is about. And that's what I'm about, is getting the corruptness out, getting people who think that the government doesn't work for them to show them that it does and just show them that when you vote, that is your voice. You know, you have an opportunity. This is an opportunity right here, right now. And it's not just me. It's other races. You know, I've been talking to I know you spoke with Joshua Collins. I've been talking to like Anthony Clark from Illinois. So it's really a progressive movement. And this is just to anyone. This is an opportunity. Don't pass this opportunity up because we cannot go another term with corruptness. We can't go another term with someone who's not going to care about us. The time is now. We need to take it and go with it. And I'm ready to fight. I've been ready to fight. I've been fighting all my life. And I'm ready to keep on fighting just in Congress. And if anyone wants to help out, you can donate to my campaign on my website at www.mikaela2020.com. And each of my social media handles are at meet Makayla and that's about MCKAYLA. Well, look, I'm convinced and I'm going to be rooting for you. I've already been kind of watching your campaign. The minute I found out that there was a challenger to Steny Hoyer, I was on board like on day one. So thank you for running because this is difficult. You are dedicating so much time and energy to this. And it really is meaningful. The fact that you would take on someone who a lot of people, generally speaking, in the establishment would think, well, you know, we just can't challenge him. You know, it's not our turn. Thank you for speaking up and not quote unquote waiting your turn and challenging him because that's important. Representation matters. And thank you to Sasha as well. I was telling Makayla before this interview began that we were talking about dogs. My dog will sleep outside the door and he'll snore so loud sometimes that the microphone actually picks it up. So if you're ever wondering why you hear like this weird noise in the background that sounds like someone snoring, it literally is snoring. So it's always nice to include, you know, the dogs as well. Well, thank you so much, Makayla. It was nice talking to you. Thank you.