Gov. Wes Moore

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118 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Mar 2025 last heard Mar 2025

Gov. Wes Moore’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The Bulwark Daily · S2 Ep1004: Wes Moore: The System Doesn't Work for a Lot of People · 20 Mar 2025 podcast

Tim, what's going on, man? How you doing?

yeah i mean it's definitely something that i'm doing but we're doing because it's authentic yeah you know what i mean and that's i think got to be the key thing is that people need to know that you're real about it and that you're sincere and the reason we talk about patriotism is not because it's going to win you electoral points it's because you believe it. And I really do.

I believe in this country, flaws and all. I believe in the fact that there's no way you can understand a journey like mine or a journey like my family's and not say there is something special and unique about the United States. and something that I was willing to fight for, willing to lay my life down for. I come from a whole family of people who believe in this country.

So I do believe that we have to be able to embrace this mantra of patriotism. I believe that we can't allow other people to just simply bastardize it the way that it oftentimes happens when it comes to when you're looking at how a lot of MAGA World and Donald Trump and them talk about it. But I do think it's about not just blindly accepting

this country or talking about this country as if its history doesn't matter. I actually think patriotism means saying, no, I'm not going to just sit down. I'm not going to just take it. I'm not just going to allow someone to take the country in the wrong direction. I'm going to fight and I'm going to fight for it. And I think that's actually the most patriotic thing that you can do right now.

Yeah, well, I mean, I'm I was a kid who, frankly, when people talk about the breakdowns of this of this country and the inequality of this country, I explain to people like I was born into it. You know, some of my first memories was literally watching my father die in front of me because he didn't get the health care that he needed.

that some of my first memories was watching my mother not get her first job that gave her benefits until I was 14 years old. First job that gave her reliable hours. And this was an immigrant single mom who came to this country and eventually went on to get a master's degree. and still did not get her first job that gave her benefits until her son was 14 years old.

I had handcuffs on my wrist by the time I was 11 years old. I joined the army when I was 17. I wasn't even old enough to sign the paperwork. My mother had to sign the paperwork for me. I went to a two-year college. So there was nothing about my life that said, oh, he's one day going to be the 63rd governor. of the state of Maryland.

My grandfather was the first one on my mom's side of the family born in this country. And when he was just a toddler, the Ku Klux Klan ran them out of the country. And so my life has been almost like consistently littered with this reminder of a brokenness of an American dream and an American promise in many ways.

But I also know that I stand here as the 63rd governor of the state because my life has also been littered by the blessings of this country. by the blessings of people who were willing to sacrifice on my behalf and the people who were helping me to actually see higher than myself. And so I'd never run for public office before in my life. I spent time in the army.

I was a paratrooper with the United States military. I led soldiers in combat in Afghanistan. I came back and I started working in finance. I was working in investment banking. Then I started a business, had a successful exit in 2017. And then I ran one of the largest poverty fighting organizations in this country.

And so one day I'm like, the issues I want to work on is I want to beat child poverty. I don't understand why society has child poverty. I understand the role that policy has played in all this. And I was like, I can just keep on screaming about elected officials not doing things or I can actually run for myself. So one day I was like, all right, I'm gonna run for governor.

Because I think I'm constantly reminded this country is not perfect. You know what I mean? Like, I don't need enough reminders of America's imperfection. You know, it's like, this has never been an even line when you think about the history of America. You know, the case of my grandfather, where, you know, some of his earliest memories was when his father was a minister and a very vocal minister.

That's what got the Ku Klux Klan then making threats to our family, where in the middle of the night, he picks up his family and he leaves. And they didn't just leave town, like they left this country and they went back to Jamaica. And most of my family always said that they would never come back to this country. And much of my family has never come back to this country.

But my grandfather did because he always felt that, you know, as he always say, like in all of his humility, this country would be incomplete without me. So so he comes back to this country. He attends an HBCU in Pennsylvania, Lincoln University. He then becomes a minister like his father. Right.

And what was crazy to him is that the same threats that started coming to his father started coming to him. But he stuck. He never left. And he devoted the rest of his life to his faith, to his community, to his family. He devoted his life with a deep belief in this country. And I tell you, because he had a deep Jamaican accent his entire life.

And he's maybe the most patriotic American I've ever met. Can you do it? Do you got to? Oh, yeah. I got to.

All right. I like that. But, you know, but he believed in this country. But it's not like he was ignorant to it. He believed in what it could be. And I just feel like it'd be real disrespectful to him. And to everything he had to endure for me to turn around and say, because of an election, I'm done. You know what I mean? Like this, this country is not built that way.

If we said that every time there was a bad election in America, if we said every time there was a bad occurrence or a bad incident, then then none of this would be real. This is a real bad one, though. This is a real no, honestly. And it's a real bad one because no one should be surprised. Right. That's the thing. All the stuff we're doing, we're saying right now is not like we didn't warn you.

Yeah. And frankly, it's not like Trump ain't warn you because he told you he was going to what he's going to do. And he's actually executing on it right now. And so I just feel like we have to remember this. That what we also have to do is it's not even just about the people who went from, OK, how does a person go from Clinton to Trump or Biden to Trump or Obama?

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