Big Voice Wednesday

With Tara Setmayer

Welcome back to Big Voice Wednesday! My guest this week is Tara Setmayer, author of the Substack newsletter, Uncompromised, and co-founder and CEO of The Seneca Project. Tara is a proud Never Trumper who left the Republican party and speaks out for democracy and against what the GOP has become. We had a candid conversation about her journey and the need for all of us to challenge assumptions and come together to reclaim our democracy. I look forward to continuing the conversation!

Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to engage in “cat talk,” though her cat, Rafi, more than made up for it by making several appearances during our conversation. I love that he made his presence known!

We ended our conversation by emphasizing the important role that each of us has to play and how the smallest act can have a big ripple effect. Tara left us with great advice. I hope you feel inspired to take it.

One step at a time,

Ronda

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[Transcript - edited for clarity, length, and flow]

Ronda Cress: Hey everyone, and welcome back to Big Voice Wednesday. You know the goal of Big Voice Wednesday is to break up the unrelenting news cycles by injecting some inspiration and hope, and sometimes a little bit of humor, into your week. Big Voice Wednesday showcases people and organizations who are using their voices in extraordinary or sometimes unexpected ways.

This week’s guest is someone I have gotten to know very recently. She is a political commentator and former GOP communications director on Capitol Hill. She is a Never Trumper who left the Republican Party because she believes in principle and patriotism over party. She is currently the co-founder and CEO of the Seneca Project and has the Uncompromised newsletter here on Substack. She is also a frequent contributor on CNN and MSNBC.

Welcome to my friend, Tara Setmayer.

Tara Setmayer: Thank you so much for having me. We have another special guest today. We have my cat, Rafi.

Ronda Cress: I love it. I love it.

Tara Setmayer: So you get a little cat bonus conversation along with our chat today.

Ronda Cress: We certainly can because sometimes other guests who have pets, I like to do a little extra thing at the end called dog talk because it is usually people with dogs. But because you have a cat and I also have cats, we could have some cat talk, so we will just move it in. That is perfect.

Tara Setmayer: He is settling in now. He is ready.

Ronda Cress: I love it. Well, it is really great to have you here. And I know things are really, really busy for you right now, especially because there is sometimes a little bit going on. We cannot even have a weekend off without some kind of chaos or something going on.

Tara Setmayer: No. I often say, as long as there is a day that ends in Y and Donald is still president, we cannot have nice things.

Ronda Cress: That is exactly right. Because I want to be cognizant of your time, I am just going to dive right in. But I have really been looking forward to having you on because I think it will be a little bit of a different conversation than I have with some of the other guests. We both grew up as Republicans, but our perspective on what the Republican Party stood for was very different. And the first time that we met in person, we kind of had this conversation. It was really interesting for me because I grew up on a farm in Ohio and it was very, very red, very, very conservative. And so my definition of what the Republican Party stood for was essentially that it was very bigoted, very strict, and very misogynistic. And as I got older, I thought, I do not want to be involved with that in any way.

But for you, it was very different. And so it helped me realize that people who are members of the same party or identify in the same way do not necessarily have the same definition. So I wanted you to be able to talk about what the Republican Party stood for you when you were growing up and why that was a big part of who you were.

Tara Setmayer: I am so happy to be with you and have this conversation because I think what we face every single day is that people are so divided and have such different impressions of what it means to be a Republican or a Democrat or a liberal or an independent. Things have changed so much because of Donald. The definitions have been redefined.

And you are right, I think these perspectives come from lived experience. I did not grow up a Republican. My mom was a single parent. She had me at 21 and she was in show business. I grew up in North Jersey. I am from Paramus, New Jersey, Bergen County. I am a very proud Jersey girl. And my mom had me in 1975, at a time when, for women’s rights, she very easily could have made a different decision as a single parent at 21. She gave up her career to raise me, and I am grateful to her for that.

Growing up for her in the arts, in New York City, and around lots of different people in the 60s and 70s, she thought she was a liberal. And by all definitions, she was. My grandparents, though, my grandfather was a police officer. He was in World War II. My great-grandparents came over from Germany. They were German Jews. And we did not know this until many, many, many decades later. My grandfather was 88 and just kind of let it slip in a casual conversation that his father used to go to temple in Paterson on Saturdays. And we were like, I am sorry, what? But I always knew that my great-grandparents left Germany in 1924 because things were getting a little difficult there. Now it makes a lot more sense.

I grew up very blue collar. I am the first person to go to college in my family. My grandmother was a professional dog handler and she was a little five-foot spitfire. She trained German shepherds with the police auxiliary. My grandfather was a volunteer fireman in my town. He marched in every Fourth of July parade from 1947 until 2016 at 90, when he was literally wheeled down the parade route with the police department because he would never miss a parade. He had some heart issues and was in rehab at the time, and he said, I am not missing the parade. And my mom went and checked him out and took him. God bless him, 10 days later, he passed. He lived a long life at 90.

So I grew up like that, regular America, Fourth of July parades, blue collar. My grandparents hated the Yankees. They loved the Mets. I am a Yankees fan now, but that is another story.

Politics really was not a big thing in our house until I got a little older. My mom started listening to talk radio, and there were influential talk radio hosts in New York City like Bob Grant, for people who are from New York and of a certain age, they will remember him, Rush Limbaugh, and others who were talking about individual responsibility, getting government out of your everyday life, freedom, and all of those kinds of things. And then, of course, coming from a law enforcement family, the idea of law and order and things being a certain way made sense.

So that all started to make sense to my mom when I was about 13 or 14 and starting to become more politically aware of what was going on. Growing up in the 80s, it was Reagan. So everything was very rah-rah America, at least for us.

My mom was like, I am actually pretty Republican, I guess. And I was like, that makes sense. Because she taught me very young never to be a victim of my circumstance. So just because I am young and I am a woman of color and I was raised by a single mother, I am not destined to be anything less than what I want to be. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise.

And my mom felt that some of the orthodoxy coming out of the Democrats felt very much like victimization. So that was kind of what steered us in the direction of the Republicans and what made sense to me in terms of how we could solve problems, just in a different way. Less government, more private sector, more individual responsibility, but we have come a long way from that. And, of course, national security.

Ronda Cress: Yes. So I do want to talk a little bit more about Ronald Reagan in a couple minutes. What has it been like for you to leave the Republican Party? Obviously, it was not just something that your family realized, that it appealed more to you. You actually became involved in the Republican Party, in politics, commentary, analysis, and communications. So I want to hear a little bit about what that was like for you, to realize that this is not the party you thought it was anymore, and then what it was like for you to leave. I imagine in some circumstances you probably lost friends from the party, maybe not. And then you may not have been as welcomed coming over to, well, I do not know if you identify as a Democrat now or independent or whatever.

Tara Setmayer: Independent.

Ronda Cress: Maybe not been very welcome. I just wanted to hear about what that experience has been like for you.

Tara Setmayer: Those dynamics have been very interesting. For the 27 years that I spent as a Republican involved in the party, as a political communications expert and strategist, I decided at a young age in high school that I wanted to go to college in Washington, DC, because I wanted to be at the epicenter of power where decisions were made. I wanted to improve people’s lives. I love this country, and I saw that there were inequities and injustices. How could we solve that problem? The best way to solve those problems is to be where the laws are made. How you talk to people, how you communicate with people, and how you meet people where they are is a really important aspect of that.

I am biracial, and my mom always encouraged me to be honest and never compromise my principles to please other people. You are who you are. Remember who you are, and do not let anyone try to change that for you.

So I saw my way of having an impact and helping other people. As an only child, I was always thrust into leadership positions, whether I wanted to be or not. So I guess I had the gift of gab. It is a blessing and a curse, but a lot of Jersey girls do. It is just part of our DNA. And I am incapable of bullshit too.

So all of those things made me become known as someone who could be a truth teller. For all those years that I was involved in public policy and Republican politics, I thought that the idea of compassionate conservatism was an achievable and admirable public policy goal. That was my intention. That was why. And then the imbalance in the way people messaged through a lot of politics annoyed me. So I used to be like, no, I do not like that. We need to be honest about it and we need to just talk to people like normal people.

But as things started to change, I would say around the Tea Party time, I started to notice that there was an uglier underbelly of racism and xenophobia that I was not comfortable with. We started chalking that up to other elements that were just on the fringe because there were more down-the-road, moderate Republicans, sane Republicans, I would call them, who did not allow for that.

But then Donald came on the scene, and I thought for sure he would be rejected, given where we were going after the autopsy in 2012 when Mitt Romney lost. We were losing minorities. We were losing demographics that you cannot lose if you are going to win in politics. So they had the whole autopsy. We need to be more inclusive and all these things. And I was like, okay, yeah. Well, it went the complete opposite way.

And for several years, I started to see these more extremist elements coming into power and gaining more influence. So it was a no-brainer for me after 2016. I worked on Capitol Hill for seven years as a communications director for a Republican from California who was a Reagan speechwriter. I had a wonderful seven years. I got to do amazing things, impactful things, and work that I was very proud of. But when I left his office to become a full-time media person, I was actually recruited to start doing media commentary full time. I did not really want to do that. I liked being in Washington. I liked being in the mix on Capitol Hill. I looked forward to going to work every day. But I was sold on the idea that, yes, you could have a national platform and a voice where you can talk about these things and shape the conversation on a larger scale.

So I took the chance. It was a huge mistake, and I regretted it a couple of months in because I started to see a lot of the showmanship and a lot of the BS that goes into these conservative commentators and these channels and the propaganda. It was about clicks and not actually about being honest and principled. So that was my first indication that this whole cottage industry was full of it.

Then Donald comes on the scene, and at that point, the only good thing about me going into the media side of things was that CNN took notice. My good friend Don Lemon would have me on his show and then advocated for me to become a CNN contributor. So that started in 2015 through 2016, which was at the apex of the first Trump nightmare. And that opened my eyes.

I became one of the most prolific Never Trump Republicans on national television very early on. I was so disappointed in all of the people who sold out, people who claimed to be principled Republicans, people who used to very sanctimoniously run around Capitol Hill with pocket Constitutions and wave them around, talking about what the other side and the liberals and the progressives were doing. They wanted us to be originalists with the Constitution and the Supreme Court and all this stuff. Where were they as Donald was making all kinds of promises and attacking constitutional principles and things that were anathema to what Republican orthodoxy was supposed to be, from economics to national security?

So I called that out, and a lot of Republicans did not like that because these were people who were my former colleagues or people I knew well, or people I knew from the 90s. They could not get away with a lot of their propaganda BS with me because I would call them out on it, and they knew that. So that created a lot of tension between me and some of my Republican colleagues and personal friends.

I lost a lot of people who were very close to me, almost like family, to the Trump cult starting in 2016, including the congressman that I worked for, who I absolutely loved and adored. He is like dead to me because of how far off the deep end he went. Other people who I was in the trenches with, who I literally considered to be like my adopted family, I no longer speak to. Including one of my best friends, who I was the maid of honor for in her wedding in 2010. We do not speak anymore. She actually works for the Trump administration right now, which is just disappointing.

Ronda Cress: I think it is good to have these conversations, though, with people who either were Never Trumpers or, I have a couple of friends who actually voted for Donald the first time in 2016, but then after that first administration were very quickly like, no, this is not for us.

Tara Setmayer: Right. This is not the way.

Ronda Cress: Right. And then they left the Republican Party. But I think it is important for people who were Never Trumpers or who identify as Democrats or whatever it is, to be able to show grace and welcome former supporters or people who are courageous enough to say, I do not agree with this, or I thought I did, but I was wrong. I was wrong to have voted that way. I wish I had not.

We need as many people as we can get on the side of fighting for democracy. And we really need to start, not just thinking about it, but talking about it in ways that are so far above Democrat and Republican. It really is so far beyond that now.

Tara Setmayer: It is true.

Ronda Cress: And I know for me, this is another reason why I wanted to have you on and have this conversation. This was a good lesson for me and my own assumptions. When I first started hearing your name, I would hear that you were Republican and I did not listen to you. I would turn the channel because I did not want to hear it.

I used to always listen to whatever Republican candidate for president, because I feel like it is good to hear both sides.

Tara Setmayer: Of course.

Ronda Cress: And in state and local elections in Ohio, I have voted for Republican judges, for example, because I think it is really important to view people as individuals and hear what they have to say, and what their record is and things like that. But at some point, because the Republican Party just started going off the rails, I even stopped listening. It was like, I do not know what they are doing.

Tara Setmayer: Right. I get it.

Ronda Cress: And to anybody who even had that label. So I was like, well, I do not want to listen to what Tara has to say. And then Mary had you on, and I thought, what is Mary doing having her on?

Tara Setmayer: That is funny.

Ronda Cress: Of course, this was before I knew Mary.

Tara Setmayer: Yeah, yeah.

Ronda Cress: And then once you were on and I actually started listening to you, I realized I was wrong and I had leapt to some conclusions. Now, maybe that was reasonable. It was not just in a vacuum because of what I was seeing the Republican Party become. But it made me realize I needed to take a step back for a second and do some examination myself.

I think a lot of people do that because so many people are rightfully upset and disgusted with what is going on. But sometimes some of the language I hear from people on the left, and how they talk about Trump supporters, I get it. And I am not going to sit here and say that I have not engaged in that myself from time to time when I get really upset or frustrated. But to call people stupid or call people cult followers and things like that, that is not going to help people. And that is not going to help somebody who is maybe on the fence and starting to second guess. So as difficult as that is.

Tara Setmayer: There are a couple layers to that. Listen, the good thing for me is that I was never one of those people who ever gave Donald a chance. So I have been intellectually honest about where I stood on most things. And I was just as disgusted with the Republican Party as a lot of other people who may not have agreed with Republicans before on policy, but now it has become a character issue. It is so much bigger than arguing over Medicare for all or marginal tax rates. I cannot wait until we get back to the days where we can argue over policy differences, honestly, because we need to have a healthy two-party system at least.

Some people would argue that there need to be multiple parties, that the two-party system has failed us. And listen, there are legitimate academic arguments to have about that. But we are not in the position right now to argue changing those kinds of things. This is the system we are in now, and we need to preserve democracy because it is under existential threat every single day.

So those policy differences, in my opinion, most of them do not matter anymore. They just do not. Because we do not have the mechanism in place to have that healthy, robust discussion and use Congress and our processes to change things. If that is gone, nobody gives a damn who believed in Medicare for all and who believed in taxing whomever. It does not matter.

But I even had assumptions about how some progressives were and how some liberals were. And I kind of joke all the time now that, yes, I left the party in 2020, but that was not because I supported Donald and then left the party. It is because I was trying to fix it from within. I wanted to leave multiple times during the first Trump administration. I did not vote for Donald the first time around. I voted third party. I did not vote for Hillary either because I still had certain very strong feelings about the Clintons and never thought that Donald would win. That was a mistake. I will never, ever do that again.

It was a vote of conscience at the time. I lived in New Jersey, so it was actually inconsequential because New Jersey was not in play, but it would not have mattered.

In the environment we are in now, it is a binary choice and that is it.

Ronda Cress: Exactly.

Tara Setmayer: That is it. So where we could make structural changes, I would say, are in primaries. We should have open primaries where people are not disenfranchised because they have to pick a party. That is something that is a more realistic structural change in various states.

But I stayed inside the party to try to be a voice of reason, to try to be a conscience, to say, hey, I remember when you guys used to believe this, so why are you allowing that? And to try to right the ship. My good friend Michael Steele, who was chairman of the Republican National Committee, who I have known for over 20 years, he is like my big uncle. He remembers when I was a young little Republican whippersnapper. He was like, listen, we cannot let the crazies run us out. And I said, okay, I will try.

Because after Charlottesville, after Helsinki, after shithole countries, after Brett Kavanaugh, just go down the list, after the incident with the upside-down Bible and clearing out Lafayette Square in DC violently, after all of those things, I was like, I do not want to be a part of this party. But Michael would say, listen, we will get him out of there and then we can rebuild it. Okay.

But then the final straw for me was in November of 2020 after the election result, when Donald did what he said he was going to do and threatened a constitutional crisis by not accepting the results, and then threatened a peaceful transfer of power. Watching Republicans who knew better, Republicans like Mitch McConnell and others who freaking knew better, the Marco Rubios and the Ted Cruzes of the world, they knew better. The fact that they would even allow a potential constitutional crisis and allow this guy to threaten a cornerstone of our democracy like that, I said, that is it. I do not give a fuck anymore. I am done. I am out. I do not want anything to do with these people.

Everything wrong with politics, and now they are a danger to our constitutional order. I have never looked back. Then January 6th happened. And anyone, when they had the chance to vanquish this bastard, they did not. Not only did they not, they welcomed him back. He paid no price for it. And here we are living this nightmare again.

So I am an independent, and I caucus with the Democrats because we all agree on preserving our democracy and our constitutional order. It is important to listen to those of us who were on the other side, who know the game and know how to win and defeat them. So I have been mostly embraced by Democrats, and I am happy for that because we really are all in this together. It is going to take all of us to change this. This is an existential fight here. So we need to all be on the same side.

Ronda Cress: No, we absolutely do. And again, I think that is going to take, maybe from many of us, challenging some of our assumptions and finding ways to move forward and maybe doing some transforming. I would like the parties to completely transform after this, hopefully.

Tara Setmayer: Well, I have my opinions about Democrats and what they need to do to reform a little bit, but nobody cares what I think about the Democrats. But for Republicans, I think the Republican Party needs to be burned to the ground. In its current form, it is unreformable. It is irredeemable. This current version needs to be burned to the ground, vanquished to the ash heap of history, and something else needs to be started.

But that only happens if they are literally vanquished at the ballot box. They have to be removed from power through our democratic system. Political animals do not respond until they lose power. And so that is the only opportunity.

For some of the MAGA people, some of them are in a cult. There is no love lost for me with evangelicals. I grew up for many years in an evangelical non-denominational church, which also had some influence on my worldview and political beliefs. And they are the biggest hypocrites. I lost my entire church family. Everyone in our home church in New Jersey, we no longer have a relationship with. And they have known me since I was about 15 or 16 years old. They were like family, and they completely sold out to Donald and called me the heretic for pointing out how what he is doing is not biblical.

So there are going to be some of those people who are unreachable, but there are some people who will finally wake up and realize that they have been taken. And that is where the cult comparisons come in. That is why studying cults and cult behaviors is instructive because how do you get them out of it? This is beyond normal politics.

Ronda Cress: Right. No, I completely agree. And I am not suggesting that there is not cult behavior going on.

Tara Setmayer: There is.

Ronda Cress: There absolutely is. But I am saying, if you want to try to change someone who is in that, calling them a cult member is not how you get them out.

Tara Setmayer: It is a case-by-case basis. Sometimes, like we call them persuadable voters in politics. But no, I hear you.

Ronda Cress: Usually, name-calling and telling people they are stupid or whatever, that is not how you are going to change it.

Tara Setmayer: Yeah. You do not want to become what you despise. That is kind of where the line is.

Ronda Cress: Yeah. You said a lot of things in there, and I know we are running out of time, but I wanted to touch on something. Again, along the lines of challenging assumptions and talking about how it needs to completely start over with rebuilding another party and the underbelly that was always there.

I sometimes get a little worried or concerned. I am very glad that people like you and others have come and said either they never supported Donald or they did but then quickly realized this is not what we are about. But I have concerns about after Donald. And there will be an after Donald. Just actuarially, he cannot continue on forever.

So there will be an after Donald time. And I have concerns that, for some people, November 2020 may have been too far. For you, it sounds like you already had a lot of questions and doubts beforehand. There were already a lot of very troublesome things for you. But for some people, they were fine with all of that until November 2020. That was the line that was crossed.

And so my concern is for people who have said that was too far, once this is all over, that some of the things that led up to the rise of Donald and made his ascendancy possible, some of those undercurrents are still going to come right back. Because for people who think the problem is just Donald and his supporters, that is not it. You have to see that this has been going on for a long time.

I hear all the time people say, well, I was a Reagan Republican, as if Reagan was very moderate. And I am not saying he did not do some good things, but I feel like there is this myth around Reagan that overlooks a lot of very problematic things. He actually, I feel, exacerbated some of the things, like stoking some of the religious extremism and states’ rights, which is kind of a dog whistle for certain issues. And he was not good on LGBTQ issues at all.

So I worry that there is going to be this undercurrent that is still there. And then I am hopeful that maybe not because I feel like this stuff is so bad, but I just do not know.

Tara Setmayer: No, I think you are right about that. And even for me, I have had a lot of self-reflection and looked back on some of the things that I may have advocated for or was unaware of how systemically problematic they were, even the racism and the misogyny. I started a women’s super PAC called the Seneca Project after Dobbs.

When I was involved in Republican politics, I was a lot more socially conservative from certain perspectives on things. But once you step away from that and look at the practical implications of these things, you have to go, wait a minute, this is not okay.

And, of course, the Dobbs decision, taking our rights away for reproductive freedom, our healthcare, and all those things, that never squared with me. If you are supposed to be a party that is about individual responsibility and the government not being in your business, this is based on basically a religious belief. That is fine. You can still be personally pro-life and feel how you feel, but you cannot foist that type of legislation on everyone. And it is more than just abortion. It is basic healthcare.

Those were things I evolved on that I never thought I would be confronted with because no one thought it would ever be overturned. We are the first women to lose a right that we once had. It has never happened in American history before. So for us at the Seneca Project, empowering women and our voices and watching what MAGA and the misogyny, that was the undercurrent for a lot of that, along with the racism.

I was in denial about how much racism was still really in the party until Barack Obama. I was like, he got elected twice. What are you talking about? And I look back now and see the through lines for things, and I am going, holy cow, this was really so much bigger. That ugliness was unearthed by Donald. It was made okay and has set us back decades.

So it is going to take a lot of work for us to be able to right this ship again. And you are very right to be concerned that just because Donald goes away does not mean that the malignancy of MAGA and what he has normalized in this country is going away. And a lot of that has to do with the media and the way people have covered him and what he has been allowed to get away with. The Overton window has shifted. There are so many things we have to confront culturally in order to, again, vanquish what MAGA represented, at least from the social perspective, because we cannot, as a pluralistic society, allow what MAGA has normalized because it is not normal. It is not okay.

The racism, the misogyny, the corruption, the indecency, all of those things are lighting the fabric of our society on fire. The things that actually do make America great, they hate. And it is up to all of us to be the examples here.

Ronda Cress: Yes. Well, that is a great segue. And I am glad you were able to mention the Seneca Project because that was one of the questions I wanted to ask you.

Tara Setmayer: Yeah. We are just a bunch of fierce women out here making ads and content and standing up for democracy and our rights. It is important that we do that. And that is why I started it as bipartisan.

Right now, if you are a Republican who voted for Donald in the past and you realize the error of your ways, we are not going to judge you now. That is for you to work out with God and your therapist. We are concerned, at this point, if you want to be an ally, that you do not vote for his policies or his people or anyone advocating for the same things again. Because you are voting against your own interests, and cognitive dissonance is a hell of a political drug. You need to get people out of that.

So that is really the fire behind what we do at the Seneca Project. We are award-winning and women-led. You have to meet people in their hearts and minds by storytelling and putting information in front of them if you want them to be motivated to go to the ballot box and make a difference. Because if you do not understand why it matters and what is at stake, you are not going to fight for it.

Ronda Cress: Right. And it has to feel very personal because it is.

Tara Setmayer: That is right.

Ronda Cress: So I want to say, before I ask my last question, that I am so glad that not only did you recognize that what was happening to the party was not in alignment with your own views, and you took the steps to leave, which sounds like it had some difficulties that went with it, but you are still using your voice. You did not just leave and go off into the shadows. You left and you are using your voice to speak out.

I think that is very important. I just wanted to say thank you so much for coming on and sharing and for your courage, because I think it does take courage to do that.

Tara Setmayer: It should not. It should not, but thank you.

Ronda Cress: And for any of the viewers who are out there who are struggling right now, because it is very overwhelming, it can feel at times like you only hear the negative all the time. Some of the positive stories do not always break through. There are so many people doing so many great things every day at the local level and the state level to fight back and resist and having success, but again, that does not always break through into the [news] cycle.

So for people who are feeling like, well, what can I do? Or, there is not anything that I could do that will make a difference. What advice do you have for people who are struggling to find or use their voices right now?

Tara Setmayer: Silence is not an option.

Every single one of us has a role to play. Robert Kennedy, RFK’s father, the good one, used to talk about the importance of the ripple effect, that tiny ripples collectively can create a current that can move mountains. And we have to look at ourselves individually as those tiny ripples. Every single one of us has a role to play. We cannot allow anyone to silence us or take our voices. That is part of our agency as human beings and as Americans in this country.

That is why the other side tries to intimidate and silence and bully and take our basic rights away from us, including our voices. It is a conscious decision to say no, and not no, but hell no.

Even if you stand up and go to a protest, if you gather two or three of your friends together for coffee and just talk about what is going on or educate them about what is happening in your local communities, because state and local politics really makes a difference and people need to realize all politics is local, which is very true.

If you give five or 10 dollars to an organization advocating for issues that are important to you, or if you are on social media and you are part of a group and you see chats and conversations, and you follow people who are truth tellers and fighters standing up for common ground that you believe in, and you share that, and make sure everybody is registered and goes and votes, there are still things you can do.

I know people feel lost and they think, well, it does not matter. My vote does not count. Yes, it does. Every single voice, every single vote, every single action matters in a democracy. We have to be active. Democracy does not defend itself. Our laws and our just way of life do not automatically change without us being active and informed citizens.

So we just have to look around at what is going on and say, what can I do? Even if you just do one small thing, it matters. So we cannot be the generation that loses democracy. No one is asking us to take up arms and go fight across oceans like our great-grandfathers and grandfathers did in World War II and in other places to actually protect freedom around the world. We can do it from the comfort of our own homes, even if it is what you are doing right now, Ronda, or what Mary does, or what I do. We all have the ability to have a platform in some way, shape, or form.

Just find what it is that is most important to you and take one active step and bring someone with you because it does matter. Every single one of our voices matters because, at this point, silence is not an option.

Ronda Cress: Yep. I could not agree more. That is something I am a big believer in — that even the smallest act can have a big impact.

Well, thank you so much again, Tara, for being here. I so appreciate it. Thank you for everything you are doing and the ways that you are using your voice. Thank you, Rafi, for making an appearance. That makes me so happy. Hopefully, we will see you again soon. So thank you again, and thank you to all of the viewers for watching as well.

Tara Setmayer: Thank you, Ronda. Thank you so much.