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“Stop the 2024 Steal.” · Pod Save America

0:02
Speaker 1: Thank you.
0:20
Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
0:23
Speaker 3: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
0:24
Speaker 2: On today's pod, a grand jury has been convened to
0:26
Speaker 2: decide Donald Trump's fate. A Republican member of Congress compares
0:30
Speaker 2: vaccine and mask requirements to the Holocaust. And Republican legislatures
0:34
Speaker 2: in red and purple states are laying the groundwork to
0:36
Speaker 2: overturn the results of the next election that they lose.
0:39
Speaker 2: Then Atlantic writer, member of the Crooked Media family, Clint Smith,
0:42
Speaker 2: talks to Tommy about his new book, How the Word
0:44
Speaker 2: Has Passed. But first, don't miss this week's America Dissected,
0:47
Speaker 2: where Abdul talks to Professor Ibram Kendi about how to
0:50
Speaker 2: root out systemic racism in the American health care system.
0:54
Speaker 2: Great episode. Check it out.
0:56
Speaker 3: All right.
0:57
Speaker 2: It's always fun to kick off the show with some
0:59
Speaker 2: good news. So here it is. The criminal investigation into
1:03
Speaker 2: Donald Trump got a lot more serious this week as
1:05
Speaker 2: The Washington Post reported that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance
1:09
Speaker 2: has convened a special grand jury. that is expected to
1:12
Speaker 2: decide whether to indict the former president, his children, or
1:15
Speaker 2: his business on potential fraud charges. Vance has already brought
1:19
Speaker 2: in a mafia prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz, who's been deposing witnesses
1:23
Speaker 2: like Michael Cohen, Eric Trump, and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg.
1:29
Speaker 2: Trump responded to the news by getting angry on his
1:31
Speaker 2: blog and announcing that he'll be starting up his rallies
1:35
Speaker 2: again in June. indeed and indeed is this it did
1:47
Speaker 2: we finally get them have we gotten them.
1:50
Speaker 3: Better late than never but mother time is here.
1:56
Speaker 2: We got them send out the resistance tweets.
2:00
Speaker 3: He's gonna be frog marsh out of somewhere and we're
2:02
Speaker 3: all gonna be there to witness.
2:04
Speaker 2: It oh man what was it the um What was
2:08
Speaker 2: the Louise Mensch thing about the Supreme Court?
2:11
Speaker 3: The impeachment eagle has landed.
2:13
Speaker 2: The impeachment eagle. Yeah, the marshal. The marshal of the
2:16
Speaker 2: Supreme Court is going to go get him. What do
2:19
Speaker 2: you think of this news? How serious is it?
2:22
Speaker 4: It's certainly more serious than anything Trump dealt with before this.
2:25
Speaker 4: From January 2017 to January 2021, he– essentially had de
2:30
Speaker 4: facto criminal immunity. As a sitting president, the Department of
2:34
Speaker 4: Justice opinion was such that he could not be indicted,
2:36
Speaker 4: which is why he is the unindicted co-conspirator in the
2:40
Speaker 4: Michael Cohen case back in 2017 instead of the indicted co-conspirator.
2:46
Speaker 4: And he had essentially de facto immunity from the Republican
2:50
Speaker 4: Party because– the Republican Party, with impeachment being the constitutionally
2:55
Speaker 4: designated mechanism for trying presidential crimes in a Republican Party
2:59
Speaker 4: that believes that crimes are not crimes not committed by
3:01
Speaker 4: a Republican. He was sort of free to escape accountability.
3:04
Speaker 4: All of that immunity is now gone. We should, I think,
3:07
Speaker 4: pump the brakes a little bit in our celebration. We
3:11
Speaker 4: know that from all of the legal analysts who look
3:14
Speaker 4: at this, the Vance investigation has reached a new level.
3:17
Speaker 4: A grand jury has been convened. The hiring of this
3:21
Speaker 4: mafia attorney is a sign. from, I think, Preet Bharara
3:25
Speaker 4: and Dan Goldman's mothers have suggested that it means that
3:27
Speaker 4: he's moving closer to charges.
3:29
Speaker 3: We just don't know what those charges are.
3:31
Speaker 2: You think that's right? You think bringing in a mafia
3:34
Speaker 2: prosecutor means they might have something on them?
3:38
Speaker 3: Well, that's the thing. We don't know if it's Trump.
3:40
Speaker 3: That's the important thing. Right.
3:42
Speaker 2: Well, that is the big thing.
3:43
Speaker 5: Yes.
3:43
Speaker 4: This is an investigation into the Trump organization, their finances.
3:47
Speaker 4: They have access to his tax returns and other financial records.
3:50
Speaker 4: Is it Trump himself? Is it someone who works there?
3:54
Speaker 4: Is it another member of his family? Is it the
3:56
Speaker 4: company itself? There are all kinds of different ways this
3:59
Speaker 4: could take. But it is undoubtedly a huge legal morass
4:03
Speaker 4: and a challenge for our blogging former president.
4:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think on the side of the ledger, there's
4:10
Speaker 2: like why it's a big deal. And then there's like
4:12
Speaker 2: pump the brakes on the big deal side of the ledger.
4:15
Speaker 2: The case has been going on for quite a while.
4:17
Speaker 2: Vance has Trump's tax returns. Remember, he won that case
4:20
Speaker 2: at the Supreme Court. So he does have all the
4:22
Speaker 2: tax returns. When New York Attorney General Letitia James joined
4:27
Speaker 2: the criminal investigation as well and said that her investigation
4:30
Speaker 2: was moving from civil to criminal, that was a sign.
4:33
Speaker 2: And usually you don't convene a grand jury not to
4:38
Speaker 2: bring charges. It is it seems clear, at least a
4:42
Speaker 2: lot of the legal experts who've looked at this say this.
4:45
Speaker 2: It seems clear that Vance believes he has a criminal
4:47
Speaker 2: case to bring against somebody. Now, is that somebody Donald Trump?
4:52
Speaker 2: Or is that somebody like a couple of accountants in
4:55
Speaker 2: the Trump organization? That we don't know. Though again, if
4:59
Speaker 2: you're Letitia James and you're putting out a statement, not
5:02
Speaker 2: even leaking, you're putting out a statement that this is
5:04
Speaker 2: a criminal investigation and then you're Cyrus Vance and clearly
5:07
Speaker 2: your side leaked to the Washington Post that you have
5:09
Speaker 2: convened a grand jury. I don't know that you would
5:12
Speaker 2: do that if the ultimate criminal charges are against a
5:14
Speaker 2: few accountants. But again, we don't know. Now on the
5:19
Speaker 2: pump the brakes side, one thing about this, this jury,
5:22
Speaker 2: this special grand jury is the panel sits for three
5:27
Speaker 2: days a week for six months. And a jury like
5:30
Speaker 2: this may hear other cases. They may be used to
5:33
Speaker 2: subpoena witnesses or evidence. They may be used to hear testimony,
5:35
Speaker 2: and then they may ultimately be used to decide potential charges,
5:39
Speaker 2: but it could be a long time and they could
5:40
Speaker 2: be hearing some other matters. The other thing that, uh,
5:42
Speaker 2: Daniel Goldman, who you mentioned, he's the former prosecutor who
5:46
Speaker 2: was the democratic council during the first impeachment trial. Remember
5:49
Speaker 2: those days, um, He said on CNN that fraud cases
5:53
Speaker 2: are hard, and they're hard because Trump could try to
5:55
Speaker 2: use advice of counsel defense. In other words, my lawyer
5:59
Speaker 2: told me this was legal, so how was I supposed
6:02
Speaker 2: to know? I got the best legal advice I could,
6:04
Speaker 2: even though it might not be legal. And because Trump
6:07
Speaker 2: doesn't use email, he may not have put a lot
6:10
Speaker 2: of his crimes in writing, which is always tough when
6:12
Speaker 2: you don't put your crimes in writing.
6:14
Speaker 3: Check Twitter, people. There's archives. All those tweets are archived.
6:17
Speaker 2: I know, he's... Yeah, well, now all of his crimes
6:20
Speaker 2: are probably on his blog, which is just very popular.
6:24
Speaker 2: So for what it's worth, and it may not be
6:26
Speaker 2: worth much of anything, an anonymous Trump advisor told Politico
6:30
Speaker 2: that the investigation has created, quote, a cloud of nerves
6:34
Speaker 2: because it's targeting CFO Allen Weisselberg, who knows all the numbers,
6:37
Speaker 2: knows where all the bodies are buried. So just for fun,
6:41
Speaker 2: let's imagine that Trump himself is indicted. Just for fun.
6:45
Speaker 2: Does that stop him from running for president? Because... business
6:49
Speaker 2: insider interviewed nine legal scholars who said nothing in the
6:53
Speaker 2: constitution would prevent another white house run and they even
6:57
Speaker 2: believe he could serve a second term as president from
7:00
Speaker 2: motherfucking prison when they when i said that like yeah
7:05
Speaker 2: nothing will stop him from running i was like i
7:07
Speaker 2: guess that makes sense serving as president from prison are
7:10
Speaker 2: you serious.
7:12
Speaker 4: John, as it turns out, there are some holes in
7:15
Speaker 4: our system, some unanticipated circumstances for which the founders did
7:20
Speaker 4: not anticipate.
7:21
Speaker 2: Yes. I would say that's the theme of today's episode.
7:24
Speaker 3: Now, would it be.
7:26
Speaker 4: Good for the country or good for democracy if Donald
7:29
Speaker 4: Trump ran for president from prison?
7:33
Speaker 5: No.
7:34
Speaker 3: Would it be briefly funny?
7:35
Speaker 5: Yes.
7:37
Speaker 4: Could you imagine– Steve Doocy, would you accept this toll
7:41
Speaker 4: call from an inmate at the Lompoc Correctional Facility so
7:45
Speaker 4: Trump could call into Fox & Friends? Can you imagine
7:47
Speaker 4: him and Sean Hannity touching hands on the glass at
7:51
Speaker 4: the prison?
7:54
Speaker 2: I mean, look, it seems– Unlikely that Trump runs from prison,
8:00
Speaker 2: partly because these kind of cases take a long time.
8:03
Speaker 2: Fraud cases take a long time. So by the time
8:05
Speaker 2: we get through, you know, this could still be in court.
8:07
Speaker 2: But we should keep in mind that this is not
8:10
Speaker 2: something too far fetched. running while on trial under investigation,
8:16
Speaker 2: Bibi Netanyahu has run for re-election three times while on
8:20
Speaker 2: trial for corruption. So this has happened before. Now, obviously,
8:25
Speaker 2: Israel's system is a bit different than ours, but... You
8:28
Speaker 2: could totally see him being under indictment and running for president.
8:32
Speaker 2: He's going to use it to whip up his base.
8:33
Speaker 2: He's already started saying, oh, the only reason they're after,
8:36
Speaker 2: he's trying to politicize the investigation. The only reason these
8:39
Speaker 2: Democrats are after me is because I'm leading in polls
8:43
Speaker 2: in the Republican primary. That's what he, you have to
8:45
Speaker 2: look on his blog for this stuff because he's not
8:48
Speaker 2: tweeting anymore. I looked the other day, by the way,
8:52
Speaker 2: because I don't pay much attention to what Trump says anymore.
8:55
Speaker 2: And it's actually people have done a pretty good job
8:57
Speaker 2: not tweeting it. You look on that fucking blog. He's
9:02
Speaker 2: blogging like 10 times a day. It's all the same
9:05
Speaker 2: shit that he usually does. The other day he was
9:07
Speaker 2: just tweeting, Crazy Joe Scarborough and his blood-curdling psycho wife,
9:11
Speaker 2: question mark Mika, are going crazy because their ratings have tanked.
9:16
Speaker 2: And it was like, no time has passed since 2020.
9:21
Speaker 2: It's like the same shit. Anyway. Yeah, so I think
9:24
Speaker 2: he'll use this probably to whip up his base.
9:26
Speaker 3: Also.
9:27
Speaker 4: somewhat alarmingly, and I kind of hate myself for saying this,
9:29
Speaker 4: but George Conway made an interesting point on Twitter, which
9:34
Speaker 4: is that if he were indicted but not yet convicted
9:40
Speaker 4: at the time of the 2024 presidential election, winning the
9:43
Speaker 4: election could be used as a way to keep him
9:45
Speaker 4: out of jail.
9:48
Speaker 2: I'm telling you, I have been saying this for a
9:50
Speaker 2: while now, not making any predictions, but literally every single incentive...
9:56
Speaker 2: for Trump points towards run again in 2022.
10:00
Speaker 6: 2024.
10:00
Speaker 2: And Quinnipiac had a poll out this week. 66% of
10:04
Speaker 2: Republicans want Trump to run again. Only 30% don't. And
10:08
Speaker 2: then 85% of Republicans want a presidential candidate who mostly
10:12
Speaker 2: agrees with Trump. I mentioned that rallies are starting up
10:15
Speaker 2: again in June. Politico reports that he's working on his
10:18
Speaker 2: own version of a contract with America with Newt Gingrich,
10:24
Speaker 2: bringing back Newt Gingrich from the 90s to do another
10:27
Speaker 2: contract with America. So it certainly seems like, like before
10:32
Speaker 2: I thought, okay, the only thing that will stop him
10:34
Speaker 2: from running is an indictment. I stand corrected now. I
10:38
Speaker 2: do not think the indictment will stop him from running
10:40
Speaker 2: at all. I don't know. I actually at this point
10:42
Speaker 2: don't know what will stop him from running again. You
10:45
Speaker 2: got anything?
10:46
Speaker 3: I got nothing.
10:47
Speaker 6: I got nothing.
10:48
Speaker 4: Do you think it'll be the speech that Paul Ryan's
10:50
Speaker 4: giving today about Trumpism?
10:52
Speaker 2: Is that what he's doing? I know you're on the Paul.
10:54
Speaker 2: I know that you're our Paul Ryan.
10:55
Speaker 4: Trust me, Paul Ryan doesn't poke up his beady little
10:58
Speaker 4: head without someone getting my mentions.
10:59
Speaker 3: So yeah, he's.
11:02
Speaker 4: Giving a speech today about trying to steer the party
11:05
Speaker 4: away from Trump. He mentions Trump's name once in the speech.
11:09
Speaker 4: And the only time he mentions it is to compliment
11:11
Speaker 4: him for the strong economy he built prior to the pandemic.
11:15
Speaker 2: Look, Nothing leads me to believe that Donald Trump would
11:18
Speaker 2: not run for office again. Nothing leads me to believe
11:21
Speaker 2: that Donald Trump would not easily win a Republican nomination
11:24
Speaker 2: again from every piece of polling, public opinion, the way
11:29
Speaker 2: the party is, the incentives in the party. And then
11:31
Speaker 2: we have an extremely polarized country where Joe Biden essentially
11:35
Speaker 2: only won the last election by about 40,000 votes because
11:39
Speaker 2: of the electoral college, not 7 million in the popular,
11:41
Speaker 2: which is what people think. So we're right back to
11:44
Speaker 2: being a few tens of thousands of votes away from
11:47
Speaker 2: Donald Trump becoming president again in 2024. That is what's
11:50
Speaker 2: been running through my head for the last several months.
11:53
Speaker 4: Not only will he win a primary, the Republican Party
11:55
Speaker 4: will cancel the primary if he runs.
11:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, who the fuck's going to run against Donald Trump
12:01
Speaker 2: in the primary?
12:01
Speaker 3: Larry Hogan?
12:02
Speaker 4: You think they're going to hold the South Carolina primary
12:05
Speaker 4: so Larry Hogan can be in a debate? No, they're
12:06
Speaker 4: going to cancel it.
12:09
Speaker 7: Oof.
12:09
Speaker 2: Good stuff, good stuff. All right, let's talk about one
12:12
Speaker 2: of the many mini-Trumps who are still wielding power in Washington,
12:15
Speaker 2: Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Why is this grade A dipshit
12:20
Speaker 2: in the news again, you may ask? Well, during a
12:22
Speaker 2: television interview, she was complaining about vaccine and mask requirements
12:25
Speaker 2: and landed on really what was the most perfect, unimpeachable
12:30
Speaker 2: historical analogy you could imagine. Here's a clip.
12:33
Speaker 5: You know, we can look back at a time in
12:34
Speaker 5: history where people were told to wear a gold star
12:38
Speaker 5: And they were definitely treated like second class citizens, so
12:42
Speaker 5: much so that they were put in trains and taken
12:44
Speaker 5: to gas chambers in Nazi Germany. And this is exactly
12:48
Speaker 5: the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.
12:52
Speaker 2: That's right, Dan. Requiring members of Congress to take precautions
12:54
Speaker 2: so that they don't infect others with the deadly disease is, quote,
12:58
Speaker 2: exactly like killing six million Jews. It's just impossible to
13:02
Speaker 2: find a difference. Of course, following the backlash from some
13:06
Speaker 2: clearly misguided critics, Green quickly issued a clarifying statement. Let's
13:09
Speaker 2: hear it.
13:09
Speaker 5: I said nothing wrong.
13:11
Speaker 1: And I think any any rational Jewish person didn't like
13:14
Speaker 1: what happened in Nazi Germany. And any rational Jewish person
13:18
Speaker 1: doesn't like what's happening with overbearing mask mandates and overbearing
13:23
Speaker 1: vaccine policies.
13:24
Speaker 2: But wait, but wait, there's more. You didn't think there
13:28
Speaker 2: was more, but there's more. Just in case anyone in
13:31
Speaker 2: the world was still confused after those first two statements,
13:34
Speaker 2: she tweeted, quote, Vaccinated employees get a vaccination logo just
13:38
Speaker 2: like the Nazis forced Jewish people to wear a gold star.
13:42
Speaker 2: So there you go. Now, since House Republicans just held
13:46
Speaker 2: a caucus-wide vote to strip Liz Cheney of her leadership
13:49
Speaker 2: post for the mere crime of criticizing Donald Trump, you
13:52
Speaker 2: can only imagine what Kevin McCarthy did to Greene, right, Dan?
13:55
Speaker 2: What happened?
13:56
Speaker 3: She's out of Congress, right?
13:58
Speaker 2: She's not out of Congress. No, she's not out of Congress.
14:01
Speaker 2: But she is. She was the target of a sternly
14:04
Speaker 2: worded statement released by Kevin McCarthy. After five days, after
14:09
Speaker 2: five days, he released a statement.
14:13
Speaker 4: Well, there's one lesson we've learned from the Trump era.
14:17
Speaker 4: It's that the best way to put a stop towards
14:19
Speaker 4: authoritarian lunacy is with tweets. And so if Kevin McCarthy
14:23
Speaker 4: has tweeted, then this problem is solved. just like Jeff
14:26
Speaker 4: Flake Sweet stopped Trump in his tracks.
14:28
Speaker 2: In fact, the statement went on to accuse Democrats of anti-Semitism.
14:33
Speaker 2: All of this, by the way, against the backdrop of
14:36
Speaker 2: a rise in anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic attacks all over the
14:40
Speaker 2: country that we have seen over the last several weeks.
14:44
Speaker 2: This is where Marjorie Taylor Greene stepped in to say
14:46
Speaker 2: all this. Like, I guess the question is, what else
14:49
Speaker 2: could McCarthy do about it if McCarthy wasn't the House
14:53
Speaker 2: minority leader and someone sane was?
14:56
Speaker 4: Well, he could join with Nancy Pelosi to kick her
14:59
Speaker 4: out of Congress. This is a safe Republican seat. They
15:01
Speaker 4: would lose nothing. Marjorie Taylor Greene won by a lot,
15:04
Speaker 4: and a Republican will win that seat again. He could
15:08
Speaker 4: say that he is going to support– he could go
15:10
Speaker 4: out and recruit a primary challenger and support that primary
15:13
Speaker 4: challenger and starve her of funding and attention and party support.
15:17
Speaker 4: But he is not going to do that. He has
15:19
Speaker 4: not done that because he lives in fear of angering
15:21
Speaker 4: Trump or the Trumpist base or any of those things.
15:23
Speaker 3: There are He has power.
15:25
Speaker 4: He doesn't know how to, but he is choosing not
15:27
Speaker 4: to use it because he is weak and stupid.
15:32
Speaker 2: Green responded to McCarthy's sternly worded statement by quote tweeting
15:37
Speaker 2: a tweet that called the minority leader a moron and
15:41
Speaker 2: a feckless word that rhymes with bunt. What does her
15:44
Speaker 2: reaction tell you about how she sees her role in
15:47
Speaker 2: the party?
15:49
Speaker 4: Well, she recognizes that she is more powerful than Kevin McCarthy.
15:53
Speaker 5: Yeah.
15:54
Speaker 2: And she doesn't need Kevin McCarthy. Well, you know, my
15:57
Speaker 2: first reaction was like, why don't they strip her of
15:59
Speaker 2: all her committee assignments like they did to Steve King
16:03
Speaker 2: when he said a bunch of racist shit a couple
16:05
Speaker 2: of years ago? And then I realized, oh, they did
16:07
Speaker 2: strip her of her committee assignments because the Democrats voted
16:11
Speaker 2: to do so after her last election. kerfuffle, let's call it.
16:16
Speaker 2: And only 11 House Republicans voted with the Democrats to
16:19
Speaker 2: remove her from committee. So she's already lost her committee assignments.
16:22
Speaker 2: So I guess all there is, is just expelling her
16:25
Speaker 2: or a primary challenge. And she doesn't fear either of
16:27
Speaker 2: those things, right?
16:28
Speaker 4: I mean, she totally doesn't. And Democrats are not trying
16:32
Speaker 4: to expel her either, which is notable.
16:33
Speaker 2: They could.
16:35
Speaker 4: They absolutely could do that. They could bring that motion
16:37
Speaker 4: to the floor and force Republicans to vote against it.
16:39
Speaker 2: Though I think the one argument for why Democrats probably
16:42
Speaker 2: haven't done it yet is they can't expel her with
16:44
Speaker 2: a simple majority, which they have. They have to expel
16:47
Speaker 2: her with a two-thirds majority, which of course they don't have.
16:50
Speaker 3: But you could like– You could make them vote on it. Yeah,
16:52
Speaker 3: you can make them vote on it.
16:53
Speaker 4: And I don't even– I'm not overly worked up about
16:55
Speaker 4: the fact that they haven't done it. There's a lot
16:58
Speaker 4: of things to do. A vote you're definitely going to
16:59
Speaker 4: lose to force Republicans to vote on that is probably
17:03
Speaker 4: maybe not the best use of time. But it is
17:05
Speaker 4: an option and could be part of a political strategy.
17:08
Speaker 4: But we should be clear is that she could be
17:12
Speaker 4: beaten in a primary. She absolutely could if people tried.
17:16
Speaker 4: And the party put their weight behind one person. They
17:19
Speaker 4: went out and recruited someone who obviously is going to
17:22
Speaker 4: be a Trumpist. They'll be Q adjacent, not Q– Q-adjacent. Yeah,
17:29
Speaker 4: they'd be Q-adjacent, not– Q-curious? Yeah, they would be Q-adjacent.
17:33
Speaker 3: Not Q-anon.
17:34
Speaker 4: They would be more dog whistle, less bullhorn, but they
17:37
Speaker 4: would still be a Trumpist MAGA net negative for American democracy,
17:42
Speaker 4: but it would be something different. And they could do that.
17:44
Speaker 4: And it's sort of sitting right there for them to do.
17:46
Speaker 4: And it would be a pretty easy political move on
17:47
Speaker 4: their part. But they are– sort of exist in fear
17:52
Speaker 4: of the base. And the base doesn't even really mean
17:54
Speaker 4: the voters. It means– Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Dan Bongino,
17:59
Speaker 4: the people on Fox News and Facebook.
18:02
Speaker 2: If you're at the DCCC right now, what do you
18:06
Speaker 2: do about Greene? Do you ignore her? Do you elevate her?
18:10
Speaker 2: Do you use Republicans' refusal to expel her as a
18:13
Speaker 2: way to brand the party as extremist?
18:17
Speaker 4: I think this is a tough question, and we don't
18:20
Speaker 4: really know enough about what the political environment is going
18:24
Speaker 4: to look like in 2022. I think definitely you try
18:27
Speaker 4: to drive some new cycles here, maybe even run some
18:30
Speaker 4: ads about it just to continue to– you want to
18:32
Speaker 4: put them on the defensive for as much of this
18:35
Speaker 4: time as possible. The more time Republicans are defending themselves,
18:37
Speaker 4: the less times they are attacking the Democratic agenda and
18:40
Speaker 4: President Biden. But in the long term, I think there
18:43
Speaker 4: are two questions. One, we should recognize that in an
18:49
Speaker 4: era of negative polarization in a deeply divided country– Democratic
18:53
Speaker 4: attacks and outrage about Marjorie Taylor Greene only strengthens her
18:57
Speaker 4: within the party. In February or whatever that was when
19:01
Speaker 4: she was kicked from her committee assignments, and that was
19:03
Speaker 4: a period of a couple of weeks where there was
19:05
Speaker 4: news story after news story about her anti-Semitic beliefs, her
19:09
Speaker 4: racist beliefs, completely unhinged behavior, harassing victims of gun violence.
19:16
Speaker 4: Her approval rating in the Republican Party went up 11 points.
19:20
Speaker 4: At that time in that same Morning Consult poll, Her
19:25
Speaker 4: name ID was as high as Kevin McCarthy's. So we
19:27
Speaker 4: are definitely strengthening her. Now, I don't think it's our
19:30
Speaker 4: job to police who has power in the Republican Party,
19:34
Speaker 4: but it's just worth knowing that she wants our attention
19:38
Speaker 4: as much as we want to give it to her.
19:40
Speaker 2: I think the.
19:40
Speaker 4: Question for Democrats is, is she too easy a figure
19:47
Speaker 4: for Republicans to walk away from? if we try to
19:50
Speaker 4: brand them that way? So let's say you're Mike Garcia
19:53
Speaker 4: in California, which will be probably the most endangered Republican
19:56
Speaker 4: in the country. And your opponent is saying you are
20:00
Speaker 4: a Marjorie Taylor Greene Republican and that he just stands
20:02
Speaker 4: up on debate stage and disagrees with everything she said.
20:04
Speaker 4: It's sort of an easy out for them.
20:07
Speaker 2: Well, to me, it's like exactly what– Republicans tried to
20:11
Speaker 2: do to Biden and a lot of Democratic candidates in 2020,
20:15
Speaker 2: which I don't think works very well when you're a voter.
20:20
Speaker 2: It's assuming that voters aren't smart enough to see the
20:25
Speaker 2: person that they're voting for in their district as different
20:28
Speaker 2: than the person that they're trying to be associated with.
20:33
Speaker 6: Right.
20:33
Speaker 2: And like Mike Garcia, who's in a very competitive district
20:37
Speaker 2: in just north of Los Angeles here, is not going
20:39
Speaker 2: to be like Marjorie Taylor Greene in any way. He's
20:41
Speaker 2: still a Republican. He's going to vote with the Republicans.
20:43
Speaker 2: He's going to, you know, have a horrible record, all
20:46
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. But he's not going to seem
20:48
Speaker 2: nuts like she is. And voters are going to get that, right?
20:51
Speaker 2: Like if you just try to say that Mike Garcia
20:53
Speaker 2: is a Marjorie Taylor Greene clone or that Mike Garcia's
20:57
Speaker 2: main sin is that he didn't vote to expel Marjorie
21:00
Speaker 2: Taylor Greene, is that going to be enough to win?
21:03
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think Marjorie Taylor has to be
21:06
Speaker 2: seen as a piece of a larger story about how
21:10
Speaker 2: the whole Republican Party is extreme, has lost its way,
21:14
Speaker 2: is radical, and is a danger to the country. I
21:16
Speaker 2: think you have to tell that larger story, and she's
21:18
Speaker 2: a piece of that story, but she's not the whole story.
21:20
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that is, we talked about this a little
21:22
Speaker 4: bit last week, but that is one of the forks
21:24
Speaker 4: in the road for Democratic Messi in 2022 is, is
21:27
Speaker 4: the story we are telling about the Republican Party that
21:29
Speaker 4: they are an extreme party, they cannot be trusted with governing,
21:34
Speaker 4: and that could be represented by Trump, it could be
21:36
Speaker 4: represented by Marjorie Taylor Greene, any, frankly, any member of
21:40
Speaker 4: almost any Republican member of Congress, or is it a
21:42
Speaker 4: different story about their sort of the plutocracy, the corporate
21:50
Speaker 4: tax cuts, cutting Medicare? That's, you know, we don't know
21:52
Speaker 4: the answer to that. Data will determine it. The state
21:54
Speaker 4: of the economy will determine if that is a question.
21:55
Speaker 4: But I think simply saying they're the party of Q,
21:58
Speaker 4: you see a lot of people, even some members of Congress,
22:01
Speaker 4: like the QOP. I don't think that works. But using
22:05
Speaker 4: her as one data point in a larger story about
22:07
Speaker 4: a party that cannot be trusted with governance to undermine
22:10
Speaker 4: the natural inclination for divided government among a disturbingly large
22:13
Speaker 4: segment of the population is, I think, a viable strategy.
22:18
Speaker 1: Yes.
22:18
Speaker 2: I think that talking about Republicans as extremist partisans who
22:24
Speaker 2: refuse to join together with Democrats to do anything good
22:27
Speaker 2: for the country at all, and only want Republicans in
22:31
Speaker 2: power and only care about power and don't care about
22:33
Speaker 2: any of you, don't care about voters, don't care about
22:35
Speaker 2: doing anything good for the country, is probably an argument
22:39
Speaker 2: that might fuse both, you know, they're bad at governing
22:42
Speaker 2: and they're plutocrats and also they're extreme. Like, I kind
22:45
Speaker 2: of think you probably have to meld the two at
22:46
Speaker 2: some point. But I don't have a lot of hope
22:49
Speaker 2: that just saying this is the party of Marjorie Taylor
22:51
Speaker 2: Greene and this is the party of Q is going
22:53
Speaker 2: to get it done. So All right. We want to
23:03
Speaker 2: end as we often do by sounding the alarm about
23:05
Speaker 2: the potential end of democracy in our time. We've talked
23:08
Speaker 2: before about the new voter suppression laws in states like
23:11
Speaker 2: Georgia and Texas, the OAN finance cyber ninja audit in Arizona,
23:16
Speaker 2: and the gerrymandering that could soon help Republicans take back
23:19
Speaker 2: the House and tighten their grip on state legislatures. Few
23:22
Speaker 2: more developments to add to this list over the last
23:24
Speaker 2: several weeks. In Missouri, Republican leaders announced that they will
23:28
Speaker 2: simply ignore a ballot measure passed by voters to expand Medicaid.
23:32
Speaker 2: In Mississippi, Republican leaders and judges struck down a ballot
23:35
Speaker 2: measure passed by voters to legalize medical marijuana. In Arizona,
23:39
Speaker 2: the Republican legislature has passed a law to strip power
23:41
Speaker 2: from the state's top election official, Democratic Secretary of State
23:45
Speaker 2: Katie Hobbs, and give power to the Republican Attorney General instead.
23:49
Speaker 2: And we now have Republican candidates who tried to overturn
23:52
Speaker 2: the last election running to be the top election officials,
23:55
Speaker 2: to be the secretary of state in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada
24:00
Speaker 2: and Michigan. So Perry Bacon at The Washington Post had
24:03
Speaker 2: an outstanding column this week titled American Democracy is in
24:06
Speaker 2: Even Worse Shape Than You Think, where he outlines four
24:09
Speaker 2: main threats to American democracy. The Republican Party's extremism. polarization
24:15
Speaker 2: that keeps the electorate closely divided, the weakness of nonpartisan
24:18
Speaker 2: institutions like the media and business, and democratic moderates like
24:22
Speaker 2: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who don't seem to grasp
24:25
Speaker 2: the magnitude of the threat that we face. Perry ends
24:28
Speaker 2: by saying that he hopes he's overly alarmed, but doesn't.
24:31
Speaker 6: Think he is.
24:32
Speaker 2: What do you think?
24:34
Speaker 3: I don't think he's alarmed enough.
24:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm pretty fucking alarmed.
24:39
Speaker 3: If you just.
24:40
Speaker 4: Watch what's happening all across this country, It is a
24:44
Speaker 4: very clear indication of a minority party that knows it
24:49
Speaker 4: has no path to majority status in this country, rigging
24:53
Speaker 4: elections at every level to set the stage for minority
24:57
Speaker 4: rule in this country. All the evidence is there. And
25:01
Speaker 4: the only place where people aren't really fully getting the
25:03
Speaker 4: evidence is in Washington, D.C., where we're still continuing to
25:07
Speaker 4: have good faith negotiations with Shelley Moore Capito and– People
25:11
Speaker 4: like Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema are hanging on to anachronistic
25:15
Speaker 4: legislative loopholes pretending that this is some different era. And look,
25:20
Speaker 4: we always say worry, don't panic. I'm not saying panic,
25:22
Speaker 4: but I think we should worry a lot fucking more
25:24
Speaker 4: because it is all right before our eyes. We have
25:27
Speaker 4: a narrow window to do something about it. And it's
25:30
Speaker 4: pretty clear that that window is closing very quickly.
25:33
Speaker 2: We've talked a lot about the voter suppression legislation that's
25:37
Speaker 2: happening in these states. And we're obviously quite worried about that.
25:41
Speaker 2: Ron Brownstein has a piece in The Atlantic today where
25:44
Speaker 2: he talked to a bunch of White House officials about
25:47
Speaker 2: whether they're worried enough about what's happening in the states. And,
25:51
Speaker 2: you know, they made the argument that obviously they want H.R.
25:54
Speaker 2: 1 to pass and that the voter suppression they believe
25:57
Speaker 2: is dangerous and antithetical to democracy and they're worried about it.
26:01
Speaker 2: But they think their argument is basically with enough money
26:06
Speaker 2: and organization, we can get our voters out and we
26:09
Speaker 2: can sort of get around some of these voter suppression
26:12
Speaker 2: laws in 2022 and then again in 2024 when Biden's
26:17
Speaker 2: on the ticket again, presumably. But then they said that
26:20
Speaker 2: what they're more worried about and don't really have a
26:23
Speaker 2: plan for is this strategy by Republicans to put all
26:30
Speaker 2: the pieces in place so that they can successfully overturn
26:34
Speaker 2: the next election that they lose. And just to lay
26:37
Speaker 2: out how this happens.
26:39
Speaker 6: Right.
26:40
Speaker 2: Like this is now we're past all the voter suppression stuff.
26:43
Speaker 2: We got around it. We won not only the popular vote,
26:46
Speaker 2: but we won the Electoral College vote. So all that
26:51
Speaker 2: needs to happen here for them to overturn the next
26:54
Speaker 2: election is you have a fairly close election in a
26:56
Speaker 2: few swing states, just like last time. Doesn't even have
26:59
Speaker 2: to be too close. Maybe just a difference of like
27:00
Speaker 2: one percent between the candidates. Trump cries fraud or whoever
27:05
Speaker 2: Republican it is. And if Trumpy Republicans are election officials
27:10
Speaker 2: or in charge of state legislatures, which they are in
27:14
Speaker 2: charge of a lot of state legislatures in red and
27:16
Speaker 2: purple states, and now they're running to be secretaries of
27:18
Speaker 2: state in those states, then they just refuse to certify
27:21
Speaker 2: the election or they send their own slate of delegates.
27:24
Speaker 2: Then if we lose in 2022, because we have a
27:27
Speaker 2: fucking gerrymandered house and it was impossible for Democrats to win,
27:30
Speaker 2: we have a Republican house. And if we have a
27:32
Speaker 2: Republican Senate, all they have to do is refuse to
27:35
Speaker 2: certify enough states to give either candidate 270 electoral votes.
27:40
Speaker 2: If they refuse to certify the states, the Constitution says
27:43
Speaker 2: that if Congress doesn't certify a majority winner, the Republican
27:46
Speaker 2: House picks the president. And that's that. Now, what has
27:50
Speaker 2: to happen is not just Republicans win in 2022 and
27:53
Speaker 2: take control of the House and the Senate, they would
27:55
Speaker 2: also have to once again maintain control of the House
27:58
Speaker 2: and the Senate in the 2024 election, if we're talking
28:01
Speaker 2: about stealing the presidency, because of course you'd have the
28:04
Speaker 2: new Congress then. But if the Republicans keep the House
28:06
Speaker 2: in 2024, and they keep the Senate in 2024, and
28:08
Speaker 2: they win those two things, they will have everything in
28:11
Speaker 2: place they need to constitutionally steal the presidency. And like,
28:18
Speaker 2: it doesn't seem like like we're talking a lot about
28:20
Speaker 2: voter suppression, too. It does not seem like anyone has
28:23
Speaker 2: a plan for this, that anyone is alarmed enough about this.
28:26
Speaker 2: What do you think?
28:27
Speaker 4: No, people are not alarmed enough about it. Like the
28:31
Speaker 4: we've mentioned this before, but the great asymmetry in American
28:33
Speaker 4: politics is that Republicans view political power as an end
28:37
Speaker 4: in and of itself, and Democrats view it as a
28:40
Speaker 4: means to an end. And this is what is happening
28:42
Speaker 4: across the country, which is Republicans using the power they
28:45
Speaker 4: have to put in place laws to allow them to
28:48
Speaker 4: hold on political power. And in Washington, they are relying
28:53
Speaker 4: on the filibuster and the willful naivete of Joe Manchin
28:58
Speaker 4: and Kyrsten Sinema to prevent Democrats from doing anything about
29:00
Speaker 4: these threats to democracy. And it is happening before us.
29:03
Speaker 3: And we are.
29:05
Speaker 4: Going pretty, as a party, going pretty quietly into the
29:08
Speaker 4: night here. And I get it from the perspective of
29:13
Speaker 4: the Biden White House and maybe even Senate Democrats. It
29:16
Speaker 4: may be that there's not a single fucking thing they
29:19
Speaker 4: can do to make Joe Manchin step up and save democracy.
29:24
Speaker 4: And when you're president, there is a limit to how
29:28
Speaker 4: much time you have presidential communication to serve a zero-sum game.
29:30
Speaker 4: And you want to talk about the things you can
29:32
Speaker 4: do or the things you have done. And so yelling
29:35
Speaker 4: about something that cannot be fixed doesn't seem particularly appealing.
29:39
Speaker 3: On a daily basis in the White House messaging meeting.
29:40
Speaker 3: I have been there. You have been there. We know that.
29:43
Speaker 4: But I will say this. We need to raise the alarm.
29:48
Speaker 4: There are disturbing signs of complacency in our party. We
29:52
Speaker 4: saw it in the special election in Texas. We're seeing
29:54
Speaker 4: some early signs among volunteers and activists in Virginia.
29:59
Speaker 3: And I get it.
30:01
Speaker 4: It is fucking exhausting that after four years of Trump,
30:05
Speaker 4: one pandemic, two impeachments, that we are 150 days into
30:09
Speaker 4: the Biden administration and the country is still in a
30:11
Speaker 4: five alarm fucking fire. That is tiring. But that is
30:14
Speaker 4: where we are. Joe Biden's victory stopped the spread of
30:16
Speaker 4: the fire, but it is still burning. And we have
30:19
Speaker 4: to do more. We have to raise the alarm. Because
30:20
Speaker 4: I have to be honest with you, I do not
30:23
Speaker 4: believe that simply passing a popular agenda is enough to
30:27
Speaker 4: win the next election.
30:28
Speaker 2: I don't either. You and I talked, what, last episode
30:31
Speaker 2: about- Who fucking knows? That poll that J.D. Scholten did
30:35
Speaker 2: with rural voters and 60-something percent of them didn't even
30:40
Speaker 2: know that the rebate checks were associated with Joe Biden
30:44
Speaker 2: and the Democratic Party. A third of them thought the
30:46
Speaker 2: stimulus checks they got were from the Republican Party. So
30:50
Speaker 2: the Biden strategy here and the Democratic strategy is we
30:53
Speaker 2: will We will pass all this legislation, mostly through reconciliation,
30:57
Speaker 2: because we can't get rid of the filibuster. It will
30:59
Speaker 2: improve people's lives. They will say, thank you for the
31:02
Speaker 2: shots in arms. Thank you for the checks. Thank you
31:04
Speaker 2: for the better economy. I will now vote for Democrats.
31:07
Speaker 2: It may be that.
31:10
Speaker 2: That may be the best of a bunch of bad
31:12
Speaker 2: options as a strategy from the Biden administration. But I
31:16
Speaker 2: would at least try to go down fighting here. Right.
31:18
Speaker 2: And again, like I'm like, I don't I don't think
31:20
Speaker 2: yelling at people to do what they don't have the
31:22
Speaker 2: power to do is all that productive. And people should know,
31:25
Speaker 2: like the White House does not have the power to
31:28
Speaker 2: force Joe Manchin to do what they want. They don't.
31:31
Speaker 2: it is unlikely that Joe Manchin succumbs to political pressure
31:34
Speaker 2: because it is highly likely that Joe Manchin doesn't run
31:37
Speaker 2: again after his term is up. So it's like you
31:41
Speaker 2: have a senator who he might be in his last term.
31:43
Speaker 2: He's in deep red West Virginia. He's immune to all
31:46
Speaker 2: kinds of political pressure.
31:48
Speaker 6: You're right.
31:49
Speaker 2: I'm sure the Biden people are immensely frustrated every single day.
31:52
Speaker 2: I'm sure the Senate Democrats are immensely frustrated every day.
31:56
Speaker 2: We know that because they tweet about this all the time,
31:58
Speaker 2: all of our Senate Democrats friends. But at some point,
32:02
Speaker 2: I do think they have to try a little harder
32:04
Speaker 2: to figure out what Joe Manchin wants. How do we
32:07
Speaker 2: reach him? What can we do? I mean, and it's hard.
32:10
Speaker 2: So as we're recording this, Joe Manchin has basically decided
32:14
Speaker 2: that he will not do anything to break the Republican
32:18
Speaker 2: filibuster of a bipartisan commission investigating the people who tried
32:24
Speaker 2: to destroy our government and attack our government on January 6th.
32:29
Speaker 2: And the reason he said he won't do that is
32:32
Speaker 2: because he doesn't want to destroy our country. He doesn't
32:34
Speaker 2: want to destroy our country by breaking the partisan filibuster
32:39
Speaker 2: of a bipartisan commission into the people who tried to
32:42
Speaker 2: destroy our country. That's where Joe Manchin is. And then
32:45
Speaker 2: a reporter asked him again, will you ever change your mind?
32:48
Speaker 2: And today he said, quote, I don't think I'll ever change.
32:52
Speaker 2: I'm not separating our country, okay? I don't know what
32:55
Speaker 2: you all don't understand about this. You ask the same
32:57
Speaker 2: question every day and it's wrong. That's enough. So like,
33:01
Speaker 2: what do you do about that? I don't know. What
33:04
Speaker 2: do you do about that?
33:06
Speaker 3: Scream into the void to avoid having your head explode.
33:10
Speaker 2: We got that covered.
33:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. We rage pod, you rage listen.
33:16
Speaker 2: We have volunteered for that. We are screaming into the void. Look,
33:20
Speaker 2: and so- On one hand, it's so weird. I find
33:23
Speaker 2: myself I am frustrated by Biden and the White House
33:25
Speaker 2: and the Senate Democrats. On the other hand, I am
33:27
Speaker 2: very sympathetic to their plight. Right. And like it is
33:31
Speaker 2: it is unconscionable to me that the entire country and
33:34
Speaker 2: the project of democracy could be held hostage by Joe
33:37
Speaker 2: Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. I mean, it's just it fucking
33:40
Speaker 2: boggles the mind. But it feels like that's where we are. Yeah.
33:43
Speaker 4: I mean, that is most certainly where we are. I
33:46
Speaker 4: think it is incumbent upon everyone. President Biden, Senate Democrats,
33:54
Speaker 4: everyone else to use the platform they have to raise
33:57
Speaker 4: the fucking alarm. Because there is very scary things happening here.
34:02
Speaker 4: There were two officials who helped stand in the way
34:05
Speaker 4: of a stolen election in 2020, the Secretary of State
34:07
Speaker 4: of Georgia and Secretary of State of Arizona. One a Republican,
34:09
Speaker 4: one a Democrat. Neither of those people are going to
34:11
Speaker 4: have power to do that same thing in 2024 because
34:14
Speaker 4: Republicans took that power away from them. When we talk
34:17
Speaker 4: about gerrymandering, we talk about States where Republicans could gain
34:21
Speaker 4: seats to steal the House. We say Texas, controlled by Republicans. Florida,
34:26
Speaker 4: controlled by Republicans. Georgia, controlled by Republicans. We also say
34:28
Speaker 4: North Carolina. And you may say, that's weird. Didn't we
34:30
Speaker 4: just reelect Governor Cooper, a Democrat?
34:33
Speaker 3: Yes, we did.
34:33
Speaker 4: But in 2016, after Governor Cooper won, the veto-proof Republican
34:37
Speaker 4: majority of the legislature took all of his powers away,
34:39
Speaker 4: including the role he was going to play in redistricting.
34:42
Speaker 4: The Republicans have set up a system where it is
34:44
Speaker 4: heads Republicans win, tails Democrats lose. And we have to
34:47
Speaker 4: scream about it because it is scary. Screaming about it
34:50
Speaker 4: is not going to solve the problem, but we have
34:52
Speaker 4: to wake everyone up to the threat. It is a
34:55
Speaker 4: surreal time to live in because in some ways things
34:57
Speaker 4: feel almost normal for the first time again.
35:01
Speaker 3: People are vaccinated. They're traveling. They're going to restaurants. Schools
35:04
Speaker 3: are reopening. All of those things.
35:06
Speaker 4: But while that's happening, and the Biden administration is rightfully
35:09
Speaker 4: celebrating that normalcy that they have helped bring about through
35:12
Speaker 4: sheer effort and competence and having a plan and bringing
35:16
Speaker 4: experts into government, believing in science, all of those things,
35:19
Speaker 4: democracy itself is at the gravest threat it has been
35:22
Speaker 4: at any point in the history of this country. And
35:25
Speaker 4: it's happening right before our eyes. You can't have a
35:27
Speaker 4: two-party system where one party is trying to destroy democracy
35:30
Speaker 4: and the other party is trying to cut an infrastructure
35:32
Speaker 4: deal with Shelley Moore Capito. Like that is– and look,
35:36
Speaker 4: I understand why they're having those negotiations. If we lived
35:39
Speaker 4: in a world where there were 51 senators and Joe
35:41
Speaker 4: Manchin– The vote was not decisive. Everything, they were probably
35:44
Speaker 4: passive by reconciliation. They're trying to get things done. But
35:47
Speaker 4: simply getting things done is not going to be enough.
35:51
Speaker 4: So you have two options here. You can either try
35:54
Speaker 4: to get people to overcome the tremendous obstacles being put
35:58
Speaker 4: in place in this election out of gratitude for all
36:02
Speaker 4: the things you've done, or you can try to stop
36:05
Speaker 4: all those anti-democratic things. That may not be an option.
36:07
Speaker 4: Or you can raise an alarm and let people understand
36:10
Speaker 4: that the stakes in this election are so much bigger
36:12
Speaker 4: than whether you're going to get to pass a second
36:14
Speaker 4: infrastructure bill or any of those things. It is something
36:16
Speaker 4: much bigger than that. And we have to raise the stakes.
36:19
Speaker 4: And that is not going to happen simply by talking
36:21
Speaker 4: about popular things. And I think it's somewhat depressing as
36:25
Speaker 4: someone who works in politics and as a Democrat when
36:27
Speaker 4: you say doing good things that people like is not
36:31
Speaker 4: enough to win elections.
36:32
Speaker 2: But there is a shit- Yeah, no, that's very depressing.
36:34
Speaker 3: But there's a shit ton.
36:35
Speaker 4: Of evidence that that is a fact. Like look at
36:37
Speaker 4: Florida in 2020. The ballot initiative to raise the minimum
36:42
Speaker 4: wage to $ 15 outperformed the candidate supporting raising the minimum
36:47
Speaker 4: wage to $ 15 by 13 points. It is about something
36:51
Speaker 4: more than just doing popular stuff. Doing popular stuff, as
36:55
Speaker 4: you said last week, is table stakes. We absolutely should
36:57
Speaker 4: do that. Doing popular stuff is better than doing unpopular stuff.
37:00
Speaker 4: Enacting a popular agenda is better than failing to enact
37:02
Speaker 4: a popular agenda. But that is not going to be
37:04
Speaker 4: enough to overcome the hurdles being put in place here.
37:07
Speaker 4: They are historic.
37:08
Speaker 2: And when we say popular stuff, particularly popular stuff that
37:13
Speaker 2: revolves around people's economic interests, right? We have had this
37:17
Speaker 2: theory now for decades, it comes from the left primarily,
37:22
Speaker 2: that if you just do really popular stuff and help
37:25
Speaker 2: people's material conditions, that they will suddenly have a revelation
37:29
Speaker 2: and not vote Republican and vote Democrat. And there is
37:32
Speaker 2: not a lot of evidence that people vote out of
37:34
Speaker 2: their own economic interests. A lot of Democrats who are
37:38
Speaker 2: well off and well educated don't vote out of their
37:41
Speaker 2: economic interests when they when they vote for tax increases
37:43
Speaker 2: or support tax increases. So why would we think a
37:46
Speaker 2: lot of Republican voters who are poorer and working class
37:48
Speaker 2: would do that?
37:49
Speaker 3: Right.
37:50
Speaker 2: Like it's still a good thing to do because it's
37:52
Speaker 2: important to pass legislation that improves people's material conditions. I'm
37:56
Speaker 2: all for it. I'm glad that Joe Biden's doing it.
37:57
Speaker 2: He should do more. But we shouldn't think that that's
38:00
Speaker 2: going to take care of the politics, especially in a
38:02
Speaker 2: country that is polarized specifically along cultural lines and lines
38:08
Speaker 2: of geography. Now, I keep trying to think of like, OK,
38:11
Speaker 2: what are some tangible things we could do here? Like,
38:12
Speaker 2: how do you solve this problem instead of just yelling
38:14
Speaker 2: about it? I do think it is probably time to
38:17
Speaker 2: separate out the anti-gerrymandering provision of H.R.1 and have a
38:22
Speaker 2: standalone bill to try to pass nonpartisan redistricting, because I
38:26
Speaker 2: think the most important provision in HR1 is the anti-gerrymandering provision,
38:30
Speaker 2: the provision that would take partisan redistricting away from all
38:33
Speaker 2: of these Republican states and make sure there's nonpartisan or
38:36
Speaker 2: independent commissions doing redistricting in all 50 states. I think
38:40
Speaker 2: if we could pass that, that would probably do more
38:43
Speaker 2: than almost anything else to protect democracy in 2022 and 2024,
38:48
Speaker 2: because it would give us a fighting chance at keeping
38:50
Speaker 2: the House right now. And right now, I don't know
38:52
Speaker 2: that we have a good chance to keep the House,
38:54
Speaker 2: particularly if we don't prevent Republican gerrymandering and redistricting, because
38:57
Speaker 2: I think they're going to be able to pick up
38:59
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of states just by drawing new maps.
39:02
Speaker 2: And also, by the way, the anti-gerrymandering provision in H.R. 1,
39:05
Speaker 2: we have pulled this, everyone's pulled this, is the single
39:07
Speaker 2: most popular provision. Of the bill. So put it on
39:11
Speaker 2: the floor. You have a you have a bill that
39:13
Speaker 2: would have redistricting be bipartisan, nonpartisan, independent, should be right
39:18
Speaker 2: up fucking Joe Manchin's alley, Kyrsten Sinema's alley. We want
39:21
Speaker 2: to take the politics out of redistricting. So no party
39:25
Speaker 2: has an advantage. Put it on the floor. Fight for that.
39:28
Speaker 2: I also think, by the way, that Congress. should look
39:30
Speaker 2: into passing a law, Democrats at least should introduce a law,
39:33
Speaker 2: that addresses the certification issue ahead of 2024. amend the
39:38
Speaker 2: Electoral Count Act of 1887, which says that the House
39:41
Speaker 2: and Senate can submit objections, and try to fix the
39:44
Speaker 2: fucking problem. It won't pass with Republican votes, but at
39:49
Speaker 2: least put up a fight for it.
39:52
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is one of those cases where fighting and
39:54
Speaker 4: losing is better than not fighting at all. And there
39:57
Speaker 4: should be an entire plan to make Joe Manchin uncomfortable
39:59
Speaker 4: with his decision to allow democracy to swirl down the toilet.
40:02
Speaker 4: So put up his version of the John Lewis Voting
40:05
Speaker 4: Rights Act, but his expanded version that he, I think,
40:08
Speaker 4: kind of accidentally proposed to expand preclearance to all 50 states.
40:11
Speaker 3: Put that on the floor. Make Republicans filibuster that.
40:13
Speaker 4: Make him answer a bunch of questions about why he
40:15
Speaker 4: thinks that's okay. Do it with the election. I think
40:17
Speaker 4: it's really interesting to have an anti-election subversion legislative agenda,
40:21
Speaker 4: including the one you just talked about. For the purposes
40:23
Speaker 4: of being constructive here, there are things that all of
40:26
Speaker 4: us can also do, right? As we wait for Joe
40:29
Speaker 4: Manchin to figure out the fucking clues here. One of
40:32
Speaker 4: them is- Let's do everything we can to hold the House, right?
40:36
Speaker 4: And that which includes– we don't know what the map
40:38
Speaker 4: is exactly yet, but we do know some of the
40:40
Speaker 4: states where it's going to matter. So you can support
40:42
Speaker 4: the Democratic Party in those states. In the Senate, we
40:44
Speaker 4: know we have to re-elect Raphael Warnock and Mark Kelly.
40:46
Speaker 4: You can contribute to their campaigns now. You can volunteer
40:49
Speaker 4: for their campaigns now. We know our best pickup opportunities
40:51
Speaker 4: are in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, and North Carolina.
40:55
Speaker 2: I want to throw in, and we have to protect–
40:58
Speaker 2: Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire and Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada,
41:03
Speaker 2: because they are they are the two most endangered Democratic incumbents.
41:07
Speaker 2: If we protect Hassan and Cortez Masto and we reelect
41:10
Speaker 2: Warnock and Kelly, we will hold the Senate. And even
41:13
Speaker 2: if Republicans win the House through gerrymandering, they will not
41:16
Speaker 2: be able to steal the 2024 election if Democrats hold
41:20
Speaker 2: on to the Senate. So that to me is like
41:22
Speaker 2: the most optimistic scenario. Is to hold the Senate. I
41:26
Speaker 2: still think I don't want anyone to give up on
41:28
Speaker 2: the House either. It's going to be an uphill climb
41:30
Speaker 2: after if Republicans are allowed to gerrymander this. But it's
41:33
Speaker 2: not impossible. And I want everyone to work as hard
41:36
Speaker 2: as they fucking can to hold on the House. And
41:38
Speaker 2: you should work like democracies at stake because it will be.
41:41
Speaker 4: And then there are some other things to do here
41:43
Speaker 4: as well. So the other one is we can expand
41:45
Speaker 4: our Senate majority. We can hold the Senate. We can
41:46
Speaker 4: also expand it. by winning in any of those four
41:49
Speaker 4: states I mentioned. There are going to be primaries in
41:51
Speaker 4: those states, but you could support, become a supporter of
41:55
Speaker 4: the Democratic Party in that state. Ben Wickler from Wisconsin
41:58
Speaker 4: has been pushing people to become monthly donors. They can
42:00
Speaker 4: begin organizing to beat Ron Johnson now while we figure
42:02
Speaker 4: out who the candidates can be. You do a similar
42:04
Speaker 4: thing in Pennsylvania, Florida, et cetera. We can actually invest
42:07
Speaker 4: in Secretary of State races, which could matter a lot, right?
42:10
Speaker 4: And some of these really matter, like Jocelyn Benson in
42:12
Speaker 4: Michigan is up for re-election. There's going to be a
42:14
Speaker 4: huge effort to defeat her. The Republicans are going to
42:15
Speaker 4: pour a ton of money into those. Katie Hobbs in
42:18
Speaker 4: Arizona is up for re-election. We have a chance to
42:20
Speaker 4: win the Secretary of State in Georgia. There's going to
42:23
Speaker 4: be an open Secretary of State race in Nevada. And
42:26
Speaker 4: we also have to re-elect governors. That's a huge part
42:28
Speaker 4: of this.
42:28
Speaker 2: Big time. I was going to say that.
42:30
Speaker 6: Huge.
42:30
Speaker 4: So imagine if Tony Evers and Gretchen Whitmer, who are
42:33
Speaker 4: going to be quite at risk in the 2022 election, lose.
42:37
Speaker 4: Republicans will then control the entire government in those two states,
42:41
Speaker 4: which will give them the opportunity to steal the election,
42:43
Speaker 4: give them the opportunity to put in place Georgia and
42:45
Speaker 4: Texas-style voter suppression in those states. We have a chance
42:49
Speaker 4: to win the governorship of Georgia and Arizona, which would
42:51
Speaker 4: be a huge deal. You know, Stacey Abrams were to run,
42:53
Speaker 4: as has been rumored. Stacey Abrams, now number one, bestselling
42:57
Speaker 4: fiction author, Stacey Abrams, among other things, just rubbing her
43:00
Speaker 4: tremendous talent in her face.
43:02
Speaker 2: Emily's been, Emily's been reading her book. She loves it.
43:05
Speaker 6: Yeah.
43:05
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just like, what did you do? Took
43:07
Speaker 3: the Senate, helped Biden to the white house.
43:10
Speaker 4: And then I just took two weeks and wrote a
43:11
Speaker 4: legal thriller that went to the top of the bestseller list.
43:14
Speaker 3: Um, but if she runs for.
43:16
Speaker 2: Governor, Pennsylvania too, by the way, we got it. We
43:17
Speaker 2: got to get to keep the democratic governorship in Pennsylvania too.
43:20
Speaker 2: That's the other one.
43:20
Speaker 5: Yeah.
43:20
Speaker 3: That is an open seat. That is, that is the
43:22
Speaker 3: only one.
43:22
Speaker 4: There is a lot that can be done at this,
43:24
Speaker 4: that we can do with our time and our resources
43:27
Speaker 4: at the state level. That isn't just tweeting at your mansion.
43:30
Speaker 4: We should keep tweeting at your mansion. I know I'm
43:32
Speaker 4: going to do it. I can't help myself, but we can't,
43:33
Speaker 4: there are some constructive things to do. Um, I wrote
43:37
Speaker 4: a bunch of these up, uh, in message box a
43:39
Speaker 4: few weeks ago. If people want to check it out, um,
43:41
Speaker 4: I will retweet it out after this pod goes up.
43:43
Speaker 4: But there are some constructive ways to channel our fear
43:47
Speaker 4: about authoritarianism and our anger at Joe Manchin that I
43:50
Speaker 4: think can be constructive and are legitimate, helps build a
43:54
Speaker 4: bulwark against this tide that could potentially save democracy if
43:57
Speaker 4: a handful of Senate Democrats won't let us do it.
44:00
Speaker 2: Sound the alarm. Get to work. Those are the two
44:04
Speaker 2: do-outs from this episode. All right. When we come back,
44:08
Speaker 2: Clint Smith talks to Tommy about his new book, How
44:10
Speaker 2: the Word Has Passed.
44:20
Speaker 7: I am so excited to welcome back to the show
44:22
Speaker 7: Clint Smith. He's a staff writer at The Atlantic. He's
44:25
Speaker 7: a poet and he's the author of the beautiful new book,
44:28
Speaker 7: How the Word Has Passed.
44:29
Speaker 6: Clint, thanks so much for joining us today. So good
44:32
Speaker 6: to be back on crooked territory.
44:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
44:35
Speaker 6: So I'm holding up the book.
44:38
Speaker 7: The book, you take the reader on this remarkable journey
44:42
Speaker 7: to several places across the United States and to one
44:45
Speaker 7: stop in Africa. And these places all have deep ties
44:47
Speaker 7: to slavery. And I just wanted to start by just
44:50
Speaker 7: telling listeners that when you pick up this book and
44:53
Speaker 7: start reading, it will be obvious to you that the
44:55
Speaker 7: book was written by a poet. This is not dry nonfiction.
44:59
Speaker 7: It is written in this way that you allow the
45:03
Speaker 7: reader to almost inhabit your mind and your body and
45:07
Speaker 7: your experience as you go to these places. And you
45:09
Speaker 7: kind of can feel the emotional connection to them. And
45:12
Speaker 7: it's just a beautiful book. And so just congratulations to
45:14
Speaker 7: you on such a job well done.
45:16
Speaker 6: I was DMing you. I picked it up.
45:18
Speaker 7: And like the next day I was halfway done and
45:21
Speaker 7: I just can't recommend it enough. So again, it was
45:23
Speaker 7: amazing work.
45:24
Speaker 6: I appreciate that so much. Yeah, no, part of what
45:27
Speaker 6: I wanted to do was, you know, I've spent the
45:28
Speaker 6: last several years engaged in a sort of deep dive
45:33
Speaker 6: in the historiography of slavery and have read these remarkable
45:35
Speaker 6: books like, you know, Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemings as a
45:38
Speaker 6: Monticello and Dinah Ramey Berry's The Price for Their Pound
45:40
Speaker 6: of Flesh, Leslie Harris and Howard Boleyn's Slavery in New York,
45:44
Speaker 6: David Blight's amazing biography of Frederick Douglass, Prophet of Freedom,
45:49
Speaker 6: and dozens and dozens more. And part of what I
45:52
Speaker 6: was thinking about, and I'm really glad to hear you
45:55
Speaker 6: say that it felt this way, was like, what would
45:57
Speaker 6: it mean to take the best of this history that
46:00
Speaker 6: has been so transformative for me in terms of allowing
46:03
Speaker 6: me to more effectively and honestly understand the history and
46:07
Speaker 6: landscape of this country and to add a sort of
46:11
Speaker 6: emotional texture and human texture and sensory detail. Like who
46:14
Speaker 6: are the people responsible for curating and talking about this land?
46:19
Speaker 6: What does it feel like not only to read about
46:22
Speaker 6: a slave cabin, but like to stand inside of one?
46:24
Speaker 6: What does it mean not only to read about the
46:28
Speaker 6: enslaved people who lived in Monticello, but to walk on
46:30
Speaker 6: the same land and sit under the same trees and
46:33
Speaker 6: think about what it means that you're looking at a
46:36
Speaker 6: building and touching a structure that were built by enslaved
46:39
Speaker 6: hands and Um, it just is such a, the experience
46:44
Speaker 6: for me was added a sort of texture and dynamism, um,
46:49
Speaker 6: to this history that I wanted to do my best
46:51
Speaker 6: to convey to the reader. Yeah.
46:53
Speaker 7: I thought about doing the NPR thing where I like
46:55
Speaker 7: read you a passage, but I just, I realized like,
46:58
Speaker 7: I don't have that arrow in my quiver, but I
47:00
Speaker 7: don't know how to do that.
47:00
Speaker 6: So I'll leave that. I'll leave that to them, but
47:02
Speaker 6: it's beautiful.
47:03
Speaker 7: Um, and you look a clear lesson from the book
47:06
Speaker 7: is what you were just talking about.
47:07
Speaker 6: I mean, we have to confront and learn from our history.
47:09
Speaker 7: Especially the legacy of slavery in the United States and
47:12
Speaker 7: how it impacts basically everything around us. And there are
47:17
Speaker 7: times I imagine, well, I know that that process is painful.
47:22
Speaker 7: And one location that I found personally sort of painful
47:26
Speaker 7: to read about was Angola prison. And I wanted to
47:30
Speaker 7: maybe start there with a two-part question for you. I mean, one,
47:33
Speaker 7: what was just the emotional impact of this journey on you?
47:37
Speaker 7: Because a lot of these places were I don't know,
47:40
Speaker 7: for lack.
47:40
Speaker 6: Of a better word, evil.
47:42
Speaker 7: And then can you tell listeners a bit about Angola
47:45
Speaker 7: Prison and what its existence says about the links between
47:49
Speaker 7: slavery and mass incarceration today?
47:52
Speaker 6: For sure. So for context, Angola Prison is the largest
47:57
Speaker 6: maximum security prison in the country. It is 18,000 acres wide,
48:00
Speaker 6: bigger than the Isle of Manhattan. It is a place
48:03
Speaker 6: where 75% of the people held there are Black men.
48:06
Speaker 6: Over 70% of them are serving life sentences. many for
48:09
Speaker 6: things that they did as children. And it is built
48:12
Speaker 6: on top of a foreign plantation. And what I tell
48:15
Speaker 6: folks is that if you were to go to Germany
48:17
Speaker 6: and you had the largest maximum security prison in Germany,
48:20
Speaker 6: and it was built on top of a former concentration
48:23
Speaker 6: camp in which the people held there were disproportionately Jewish,
48:27
Speaker 6: that place would so rightfully and clearly be a global
48:30
Speaker 6: emblem of anti-Semitism. It'll be abhorrent. It'll be disgusting. We
48:33
Speaker 6: would never allow a place like that to exist and
48:36
Speaker 6: we never should. And if they did, people would be
48:38
Speaker 6: protesting outside of it every day and they'd be completely
48:40
Speaker 6: right to do so because it would run counter to
48:42
Speaker 6: all of our moral and ethical sensibilities. But here in
48:45
Speaker 6: the US, we have the largest maximum security prison in
48:48
Speaker 6: the country in which the vast majority of people held
48:50
Speaker 6: there are Black men serving life sentences who go out
48:53
Speaker 6: into fields that were once a plantation every day and
48:56
Speaker 6: work for virtually no pay while someone watches them on
48:59
Speaker 6: horseback with a gun over their shoulder. And so part
49:02
Speaker 6: of what I'm thinking about when I go to a
49:03
Speaker 6: place like Angola is like, what are the ways that
49:05
Speaker 6: white supremacy and the history of white supremacy not only
49:08
Speaker 6: enacts physical violence against people's bodies, but also collectively numbs
49:12
Speaker 6: us to certain types of violences that in another global
49:14
Speaker 6: context would be wildly and so clearly unacceptable? And what
49:18
Speaker 6: does it mean that that place has a museum that
49:21
Speaker 6: doesn't mention the word slavery at all? What does it
49:24
Speaker 6: mean that that museum that again is attached to a
49:26
Speaker 6: prison has a gift shop where they sell paraphernalia of
49:30
Speaker 6: that prison, coffee mugs and shot glasses and sweatshirts that
49:34
Speaker 6: are almost, you know, there's one that says, there's one
49:37
Speaker 6: mug that has the silhouette of a watchtower in Angola.
49:42
Speaker 6: And you can see the sort of small silhouette of
49:44
Speaker 6: the man or the guard holding a gun. And above
49:48
Speaker 6: and below the mug, it says, Angola, a gated community.
49:53
Speaker 6: And so it's not only that they are not confronting
49:56
Speaker 6: this history, but almost making a mockery of the conditions
50:00
Speaker 6: that thousands of people continue to live in today. And so,
50:02
Speaker 6: you know, I could have written a whole book, honestly,
50:05
Speaker 6: about my experience at Angola, which is just a wild,
50:08
Speaker 6: unsettling and haunting place. And to your, to the other
50:12
Speaker 6: part of your question, I mean, it is, it is
50:16
Speaker 6: hard to, in some ways to think about this history
50:19
Speaker 6: all the time and to confront the structures and the
50:22
Speaker 6: places and the land that brings back the memories of, of,
50:27
Speaker 6: you know, in the case of a place like a plantation,
50:29
Speaker 6: that was a torture site, which was an intergenerational site
50:32
Speaker 6: of torture. And I, but the thing I also tell
50:36
Speaker 6: folks is that like, This book at times was certainly
50:40
Speaker 6: hard to write, but it was also profoundly emancipatory and
50:44
Speaker 6: like really liberating, right? Because the more you learn about
50:47
Speaker 6: the history of this country, the more, the less this
50:50
Speaker 6: country can lie to you. about why it is the
50:53
Speaker 6: way it is. The sort of myth of meritocracy dissolves.
50:56
Speaker 6: You begin to more fully understand that the reason one
50:59
Speaker 6: community looks one way and another community looks another way
51:02
Speaker 6: is not because of the people in those communities, but
51:04
Speaker 6: it is because of a history of things that have
51:05
Speaker 6: been done to those communities generation after generation after generation.
51:09
Speaker 6: And I think, you know, that certainly doesn't end with slavery,
51:12
Speaker 6: but slavery being something that existed in this country for
51:14
Speaker 6: 250 years and has only not existed for around 150,
51:18
Speaker 6: You know, so the idea that this institution that existed
51:21
Speaker 6: for a century longer than it hasn't would have no
51:25
Speaker 6: impact on what the contemporary landscape of inequality looks like
51:28
Speaker 6: is both morally and intellectually disingenuous. And part of what
51:31
Speaker 6: I wanted the reader to do was not only feel
51:33
Speaker 6: like a physical proximity to these places and a sort
51:36
Speaker 6: of sensory proximity, but also like a temporal proximity, right?
51:41
Speaker 6: Like there are people alive today who had relationships with,
51:45
Speaker 6: who were raised by, who loved people who were born
51:49
Speaker 6: into slavery. The woman who opened the National Museum of
51:52
Speaker 6: African American History and Culture in 2016 alongside the Obama
51:55
Speaker 6: family who rang the bell to sort of signal the
51:57
Speaker 6: opening of this museum was the daughter of an enslaved person,
52:01
Speaker 6: not the granddaughter or the great-great-granddaughter, but like the granddaughter
52:05
Speaker 6: of someone who had been born into slavery. And so
52:09
Speaker 6: We talk about slavery like it was this thing in
52:10
Speaker 6: the Jurassic era, like it was dinosaurs and the Flintstones
52:14
Speaker 6: and slavery. But this history, in the scope of human history,
52:20
Speaker 6: slavery was just yesterday. And I really want the reader
52:24
Speaker 6: to feel the closeness of our society. And to your
52:26
Speaker 6: point that every part of our social, economic, and political
52:29
Speaker 6: infrastructure is informed by or built out of that system.
52:36
Speaker 5: Yeah.
52:36
Speaker 7: And Jim Crow is even more recently. And to your
52:39
Speaker 7: point about the need to confront this history, I mean,
52:41
Speaker 7: your book, countless other scholars have just thoroughly documented the
52:45
Speaker 7: fact that the Civil War was about slavery. You can
52:47
Speaker 7: quote from the vice president of the Confederacy. You can
52:50
Speaker 7: quote from senators at the time. You can quote from,
52:52
Speaker 7: you do quote from Confederate declarations of secession. It's not debatable,
52:57
Speaker 7: but there has been this concerted effort to reframe the
52:59
Speaker 7: Civil War and the Confederacy as being about sovereignty or heritage,
53:03
Speaker 7: not hate, right?
53:04
Speaker 6: That's like the tagline.
53:05
Speaker 7: And it's part of this whole curriculum of lies about
53:09
Speaker 7: the institution of slavery itself. I'd add into that that
53:12
Speaker 7: like most slave masters were good, caring people, right? And that,
53:16
Speaker 7: you know, the people were happy during that time, right?
53:18
Speaker 7: And so you visit the cemetery for Confederate veterans that
53:22
Speaker 7: I think really epitomizes the lost cause propaganda. I was
53:28
Speaker 7: hoping you could explain a bit about you know, the
53:30
Speaker 7: history of the Lost Cause and how successful you think
53:33
Speaker 7: that propaganda effort has or has not been.
53:36
Speaker 2: Yeah.
53:37
Speaker 6: I mean, the Lost Cause is wild. And what's as
53:40
Speaker 6: wild is the way that we see sort of contemporary
53:42
Speaker 6: parallels to it. So you mentioned Alexander Stevens, the vice
53:45
Speaker 6: president of the Confederacy. So, you know, he wrote in
53:48
Speaker 6: his infamous Cornerstone speech, in essence, that that slavery is
53:53
Speaker 6: the cornerstone upon which this new nation will be built.
53:55
Speaker 6: And it is founded on the belief that the, that
53:58
Speaker 6: the African and that black people are inherently inferior to
54:01
Speaker 6: white people. And like, and he said this and it
54:03
Speaker 6: was well quoted and well documented in newspapers across the country.
54:07
Speaker 6: After the civil war, after the war ended in 1865,
54:11
Speaker 6: Alexander Stevens was like, I never said that. Like, what
54:15
Speaker 6: are you, what are you talking about? And everybody's like, wait, we,
54:18
Speaker 6: we were there. We were, it was in the paper.
54:20
Speaker 6: Like everybody knows that you say he's like, no, no, no.
54:22
Speaker 6: I don't know what you're talking about. I never said
54:23
Speaker 6: anything like that. And it is this sort of 19th
54:26
Speaker 6: century iteration of gaslighting where we are being, where people
54:29
Speaker 6: were like told that this thing that they saw and
54:32
Speaker 6: this thing that they knew was not true. And, you know,
54:37
Speaker 6: we were seeing that today, you know, I don't have
54:39
Speaker 6: to list the examples. But, but I think that the
54:43
Speaker 6: playbook is one that, that is centuries in the making
54:47
Speaker 6: and the lost cause is generally this idea of that,
54:50
Speaker 6: you know, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, you know,
54:53
Speaker 6: people who were Confederate widows and mothers and daughters, that
54:58
Speaker 6: they created alongside the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other organizations,
55:03
Speaker 6: but largely the United Daughters of the Confederacy, created an
55:06
Speaker 6: effort to say that, one, to your point, like the
55:10
Speaker 6: Civil War wasn't about slavery. In any way, slavery wasn't
55:13
Speaker 6: even that bad. Like it was a benevolent institution that
55:16
Speaker 6: Senator John Calhoun of South Carolina would say was a
55:19
Speaker 6: positive good. for both black and white people alike. Ulrich B.
55:22
Speaker 6: Phillips is this historian who sort of propagated lost cause
55:26
Speaker 6: mythology throughout the early 20th century, which a lot of
55:29
Speaker 6: people don't realize was like the predominant narrative around slavery
55:32
Speaker 6: until the civil rights movement is this idea that like
55:34
Speaker 6: plantations were civilizing institution, that black people were better off
55:39
Speaker 6: here after having been stolen and separated from their families
55:43
Speaker 6: than they were in Africa. And it wasn't until the
55:45
Speaker 6: civil rights movement that that narrative began to shift and
55:47
Speaker 6: that scholars came and began to center the origins of
55:52
Speaker 6: inequality between Black and white people in America in slavery
55:56
Speaker 6: in ways that hadn't been done before. And I see
55:58
Speaker 6: a lot of parallels to what's, you know, the way
56:00
Speaker 6: that Black Lives Matter as a social movement has shifted
56:02
Speaker 6: the discourse around how we think about the history of
56:05
Speaker 6: race and racism today. You know, like, I don't know
56:07
Speaker 6: that we would be, that the conversation around the pandemic
56:11
Speaker 6: would have been happened or framed in the way that
56:13
Speaker 6: it was had activists and organizers not been doing what
56:17
Speaker 6: they've been doing for the past several years, which allowed
56:19
Speaker 6: us to understand and frame in not in every place,
56:23
Speaker 6: but in more places, the pandemic is something that was
56:27
Speaker 6: shaping or, you know, the, the, that the pandemic was
56:31
Speaker 6: shaped by and the people being disproportionately impacted by the
56:34
Speaker 6: pandemic was something that was shaped by systemic and historical
56:36
Speaker 6: factors rather than like personal decisions or personal failures. Right, right.
56:41
Speaker 7: Yeah, no, I couldn't help but draw the parallel between
56:43
Speaker 7: the lost cause and the big lie and the 2020
56:46
Speaker 7: election lie. And I just kind of wonder, like, is
56:48
Speaker 7: this a human thing or are we Americans just more
56:50
Speaker 7: susceptible to believing these disinformation campaigns? And it also made
56:54
Speaker 7: me wonder if, you know, if you think that the,
56:59
Speaker 7: you know, really angry fight we're seeing from conservatives about
57:02
Speaker 7: the 1619 Project and critical race theory Is that just
57:07
Speaker 7: the latest iteration of the lost cause?
57:10
Speaker 6: Or do you think this is something new? Like, how
57:12
Speaker 6: do you think about that? I mean, I think that
57:15
Speaker 6: for me, part of what we see happening is a
57:20
Speaker 6: recognition from a large portion of this country. One that like,
57:25
Speaker 6: I mean, they peddled in fear, right? And so like
57:28
Speaker 6: fear and like, you know, the fear that, you know,
57:30
Speaker 6: someone like Mickey Haley would say is like, they want
57:33
Speaker 6: to teach your child that they are racist. and that
57:35
Speaker 6: they're inherently racist, which is not what critical race theory
57:38
Speaker 6: is and not what these teachers and educators throughout the
57:40
Speaker 6: country who are doing remarkable work are trying to do.
57:43
Speaker 6: But there's a recognition that if people understand that the
57:48
Speaker 6: institution of slavery alongside native genocide, alongside the way that
57:53
Speaker 6: multiple groups of immigrant communities were treated when they were
57:56
Speaker 6: first brought to this country, if people understand that history,
58:03
Speaker 6: they will begin to look around And understand, again, like
58:06
Speaker 6: I said, that the reason one community looks one way
58:09
Speaker 6: and another community looks another way is not because of
58:11
Speaker 6: the people or the decisions in that community that are
58:14
Speaker 6: made in the community, but is what has been done
58:16
Speaker 6: to that community. And that that like undermines the entire
58:18
Speaker 6: narrative of this country. It undermines the idea that you
58:22
Speaker 6: can have anything you want if you work hard enough.
58:24
Speaker 6: And that hard work is the single most important thing,
58:27
Speaker 6: because you can have two young people who work equally
58:29
Speaker 6: as hard. but who grow up in a fundamentally different
58:32
Speaker 6: set of circumstances based on nothing that they have done
58:35
Speaker 6: in their lifetime, based on historical factors that shaped what
58:37
Speaker 6: their communities look like and what their families communities look
58:40
Speaker 6: like long before they were even born. And they can
58:42
Speaker 6: work equally as hard as one, as one another, but
58:45
Speaker 6: that hard work bears fruit in fundamentally different ways because
58:48
Speaker 6: of the capital lack capital or lack thereof, or the
58:51
Speaker 6: resources or lack thereof or the safety or lack thereof. Um,
58:56
Speaker 6: And as we said, like every part of our economic,
58:58
Speaker 6: social and political infrastructure is born out of this institution
59:02
Speaker 6: that existed longer than the country existed, right? Like slavery
59:05
Speaker 6: existed for years before centuries, more than a century before
59:09
Speaker 6: the United States. States even became the United States. And
59:12
Speaker 6: so we cannot understand this country without understanding the way
59:17
Speaker 6: it was shaped by slavery. And once you understand the
59:19
Speaker 6: way that it is shaped by slavery and racism and
59:22
Speaker 6: Jim Crow and slave codes and black codes and continues
59:25
Speaker 6: to be shaped by mass incarceration and housing discrimination, then
59:30
Speaker 6: then it like undermines the story that one has told
59:34
Speaker 6: themselves about themselves in this country and why they do
59:37
Speaker 6: or don't have the things that they do.
59:41
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, speaking of stories, we tell ourselves about ourselves.
59:44
Speaker 7: I mean, I grew up in Massachusetts, which obviously has
59:46
Speaker 7: had enormous problems with racism, segregation over the years, but
59:51
Speaker 7: you still hear a sense of moral superiority, I think,
59:54
Speaker 7: in Northern states on issues of race as compared to
59:57
Speaker 7: the South. Kids are largely taught that slavery was a
1:00:00
Speaker 7: Southern institution and that the North fought this noble war
1:00:03
Speaker 7: to get rid of it. And the book takes us
1:00:06
Speaker 7: on a tour of New York that I think shows
1:00:09
Speaker 7: how wrong that sentiment is. Can you tell us a
1:00:12
Speaker 7: bit about that tour you took through Manhattan and slavery's
1:00:15
Speaker 7: roots in the Northern states?
1:00:17
Speaker 6: Yeah. So I went on a tour led by a woman,
1:00:20
Speaker 6: Damaris Obie, in Manhattan, who does a history of slavery
1:00:25
Speaker 6: and the Underground Railroad in Manhattan. New York. And I
1:00:29
Speaker 6: wanted to make sure that I was not centering the
1:00:31
Speaker 6: book only on states and cities in the South, because
1:00:35
Speaker 6: to your point, it was saturated in the South, given
1:00:39
Speaker 6: the reliance of the South on slavery's economic and social realities.
1:00:48
Speaker 6: But It also existed in New York, not just in
1:00:53
Speaker 6: a way that benefited them financially, which is true through
1:00:56
Speaker 6: the banks, through the manufacturing industry. There had to be
1:01:01
Speaker 6: a place where they sent the cotton from the United
1:01:06
Speaker 6: States to Europe and elsewhere. But people don't realize that
1:01:10
Speaker 6: for an extended period of time, New York City was
1:01:13
Speaker 6: the second largest slave port in the country after Charleston,
1:01:17
Speaker 6: South Carolina. Or that Fernando Wood, who was the mayor
1:01:20
Speaker 6: of New York City on the eve of the Civil War,
1:01:23
Speaker 6: was basically like, hey, y'all, I think we should secede
1:01:27
Speaker 6: from the union because our interests are thoroughly aligned and
1:01:31
Speaker 6: entangled with the South. And if we get rid of slavery,
1:01:36
Speaker 6: then what's going to happen to us? Because New York
1:01:39
Speaker 6: City's financial circumstances and so many of the financial powerhouses
1:01:44
Speaker 6: who live there their wealth was deeply entangled in slavery
1:01:47
Speaker 6: to the point where the mayor of that city proposed,
1:01:50
Speaker 6: and it ultimately didn't work out this way, but proposed
1:01:52
Speaker 6: that they secede from the union after they saw South
1:01:55
Speaker 6: Carolina secede in 1861. And so it is important that
1:01:59
Speaker 6: we recognize the way that culpability is not singularly in
1:02:07
Speaker 6: the South, right? That this was a national problem. And
1:02:12
Speaker 6: the same way that I went to New York, I
1:02:13
Speaker 6: could have gone to Boston. I could have gone to Connecticut.
1:02:17
Speaker 6: I could have gone to California. I could have gone
1:02:20
Speaker 6: to Oregon. And you can write, you know, then many
1:02:23
Speaker 6: scholars have written so many important books on the history
1:02:26
Speaker 6: of slavery in these different regions across the country. And,
1:02:30
Speaker 6: and not only again, how they benefited from it financially,
1:02:33
Speaker 6: but how like enslaved people were physically there. Like enslaved
1:02:37
Speaker 6: people lived in New York and were taught, you know,
1:02:39
Speaker 6: if you think about how I was taught, I was
1:02:40
Speaker 6: made to think that, you know, there was no enslaved
1:02:44
Speaker 6: person above the Mason-Dixon line. And that like New York
1:02:46
Speaker 6: has always been this bastion of cosmopolitanism and these people
1:02:50
Speaker 6: who always had, you know, their moral sensibilities oriented in
1:02:54
Speaker 6: the right direction. But there were a lot of slaves
1:02:57
Speaker 6: and a lot of enslaved folks in New York City
1:02:59
Speaker 6: and other places in the North. And I think it's
1:03:01
Speaker 6: important for us to reckon with that.
1:03:03
Speaker 7: Yeah. And by the way, some of the tour guides
1:03:06
Speaker 7: in this book are like the heroes.
1:03:09
Speaker 6: Oh, absolutely.
1:03:09
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:03:10
Speaker 7: The woman you just mentioned in New York, uh, there
1:03:12
Speaker 7: was some interactions, uh, at Monticello in Virginia where ordinary
1:03:17
Speaker 7: people who I imagine aren't getting paid a ton of
1:03:19
Speaker 7: money are just speaking really hard truths to people who
1:03:22
Speaker 7: don't want to hear it.
1:03:23
Speaker 6: And I was, I was, I don't know.
1:03:25
Speaker 7: I was just kind of inspired by the, the daily
1:03:29
Speaker 7: challenge and courage behind those conversations.
1:03:31
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:03:32
Speaker 6: I mean, Damaris Obie in New York, David Thurston at Monticello, um,
1:03:37
Speaker 6: Yvonne Holding and the Whitney Plantation. I mean, just so
1:03:41
Speaker 6: many folks, you know, part of what I wanted this
1:03:43
Speaker 6: book to do was I wanted it to be like
1:03:45
Speaker 6: an homage and an ode in some ways to those
1:03:48
Speaker 6: public historians who don't, you know, they're not getting Pulitzer Prizes.
1:03:53
Speaker 6: They're not winning National Book Awards. They're not, you know,
1:03:57
Speaker 6: featured on The Daily Show or anything else that can
1:04:00
Speaker 6: happen to, you know, that still doesn't happen to many
1:04:03
Speaker 6: historians to be sure. But like, their, their work, I
1:04:07
Speaker 6: think is often taken for granted by, from many people.
1:04:10
Speaker 6: But the reality is that, I mean, like hundreds of
1:04:13
Speaker 6: thousands of people go to Monticello every year, or at
1:04:15
Speaker 6: least did before the pandemic. And I think that, you know,
1:04:18
Speaker 6: hopefully we'll continue to as we move out of this,
1:04:21
Speaker 6: but like, there are more people who go to Monticello
1:04:23
Speaker 6: every year than who read any book about the history
1:04:27
Speaker 6: of slavery, you know? Right.
1:04:29
Speaker 7: Or like any book or any book, you know, unless
1:04:31
Speaker 7: it's like Michelle Obama's book.
1:04:32
Speaker 6: Exactly. Right. Unless you're becoming, um, And and so there's
1:04:37
Speaker 6: just this really unique opportunity that these places have to
1:04:43
Speaker 6: tell the story of slavery in a 45 or 60
1:04:46
Speaker 6: or 90 minute tour to a group of people who
1:04:49
Speaker 6: might never open a book about Thomas Jefferson and his
1:04:52
Speaker 6: relationship to slavery, who might never open a book about
1:04:55
Speaker 6: the Hemings family, who might never have heard of the Hemings.
1:05:00
Speaker 6: I mean, I think about the people that I met
1:05:01
Speaker 6: when I went to Monticello. And I met these two women,
1:05:03
Speaker 6: Donna and Grace, who were on my slavery of Monticello tour.
1:05:06
Speaker 6: And I went up to them after and started talking
1:05:08
Speaker 6: to them. And they were like, I had no idea
1:05:11
Speaker 6: that Jefferson owned slaves. I had no idea that Monticello
1:05:14
Speaker 6: was a plantation. And these are people who like bought
1:05:16
Speaker 6: plane tickets, got a hotel room, rented cars, bought tickets
1:05:21
Speaker 6: to come to this place and had no conception of
1:05:24
Speaker 6: this place as the home of someone who enslaved human beings.
1:05:27
Speaker 6: And it's a sort of microcosm of this like deep
1:05:30
Speaker 6: failure throughout our country. to have a sort of collective
1:05:36
Speaker 6: understanding of what slavery was and how it shaped our
1:05:38
Speaker 6: founding and also how it shapes our world today. And
1:05:41
Speaker 6: it was an important reminder for me, just personally, I
1:05:44
Speaker 6: think I can, you know, many of Positive America listeners
1:05:47
Speaker 6: will likely know, you know, Thomas Jefferson, knowing enslaved people.
1:05:50
Speaker 6: And that's something that we are having more honest conversation
1:05:53
Speaker 6: about these days, certainly in the last five years, last
1:05:56
Speaker 6: decade and more so than before. Again, in part tied
1:06:00
Speaker 6: to the work of Black Lives Matter And that sort
1:06:03
Speaker 6: of broad social movement. But it was an important reminder
1:06:06
Speaker 6: that there are still millions and millions and millions of
1:06:09
Speaker 6: people across this country who like just literally have no idea.
1:06:14
Speaker 6: And that's not to say, you know, I don't know
1:06:15
Speaker 6: that like after those two women heard this tour, that
1:06:19
Speaker 6: like their politics began to shift or their understanding, you know,
1:06:23
Speaker 6: or that it shaped the way that they voted. We,
1:06:27
Speaker 6: you know, David doesn't have control over that. I don't
1:06:28
Speaker 6: have control over that. None of us have control over that.
1:06:31
Speaker 6: But I think we do need to take seriously the
1:06:35
Speaker 6: idea that there's just a lot of information that a
1:06:38
Speaker 6: lot of people don't know and that some people will
1:06:41
Speaker 6: continue to move through the world as they would have
1:06:44
Speaker 6: moved through before once they encountered that information. But I
1:06:48
Speaker 6: think others, it has the possibility to like change how
1:06:52
Speaker 6: they understand this country and change how they understand themselves
1:06:55
Speaker 6: in relationship to this country. And I, you know, it's
1:06:58
Speaker 6: not to say that like, education will get rid of racism,
1:07:02
Speaker 6: not at all. But I do think we, we should
1:07:05
Speaker 6: not take for granted that because of the sort of
1:07:08
Speaker 6: residue of the lost cause and the success of that effort,
1:07:11
Speaker 6: that like, there are just a lot of people who,
1:07:13
Speaker 6: who don't learn a lot about slavery other than your
1:07:15
Speaker 6: sort of, you know, the name Harriet Tubman or the
1:07:19
Speaker 6: name Frederick Douglass. And there's a real opportunity to, I think,
1:07:24
Speaker 6: reach folks, whether they go to a plantation or read
1:07:27
Speaker 6: a book or, listen to a podcast or watch a
1:07:30
Speaker 6: YouTube documentary or whatever, and sort of reach them where
1:07:34
Speaker 6: they are and not antagonize them for not knowing something,
1:07:38
Speaker 6: but to sort of meet them where they are and say, like,
1:07:41
Speaker 6: this is new information that you should take seriously because
1:07:45
Speaker 6: this is the story of this country. Yeah.
1:07:48
Speaker 7: And by the way, it was also very interesting to
1:07:50
Speaker 7: see some of the parallel conversations that that you were
1:07:53
Speaker 7: a part of in Senegal about accurate information, disinformation, renaming
1:07:59
Speaker 7: streets the same way we're talking about renaming streets about
1:08:02
Speaker 7: Confederates there. I'll force readers to buy the book to
1:08:05
Speaker 7: read more about that, but it was really, truly fascinating
1:08:07
Speaker 7: part of it.
1:08:08
Speaker 6: Again, the book is How the Word Has Passed. You
1:08:10
Speaker 6: mentioned Black Lives Matter.
1:08:11
Speaker 7: I mean, this is the one-year anniversary of George Floyd's murder.
1:08:16
Speaker 7: What do you think has changed And what do you
1:08:18
Speaker 7: think we've learned about the country's willingness to address or
1:08:23
Speaker 7: talk about racial inequities in this country?
1:08:26
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, there was a New York Times piece
1:08:30
Speaker 6: that I was reading just this morning, I think, that
1:08:32
Speaker 6: talked about how after George Floyd, there was this sort
1:08:35
Speaker 6: of skyrocketing of support for Black Lives Matter. And then
1:08:39
Speaker 6: more recently, among certain groups of people, it is profoundly
1:08:44
Speaker 6: dropped off. Especially white voters. Yeah, specifically white voters. And
1:08:48
Speaker 6: so I don't know that that necessarily surprises me because
1:08:55
Speaker 6: I think when you have an entire sort of media
1:08:57
Speaker 6: infrastructure and the infrastructure of an entire political process, party
1:09:00
Speaker 6: that is dedicated to misrepresenting and making a caricature of
1:09:03
Speaker 6: a social movement that is actually just intended to build
1:09:08
Speaker 6: a more just and equitable world, that that is what
1:09:11
Speaker 6: is going to happen. Yeah. And also, not to say
1:09:16
Speaker 6: that that only impacts conservatives, because I think that also
1:09:19
Speaker 6: trickles into and informs the way that even some liberal
1:09:23
Speaker 6: voters think about these things. But I think it would
1:09:27
Speaker 6: be wrong to say that things have not changed. I
1:09:31
Speaker 6: think that there are more people who are cognizant of racism,
1:09:37
Speaker 6: not just as an interpersonal phenomenon, but as a systemic one.
1:09:41
Speaker 6: as a historical one, as one that is shaped by
1:09:44
Speaker 6: policy and not simply people and like somebody being mean
1:09:48
Speaker 6: to another person. You know, a thing that I tell
1:09:51
Speaker 6: people sometimes is like, if you would ask somebody in 2013,
1:09:54
Speaker 6: like what is redlining? They would have said like, it's
1:09:59
Speaker 6: a type of makeup or it's a type of lipstick,
1:10:01
Speaker 6: you know? And I think the fact that like in
1:10:05
Speaker 6: our democratic primaries, people are talking about systemic racism. People
1:10:08
Speaker 6: are talking about reparations. People are talking about the racial
1:10:13
Speaker 6: wealth gap. And, you know, we can have, you know,
1:10:17
Speaker 6: we don't have enough time to talk about like the
1:10:19
Speaker 6: nature of performative politics and the nature of, you know,
1:10:21
Speaker 6: whether it's of good faith or not. But I think
1:10:24
Speaker 6: that it matters, right? It matters, like our discourse has shifted.
1:10:29
Speaker 6: And I think we have in some spaces a more
1:10:32
Speaker 6: sophisticated lexicon with which to name and identify the reality
1:10:37
Speaker 6: of how racism has shaped this world. And it's something that,
1:10:40
Speaker 6: I mean, I think I look back at, kids who
1:10:41
Speaker 6: go to the high school that I went to in
1:10:44
Speaker 6: New Orleans. And like the way that they are able
1:10:47
Speaker 6: to talk about these issues is just like light years
1:10:50
Speaker 6: beyond anything that I was able to say or understand
1:10:55
Speaker 6: when I was 15, 16 years old. And so I
1:10:58
Speaker 6: think that means something. I think social media plays a
1:11:00
Speaker 6: huge role in it. I think it gives access to
1:11:02
Speaker 6: more information to younger people and to more people generally,
1:11:06
Speaker 6: meets them where they are. Obviously there are issues with
1:11:08
Speaker 6: disinformation and misinformation, But I do think that we, you know,
1:11:13
Speaker 6: we're in a in a better place than we were.
1:11:17
Speaker 6: But that doesn't mean that we're in a good place.
1:11:19
Speaker 6: And so I think there's still a lot of work
1:11:21
Speaker 6: to do. And obviously, George Floyd, you know, he did
1:11:24
Speaker 6: not choose to die. He did not want to. be
1:11:28
Speaker 6: a martyr. He is a, he was a father and
1:11:30
Speaker 6: a son and a friend who, who we all should
1:11:34
Speaker 6: wish was still alive today. And who most certainly whose,
1:11:37
Speaker 6: whose family wishes he was still alive today. And I
1:11:40
Speaker 6: think that, you know, even those people who become, whose
1:11:45
Speaker 6: legacies become bigger than themselves, I think it's always important
1:11:48
Speaker 6: for us to remind ourselves that they, that they were
1:11:50
Speaker 6: people first and foremost.
1:11:53
Speaker 5: Yeah.
1:11:54
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely.
1:11:54
Speaker 7: And I think, you know, obviously the, the, a lot
1:11:57
Speaker 7: of the, Debate has focused around how to prevent the
1:12:01
Speaker 7: next George Floyd from being murdered by the police. And
1:12:03
Speaker 7: I think like stepping back a little bit, like there
1:12:06
Speaker 7: is considerable evidence that throughout the history of the United States,
1:12:11
Speaker 7: police forces have been the drivers of state sanctioned violence
1:12:14
Speaker 7: against black communities, not the protectors.
1:12:16
Speaker 2: Right.
1:12:17
Speaker 7: This isn't an issue of bad apples or bad precincts.
1:12:19
Speaker 7: It's much more foundational than that. And I think clearly
1:12:22
Speaker 7: that the knowledge of that history informs the defund the
1:12:24
Speaker 7: police movement. I think it's also a historical fact in
1:12:28
Speaker 7: this country that people of all races, when they get scared,
1:12:32
Speaker 7: they are more likely to listen to demagogues and support
1:12:36
Speaker 7: draconian terrible policies, right? You can draw a line from
1:12:39
Speaker 7: Nixon and like law and order to the crime bill
1:12:42
Speaker 7: in the 90s to like post 9-11 counterterrorism architecture. And
1:12:46
Speaker 7: so what I'm constantly trying to figure out is, okay,
1:12:50
Speaker 7: How do I acknowledge both of those truths and then
1:12:52
Speaker 7: find a way to advance policy ideas that actually deal
1:12:55
Speaker 7: with the underlying problems? And I'm like struggling with this
1:12:59
Speaker 7: because you're starting to see more reporting on violent crime
1:13:02
Speaker 7: going up in 2020. And you're seeing communities that are
1:13:05
Speaker 7: refunding police forces. Then you're seeing reactionary politicians blaming everything
1:13:09
Speaker 7: on the defund movement. And I'm struggling with the best
1:13:13
Speaker 7: way to have this conversation because so that we don't
1:13:15
Speaker 7: fall into these traps. We don't fall into Fox News
1:13:18
Speaker 7: or make the same mistakes on policy. And I just wonder,
1:13:20
Speaker 7: do you have thoughts about how to manage that?
1:13:24
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to like look
1:13:27
Speaker 6: to experts and not soundbites when we think about something
1:13:29
Speaker 6: like crime. You know, so crime has gone, did go
1:13:32
Speaker 6: up in 2020. And, you know, there are people who
1:13:35
Speaker 6: will say that that is, and who have said that
1:13:38
Speaker 6: that is the result of the defund the police or
1:13:41
Speaker 6: the abolish the police movement. But like, The crime has
1:13:46
Speaker 6: gone up in places that have like given more money
1:13:49
Speaker 6: to police.
1:13:50
Speaker 7: Right.
1:13:50
Speaker 6: So this is not this is not happening simply in
1:13:53
Speaker 6: places that have like taken funding from the police department
1:13:57
Speaker 6: and moved it somewhere else. This is happening across the
1:13:59
Speaker 6: board and obviously cannot be.
1:14:00
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:14:01
Speaker 6: Obviously can't be disentangled from the fact that we're living
1:14:03
Speaker 6: through a global plague, you know, in which people have
1:14:07
Speaker 6: lost their jobs and which kids have been out of school.
1:14:09
Speaker 6: I mean, I was a high school English teacher for
1:14:11
Speaker 6: for a few years before I started graduate school and
1:14:13
Speaker 6: then and writing full time. But I can't overstate how
1:14:19
Speaker 6: destabilizing it is for so many of our young people
1:14:25
Speaker 6: not to be physically going to school every day, how
1:14:28
Speaker 6: destabilizing it is to the routine that an entire sort
1:14:32
Speaker 6: of network of families and communities rely on. And it
1:14:36
Speaker 6: has been well reported by journalists and scholars over the
1:14:39
Speaker 6: course of the past year how difficult it uh, you know,
1:14:43
Speaker 6: zoom school has been for, for so many, can that
1:14:45
Speaker 6: there are millions of kids who like just stopped going
1:14:48
Speaker 6: to school, right. Because they don't have the infrastructure in
1:14:51
Speaker 6: their home. They live in intergenerational homes where people, you know, there's,
1:14:56
Speaker 6: they don't have access to internet or they only have
1:14:58
Speaker 6: access to one computer or they, you know, um, they
1:15:01
Speaker 6: have to try to find a job so that they
1:15:02
Speaker 6: can work to bring a new income so that they're
1:15:04
Speaker 6: not evicted from their homes. I mean, the schools are
1:15:06
Speaker 6: part of this sort of, as you know, this larger
1:15:08
Speaker 6: ecosystem of factors that, um, that shape what a community
1:15:13
Speaker 6: looks like. And so when we see crime go up
1:15:15
Speaker 6: in a community in 2020, it can't be understood outside
1:15:22
Speaker 6: of the context of people living under the threat of eviction,
1:15:26
Speaker 6: living through the pandemic, having to work these frontline jobs,
1:15:29
Speaker 6: people getting sick, people trying to prevent their family from
1:15:32
Speaker 6: getting sick and so not doing things or not making decisions,
1:15:35
Speaker 6: not going places. And the sort of general sense of
1:15:39
Speaker 6: desperation that it causes and fear, right? I think, you know,
1:15:44
Speaker 6: so many people don't take seriously that like a lot
1:15:49
Speaker 6: of the violence that we see, especially young people engaging
1:15:53
Speaker 6: in is like born out of fear and born out
1:15:56
Speaker 6: of a sense, an attempt to protect themselves and keep
1:15:59
Speaker 6: their bodies safe. You know, you can't talk about gang
1:16:02
Speaker 6: violence without talking about how these gangs are emerging in
1:16:06
Speaker 6: communities where there is little access to, any sort of
1:16:10
Speaker 6: social infrastructure or foundation that would give them the sort
1:16:16
Speaker 6: of financial stability, the social stability that would be necessary
1:16:21
Speaker 6: so that people don't feel like they have to join
1:16:23
Speaker 6: a gang to protect themselves or to find some entry
1:16:28
Speaker 6: point into a job that doesn't pay them below living
1:16:32
Speaker 6: wage or all sorts of things. It's just We have
1:16:37
Speaker 6: to be precise and we have to provide context. And
1:16:42
Speaker 6: we also have to recognize that even the best scholars
1:16:46
Speaker 6: of criminology don't have disagreements about what specific things have
1:16:56
Speaker 6: causal relationships to crime. And this is something we've talked
1:16:59
Speaker 6: about over the past few years with mass incarceration. There
1:17:02
Speaker 6: isn't a relationship between incarcerating more people and crime like
1:17:06
Speaker 6: going up or down, you know? So it's not a
1:17:08
Speaker 6: matter of like, if you put more people in prison,
1:17:10
Speaker 6: then crime will go down. Or if you put less
1:17:12
Speaker 6: people are in prison, then crime goes up. The world
1:17:17
Speaker 6: is complex and society is complex. And the best things
1:17:20
Speaker 6: we can do are provide people with the things that
1:17:22
Speaker 6: they need so that they don't feel desperate and that
1:17:26
Speaker 6: they don't make decisions based in desperation or fear, but
1:17:31
Speaker 6: instead are are making decisions that are shaped and animated
1:17:34
Speaker 6: by what it means to have all the things that
1:17:38
Speaker 6: you need to be a person in the world. Yeah.
1:17:42
Speaker 7: And by the way, that point you made about the
1:17:44
Speaker 7: challenge of figuring out a causal relationship between events or
1:17:47
Speaker 7: policies and crime is historically true as well. I mean,
1:17:50
Speaker 7: when we talk about the drop in crime since 70s
1:17:53
Speaker 7: or the 80s, no one really knows exactly what happened
1:17:55
Speaker 7: or why. There's lots of debates, right? Some people say
1:17:57
Speaker 7: lead paint or lead in gasoline. Other people say a
1:17:59
Speaker 7: whole bunch of other issues.
1:18:00
Speaker 1: So Yeah.
1:18:01
Speaker 7: I just think it's sort of incumbent upon all of
1:18:02
Speaker 7: us to sort of constantly try to paint a picture
1:18:05
Speaker 7: of a better tomorrow where we have solved these problems.
1:18:09
Speaker 7: We have thought of more creative ways to keep people
1:18:11
Speaker 7: safe and not just done the same things over and
1:18:14
Speaker 7: over again, because Fox news scared us or whatever. Um, uh,
1:18:17
Speaker 7: a couple more questions for you. So there's a lot
1:18:19
Speaker 7: of like joyful moments in the book. Um, one of
1:18:21
Speaker 7: them is, is around Juneteenth. Uh, it's incredibly moving visit
1:18:25
Speaker 7: to Galveston, Texas, where the, the tradition and the story
1:18:29
Speaker 7: of Juneteenth begins. you meet these just like, again, it's
1:18:33
Speaker 7: just these like average, amazing, inspiring people who have kept
1:18:36
Speaker 7: this tradition alive. And you have this cathartic experience singing
1:18:39
Speaker 7: with some of them. Can you give us like a
1:18:41
Speaker 7: little history of Juneteenth and what it meant for you
1:18:44
Speaker 7: to be with that group of people in those moments?
1:18:48
Speaker 6: Yeah, so Juneteenth, for those of you not know, is
1:18:51
Speaker 6: a holiday that is more popular now than it was
1:18:56
Speaker 6: a year ago. But that marks the moment and the
1:19:00
Speaker 6: day that General Granger of the Union Army came to Galveston,
1:19:04
Speaker 6: Texas and told the 250,000 enslaved people in Texas that
1:19:09
Speaker 6: they were free He did so through an important proclamation.
1:19:14
Speaker 6: This was two years after the Emancipation Proclamation and two
1:19:20
Speaker 6: months after General Lee surrendered at Appomattox, effectively ending the
1:19:24
Speaker 6: Civil War. It's this thing that is both, to my mind,
1:19:29
Speaker 6: something that is worthy of mourning. We should mourn the
1:19:34
Speaker 6: fact that there are hundreds of thousands of people who
1:19:37
Speaker 6: were kept in bondage, even when bondage was no more,
1:19:42
Speaker 6: you know, or even after the civil war, after the
1:19:44
Speaker 6: emancipation proclamation, after the civil war had ended. And also
1:19:49
Speaker 6: this moment of, of like a celebration, right? Because this
1:19:53
Speaker 6: thing that had defined our country again, before it was
1:19:55
Speaker 6: even a country had been abolished. And, you know, the
1:19:58
Speaker 6: fact that Juneteenth is not a national holiday is, is,
1:20:04
Speaker 6: have a lot of words for it that I, you know,
1:20:05
Speaker 6: I try to, I'm a dad now, so I try
1:20:07
Speaker 6: to keep it PG, but I mean, it's abhorrent. It's
1:20:10
Speaker 6: the idea that we don't have a moment to celebrate
1:20:13
Speaker 6: the end of one of the worst things our country
1:20:16
Speaker 6: has ever done, I think reflects really poorly on us.
1:20:19
Speaker 6: And one of the things that's so amazing about this
1:20:22
Speaker 6: event that I went to in Galveston was that it was,
1:20:25
Speaker 6: you know, this community of folks who were in this
1:20:28
Speaker 6: building where, you know, the sort of scholars debate of like,
1:20:33
Speaker 6: have debate about whether, where General Granger like made the
1:20:36
Speaker 6: proclamation and read it aloud, or even if he read
1:20:38
Speaker 6: it aloud, but the sort of, you know, part of
1:20:40
Speaker 6: what the book is exploring is the relationship between like
1:20:42
Speaker 6: truth and mythology and symbolism and how it's sometimes symbolism
1:20:46
Speaker 6: can be just as powerful as, as, um, an empirical reality.
1:20:51
Speaker 6: And so it's in this place called Ashton Villa. Um,
1:20:54
Speaker 6: and the story goes that he stood on the, um,
1:20:59
Speaker 6: on the terrace of the Ashton Villa and like read
1:21:00
Speaker 6: this proclamation aloud. And so people, you know, hundreds of
1:21:04
Speaker 6: people meet inside for Al Edwards prayer breakfast. And Al
1:21:07
Speaker 6: Edwards is the legislator in the, or was, he just
1:21:10
Speaker 6: recently passed in Texas who made Juneteenth a state holiday
1:21:16
Speaker 6: in Texas over 40 years ago. And there was this
1:21:20
Speaker 6: moment where everybody was singing, stood up and started singing
1:21:23
Speaker 6: the Black National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing. And,
1:21:27
Speaker 6: you know, I grew up in attending a black church
1:21:30
Speaker 6: and around black people and black ceremonies and communities. And
1:21:34
Speaker 6: so I've heard this song, you know, thousands of times
1:21:37
Speaker 6: it feels like, but I can't tell you, it was
1:21:40
Speaker 6: such a, it was such a moving experience to be
1:21:45
Speaker 6: standing in that place on that day, surrounded by people
1:21:50
Speaker 6: who were the descendants of people who had been told
1:21:54
Speaker 6: that day and made clear by that proclamation that they
1:21:59
Speaker 6: were no longer enslaved to like stand alongside them to
1:22:02
Speaker 6: watch them as they sang these words that that were
1:22:05
Speaker 6: clearly not just words right they were not just abstractions
1:22:09
Speaker 6: they were not just lyrics they were something that was
1:22:12
Speaker 6: that was tangible and then and you know we were
1:22:15
Speaker 6: talking about proximity that like make us more proximate to
1:22:20
Speaker 6: what happened both in the physical place that we were
1:22:23
Speaker 6: standing on the island where we were but in that
1:22:27
Speaker 6: state and in this country as a whole. And I think,
1:22:29
Speaker 6: you know, art and literature and songs and music have
1:22:36
Speaker 6: always and continue to have a really amazing way of
1:22:43
Speaker 6: making us feel that sort of emotional proximity to something
1:22:48
Speaker 6: that might've happened long before we were even alive. And
1:22:51
Speaker 6: I felt that in a deep way. way in that
1:22:54
Speaker 6: moment and in a way that has stayed with me
1:22:57
Speaker 6: since then.
1:22:58
Speaker 7: Well, it was also one of the moments in the
1:23:00
Speaker 7: book where, you know, the writing and the way you
1:23:03
Speaker 7: set the scene, it really did make me feel like
1:23:05
Speaker 7: I was either, you know, sitting next to you or
1:23:07
Speaker 7: like somehow watching you sort of be there in that
1:23:10
Speaker 7: moment and feel the music. So just a truly beautiful
1:23:14
Speaker 7: moment in an extraordinary book. How the Word is Passed.
1:23:17
Speaker 7: Everybody should buy it. Buy a copy for your friends.
1:23:21
Speaker 7: Buy a copy for your enemies.
1:23:22
Speaker 6: There you go. Thank you so much.
1:23:23
Speaker 7: Thank you so much for doing the show. Thank you
1:23:25
Speaker 7: for this great work and I really appreciate the conversation.
1:23:27
Speaker 6: Thank you so much, Tommy. It's been a pleasure.
1:23:34
Speaker 2: Thanks to Clint for joining us today. Great interview and
1:23:36
Speaker 2: everyone have a great weekend. We will talk to you
1:23:38
Speaker 2: next week.
1:23:39
Speaker 3: Bye everyone.
1:23:41
Speaker 2: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
1:23:45
Speaker 2: producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Flavia Casas.
1:23:49
Speaker 2: Our associate producers are Jazzy Marine and Olivia Martinez. It's
1:23:53
Speaker 2: mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our
1:23:56
Speaker 2: sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou,
1:24:00
Speaker 2: Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to
1:24:03
Speaker 2: our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmal Konian, Yale Freed, and
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Speaker 2: Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos
1:24:10
Speaker 2: every week.