Charlamagne Tha God’s Take on the State of the Race

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Welcome to Raging Moderates.

Today, Jessica and I have the one and only Charlemagne the God.

Charlemagne's known for his bold takes, and recently he's been at the center of some major political conversations, including two interviews with Vice President Kamala Harris.

We'll dive into that and much more, including his thoughts on Trump, the role of black voters, and the state of of the race.

Charlemagne, welcome to the show.

What's up, Scott?

Thank you for having me.

What's up, Jessica?

Hey, it's so good to see you.

I'm so glad to have you on our turf after you so generously had me on yours.

I wanted to jump in with the controversy du jour, Biden's maybe flub about Tony Hinchcliffe's comments about Puerto Ricans.

And I saw that you said that he shouldn't have walked them back.

And I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit.

And if you have, and maybe it's just my own anxiety, but sometimes when stuff like this happens, I get nervous about losing voters, right?

Like that if Biden doesn't walk it back, then maybe there are a few people in Pennsylvania who thought, eh, I was going to vote for Kamala, but that side thinks that Trump supporters are garbage.

So.

Well, I mean, I get nervous anytime Joe Biden talks.

Joe Biden should have stopped talking.

Joe Biden.

Definitely.

Joe Biden probably should have stopped talking about a year ago.

But no, I mean, because I think this one is a reach.

I just think it was

taken slightly out of context.

I mean, he was very specific about the type of people he was referring to.

He gave examples.

He said that if you're a person who thinks immigrants

poison the blood of America, he said if you're somebody who agrees that Puerto Rico is garbage, he was talking specifically to them.

Like, I didn't hear him, you know, say that about all Trump supporters.

And I mean, truthfully, if you were a person who said, you know what, I was thinking about voting for Kamala Harris, but now I'm not because of Biden's comments, I doubt you was really thinking about voting for her anyway.

Because, you know,

if you're a Trump supporter, then you're a Trump supporter.

And if you're offended by those comments, it's because you're still supporting Trump and because you feel like, hey, that's the person I'm going to vote for.

But I don't think that he turned off anybody who...

you know, wasn't already planning on

voting for Trump anyway.

I just didn't think, I think the comments are being blown out of proportion.

Oh, totally.

But I mean, this is how you own a news cycle, right?

When it seemed like it was going in the other direction about this, and now they can at least inject a bit of it into the proverbial bloodstream.

And Trump, I mean, he said, Trump is called, Trump called America garbage last week.

He said America was a garbage can just last week.

So it's like, what are we doing?

Like, it's just, I don't know.

That's just their way of, like you said, trying to change the headlines.

Totally.

I wanted to get your take.

So you had Kamala on, again, and I saw Lauren LaRosa really pressed her about the idea that black men aren't fully backing her.

She said it wasn't her experience, especially at the rallies.

Do you think that the media is overplaying these divisions?

Because it feels like data is trickling in that maybe it was a bit of a mirage, this mass exodus from the Democratic Party.

But what's your take?

Yeah, I never agreed with that.

I never agreed with it.

I didn't like when President Obama went out there and, you know,

was waving his finger at black men simply because black men have always been the second largest voting block of Democrats.

There's no real data that we've seen unless something comes in on Tuesday after election night that shows us different, that makes me believe black men aren't going, you know, show up for the vice president.

And then I saw an ABC poll that came out Sunday and it proved me right.

I think it said 85% of black men as of right now are supporting the vice president.

So, yeah, I just, I never believed that.

I mean, I felt like they should be out there shaking their fingers at white women, like Liz Cheney, Hillary Clinton.

They should be out there talking to white women the way Barack Obama was trying to talk to black men.

52% of white women voted for Trump in 2016, 55%

in 2020.

Like, why are they, why did they vote against their own interests in 2016?

Why did they vote against their own interests in 2020?

They're the ones that need

a talking to.

Black men have always showed up for the Democratic Party, the second largest voting block behind black women.

So I always thought those polls were overstated.

So you're obviously pretty close to the campaign, and I imagine at some point they've asked for your advice.

What do you think they need to be focused on and kind of the kind of the home stretch here?

I think she's doing it.

I think her speech last night was solid.

The fact that she was able to show the clear contrast between her and Donald Trump, which anybody should have saw already, but also, you know, speaking to the optimism and the hope.

of the future of America.

I mean, that's what we as American citizens buy into.

I don't care if you're black, I don't care if you're white, I don't care if you're male, you know, female, gay, straight, Democrat, Republican.

There's two things that I feel like all of us as American citizens want.

We want to have more money in our pocket and we want to be safe.

That's it.

Like, and I think that you have to speak to that.

You have to let people know: how are you going to put more money in my pocket and how are you going to make me feel safe?

How am I going to be able to provide for my family?

How am I going to be able to put food on the table and a roof over my head?

And how are you just going to keep us as a country safe?

How can we be safe as a society?

And I feel like she spoke to that.

Like I said, she spoke to the clear and present danger and threat to democracy that Trump is.

And she spoke to the hope and optimism that all of us here in America have.

Do you think, because I mean, you had like the two closing messages in what you just said.

So there is the protecting democracy closing message and then the opportunity economy.

And this is what kind of president I'm going to be.

Do you think that it's reaching?

the demographics that it actually needs to get to because that's my big worry i feel like we just consume so much information about this that we know that you know what she said at the auto plant in Michigan and then we know what she said at this event and that Americans are only getting like half the story.

Well, I think that's why repetition is important.

You know, when I had my town hall with her a couple of weeks ago and you know, I asked her about the fact people say she sticks to her talking points and you know, she seems like she's always so scripted.

And she was like, well, that's what I call being disciplined.

And she said, that's why I have to repeat these points over and over and over.

And it's true.

I just think think that we live in a society where,

you know, all of these messages, we see them so much.

It's not like how back in the day, you could do a local event in Michigan and just the folks in Michigan would hear it.

Or you do a local event in Pennsylvania somewhere and just folks in Pennsylvania would hear it.

We hear every single thing all the time from everywhere.

So it sounds like she's constantly repeating herself.

But I don't think that's a bad thing because, you know, to your point, I don't think everybody hears everything.

Like, you know how many people I run into every day who literally have not heard 95% of the crazy rhetoric that has come out of Trump's mouth or come out of people in his camp's mouth.

And so it's like, you should keep putting that in people's face to let folks know what he's saying, what he's planning to do.

And you should keep drilling home your message,

your plan for the economy.

Like, you know, especially her, because she's only been running for

100 days.

Like, so people may not have heard the opportunity economy plan.

People may not know, you know,

where she stands as far as, you know, job creation, where she stands as far as, you know, what she wants to do with small, small businesses.

Like, so

I think it's nothing wrong with constantly repeating yourself.

And I think you do have to deliver both those messages because different things resonate with different people for different reasons.

Like, there's some people that you can say threat to democracy, and they don't even, they're like, what does that mean?

Democracy has never worked for me.

You know, there's people that's living in hell right now.

They don't think things can get hotter.

So that might not resonate with them.

But that message of hope, you know, that message of opportunity, the economy, being able to participate in this economy,

that might resonate with them.

So you got to do both.

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Curious, Charlemagne, what is your, you're obviously very involved in this, both professionally and emotionally.

How are you trying to be?

Obviously, you feel you're right.

How do you be effective?

What's your, what are the, what does the next week look like for you?

That is a fantastic question, Scott.

I don't know, man.

You know, it's interesting, right?

Because

I don't want to come off as a surrogate because

I'm not a surrogate, right?

Like, I respect you.

I don't know.

I think you are, actually.

If surrogate is so surrogate is someone else.

So you're unpaid.

Yeah, which

quite frankly makes you a more effective surrogate.

So you, well, let me start with this.

You are important.

And

if you show up, you can have an impact.

What do you think showing up means for you?

I think showing up for me means

just telling people why I'm voting.

I'm not pushing people and telling them you should vote for this individual.

I'm just telling people who I'm voting for and why I'm voting for them.

And when people ask me, because they have been asking me over the past hundred days, I can tell you right now, when President Biden was running, people were asleep.

I was saying that this race was about the Republicans, who I think are the crooks, the Democrats, who I think are the cowards, because they don't fight enough, and the couch, which is voter apathy.

And there was people that were just on the couch and they weren't moving.

When she got to the top of the ticket, people sat up and they became curious.

And I think that, you know, there's been a lot of...

a lot of huge missteps the Trump campaign has been making over the last few weeks that have been, you know, really highlighted in a real way that's making people not even just feel curious.

Now they actually want to get up and go do something.

And so I just think for me, I'm just, I'm here to highlight those things.

And when people ask me why I'm voting,

I tell them the reasons why.

Like, you know,

I like her opportunity economy policy.

And there's another thing that I really like too.

It's something President Obama said.

It's the second part of his speech.

And I pulled it up because I like to read it, but it says, and so sometimes When he was in Pennsylvania, everybody focused on what he said about black men, but there was a second part where he said, and so sometimes the other excuse we hear when we're talking to folks as well, it ain't gonna make no difference.

Well, no, you're right, that we're not eliminating poverty, we're not gonna get rid of all problems with race, we're not gonna prevent every bad thing from happening in this country.

Whoever we elect president, that's not how things work.

The question is, do we have somebody there who sees us, who cares about us, who will work on our behalf and can make things a little bit better?

I think she needs to be leaning into that message, and that's what I'm telling all of my listeners.

I think that we have to stop thinking that presidents, you know, get in the White House and just wave a magic wand and make everybody's problems disappear.

You just want somebody in office who cares, you know, who has some empathy

for the American people and just wants to make things, you know,

a little bit better.

That's my message to people.

Who do you think can make your life, you know, just a little bit better?

That's who you should go out there and vote for.

Yeah, she's actually...

managed to do that very effectively.

It was one of the first categories that she was able to turn around from when Biden was running, like, who cares about people like me?

And you see this in all the town halls and the focus groups that people think she's a really nice person that cares.

Whether that translates to they're going to actually go out there and vote for her, we'll see.

But she's been doing really well on that.

And I want to choose Scott's at it.

You're really important.

And it's something that we both think and have been talking a lot about how differently this campaign has played out media-wise.

Like the mainstream interviews have not mattered nearly as much as the podcast wars

coming on the breakfast club doing your town hall do you think this kind of change is here to stay and like what do you see your role on the in the future of political media which is kind of where you guys sit now

that is a great question i don't i don't i don't know if um

i i really don't know how much impact podcasts and stuff are going to have like i i you know for breakfast club is different because we still are a traditional radio radio station.

I don't know if people

understand that because everything is so podcast driven, but we're a radio show that comes on every morning.

We talk to 8 million people weekly, right?

And then we take that daily show and put it out as a podcast every day.

So our reach is a little bit different and our reach is a little bit more traditional, but I don't know what all of these podcast appearances, I don't know how they're going to resonate with voters because in my mind, and I could be completely wrong about this, in my mind, going on podcasts makes a lot of noise, but we don't know if those young men that are listening to podcasts are actually going to go out there and vote.

You know that The View has people that watch that vote.

You know, Stephen Colbert has people that watch that vote.

You know Fox, you know, has people that watch and vote.

CNN, you know that.

So I think, you know, Vice President Harris did it really right because she hit both.

Like she didn't just stick to the podcast like, you know, Trump did.

She did the, you know, Fox News hits.

Then she did the views.

She did, you know, her CNN town hall, but she also did Colbert.

Like she did traditional radio with the Breakfast Club.

But then she, you know,

makes an appearance on Univision.

So I think that she actually did it right.

Because, you know, there's just so many different pockets of people that you have to hit.

And you're not going to hit them going to one place.

Like, even if you, I love Joe Rogan to death, but there's people who do not listen to, there's many people that listen to Joe Rogan.

There's tens of millions that don't as well.

So I think she did it right out of

both candidates.

And to answer your question,

Jessica,

I still believe in both as well.

You know, I believe in mainstream media and I still believe in what is, I guess, still called non-traditional media, which I don't know why we call it that anymore, but because to me, it's legacy.

But I believe in both.

So I feel like you have to

show up in both.

So

I hope I have a presence in both.

In the future.

So

no Democrat is.

You definitely do.

Agreed.

Just to fill in.

Go ahead, Scott.

So no Democrat has ever won the presidency without getting the young vote by a pretty wide margin.

Young people have to show up for the Democrat or they just don't win.

And

I actually am...

I'm more worried, I think, than you that young men aren't going to show up.

That young men, if you look at the polls, are trending more and more conservative.

A lot of young men listen to this podcast.

I know a lot of young men listen to your work.

What about America has worked for you?

People look at you and they think, I'd like to be that guy.

You seem to be doing something you like.

You seem to be in good shape.

You seem to be making a lot of money.

America has worked for you.

What about America has worked for you?

And what is it about this campaign that you think will extend those things about America?

I mean, America is the only place

where a black man from Monks Corner, South Carolina, who was raised on a dirt road, who never went to college, you know, can

find something within himself that is a talent, right?

That is a gift, I guess, you know, my ability to speak, I guess, and turn that into

the multimedia

career that I've had.

Like I'm in the Radio Hall of Fame right now just because America's free market enterprise, America's

free speech allows that to happen.

Like this is the this is the land of opportunity

for so many people.

Like you know, that's why people are dying to get over here, literally.

They're dying to get over here just because they know that

opportunity comes to those.

who created in this country.

Yeah, there's a lot of obstacles.

You know, there's a lot of hurdles.

There's a lot of, you know,

systemic issues that keep certain

groups of people from getting where they need to be, but it still can be done.

You know, this is literally the country where opportunity

comes to those who create it.

And so I would just tell

all of those black men, let's not live in a country where

people's freedoms.

are being taken away because if we don't have those freedoms, if we don't have those rights, you know, those things can hinder us from getting to where we need to be.

And, you know, you can, you can sit around and think just because it's not happening to you now doesn't mean it can't happen to you in the future like you know Martin Luther King Jr.

said

injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere so you can't sit around and

you know watch what's happening to you know women or sit around and watch what's happening with what I think is going to happen to even legal you know,

immigrants in this country.

Like if they're talking about mass deportations,

I was listening to Jon Stewart the other night and I thought it was hilarious what he said, but it's true.

He was like, you really think Donald Trump knows the difference between who's here, between what immigrant is here legally and what immigrant is here illegally?

Like they were showing him a picture of women in a deposition and he picked the woman who accused him of sexual assault and he said that was his wife.

He didn't even realize that that was a whole other woman.

That wasn't his wife.

So my point is, you can't sit around and just think, watch all of these injustices happening to other people and think that they're not going to happen to you.

I don't like anything that, any rhetoric that is coming from that side right now.

We should not live in a country where people are, somebody speaking about putting people in camps, where somebody led an attempted coup in this country, where somebody's talking about locking up political opponents, where, you know, somebody's talking about locking up journalists.

Like,

where are we?

Where are we as a country?

That's not what America is.

So, you know, we shouldn't want somebody leading this country whose mind is even there.

Because I promise you, the more they strip rights away from others, it's only a matter of time before it's your turn.

How do you think we got to a place where so many millions of people are comfortable with that kind of rhetoric?

Because that's what really stuns me.

Like Donald Trump, to me, is a completely depraved human being.

And I grew up in New York City.

I've watched this for a really long time, but I'm shocked still by tens of millions of people who can hear stuff.

Like you play them the tape.

Like we were emailing about the other day, right?

That like Jay Tapper has now started playing people the tape of what he says and they're still

like okay with it.

Well, I think that's where, that's where mainstream media comes into play, right?

And that's why mainstream media cannot go away or lose its position to you know, the podcasters and the YouTubers, right?

Because mainstream media still has a job to do.

There's still journalistic integrity that has to happen.

And I really think there's been a lot of

journalistic integrity that's been lost because

we talk about donald trump being a threat to democracy but we don't really explain that to the american people and we don't we don't treat him like a threat to democracy like you know i was on anderson cooper the other day and that's what i was trying to explain like you know these networks they center the wrong conversations all the time like they'll make more of a bigger deal about well is kamala harris black or is she a dei hire than they will you know actual

things that donald trump has done like

what do you want to do?

The two impeachments, the 88 criminal charges, the 34 convictions,

you know, leading an attempted coup in this country.

Like, literally, it is a choice to not center those things as conversation.

And then, man, don't even get me started on Merrick Garland and the DOJ.

Like, they definitely didn't treat him like a threat to democracy in any way, shape, or form.

So, if nobody, if the media is not talking about him like a true threat to democracy and,

you know, our government and law law enforcement isn't treating him like a threat to democracy why should the American people think he's a threat to democracy I've literally listened to people on YouTube channels because I'm not one of those people that just dismiss folks that I don't agree with like I want to hear why people are thinking the way that they're thinking I heard a guy the other day say man if he really tried to overthrow the government he'd have been in jail

and and and the guy that was interviewing him didn't even push back and I I happened to know the guy because they're they're young they're young guys like in their 20s I happened to know the guy that was interviewing him.

And I said, yo, why didn't you tell him that, you know, you know, Trump got charged?

He was like, I didn't know.

So you got one guy who didn't know Trump got charged with

trying to overthrow the government.

And the guy

interviewing him didn't know either.

They'd know they saw it.

right?

We know we all saw January 6th, but they didn't know that there was an actual action taken.

And if you don't see somebody receive consequences for their actions,

you don't think anything is wrong.

So that's how we got here.

We got here because we have normalized Trump by not speaking about him like the actual threat he is and

this government not prosecuting him like the threat he is.

So just as we wrap up here, Charlemagne, you obviously see an inspiring story coming from modest means and now you're interviewing who may be the next president of the United States.

I'm just curious,

what are the one or two moments or people in your life that were really pivotal?

When you look back and think,

this was the moment of the person that put me where I am?

Oh, man, I mean, I got to go back to the beginning.

Like, that would definitely have to be my mother and my father.

You know,

as dysfunctional as my father was, you know, great man who just had his own issues like we all do.

He had his own issues with mental health and his own issues with substance abuse.

But

I learned through therapy.

This is something that I learned in therapy.

I used to get upset at my father because I felt like he would discipline me for things that he never taught me.

But he did teach me a lot.

He just was raising me out of fear and not love because he didn't want me to make the same mistakes that he made.

Now, granted, I still ended up making a lot of those same mistakes, but it was all of that.

extremely tough love in the beginning from him and my mom.

My mom was an English teacher.

You know, she's been teaching English in South Carolina for my whole life, right?

She's retired now.

She just does like substitute teaching, but and she was a Jehovah's Witness, so she'd make me read The Watchtower and make me read The Awakes and make me read the Bible and take with me, take me with her to field service on, you know, Sundays.

But then she was an English teacher, so I was always into like the book it program.

So I was the guy reading, you know, four books to get a free pizza, you know, every week.

And that's what,

and the biggest piece of advice my mom gave me, she told me to read things that don't pertain to me.

So read things that didn't have anything to do with my life, didn't have anything to do with the way that I was being raised.

And that's what led me to like falling in love with Judy Bloom books.

That's what led me to fall in love with, you know, Beverly Clearly books.

So it was like between that and then my father just

always being on me about

not falling victim to our environment.

He gave me one piece of advice that stuck with me my whole life.

He said, if you don't change your lifestyle, you're going to end up in jail, dead, or broke sitting under the tree.

And I promise you from the time I was in,

like second or third grade, my father was always on me about not falling victim to our environment that we were growing up in, not falling victim to our environment that we were growing up in.

And it was because of that that, you know, when I did start to get in trouble, it clicked for me right then and there.

I realized that I'm not getting any of this time back.

And everything that I do today directly impacts what happens in my life tomorrow.

And so that's what I started focusing on.

I started focusing on what my future would look like.

So I started thinking in five-year intervals, 10-year intervals.

I was like, okay, whatever I want to do for the next five years, I got to start doing now.

Whatever I want to be doing for the next 10 years, I got to start doing now.

And that's literally what got me on, you know, the right path to ultimately lead me where I am now.

So yes, it was definitely my mom and dad for sure.

We don't get this time back and read things that don't pertain to you.

I think that's a good place to end it.

We really appreciate your time, Charlaman.

Thanks for joining us and stay safe on the trail.

Thank you, Scott.

Thank you, Jessica.

Appreciate it.

So good to see you.