Abby Phillip: Governing by Troll

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovny, and Carise Van Houten.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 14 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 21 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 22 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 12 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 26 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 29 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 32 Amazon has everything for everyone on your list, like your husband, who fidgets through the night like he's sending Morse code with his toes.

Speaker 32 Get him a weighted blanket and save big with Amazon early holiday deals. Sleep tight, Dave.

Speaker 33 Hello, and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
Delighted to welcome you to the show, the anchor of CNN News Night.

Speaker 34 She's the author of a new book, A Dream Deferred, Jesse Jackson, and the Fight for Black Political Power. It's Abby Phillip.

Speaker 35 What's happening?

Speaker 36 Hey, Tim, good to see you. Thanks for having me on.
Good to see you.

Speaker 33 Congrats on the book.

Speaker 36 We've come a long way since you were uh an emped or whatever and i was the flack for the last place candidate in the republican primary in 2012 john hudson i was trying to remember how we had met but it had something to do with that yeah i have a i have an image in my head of a of a sad half empty town hall somewhere in new hampshire where i was trying to convince you things were going well i think you know that's

Speaker 36 that's that's i can't remember the details i knew then that you had a really bright future tim so that was not that was not the end. Neither of us.

Speaker 40 I want to talk about the book, obviously.

Speaker 42 And

Speaker 42 I've been kind of ruminating myself on the value of doing debate shows and stuff.

Speaker 34 So I want to talk to you about your show.

Speaker 42 But first, if we can do a little news, you're covering the shutdown every night, hearing arguments from both sides.

Speaker 47 It's a weird shutdown.

Speaker 38 It's hard to see an off-ramp.

Speaker 42 Trump is in Asia right now, the president.

Speaker 38 The Congress hasn't, GOP Congress hasn't been in session for like five weeks, basically.

Speaker 33 What's What's your sense of who's winning the argument, if there's an off-ramp, where things stand?

Speaker 36 Yeah, I'm with you. I think this has been the weirdest shutdown ever.
And I covered all the Trump shutdowns.

Speaker 36 And I think that this is the one where, I don't know, I mean, there is not a great off-ramp. But the thing that I keep

Speaker 36 asking my conservative friends is, you know, if at the end of the day,

Speaker 36 what they want is to be able to say that they reopened the government without making a deal and then turn around and make a deal,

Speaker 36 I don't know that that works for the American people.

Speaker 43 So

Speaker 36 do I think this is some kind of slam dunk for Democrats? No. I don't think shutdowns are ever a slam dunk, period.
I think Americans don't like things like that.

Speaker 36 And come Saturday when people are not getting their food stamps, it's going to be terrible.

Speaker 36 But I also think, you know, having the unions coming out and saying you need to reopen the government because our members are suffering, also bad.

Speaker 36 There's probably going to need to be, and I think there's some indication that this is happening, some conversation with Republican leaders and moderate Democrats that get them to an agreement about a real solid commitment to addressing this issue.

Speaker 36 What that looks like, I don't know, but it feels to me like they're going to have to get some private and public assurances that they're going to address the health care issue, that they're going to have a vote on it, whatever it is that satisfies the moderates.

Speaker 36 I don't think they're going to satisfy the Democratic leaders and the liberals, but that's how these things always end.

Speaker 36 It's always going to have to be the moderates coming to some kind of agreement and then voting with Republicans to reopen the government.

Speaker 34 And maybe if that just happens in the Senate, I'm with you.

Speaker 44 I mean,

Speaker 51 you can imagine a path in the Senate.

Speaker 42 I mean, there are a couple of Republicans who want to vote on this stuff.

Speaker 42 Josh Hawley is out saying basically like, look, they're like a handful of the populist MAGA Republicans and Marjorie Taylor Greene in the House who are like, these are our constituents that are losing SNAP next week that are paying more on health care.

Speaker 49 So we should be responsive.

Speaker 48 The problem is that like the main body of the Republican Party, I don't think wants to extend Obamacare subsidies again.

Speaker 47 And the House, it's kind of hard to imagine Mike Johnson bringing that up in the House.

Speaker 48 You know, you can imagine a deal in the Senate, but it's kind of hard to imagine them doing.

Speaker 44 And maybe, who the hell knows?

Speaker 49 Maybe that's just where things die and they fight over this in the midterms.

Speaker 59 I don't know.

Speaker 36 I don't know. I mean, to be honest, I think that they're going to have to deal with this.

Speaker 43 I think this is actually a really important thing.

Speaker 37 Obamacare is politically.

Speaker 37 Yeah.

Speaker 36 Yeah.

Speaker 36 I think this is a really politically toxic issue for Republicans, because when you look at the chart of where Obamacare enrollment has dramatically increased, it is a huge swath of Republican territory.

Speaker 36 And that is... very significant.
That explains, people are wondering, why is Marjorie Taylor Greene saying this?

Speaker 36 Because her state is one of the places where, you know, millions more people are enrolled in Obamacare Obamacare today than they were four years ago.

Speaker 36 And that fact is going to mean that it's not just Democrats that are affected by the increases that people are going to experience. It's Republicans too.

Speaker 36 They're going to call it whatever they want to call it. But I do think that there's going to be some coming to the table on the numbers here because these are their voters too.

Speaker 36 I mean, I think the raw politics is that these are Democrats somehow, but that's very much not the case.

Speaker 60 A couple of the random news items I just wanted to pick your brain on.

Speaker 61 I was

Speaker 34 doing my due diligence and kind of reminding myself your backstory.

Speaker 55 And I did not realize that you lived in Trinidad and Tobago for a little while as a kid and that was your family.

Speaker 44 I did not know that.

Speaker 36 Yes, I did.

Speaker 56 The Caribbean boat bombing story is so strange in a lot of ways, right?

Speaker 38 Because the stated reason for it is just obviously fake, right?

Speaker 37 Like this idea that there are drugs, that there's fentanyl coming from Venezuela through Colombia, all the way up to America.

Speaker 37 That's just not happening.

Speaker 42 And these boats are actually, a lot of them going from Venezuela to Trinidad and Tobago. And so I was just wondering, I don't know.

Speaker 42 I was just wondering if you had any kind of perspective on that, if there's any buzz about that.

Speaker 36 It is interesting. I mean, because first of all, yeah, I mean, my parents are from Trinidad and Tobago.
So I do hear the scuttle butt.

Speaker 36 And this is very heavily discussed down there right now because the leaders of Trinidad and Tobago have been actually largely supportive of these bombings because these boats are actually headed for them.

Speaker 36 And so if they're carrying drugs, they're carrying drugs into Trinidad and Tobago and other parts of the Caribbean.

Speaker 36 And so I think if you can substantiate that there are drugs on these boats, that there's a reason to take them out, whatever it is, maybe there's an argument there.

Speaker 36 But I also think that as an American, you also have to ask the question, is that what we're doing now? Just serving as the police force for the Caribbean and the Pacific?

Speaker 36 I just, I mean, I just think it defies the America-first logic that we would engage in military activity for that reason.

Speaker 36 And I also would say that there are a lot of people in the region who do believe that what this is really about is regime change in Venezuela and about having a regime that is friendlier, that gives the United States more access to Venezuela's rich oil reserves, all that stuff.

Speaker 36 I think where we are right now from a what do we know factual perspective, I don't think we have enough information to substantiate any of those theories, but I'm just saying that's what people there think that this is about.

Speaker 36 And you're right, like the drug excuse, it doesn't make a lot of sense. There is virtually no fentanyl coming from Venezuela.
Most of that is coming from Mexico, nearly all of it.

Speaker 36 You also should be able to say, hey, what kind of drugs are they carrying?

Speaker 36 Anything? I've not seen any reports that have said, is it cocaine? Is it fentanyl? Is it marijuana? Are we blowing people out of the water over marijuana? I don't know.

Speaker 40 We might be. Is it human trafficking?

Speaker 43 Is it just human trafficking?

Speaker 36 Yeah. Is it just human smuggling? Because that's another thing.

Speaker 36 I mean, Venezuela's instability has meant a lot of flow of people out of Venezuela and into the Caribbean, as well as into the United States. So, you know, all these are legitimate issues.

Speaker 36 But as Americans, I think it's fair to ask, what are we doing as it pertains to that issue?

Speaker 42 Yeah. I mean, as a former neocon, you can maybe sell me.

Speaker 38 There was like, I guess, a covert deal on the pilots were trying to bribe the pilot to turn Maduro's pilot to turn him over.

Speaker 33 You can maybe sell me on that.

Speaker 47 I mean, you did lose the election.

Speaker 48 That seems different than just gadding boats out of the Caribbean that are headed for Trinidad and Tobago.

Speaker 42 I mean, I'm like, it's interesting that they don't want drugs in their country, but that just doesn't really, like, doing summary executions on the sea doesn't really seem to be an America priority.

Speaker 36 And also, you know, what are the organizations that these people are allegedly a part of?

Speaker 36 If the argument here is that there's some kind of organized cartel gang, whatever, that we're trying to take out, what is the organized cartel, gang, drug?

Speaker 36 What is it? I just think these are basic questions that there are no answers to, at least publicly, and that there should be, just on a very basic level. You ought to be able to tell me.

Speaker 36 I mean, are these people part of a drug cartel? If not, why are we bombing them?

Speaker 34 One other thing I was curious your take on, I did a little bonus video with Bill Crystal last night because I was just dying to hear what Bill Crystal thought about Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes.

Speaker 42 We're going to get to them in a second too, but also what he thought about these, like, have you seen these memes that like the Department of Labor is putting out and DHS is putting out with like, it's like the 1950s memes and it's like a white family like in a church or like in a, in a bucolic part of New England and maybe kind of by where we used to meet in New Hampshire.

Speaker 51 And it's always white.

Speaker 44 people and they've got like muscles and it's like bring back america america is for americans

Speaker 42 I mean, obviously it's a troll, but it's, I don't know, and also kind of in the context of Jesse Jackson, the Rainbow Coalition, it's not a Rainbow Coalition on

Speaker 53 these memes.

Speaker 49 It's all white people.

Speaker 50 And I think it's pretty clear what they're doing.

Speaker 45 I'm just wondering what you think about that.

Speaker 36 I actually kind of am on the fence about what percentage of it this is troll versus anything that really signals something real.

Speaker 36 But there's no question that there's a nostalgia for some time in the past, maybe the 30s, the 40s, when the representations, the visual representations of America are only the heartland or white people or blondes,

Speaker 36 whatever it is.

Speaker 36 Fine. I mean, I think that some of that is really true.
It's fine, I guess.

Speaker 33 It's crazy, though. And it's crazy that the government is doing it.

Speaker 36 It's designed to piss people off.

Speaker 36 It is.

Speaker 40 Should the government be doing things that are designed to piss people off?

Speaker 43 Clearly not.

Speaker 54 It's different if it's like a campaign, if it's a Fox News, News, or if it's the campaign or if it's whatever, if you want to be a racist senator, like, okay, but like the Department of Labor is representing everybody and we are paying.

Speaker 36 Listen, I agree with you totally in the sense that this government has been sort of governing by troll from the very beginning, where it's all about memes, it's all about the internet, it's all about owning the libs.

Speaker 36 And no, I mean, I think that the government ought to be above and beyond that, representing this entire country and also recognizing that even for many of these very people who are pushing these memes, their ancestors came from somewhere else and came to America.

Speaker 36 And the people that actually were here in America, many of them look like me. And, you know, people who are black and brown have been here longer than many people who are white have been here.

Speaker 36 That's a fact. And

Speaker 36 do I think they should be governing that way? Absolutely not. But look, I mean, I do think that the symbolism for this administration is part of the strategy.

Speaker 36 They do want to reshape how America is viewed and talked about. They do not like this idea of a multiracial democracy.

Speaker 36 It's been explicit that they believe that that is a sign of our national decline.

Speaker 36 I mean, when you look at the comments of many of the most prominent voices in conservatism, they're like, look at Europe.

Speaker 36 They have Muslims and they have Africans and brown people, and that's why they're in decline. And that's a pretty explicit message.
And that is part of it.

Speaker 36 I think it's a troll, but I also think that it's part of an attempt to reshape culture and using imagery to do that. And it shouldn't be ignored.

Speaker 36 But I also think that there are lots of real things that are happening that are just as important, if not more important, in terms of what they're doing policy-wise.

Speaker 60 And it does tie into the, I mean, just directly into the refugee policy, for example.

Speaker 66 It seems like we're taking white South Africans now and, you know, not black and brown people, basically.

Speaker 67 High key. Looking for your next obsession?

Speaker 69 Listen to High Key, a bold, joyful, unfiltered culture podcast coming at you every Friday.

Speaker 71 Now, my question is, in this game of mafia that we're going to play, are you going to do better than me?

Speaker 61 Say it now.

Speaker 70 Duh. Period.

Speaker 72 I'm going to eat. You're going to do better than me? I'm going to eat.
Yes.

Speaker 73 I literally will. Ryan will.

Speaker 75 I cannot wait till we both team up and get you out, and then one of us gets the other out because we didn't realize they were a traitor the whole time and you were actually an innocent.

Speaker 76 Y'all won't even know that I'm a trainer.

Speaker 78 This is going to be delicious.

Speaker 68 Well, thank you for coming to our show.

Speaker 70 And on that note, thank you for coming to my show.

Speaker 82 Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 14 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 21 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 22 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 12 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 26 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 29 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 33 Speaking of the government by troll, on your show, you've got some of them that come on to troll you, and I think that's kind of their strategy, right?

Speaker 33 Or to troll the other panelists, maybe not to troll you.

Speaker 62 Like I said in the lead-in, I mean,

Speaker 62 I've been going back and forth, like, should I do this Piers Morgan show?

Speaker 55 I have another debate thing that might be coming out in a few weeks.

Speaker 34 Like, is there value in the debate stuff because we've gotten so siloed?

Speaker 42 On the other hand, it's kind of like, what is the point of all this?

Speaker 38 So, I guess that's my question for you.

Speaker 58 What's the point of having a debate show?

Speaker 36 What's the point? Yeah. Let me tell you my point of view on this.
I, and I, and I, and I do see that you go on Piers Morgan all the time, and

Speaker 36 there are a lot of characters who show up there.

Speaker 41 Yeah.

Speaker 36 And look, I think that our goal is not

Speaker 36 to create those moments, but I don't control people's minds, and nor do I want to. And I do think that we allow people to exercise their free speech, to have their points of view.

Speaker 36 And the more important goal that we have is actually to say that we don't get brownie points for pretending like half the country isn't around and doesn't have viewpoints and doesn't vote.

Speaker 36 And I think that goes for Democrats and Republicans.

Speaker 36 So we bring people on to the table who have different points of view, who have real differences of opinion, not fake differences of opinion that are palatable to a television audiences, the real ones that actually reflect the country.

Speaker 36 And guess what? Some of those things are outlandish or might be offensive to people. But just like we were talking about this governing by troll kind of situation,

Speaker 36 This is our actual government right now.

Speaker 36 Some of these viewpoints are shared inside the government. My argument is just simply, don't you think you ought to know that?

Speaker 36 Shouldn't we know what the point of view is as opposed to pretending that it doesn't exist? And so, I don't know, I think there's a misconception that the

Speaker 36 idea is to

Speaker 36 have

Speaker 36 people come on and say crazy things, and it's not. And I don't know.
A lot of clips.

Speaker 43 I guess

Speaker 33 that the point of it is to get clips.

Speaker 43 Because I do think think a lot of people engage with your show mostly through clips.

Speaker 36 Because guess what? We don't create those clips. None of them.

Speaker 36 We don't create any of them.

Speaker 42 Like the CNN account doesn't put out the

Speaker 35 photo clips, you mean? Yeah.

Speaker 36 Yeah.

Speaker 36 And I also think, look, if you only consume the show through viral clips, which may, which a lot of people do, CNN is streaming now, so you can actually watch the show, even if you don't want to have cable.

Speaker 36 Okay, my, that's my shameless plug. But

Speaker 36 if you only consume the show that way, you might think that that is the only thing that happens, but it's clearly not. There is a lot of

Speaker 36 conversation that happens that is reasonable, that is interesting, that is, that is, that is provocative, where people are on unexpected sides of issues.

Speaker 36 And that happens more often than not on a daily basis. And I just think that it's sort of,

Speaker 36 you know, I can't stop people from saying things that might be out there.

Speaker 36 And that's okay. It happens from time to time, but I don't think that's that.
I know that's not the objective because I'm there. I'm doing it.

Speaker 56 You feel like what you're saying is that it's a useful purpose for everybody to understand better what the other side is arguing.

Speaker 34 I guess that's the point of having a debate show.

Speaker 36 Absolutely.

Speaker 43 So here's my point.

Speaker 36 And I also think that having ideas tested is also super important. I agree with this.

Speaker 36 Because it's one thing for people to just say things out into the ether, but then to have them actually challenged in real time is also the thing that I think has value as well. well.

Speaker 40 I agree with that.

Speaker 60 And I think that's especially true for the left, actually.

Speaker 42 This is

Speaker 42 one argument, a rare one these days that I agree with my former friends on the right on, but they say that a lot of times they feel better capable in debates because they're used to having their arguments challenged more.

Speaker 40 And I think that that is true.

Speaker 48 I think that there's a lot of people on the left that have like kind of, in the Trump era, just basically blocked out, deplatformed, like not just said, I'm not even going to engage with this because it's too wrong.

Speaker 38 And I understand that.

Speaker 36 It's a skill that has atrophied.

Speaker 43 Yeah, yeah, I understand that. It

Speaker 46 But if you aren't challenged, then you can't, you can't assess your own weaknesses.

Speaker 34 Here's my issue watching your show and how I think about it with mine here, too.

Speaker 63 You said earlier that you want to see the real arguments, not the fake arguments back and forth.

Speaker 51 And it's like, it's kind of hard to find Trump supporters that don't at least make fake arguments sometimes, like that aren't saying something different on

Speaker 35 at the table or on a podcast than they would say if you were in private.

Speaker 42 Like almost all of them like have major disagreements with him, whether it be on policy, about tariffs, or whether it be about his behavior or whatever, that they won't express because they don't want to get in trouble.

Speaker 35 And

Speaker 37 so for me, it's kind of like, I don't want to have somebody on that's going to lie like on the show.

Speaker 33 And I feel like it's not, this isn't just a MAGA thing.

Speaker 40 Like I, I felt this way after the Biden debate.

Speaker 33 Like I had to cut a couple people from this podcast because they were saying different things to me on text than they were on the show. You know, and I'm just like, I don't want that.

Speaker 42 Like, if you're going to come on and have a real argument, you should tell me what you really think.

Speaker 40 And I wonder how you think about that.

Speaker 50 We're in agreement.

Speaker 40 Yeah. Don't you feel like we shouldn't pick on Scott?

Speaker 58 You did a show. I used to work with him.

Speaker 45 But I feel like sometimes Scott's making arguments he doesn't really believe on your show, for example.

Speaker 36 Here's what I would say: is that Scott gets challenged a lot. He gets challenged by me.
He gets challenged by other people to say what he really believes.

Speaker 36 And I can't force anybody to bear their soul on television, But I can

Speaker 36 point out, and I do, because if you watch, you've seen me do it, you don't really believe that, do you?

Speaker 36 You know, or, you know, just to drill down on it, because I think then it becomes very apparent when there's a desire to kind of like squirrel around the issue.

Speaker 36 Am I saying that it's 100% the case that we have everybody on truth serum every night on television? No.

Speaker 36 You know, everybody in politics is to some degree or another left and right, frankly, saying things that in private they really wouldn't go so hard on.

Speaker 36 But part of the thing that we do that I think makes it valuable to still talk to them anyway is that there is an opportunity to drill down on what people really believe, to test the logic of the thing that they're saying, to say that, you know, if you are so worried about Burisma and Hunter Biden, why aren't you worried about President Trump's family literally making money off of crypto schemes that he is developing policy around?

Speaker 36 Why aren't you worried about them making deals in the Middle East while Trump is making diplomatic deals with those very same countries? We have a chance to actually ask that question

Speaker 36 and

Speaker 36 get people further away from bad faith arguments. I don't think it's perfect, Tim.
There's nothing perfect about this time that we're in.

Speaker 36 You know, we do have people on sometimes that we're trying out. We're searching for new voices voices all the time.
We are always

Speaker 36 trying to bring new people into the conversation that you might not normally hear from. And sometimes it doesn't work out.
Sometimes they don't have the depth.

Speaker 36 Sometimes they can't handle the conversation. Sometimes they don't want to act in good faith.
All that's fine.

Speaker 36 But we don't stop trying to find those voices because I do genuinely think that we need to know what is happening on all sides of this.

Speaker 36 And then we also have people who don't fall into those neat little buckets of left and right or, or liberal or conservative. And we bring those people on too, because they also add a lot of clarity.

Speaker 36 You know, people like Anna Kasparian, they come on and they, they blow past some of these rigid boxes that people want to put themselves in and they change the conversation because of that.

Speaker 34 God bless you.

Speaker 42 Having to talk to Anna Kasparian.

Speaker 43 You know, you're doing something or it's something.

Speaker 33 Somebody has to.

Speaker 67 High key.

Speaker 70 looking for your next obsession listen to high key a bold joyful unfiltered culture podcast coming at you every friday now my question is in this game of mafia that we're gonna play are you gonna do better than me say it now

Speaker 75 duh period i'm gonna eat you gonna do better than me i'm gonna eat yes i literally will ryan will i cannot wait till we both team up and get you out and then one of us gets the other out because we didn't realize they were a traitor the whole time and you were actually an innocent y'all won't even know that i'm a trainer

Speaker 78 This is going to be delicious.

Speaker 68 Well, thank you for coming to our show.

Speaker 70 And on that note, thank you for coming to my show.

Speaker 82 Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 14 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 21 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 22 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 12 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 26 One thing's for sure: the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 29 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 60 You were on Charlotte when you said you can draw the lines where you need to draw the lines and you've control over who shows up and who doesn't.

Speaker 35 I wonder what the lines are.

Speaker 48 And I have a couple specific thoughts on that, but I just am curious if you have some definition in your head, or it's kind of like the Supreme Court ruling with porn where you kind of know it when you see it.

Speaker 36 Yeah, I think it's kind of like you know it when you see it, you know.

Speaker 36 I mean, and I'm curious about what your examples are because I don't, you know, I don't, look, we don't have, we don't have rules rules written down in stone. Let's put it that way.

Speaker 33 Yeah, let's just start with Tucker. Like, so on the one hand, I think this is a tough call.

Speaker 38 So Tucker has Nick Fuentes on his show.

Speaker 33 Yeah. Would you have Nick Fuentes on?

Speaker 63 That seems like an easy one.

Speaker 36 No, I would not have Nick Fuentes on. No.
And he's been explicitly anti-woman, anti-button.

Speaker 45 White nationalists.

Speaker 36 Tucker is a tougher call.

Speaker 44 And he has,

Speaker 33 you know, depending on what rankings you're looking at, number one news podcast in the country. Maybe it's three or four if you kind of come by.

Speaker 34 It's hard to like judge all the different platforms, but and he is one of the most watched podcasts in the country.

Speaker 42 So, on the one hand, to your point of like, you should hear what the other side's saying, you should engage with them.

Speaker 65 Like, he would seem like an obvious person.

Speaker 42 He has influence. He may be influenced who the vice president was, according to reporting.

Speaker 60 On the other hand, you know, and he's having people on his pod these days that are like, that are white nationalists that are saying that Churchill was the

Speaker 42 villain in World War II.

Speaker 39 And so, on the other hand, it's like, this,

Speaker 62 do I want to do anything to give this person more attention?

Speaker 50 How would you think about that?

Speaker 36 Yeah, I mean, you know, I think it's less about that for this particular show and more about can this person sit at a table and have a conversation?

Speaker 36 And I think on that very basic level, I'm not sure that the answer would be yes for someone like Tucker.

Speaker 36 I think he's the type of person who wants to be in control of the conversation and you know, may not be willing to sit down and talk to

Speaker 36 four other people

Speaker 36 about a topic and have his ideas tested and so on and so forth. So I think that's a big part of it for me.

Speaker 36 But I think it's a hard question. I mean, I'm not a hard no

Speaker 36 on

Speaker 36 people who are controversial because I just think

Speaker 36 one of the problems with doing that is that you miss what is influencing our government. And I don't think we want to be in a position where we don't understand

Speaker 36 what is driving decision-making in the White House or in the halls of Congress or what have you. So I think it would have to be in that vein.

Speaker 36 But also, I think a lot of what happens right now with Tucker is he's kind of off in a lot of cul-de-sacs right now about conspiracies around Israel, around just things, you know, Epstein.

Speaker 36 I mean, they're just things that I'm not sure that are speaking to the heart of what's happening in government and what affects people's lives, at least for the average American.

Speaker 43 And so, what about your girl Candice?

Speaker 42 Would you have Candace on and talk about Brigitte Macron's penis?

Speaker 36 That's a no. No.

Speaker 36 Absolutely not. No.
I mean, look, no, obviously. I mean,

Speaker 36 this is kooky stuff.

Speaker 43 But again,

Speaker 40 she's right above me in the podcast, Ranky.

Speaker 33 So

Speaker 33 I actually think this is a legitimate question.

Speaker 36 She's being sued by the government, you know, by the leader of France

Speaker 43 over

Speaker 43 alleged slander.

Speaker 36 And I mean, I just think,

Speaker 36 no,

Speaker 36 no. But, I mean, you know, someone like Steve Bannon is actually a very important figure in terms of like the sort of intellectual underpinnings of MAGA.

Speaker 36 And I think he's somebody who is important to talk to, just

Speaker 36 in general, because I think what comes out of his mouth is often a reflection of what is being contemplated in the halls of the White House.

Speaker 34 Do you have a favorite among your children?

Speaker 42 You only have one child in real life, so you don't do nothing.

Speaker 36 I only have one child, yes.

Speaker 61 That is

Speaker 42 your panelists' children.

Speaker 40 Do you have a favorite?

Speaker 36 No, I'm not going to say that I have a favorite. That's

Speaker 36 a good question.

Speaker 42 When Nicole was on the show, she admitted that I was her favorite, so that's okay.

Speaker 36 Well, Tim, if you would come on our show, you would very quickly become a favorite. I think we've invited you, but if we have not, you are inviting me.
I know.

Speaker 39 That's those stupid gruels, MS Now rules together.

Speaker 54 Yeah, I know.

Speaker 36 That's right. That's right.
Yeah. But look, I mean,

Speaker 36 there are definitely people that I think add a special sauce to our show. I'm not going to embarrass them by naming them.

Speaker 35 Fan Latham.

Speaker 36 But there are people who do that. And I think, and it's not who you think.
I think it's usually the people who are not.

Speaker 36 from New York or DC, who are outside of the Beltway, who are different, who are collegial, but have clear points of view that are not necessarily political predictable that's a lot of things but but we do have those people and when they come on they add something well that's a real person actually that's a real human most people live outside the beltway and have and have opinions on issues that are not predictable you know that's exactly that's humanity and then that gets kind of it does get sanded down on tv

Speaker 67 Looking for your next obsession?

Speaker 69 Listen to High Key, a bold, joyful, unfiltered culture podcast coming at you every Friday.

Speaker 71 Now, my question is: In this game of mafia that we're gonna play, are you gonna do better than me?

Speaker 61 Say it now.

Speaker 70 Duh. Period.

Speaker 72 I'm gonna eat. You're gonna do better than me? I'm gonna eat.
Yes.

Speaker 73 I literally will. Ryan will.

Speaker 75 I cannot wait till we both team up and get you out, and then one of us gets the other out because we didn't realize they were a traitor the whole time and you were actually an innocent.

Speaker 76 Y'all won't even know that I'm a trainer.

Speaker 78 This is going to be delicious.

Speaker 68 Well, thank you for coming to our show.

Speaker 70 And on that note, thank you for coming to my show.

Speaker 81 Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 8 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family.

Speaker 12 with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 14 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 21 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 22 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 12 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 26 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 29 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 42 Okay, I want to get to Jesse.

Speaker 60 One last thing, though, I have to ask you because it was just out there yesterday.

Speaker 52 Mehdi Hassan was on your show, I guess, a year ago, and there's this horrible moment with Ryan Juderski.

Speaker 48 He's this mega troll guy that I haven't liked since I met him around the first time I met you back around the Huntsman campaign.

Speaker 35 He was a dick back then.

Speaker 34 But he made this joke about how he hopes Mehdi doesn't have a pager.

Speaker 42 It was right around the time that Israel had done the pager attack on Hezbollah, and there were bombs inside the pager.

Speaker 60 And Mehdi tweeted yesterday that a year ago, racist tried to make a joke about me.

Speaker 58 That night, CNN said they'd ban him.

Speaker 45 But in the year since, I haven't been invited back on CNN.

Speaker 58 So was I banned too?

Speaker 36 No, he was not banned. Here's what I'll say about this, because

Speaker 36 I don't want to

Speaker 36 make this a bigger thing than it is. I have talked to Meddy about this.

Speaker 41 If you

Speaker 36 watched that episode, first of all, we just talked about lines that are being drawn. That was a line.
Calling someone a terrorist and wishing that they were killed in an attack is a line.

Speaker 36 And Gurduski was kicked off the show. And despite his claims that he was just fine afterwards, he was actually pretty upset when it happened.

Speaker 36 And even the Republican other panelists who we had at the table was actually absolutely stunned that he had said it. And, you know, everybody was stunned that he had said it.

Speaker 36 So it wasn't like one of those things where it's like, you can't take a joke. Okay.
So that was a year ago. That's done and dusted.

Speaker 36 I addressed addressed it publicly.

Speaker 36 That night, Mehdi left the show too, and we wanted him to stay, especially because we did not want people to think that we were dismissing both Gurdesky and Mehdi, who was the subject of the verbal attack.

Speaker 36 So he chose to leave, understandably, because he was upset. And that's okay.
And we have given him his space since then. And, you know, Mehdi and I have texted before.
We're on friendly terms.

Speaker 36 We invited him onto the show that night and had been working with him for a long time to try to get him on. And so my feeling was something crazy happened on television.

Speaker 36 I'm going to wait for that person to be ready to come back on. And I did not get that sense over the last

Speaker 36 year. There were other reasons, too, that I'm not going to say, because I just think in terms of like, Does Meddy want to be on a debate show on CNN?

Speaker 36 I don't know. You could look on

Speaker 36 in his public statements and you might get the sense that maybe he doesn't. But it was not,

Speaker 36 he was not banned from our show.

Speaker 36 And in fact, if he would like to come on our show, I would like to have him on the show.

Speaker 37 And do you have a banned list you want to release right now?

Speaker 52 Do you have a full

Speaker 33 tick list right there underneath your desk?

Speaker 40 Okay. All right.

Speaker 43 No, absolutely not.

Speaker 36 It is not a thing.

Speaker 33 I do want to get to your book.

Speaker 42 I lied, though. I have one more question about a different book before we get to your book.

Speaker 34 Because Corrine Jean-Pierre is doing the rounds. She did my show as well.

Speaker 60 She did her book.

Speaker 33 One of the main arguments in her book that she was trying to make is

Speaker 42 that the Democratic Party

Speaker 65 is not being appreciative enough to black women and to black queer women and that she felt ostracized and that that's why she's going independent.

Speaker 51 I gave her a chance to kind of explain that on this show.

Speaker 62 And she has continued to do the rounds.

Speaker 42 And it's hard to kind of pin that down on like what exactly she's talking about.

Speaker 45 I'm just wondering if you had any reaction to what we've seen from Corine on her book tour.

Speaker 36 I mean,

Speaker 36 I think that all of that

Speaker 36 has nothing to do with Joe Biden's fitness to serve as president for four years. And I think that

Speaker 36 maybe you can make an argument that the Democratic Party doesn't fully, you know, respect the value of black women or queer people or whatever.

Speaker 36 I mean, maybe that's the case as an internal democratic matter, but I don't think that that is related to the central premise of the book or the central premise of

Speaker 36 what happened to Joe Biden.

Speaker 36 I think that is, that's a separate issue. Was Biden fit to serve for another four years?

Speaker 36 Most people would say no.

Speaker 36 And I don't know. I don't think it's a betrayal to say that.
that.

Speaker 36 And I think plenty of people in the Democratic Party, black and white and gay and straight or whatever, have been willing to say that, not just because,

Speaker 36 you know, for the good of the Democratic Party, but if you believe that you want to protect those very people, then wouldn't it behoove you to put up a candidate who is

Speaker 36 fit to serve? and can beat the opponent.

Speaker 36 And I think that is, that fundamentally is what we are talking about here. Now, in terms of Corrine and

Speaker 36 how she was treated as press secretary or what have you, I think that's her perspective on her own experience. And

Speaker 36 she's entitled, she's allowed to have that viewpoint. But I also think that the book is predicated on this idea that Biden was betrayed.

Speaker 36 And I'm not sure that that really checks out when you consider that even to this day, when you ask the question to many of these people, do you think he could have served out another four years many of them won't answer that question won't answer yeah i've tried at least several of them on the show and uh that's not one that they uh that they like to answer

Speaker 69 looking for your next obsession listen to high key a bold joyful unfiltered culture podcast coming at you every friday Now, my question is, in this game of mafia that we're going to play, are you going to do better than me?

Speaker 61 Say it now.

Speaker 70 Duh. Period.

Speaker 72 I'm going to eat. You're going to do better than me? I'm going to eat.
Yes.

Speaker 73 I literally will. Ryan will.

Speaker 75 I cannot wait till we both team up and get you out, and then one of us gets the other out because we didn't realize they were a traitor the whole time and you were actually an innocent.

Speaker 76 Y'all won't even know that I'm a trainer.

Speaker 78 This is going to be delicious.

Speaker 68 Well, thank you for coming to our show.

Speaker 70 And on that note, thank you for coming to my show.

Speaker 82 Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 14 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 21 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 22 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 12 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 26 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 29 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 40 All right, the book, Why Jesse Jackson.

Speaker 39 I gotta, I'll throw a hand up in the air.

Speaker 64 So I had Picari on a couple weeks ago, and he was mentioning, and I was just kind of asking, which is like big picture blue sky, kind of asking like what

Speaker 51 who the Democrats could learn from, you know, like what they could learn from messaging wise.

Speaker 49 What are some things they could take?

Speaker 38 And he mentioned, and he mentioned Jesse Jackson in the 84 speech.

Speaker 51 And I'm going to play some of that in a minute.

Speaker 48 When he said that, I was like, I had to put my hand up and like, I had a very, you know, kind of one-dimensional view of Jesse Jackson's campaign.

Speaker 34 So like, and I was a kid during that time.

Speaker 37 Then I grew up and I'm a Republican operative, so I'm only hearing slander about Jesse.

Speaker 60 Like, so I did not have a three-dimensional view, really, of Jesse Jackson.

Speaker 51 So I was, I was pretty intrigued to read what you've been writing about him.

Speaker 44 I'm curious, was that kind of why you wanted to talk about Jesse Jackson?

Speaker 42 Just because like he was, he sort of was this figure that like memories have started to fade. And so folks started to not have a full view of him?

Speaker 42 Or were there other elements that made you decide to take on the project?

Speaker 36 I think it was a lot of that. You know, I think some of it is about how he is.

Speaker 36 remembered or what we actually know about what happened in those campaigns, which is actually not that much from his side of things.

Speaker 36 I I mean, I think we know about what transpired in the general election and sort of the end, right? Especially for Democrats, because they lost spectacularly both times.

Speaker 36 But we don't really know much about how he ran in particular because he lost. And because in the intervening time, there was another man who became the first black president.

Speaker 36 But one of the reasons that I...

Speaker 36 thought this was worth exploring is that, I mean, I covered 2016 and 2020, in which Bernie Sanders seemingly came out of nowhere with this populist message.

Speaker 36 He was a socialist candidate and got thousands and thousands of people into arenas to support him.

Speaker 36 And what I was hearing from a lot of Democrats who came through the Jesse Jackson era was that you can't really understand a Bernie Sanders and how he ended up campaigning without understanding Jesse Jackson.

Speaker 36 And in fact, Bernie told me when I spoke to him for this book, he said, my campaigns campaigns were essentially picking up where Jesse Jackson left off.

Speaker 36 And I think that's a really important question for us right now, because guess what? That type of politics isn't going away. In fact, that's where all the energy is in the Democratic Party right now.

Speaker 36 And I do think understanding it seemed to be something that was worth doing.

Speaker 36 And by the way, even as a Republican, I mean, if you want to understand

Speaker 31 the

Speaker 36 Trump of it all, there is so much of Jesse Jackson's candidacy that is reminiscent of what Trump is doing right now, except from the other side of the political spectrum.

Speaker 36 Both the celebrity nature, the personality, and the populism.

Speaker 36 And I think that that is, that's also worth really understanding is that there is a lot of resonance for Americans in a candidate that says to them, the system is broken and you need an outsider to fix it.

Speaker 36 The system is rigged against you. You know, there's a line in Jesse Jackson's 1988 campaign speech where he says, the battle of today is economic violence.

Speaker 36 And that language reminded me of, you know, American carnage and sort of that picture of the rusted out, you know, towns of the Midwest. And he was literally painting that very same picture.

Speaker 36 And that is what has worked so well for Donald Trump. So you got to understand that stuff to really understand where the future of populism on the left and the right is going.

Speaker 35 Yeah.

Speaker 64 Another thing I didn't really realize was just, and obviously I knew that, you know, his campaign had juice and that he won some states in the South.

Speaker 33 In 88, after the Michigan caucus, he was actually in the lead in pledge delegates.

Speaker 45 Yes.

Speaker 42 You can really imagine, I think you mentioned this when Charlemagne.

Speaker 49 You could really imagine if 1988 was 2012 or whatever, I guess would have been Obama, 2016, and there would have been more chances for him to go outside the mainstream media.

Speaker 44 You know, I mean, who the hell knows?

Speaker 45 Like, it might have, it could have been Jesse Jackson winning in 1988.

Speaker 36 Totally. Yeah.
That was one of the biggest things to me. I mean, you know, I think there's, you know, I'm loath to sort of put 2000 and 2025 eyes on the 80s, right?

Speaker 36 But you just, you can't help but imagine here you have this candidate who's incredibly charismatic, who is an incredibly famous person in the sense that people just know who he is, whether you like him or not.

Speaker 36 He has sort of like 100% name ID, you know, which is kind of what Trump had when he was running.

Speaker 36 And he wins the Michigan caucus and doubles the lead Democratic candidate in the race and suddenly is in the lead.

Speaker 36 Had he been able to sort of utilize the power of controlling media narrative or even bypassing media narrative, I really do think it would have been a different story.

Speaker 36 But in the 80s, that's not the kind of media environment that they were in. And the narrative that came out of that campaign was, what does he really want? What does Jesse want?

Speaker 36 Was the title of the Time magazine article that he was on the cover of? Because people weren't asking, can he win? They were asking, what can we give him to get him out of here?

Speaker 36 And I think those are very different questions.

Speaker 42 And also, just kind of back in how those primaries were one, there were factional.

Speaker 58 And he's obviously like the inverse of, you know, kind of like the southern racist candidate that they would have in a lot of those, you know, Democratic primaries going back then.

Speaker 48 So there were that factional element to it.

Speaker 46 It's interesting.

Speaker 49 So I watched the whole, I asked Picari which speech to watch and he suggested the 84 convention speech. So I watched it all last night.

Speaker 46 It's a barn burner. He's sweating.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 35 It's like an hour long.

Speaker 36 People are crying. It's a whole thing.

Speaker 43 Yeah.

Speaker 47 I want to play one little bit for you

Speaker 63 because I think it's instructive to where we are now.

Speaker 83 If we lift up a program to feed the hungry,

Speaker 83 they'll come running.

Speaker 83 If we lift up a program to study war no more our youth will come running if we lift up a program to put America back to work as an alternative to the welfare and the spam they will come working if we cut that military budget without cutting our defense and use that money to rebuild bridges and put steel workers back to work and use that money and provide jobs for our cities and use that money to build schools and pay teachers and educate our children and build hospitals and train doctors and train nurses the whole nation will come running to us

Speaker 64 it's hard not to notice just this like the stark nature of comparing that to kind of the type of message you heard at the 20 24 DNC convention right on a variety of issues and you listen to him and a few things that just caught my ear: we're going to get America back to work, but an alternative to welfare.

Speaker 42 Right. So he's even playing into, like, I don't, it's not, it's not about safety.

Speaker 37 Yeah, it's not about safety now.

Speaker 42 Use the military money. We're going to keep the defense.

Speaker 47 We're going to use the military money for schools, getting steel workers back to work, you know, paying nurses, paying teachers, feeding the hungry.

Speaker 55 It's pretty noteworthy.

Speaker 46 And I think there's certainly some lessons that the Democrats who are trying to capture some economic populism now could learn from kind of how he framed all that.

Speaker 36 Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, you hear in that message just some slight differences that can be really important in terms of how these things are communicated.

Speaker 36 You know, at that time, I mean, I think that you had the sort of Reagan-esque sort of pull yourself up from your bootstraps type of thing.

Speaker 36 And he's clearly engaging with that idea by also saying, we don't want people on welfare. We actually want people to be able to work.

Speaker 36 And being unafraid to say that while also saying that, you know, we don't want to fight foreign wars. We want to take that money and use it at home.
We want to bring back jobs

Speaker 36 to America. I mean, he's saying all of those messages and is not afraid to kind of get just close enough to maybe the center right.
that he offends the far left in the party.

Speaker 36 And maybe this, you know, and I think in a way this this was a different time, right? I think that right now, Democrats are just

Speaker 36 way more, they police the boundaries of the left so much more now than they did then.

Speaker 36 And that allowed someone like Jesse Jackson to borrow from the center right and still have credibility in progressive circles. And I think it allowed him to speak to a broader audience of people.

Speaker 36 And that's the goal. I mean, what he was basically saying there was

Speaker 36 this is a universal message that if you're white or black or yellow or green, I mean, he, you know, he said, he used to say, we're all precious in God's sight.

Speaker 36 This is a message that can work for everybody.

Speaker 36 And I feel like Democrats just have such a hard time articulating that right now, because there is this fear that if you say something just the wrong way, you might offend the people who are policing your language on the left that don't really want you to talk about reducing the number of people on welfare, which actually might very well need to be the goal because the alternative is people actually working and having, making enough money to feed their families.

Speaker 34 A few other things that jumped out to me, and you can jump on any of these that

Speaker 66 you felt reflected your observations, but really comfortable talking about God, obviously, Reverend Jesse Jackson, but like more than the Democrats do now, like a lot woven through his times and kind of challenging the Republican frame of religion a lot.

Speaker 58 You know, Jesus

Speaker 60 said we should not be judged by the bark we wear, but the fruit we bear.

Speaker 58 You know, we measure greatness by how we treat the least of these.

Speaker 42 Jamal Bowie wrote about this in the context of your book, you know, very much

Speaker 52 a call for like collective recognition of helping everybody.

Speaker 60 And, you know, there's certainly unique challenges that face each group, but he wasn't siloing the groups really.

Speaker 66 Like it was about unifying all the different groups.

Speaker 42 And one of the things I just felt like I should mention, called out gays and lesbians twice in his 1984 convention speech.

Speaker 36 And he was the first candidate to do that. Yeah.
He was the first candidate to do that.

Speaker 36 And he also spoke at an AIDS march, also the first, you know, a presidential candidate to do something like that. I mean, so, yeah, he explicitly,

Speaker 36 not just gays and lesbians. Asian Americans, he brought them into the political process.
Arab Americans brought them into the political process.

Speaker 36 But you're so right. I think the way that you put it is exactly right.

Speaker 36 He spoke to the identities of these people without siloing them, without sort of putting them in a box, but really saying there's a kind of a thread that weaves us together.

Speaker 36 That's why he used the analogy of the quilt so often in his speeches.

Speaker 33 Do you see anybody out there that's channeling Jesse Jackson at all?

Speaker 36 At a national level?

Speaker 50 Yeah, or local.

Speaker 34 And you think about Trump as very much an inheritor of Buchanan.

Speaker 40 This is the same era.

Speaker 48 Yeah.

Speaker 46 And so, I mean, I guess maybe Bernie was the answer, but I don't know if there's somebody else on a national level that would be an inheritor of Jesse Jackson.

Speaker 36 I think that there are people who are inheritors of different parts of Jesse Jackson, but I think that there's still kind of not really a person who has

Speaker 41 the full picture of it.

Speaker 36 And, you know, I mean, even Bernie, I mean, I think Bernie.

Speaker 36 is the easiest example in the sense that he ran for president and used a very similar model, which is, you know, rallying college students and all of that and these massive stadium rallies and then the populism of the message.

Speaker 36 But he clearly struggled with the diversity piece. And you can't really be a successful Democratic candidate unless you are able to really tap into the diversity of the party itself.

Speaker 36 And so that was his weakness in both 2016 and in 2020. TBD on someone like AOC is sort of a protege.
I mean, I think we have to see her.

Speaker 36 Can she appeal at a national level? But I also think, you know, look at what's happening in New York City. I mean, as controversial as it is, Mom Dani is kind of running a double-barreled campaign.

Speaker 36 And that double-barreled campaign is working really well in a very urban environment. And so maybe that's something that works for New York right now.

Speaker 36 But I don't know that there's been any politician that's really tried what Jackson tried to do at a national level.

Speaker 36 And certainly not with the addition of the kind of moral element of it, the faith-based appeal that people that I think also helped him reach across to especially rural white Americans.

Speaker 36 I think that really helped his message in those places too.

Speaker 62 Yeah.

Speaker 34 Maybe a weird person to mention because who knows, but I was thinking about Tall Rico. That kind of does have the religious element.

Speaker 51 And can you layer in that economic populism on top of that and kind of do it from a little bit of a different and an inverted perspective?

Speaker 49 Obviously, a white guy. Yes.

Speaker 33 I don't know.

Speaker 60 Just one other thing I just had to ask you about was that is relevant to what's happening now.

Speaker 48 He did in his, I guess it was the 84 campaign, he gets in trouble for like some private anti-Semitic remarks.

Speaker 42 And so that's another thing that I think that the Democrats are having to deal with as part of this broad coalition, which is, you know, there are some within the coalition who have said

Speaker 51 some things about Israel or Jews that

Speaker 38 go outside the lines, right?

Speaker 46 And make, I think, Jews feel maybe like they're not part of the patchwork.

Speaker 44 And I'm wondering what

Speaker 57 I noticed how he managed that in his speeches, but I'm wondering what you thought about how he kind of navigated that.

Speaker 50 If there's any lessons.

Speaker 36 Yeah.

Speaker 36 And it's important not to sugarcoat this, because this was the scandal of the 1984 campaign. This was largely the reason that he flamed out in that campaign.
He didn't address it. well at first.

Speaker 36 I mean, he tried to deny that he said it, then he acknowledged that he said it, and then he delivered a speech, but then he had Louis Farrakhan sort of out there talking, talking, threatening the reporter who revealed these remarks.

Speaker 36 And Jesse Jackson didn't really want to cut Farrakhan loose, partly because of their long ties in Chicago.

Speaker 36 And also from what I gathered in talking to people around him and reporting about this, was he just thought that cutting people off because of their mistakes or flaws was not something that he wanted to do as a faith leader.

Speaker 36 As a politician, you would think, well, obviously, that would be the first thing that you would do. But he didn't really see himself as a politician for a lot of the 1984 race and perhaps 1988 too.

Speaker 36 He saw himself as this sort of person who was outside of politics, this outsider religious figure who was coming in to force the political system to operate better.

Speaker 36 So he made, frankly, a lot of mistakes in dealing with that scandal and failed to recognize the extent to which it's more than just words.

Speaker 36 It has to also be actions that

Speaker 36 are divvied out to parts of the voting electorate in equal measure.

Speaker 36 So he wanted to bring Arab Americans into the process, but I think he felt so kind of put upon by the attacks he was receiving from some Jewish leaders that he was sort of at a loss.

Speaker 36 He was like, what am I supposed to do? Is there anything that I can do to make this better? And I don't know.

Speaker 36 I mean, I think a politician might have figured it out, but I think he didn't want to throw anybody under the bus.

Speaker 34 Not even Jesse Jackson can solve the centuries-old holy war.

Speaker 36 It wasn't just, I mean, it was, it was about that. It was partly, it was about, look, you couldn't say Palestinian practically in the 80s.
Okay. It just was not something that you could talk about.

Speaker 36 And so he got a lot of heat just for that.

Speaker 36 But I also think that

Speaker 36 there are things that politicians would do. I mean, remember the Jeremiah Wright scandal of the Obama years.
And that was just

Speaker 36 a firestorm. But they cauterized that wound as quickly as they could.
And I don't think that Jackson was willing to do that in 1984 for a lot of different reasons.

Speaker 36 And that made it very difficult for him to get past this.

Speaker 42 Any other cute little anecdotes or something that surprised you or a fun little story to leave us with?

Speaker 36 One thing that

Speaker 36 I thought, you know, to the point about, you know, what would have happened if this stuff happened today? I mean,

Speaker 36 when I was sort of digging into the fact that in the middle of a campaign, he got on a plane and went to Syria and brought back a prisoner of war from Syria and then subsequently got invited to the White House by the guy he was trying to beat in a campaign.

Speaker 36 You know, some of those things,

Speaker 36 this is sort of the kind of special nature of this campaign that I think doesn't really get relayed in history.

Speaker 36 Was that he was such an unusual, unconventional, unpredictable candidate that honestly, he kind of puts Trump to shame in that respect.

Speaker 36 You know, he was the candidate that reporters would literally call up to his hotel room and ask what the schedule was tomorrow. And he would tell them.

Speaker 36 He had that kind of relationship with the press that I think is not the way candidates operate today. And he did things like go to Syria, like go to Cuba.

Speaker 36 He also went to Cuba in that campaign and brought back dozens of political prisoners to the United States and did all that while running for president.

Speaker 36 And it was a bit of a sideshow, but in today's media environment, it would have made him the most talked about person in that campaign and would have gone a long way, I think, to helping him succeed.

Speaker 34 All right, Abby Philip, if I if I get fired over at MS Now, my first stop is at the table, all right?

Speaker 60 As long as I'm still invited, depending on what I get fired for, I guess.

Speaker 52 So

Speaker 43 I appreciate you coming on the show.

Speaker 36 Yeah, what you got to do is you got to write a book, and then we'll have a book.

Speaker 43 That's true. I do have to write a book.

Speaker 34 I have other people on my ass about that, too.

Speaker 40 That seems hard. How did you do that during all this? I've got a daily show.

Speaker 33 The idea of writing a book is insane to me.

Speaker 35 When did you write it?

Speaker 51 In the mornings?

Speaker 36 You have a baby? It was hard. You have to write it in the middle of the night.
I have a baby. You have to write it in the middle of the night.

Speaker 36 And you have to write it on long weekends or send yourself away on a writing vacation for a week or a couple of weeks. It's hard, and it takes time, and it's not easy to do on a good day.

Speaker 35 I'm not doing that.

Speaker 50 I would like to hang out with you.

Speaker 36 I think you have a book in you, Tim.

Speaker 43 I probably, probably,

Speaker 47 but I'm not doing it, I don't think.

Speaker 33 Not anytime soon.

Speaker 42 We'll see what happens.

Speaker 34 You know, the future will take care of itself, as Mitch McConnell said.

Speaker 60 Abby, Philip, the book is A Dream Deferred: Jesse Jackson, The Fight for Black Political Power. Thanks for coming on the Board podcast, girl.

Speaker 36 Thank you.

Speaker 60 Everybody else, we'll be back tomorrow for another edition. See you all then.

Speaker 42 Peace.

Speaker 79 But there's no SC for this juncture. I didn't have no money, so now I got a punched up.
Crock got a slave and the Apple Man. But YD says there's no room for the African.

Speaker 79 Always knew that I would crock jeeps. But welcome to McDonald's.
May I take your order, please? Goddess of your move, that might give you cancer. Cause my son doesn't take no fault and answer.

Speaker 79 Now I pay taxes, nothing ever give me back. What about diapers, bottles, and slimmer lac? Do I have to sell me a whole lot of crap? For decent shelter and clothes on my back?

Speaker 79 Or should I just wait for help from Bush? Or Jesse Jackson and Operation Push? If you ask me, the whole thing needs a dush.

Speaker 79 A mass and gale, what the hell cracker sell in the neighborhood to the corner house bitches, Miss Parker, Lil Joe, and Todd Bridges, or anybody that he knows.

Speaker 79 So I copped me a bird better known as Aquilo. Now everybody knows I went from poe to a nigga that got dope.
To nigga with the feds against me, cause I couldn't follow the plan of the presidency.

Speaker 79 I'm never getting love again.

Speaker 79 But blacks aren't too fucking broke to be Republican. Now remember, I used to be cool till I stopped filling out my W-2.
Now senators are getting high

Speaker 79 and you're playing against a ghetto back fly.

Speaker 79 So now you gotta pep talk.

Speaker 79 But sorry, this is our only room to walk. Cause we don't want a truck bush.
But a bird in the hand is worth more than a book.

Speaker 39 The Bullwork podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

Speaker 20 Gas, groceries, eating out, it all adds up fast.

Speaker 84 With the Verizon Visa card, you get rewarded every time you spend. Get 4% in rewards on gas, dining, and at grocery stores.

Speaker 84 And you can put those rewards toward your Verizon bill or on new tech like a smartwatch and earbuds. Apply today at Verizon.

Speaker 84 Application required subject to credit approval must be a Verizon mobile account owner or manager or Fios account owner. See Verizon.com/slash Verizon Visa card for terms or restrictions.

Speaker 84 The Verizon Visa signature card is issued by Syncretty Bank pursuant to a license from Visa USA Inc.

Speaker 85 In our nation, we don't follow.

Speaker 43 We lead.

Speaker 85 We don't wait for permission. We move first.

Speaker 85 So while others talk about AI, Booz Allen puts it in space. That's right, in space.

Speaker 85 Because real leadership, it's about building what nobody else can. Coding so we can't lose.
Making America stronger, safer, faster. It's in our code.
Find out more at bruiseallen.com slash our code.

Speaker 41 November is all about gathering. Friendsgiving, Thanksgiving, and football weekends.
Total Wine and More has everything you need for your table and your toasts.

Speaker 41 With thousands of wine, spirits, and beers at the lowest prices. From bold reds to sparklers and smooth bourbons to tequilas made for celebrating.
Total wine has it all.

Speaker 41 With the lowest prices for over 30 years, you'll always find what you love, only at Total Wine and More. Curbside pickup and delivery available in most areas.
See TotalWine.com for details.

Speaker 41 Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly, B21.