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Hey,

there's something I gotta tell you.

You're not going to hear this, but I gotta tell you, it's on you.

It is your job to stop the fascist takeover of our country.

It's on you.

I know, I know, you don't want to hear it.

I know you don't want to hear it.

But in the movie that is made about this era, the camera is zooming in right now on you.

on your character.

It is on you.

And I know you're like, but I'm not ready.

I don't know what to do.

I didn't train or whatever.

No, you know, Neil wasn't ready.

Luke Skywalker wasn't ready.

Katniss wasn't ready.

Shuri from the Black Panther wasn't ready.

I want to wasn't ready.

Those pups on Paw Patrol are never ready.

Except for Chase.

He's a cop.

But yeah, it's on you.

It's on you to figure out how to stop America's fascist takeover.

Jesus Christ.

He wasn't ready either, actually.

Yeah, but it's on you.

No politician is going to save us.

Nobody else.

It's on you.

You're welcome.

I'm sorry.

On this episode of the Commercial Break.

When the president has troops and his law enforcement kidnapping people off streets and taking them to places

where they don't want to go and not giving them ever access to a lawyer in that process, that's fascism.

Ta-da!

Congratulations.

You're Venezuela.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, and I think Venezuela, we did an episode of United States of America about Venezuela

Venezuelan Americans.

And that, so I'm happy, not happy, but to hear your wife say that and hear her positive.

I'm like, oh, so I've been right.

I've been saying this happened in Venezuela.

And one day you look up, and as I learned that episode, and suddenly you're using the currency for a napkin because it's not worth anything because they've totally raided everything and nothing is worth anything anymore.

And people are using garbage or emptying out garbage cans to steal water.

It's like that, that we're on that track right now.

The next episode of the Commercial Break starts now.

Oh, yeah, cats and kittens, welcome back to the commercial break.

I'm Brian Green, and there's no one here with me as Chrissy is out on her menfo break.

But I had an opportunity to talk to W.

Kamau Bell on a TCB infomercial Tuesday, and I'm super excited to share that conversation with you.

If you do not know W.

Kamal,

he is an American comedian, television show host, political commentarian, general observationalist of the world around us.

And I do appreciate what he has to say.

Actually, I feel, and I'll tell him this, I feel like I'm bringing a cotton swab to a knife fight because W.

Kamau is currently the reigning celebrity Jeopardy champion.

amongst all the other things that he is.

The United Shades of America was a very popular show that was on CNN for, I don't know, seven or eight years.

It had a number of seasons.

And I watched almost every episode of that because it's a great look into the psychology and psyche of America at that time.

I think that it started filming in like maybe the mid-2000s and or

yeah, maybe the mid-2000s.

No, no, no, no, no.

In the mid-2010s.

And then it just ended a couple of years ago.

Go check out that show.

He's also on tour.

He's doing select cities.

I'm going to put a link down in the show notes.

W.

Kamau has makes no bones about it.

He is, like I said, he's a commentary.

He's a humorist.

He's a comedian.

And he talks a lot about politics and he talks a lot about

his observations around politics, usually in a very funny way.

But, you know, if politics is not your thing, if you don't like your commercial break with a bit of politics, I encourage you to listen to the episode anyway, but I'm just giving you fair warning here.

I think it's a prescient time to bring W.

Kamau on the show and have this conversation with him.

I'd like to get his opinion.

I was, I'm laughing because he is currently the spokesperson, like the television spokesperson for the ACLU.

And so I just saw a commercial with him on it for the ACLU.

And now he's going to be here on my television screen yet again.

So

why don't we do this?

Let's take a break.

And when we get back through the magic of telepodcasting, I will bring

W.

Kamau here and we will have a nice conversation with him.

And we will ask him all the pertinent questions, like,

is there any chance that democracy survives the current shit show?

And,

you know, we'll see what he has to say.

I hope there's an optimistic answer to this.

I really do, because I'm looking for optimism in a lot of different corners and I don't see a whole bunch.

But, you know, we'll hold on.

We'll hold strong.

We'll keep the faith.

Doesn't matter which side of the aisle you're on.

We all got to defend democracy, free speech, human rights, all that good stuff.

That's just, you know, basic shit that we should do.

And

I don't care whether or not you like what I'm about to say.

We should not have troops in American cities.

We just shouldn't.

It just should not be happening.

But, you know, we also shouldn't be kidnapping people off the street

in unmarked patrol cars with unmarked officers having masks on their face.

All that stuff is kind of dystopian.

It's kind of bullshit.

And it should stop and it should stop immediately.

So I'm not a bleeding heart liberal.

I just think that we are all getting desensitized to something that is clearly fucked up.

If you would have 20 years ago said to yourself that this is what is going to be happening in the United States of America, I think you would laugh.

You would be like, there's no way that doesn't happen in the United States of America.

Well, it's happening.

And so we all should speak up and we should all defend the rights of ourselves and the rights of other people.

Yeah.

Okay, that's it.

That's all I'm going to say so as not to turn every single listener of the commercial break off.

Anyway, I enjoyed this conversation.

I hope you do too.

I'll be back afterwards to wrap it all up.

We'll be back.

Hey, it's Rachel, your new voice of God here on TCB.

And just like like you, I'm wondering just how much longer this podcast can continue.

Let's all rejoice that another episode has made it to your ears, and I'll rejoice that my check is in the mail.

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It's Candace Dillard Bassett, former Real Housewife of Potomac.

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And W.

Kamal Bell is here with me now on the Through the Magic of Telepodcasting on my video screen.

I'm quite honored to have you on here, my friend.

How are you doing?

I guess I feel old when people are honored you show up.

I guess I just, you know, it's like, hey,

listen, you could.

But I'll take it though.

Yeah, you could be Huntrix or whatever, and I'd be honored to have you on also.

Because my kids, you know, because of my kids.

Yeah, you know, for sure, for sure.

I'd be honored to have Olivia Rodrigo on my podcast.

So

shit.

Listen,

the world is run by the youth, youth, the utes, as they would say.

And I don't know how old you are, but I'm making the assumption we're around the same age and we are not the Utes anymore.

Those days have long passed.

I'm a proud member of the greatest generation, aka Generation X.

Amen.

Amen.

Generation X.

So you grew up in the 90s just like I did, 80s and 90s, just like I did.

I was telling a friend of mine who's currently in Chicago, and we were

bantering back and forth about all the stuff that's going on in Chicago, but we both grew up across the street from each each other, haven't seen each other in a long time.

But I said, totally off topic of politics, I said, my children will never know what it's like to get up on a Saturday morning and be babysat by Hannah Barbera.

They just will never know that.

Hannah Barbera and a sugary cereal.

And I feel like they're missing out on that.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's, I really noticed, especially like I've had, I have three daughters.

And so it's funny how much it's even changed from the 14-year-old to the seven-year-old that I have now and how much more access she has to, I want to see exactly what I want when I want to see it as many times as I want to see it whereas when even when a 14 year old was born there was streaming but it was like Netflix only the only like Disney movie they had on Netflix was Aristocats you know what I mean so I was like so we saw that a lot and I was like I had no idea this was so racist

yeah so it's like just and she had access to to streaming and it's funny it always would it would always end up we'd go to a hotel and she would turn on the TV and be like I want to watch and she would say something like we can't do that here we have to to sort of do whatever the hotel wants.

But yeah, the choices.

I didn't understand that either.

You know, it was funny because I guess when

TiVo was a thing, like the very first DVR where you had to have a complicated piece of machinery installed onto your TV by a technician to record the program.

I'm on my second marriage, but on my practice marriage, my mother-in-law was one of the first that I knew of to get one of those TiVos.

And I happened to be the guy who had to go meet the technician at the time.

She was out of town.

And the technician was playing around and checking to make sure everything was working.

He goes, You know, it's crazy.

I don't think my kids are ever going to watch a commercial in their entire life.

They were young.

And I laughed.

I thought it was a funny thing that he said.

And now I realize if they don't choose to, they won't watch a commercial in their entire lives.

It's insane.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, the difference is commercials figured out a way to sneak back in there, but you can still pay your way out of commercials if you want to.

True.

$5.99 with commercials, $89.99 without commercials.

It seems crazy

It seems crazy to be watching HBO when there's a commercial.

You're like, who's HBO?

We went backwards.

It really is.

Let me ask you a question because I just can't resist because you're an intellectual, a true intellectual, and I really appreciate your take on the world around us.

I like the way that you move through life.

And I want to start maybe by...

Let's look at the glass half full.

There's obviously a lot of strife and tension, and we have an immense amount of divisity in this country currently.

And that's putting it, I think, mildly.

And I think anybody on either side of the spectrum could probably agree on that.

What's positive?

Do you see this

current kind of turmoil that we're in?

Do you see that we work our way out of this?

Or is that generational?

No, no, is it generational?

we do, but we have to work our way out of it.

I think that's the way you put it is perfect.

We can work our way out of it.

It's not just going to happen.

It's not like we go, well, the pendulum swings to the left and the pendulum swings to the right.

It's not that anymore.

This is actually like the pendulum could get stuck over there on the right, and they could actually like build a fortress to keep the pendulum over there.

And then they could like, you know, it's very realistic that next election day in the midterms that you go to your local polling place in your town, especially in a red state, and it's surrounded by ICE patrols.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

And you just go, huh, how, am I too brown to walk into the polling place today?

You know what I mean?

So

I think you have to understand that, like, there's a October 18th, there's another nationwide No Kings protest.

November 5th, people are talking about going to D.C.

on the year of the election anniversary.

So, yeah, I talk to people all the time.

People always ask me, what can we do?

I think you got to actually, I just did an event with Robert Rice, who's actually a real intellectual last night, Secretary of Labor, and like, you know,

everybody's woke grandpa.

And he was like,

he's like, the antidote to feeling depressed is activism.

Get active.

And really, that can mean different things for different people, but you have to do it.

You can't just sort of, it's not just going to happen on its own.

I will say that.

It will take a lot more of us than we think to

work our way out of this the way you said it.

We have to work our way.

It's like a car stuck in the mud in a rainy day.

It's not just going to come out and you could wait for it to dry, but then like, you know, you wait for the rain.

Yeah.

But that's not going to get you where you need to go at the right time.

I forgot which, and I apologize,

my brain just doesn't work like it used to, but some, one of the great civil rights leaders, it may have been MLK, he is, someone said, this is a generational thing.

We're going to have to work our way to equality.

And I see that how we're in right now.

The fuckery is being done.

And to get unfucked, it's going to be generation after generation that's going to have to be handed the responsibility of taking care of themselves and working toward the next step, bringing it, I don't know if bringing it back, pushing it forward, right?

Making it into what it is that they want to.

And I have to think, and at least this is my hope.

I have to think, and I'm taking the temperature with some people who don't necessarily always agree with me ideologically.

I have to think that even some of the folks that don't agree with me are seeing this in a different light right now.

The steps that are being taken, sending troops into, you know, blue cities.

American cities.

Yeah, American cities.

And it's, that is a scary thing.

My wife is Venezuelan.

She saw this happen with Chavez.

She's like, you know, she was alive when this happened.

And her father keeps telling me,

this is not how it happened.

This,

or he said, this is not how it was happening.

This is how it happened.

Yeah, no.

He's saying, you're there.

It's not happening.

It's not going to happen.

It's happened.

It's already there.

Yeah, no, it's a, this is, we are, we, I, I just posted a video yesterday where I was like, people are like, I always ask me, what can I do?

And I was like, well, the first thing you can do, there's lots of things to do, but the first thing you can do is call it fascism because that's what it is right now.

It's not

when the president is sending troops into American cities, even though the governors and mayors of those places don't want the troops there, that's fascism.

When the president is prosecuting his political enemies like Comey, that's fascism.

When the president

wants the generals to swear a loyalty oath to him, not to the Constitution, which is who they swear it to, but to him, that's fascism.

When the president has troops and his law enforcement kidnapping people off streets and taking them to places

where they don't want to go and not giving them ever access to a lawyer in that process, that's fascism.

Ta-da!

Congratulations.

You're Venezuela.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, and I think Venezuela, we did an episode of the United States of America about Venezuela.

Venezuelan Americans.

And that, so I'm happy, not happy.

but to hear your wife say that and hear her father say, I'm like, oh, so I've been right.

I've been saying this happened in Venezuela.

and one day you look up and as i learned that episode and suddenly you're using the currency for a napkin because it's not worth anything because they've totally rated everything and nothing is worth anything anymore and people are using garbage or emptying out garbage cans to steal water it's like that that we're on that track right now i i couldn't agree with you more and i don't say this to be i mean there's there's no more alarmist about it the alarm is ringing it's ringing loudly yeah and regardless of whether you're a conservative or you're a democrat you know in venezuela um Democrat or liberal has a bad connotation because that is how fascism entered their lives.

Here, it's entering through conservatism, right?

But it's really populism at the end of the day, is what it is.

It's populism and then it turns into fascism.

And so my father-in-law.

And Hitler was a socialist.

That's right.

That's right.

It doesn't matter what you call it.

And my father-in-law made this point to me so many years ago, that decade ago, when we met and they kind of Trump was moving on the scene, he would probably have considered himself more of a conservative if he lived here and he was voting here, right?

But he said to me one day, he said, it doesn't matter what you call it, it's a circle and it all ends up in extremism all ends up in the right place, in the same place, the exact same place, right?

And he couldn't have been more right about that.

And I wonder when you were doing 50 Shades, or when you, 50 Shades, when you were doing 50 Shades,

hey,

he looked hot in that movie, just letting you know.

When you were doing the CNN show,

United Shades

of America.

When you were doing that show

years ago, did you smell this coming?

Could you tell just by being out there on the streets having these really tough conversations and really interesting positions?

Could you tell that the country was kind of pulling itself apart?

So, yeah, it's interesting.

When we started the show, Barack Obama was in his last year in office.

And at that point, there was this idea that

he was about to hand off the presidency to a woman named Hillary Clinton, that it was going to be a smooth transition.

Because how could Donald Trump ever win?

And I remember being at

a birthday party of one of my kids' friends in Berkeley, California.

And this old hippie guy was like, yeah, we thought Reagan was a joke, too.

And so that was the, like, there we, we thought there was no way Ronald Reagan would ever be governor of California, let alone president of the United States.

And that really like click.

And And then we did an episode of United Shades where

we did two episodes in the same season.

I think it was the same season.

One was on the south side of Chicago

with men who were in gangs

and black men who were in gangs on the south side and west side of Chicago.

And then we did an episode in Appalachia with white ex-coal miners.

And I remember thinking, these two people would say they are in different ends of the political spectrum or or they would say, I don't believe in whatever the other party it is chicago is a very democratic city appalachia is a very red state and yet they all want the same things they want better jobs they want higher wages they want more access to health care they want better schools for their kids they want there to be less potholes in the streets so but they've been but but political parties are weaponizing their differences against them.

So they think, I want the opposite of what that guy wants.

Yeah.

And you both want, you want, and you've been told, if that guy gets what he wants, then that means I get less of what I want.

When it's like, no, that's not how it actually ever should work, but that's how the political parties.

So yeah, I would say I was really clear about the division in the country

was planted.

It's not like a thing that happens naturally.

It's a thing that is sown and planted.

And then on top of that, the enemy, by the last season of the United States, I said, I think the enemy of

every episode

is American capitalism.

Now, American capitalism encompasses a lot, also encompasses white supremacy and racism and imperialism.

So it's like, it's all, it's not just, you know, it's not, but that's what adds up to specifically, and I say American capitalism because other countries do capitalism differently, but that's how you end up in a situation where

like poor white people in Appalachia can vote for the party that actually doesn't care about them.

But they think this party is protecting tax cuts

for rich people.

And one day my lottery lottery ticket's going to hit, and I will be a rich person who will need my taxes protected.

And you're just like, and that's how they do it.

So, I think it's just about weaponizing difference and weaponizing ignorance.

And then, in this last election, it was all about, like, for some reason, making people think that America's biggest thing to be afraid of was trans kids playing sports.

It's insane how that, how less than half a percent of the population of the history of humanity played such a big role in 400 million adults' minds.

Not that many voted, but it's

that it became like it became a, what they call a kitchen table issue.

That became an issue that people

sat down at their kitchen tables, like we need to discuss trans kids and sports, even though there's no trans kids trying to play sports in my kids' school.

Or even though the trans kid who wants to play sports is just wants to play sports.

Like, who cares?

Like, you know, he's a shit.

Yeah.

He's a shit.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Do you think NBA players think Victor Wimbinyama is fair?

You know what I mean?

Like, he's like, he's a seven foot four guy who can shoot

from the three.

They don't, that doesn't seem fair, but they understand that's just what happens in sports sometimes.

So I think, and, you know, and to be truthful, most people playing sports are just doing it to run around and get some fresh air.

Most of us, the overall majority of us, aren't that good and it doesn't matter.

It really doesn't.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter.

Yeah.

And, you know, and, you know, that's a debate in its own ilk, but it's, it's almost not worth having because it affects so few people.

And you address those things as you cross that bridge when you come to it as

we always have with the minutiae of life.

But yet it was the biggest thing.

The absolute weaponization of misinformation and

it's the tiniest tip of the spear that allowed all of this

rabble-rousing and hatred to just pour its way into this into our

discourse was amazing.

And now it's the immigrants, right?

It's the people who came into the country and took your jobs, jobs that you never wanted in the first place, jobs that you weren't filling in the first place.

Jobs that they wouldn't pay you enough, jobs that they wouldn't pay you enough to do, which is why undocumented immigrants do them.

Because

they're not paying a living wage for those jobs.

I know.

And I think a lot of people now, including a lot of the quote-unquote manosphere of the podcast world, right?

That's just a word that I am using to describe something.

I wouldn't use it myself, but because I don't think it just includes men, by the way.

And, but they, all of a sudden, they go, oh, shit, well, this isn't what we vote.

This isn't what we wanted.

Well, this is what you got, right?

Now they're kidnapping Americans on the streets.

And how do you put that cat back in the bag?

You aren't going to.

It's not going to happen unless a few brave men and women stand up and do that.

I have a question for you personally because I watched one of your episodes.

It really affected me.

I think it was the one where you went and you were kind of talking to KKK members.

How do you prepare for that mentally?

I mean, I understand.

I'm sure you get this question a lot, but it's just

curiosity

has got me on this one.

How do you prepare for that mentally?

How do you keep your fists

in your pockets?

I don't know.

I mean, so that one specifically was the very first episode of the United States to ever take.

It was the pilot episode that sold the series.

So I was the one who pitched that idea because it was the idea of the show was like black guy goes places he shouldn't go or you wouldn't expect him to go.

And so they were like, the country club or the golf course.

And I was like, or the KKK rally.

Because I was like, you got to go big or go home.

But then it was like, it really was

the hardest thing about that episode was that it was the pilot.

So I didn't even know the crew that well.

And I didn't know the producers that well.

So at the times in the making of that episode, when me, Kamal Bell the Human, was having an emotional reaction to something, There was nobody to turn to really

and be like, help.

And I mean, there was a friend of mine was a producer on that episode, but there was just really nobody in control to turn to and be like, this doesn't work for me.

This thing you're asking me to do doesn't work for me.

And if I have to explain it to you, I'm going to start weeping.

Like, you know, so.

So I had a friend of mine who was there to help, but they just really didn't disregard him or me as being like, as far as they were concerned, you know, host of a TV show can mean a lot of different things.

And some hosts are just like wind-up toys, and that's what they want to do.

Like,

I'll just sort of tell me where to go, what to say, how to do it.

I think of a little bit like Chris Harrison from The Bachelor.

He doesn't actually care at all who gets the rose, he's just supposed to ask.

You know what I mean?

That's it.

We make fun of it all the time.

He walks in 30 seconds and he goes, gentlemen, there's one rose left.

And he walks back out.

What the fuck was that?

And he goes back to the hotel, the nine-star hotel in Thailand where they're staying.

That's right.

uh and so but i was like came for i wanted to do this because of what the work i'd seen morgan spurlock do and then he bourdain do and michael and uh michael moore and so i was like i'm i'm i want to be in it and have decisions and make decisions it took me several years to get that level of control but that episode there was just times right like for the thing at the story i always tell is like at the at the the the meeting those clan members in the forest where we're going to do the crossburning later and we were there for hours because they wanted it for we got there early and it had to get dark.

And I'm talking to the clans members, and they're filming.

And at some point, I look around and I realize that the crew has their cameras down,

and I realize I'm just talking to this clan member for no reason.

And I have to go to the showrunner and be like, hey, man, when we're not filming, let me know.

I don't just want to talk to the KKK.

Fuck it.

Hey, man.

Hey, man.

Like,

hey, man, this is actually hard for me.

This is actually not fun for me.

And I would hope hope that you understood that.

White guy.

You know what I mean?

So it's really the white.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, it's some of my best whites are friends.

So, but it was really just the idea that I had to do there were two battles to fight.

The battle of like getting, dealing with the clan, and then the battle with like showbiz not being designed for people who aren't white men.

When

was there any insight that you took away from that specific episode that

gave you some inch of hope that some of these

really hard decor

bigots

could,

you know, there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

The funny thing was, so there were some people, they were sort of split into two groups.

There was one group of the Klan members who were like there and wanted to talk to me and explain to me what they believed and why black people were inferior and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then there were people, there were some who just wouldn't talk to me because it was like,

you know, a snake has entered the parlor you know what i mean yeah so it just like stayed clear for me the person who who was the most angry at me was this blonde white young black one young white woman who looked like she would come in third in a britney spears young britne spears look-alike contest and i remember thinking like your biggest problem is you live here yeah like if i took you to la

you would really totally you'd have a totally different opinion but if you live here

basketball exactly yeah yeah yeah but you're you don't know the and i really from that i took a lot of what they were mad about was the circumstances they were born into that they couldn't escape and somebody had weaponized that saying it's black people's fault meanwhile they lived in Dawson Springs Kentucky a town that's not that black like so you're mad at black people and there's not that even that many black people around here yeah and the ones who are know you're in the clan so not messing with you they're like that they all know you're in the clan so I think the idea being that like again it's the site that like people's

people's fears are being weaponized against them.

So these guys live in a town where there's not a lot of jobs, not a lot of opportunities, and somebody has told them, essentially at that point, it's Barack Obama's fault, the black guy.

And the thing that I saw, because at the time when the episode aired, Trump was still not being really taken seriously as a candidate.

And some people were like, why would you do this show about the Klan?

Who cares about the Klan?

And cut to a year later, Trump is like an ongoing concern and going to win.

And then suddenly that episode, it's like,

since it's aired, it's grown bigger because it sort of pointed the direction that the country was going.

Yeah, very interesting.

It really was kind of a lit mist.

I remember watching the episode.

I don't remember if I watched it when it first ran, but I just remember watching it and I'm like, I,

I, I mean, I'm obviously not a black man.

I have had no, I have had, I won the genetic lottery in that sense, but I just, from a little kid, because no, no, no, no, no, no, I, I won the genetic lottery.

I'm six foot four.

I'm six, four.

Well, then you are.

I'm a short king, so then there you go.

Um, but I just remember just because of the way that I was raised in Chicago that I just had a lot of hatred for the KKK.

Like that, just to me was the emblematic of everything

that could go wrong in the human psyche and

was also like an earmark of how much,

how big our problems are here in the United States of America when it comes to race.

My wife comes from Venezuela and she goes, I just can't believe how big of a problem racism is now.

You know, Venezuela is a different country, right?

But they have indigenous people, they have black people.

And, you know, you go to other places and it's just, it's just, it's just different.

It's, we just magnify it here.

We magnify it.

And it's been magnified from the moment, right?

Well, we, because we built the country on that.

That's right.

I mean, I think, like, certainly,

like, other countries have their own problems.

They, well, they would call it nationality instead of racism.

So in the UK, they think they don't have a racism problem, but get these packies out of here.

You know, which is, you know, so it's like, get these, get these Arabs out of here.

We don't have a racism problem, but I don't want to live next to a Muslim.

You know what I mean?

So I think it's named different things.

Nationality does a lot of the work of racism in other countries.

But I would also say, specifically in America,

we built the country on racism.

Like, literally, like, we, you know, first let's get rid of the Native Americans, as many as we can, and push the other ones out into places we don't want to be.

And then let's have black people do some of the major economic work to get this country started.

And let's bring in some Chinese people to help build the the connective tissue and the the railroads.

But also, while we're here, we're also passing anti-Chinese laws so that we need them here to build the railroad, but they also aren't allowed to live here, which is a weird thing.

And so

it's the country was built on racism in a way that it also wasn't, it wasn't that long ago.

So it's not like we can even go, well,

that was a millennia ago.

Like in China, you can go, that was a millennia ago.

You cannot do that in this country.

It's all

very young.

The country is very young.

As I always say,

Martin Luther King Jr.

would be 96.

That's crazy to think about.

Yeah.

No, people, you think he's like, well, he'd be 20 years old.

No, he could still easily, 96 doesn't get you a happy birthday on the TV.

It doesn't get you a, you're not there yet.

You know, so you're still four years away from anybody caring about how old you are.

And he can still be alive today.

And, you know, so it's not like we're, this stuff is not a million years ago.

You know, I, like, speaking of genetic lottery, I have, I said this just a couple of weeks ago on the show when we were talking about immigration.

I said, it's an imaginary line in the sand.

And it's about, it's really like,

it's really about a lottery that you win.

What skin do you, what skin are you born into?

Where are you born into?

What language do you speak?

What language do you speak?

What religion are what religion are you?

Do your parents or whoever's around you, you grow up in?

All these things are non-choice options.

You don't make those choices.

And largely, your parents didn't make those choices and their parents didn't make those choices

so then we go around demonizing people based on things that they have no control over at all whatsoever but we point to them and we say they're the problem and they're the bad guys and they're the evil ones and they need to get out of here and they've committed some you know

horrendous felony for crossing over an imaginary line in the sand when they had zero choice in it you just won the fucking lottery that's the only thing that happened to you dude and you won it at this point in history because at another point in history, if you'd been born in that same place, you would have, you wouldn't have won the lottery.

You know what I mean?

So we're like, again, we're talking about that line shifts and moves and that country's reputation means something different 100 years on either direction of whatever, of whatever date you were born.

It's so true.

And I wish that more people could see that when we're ripping parents away from children at bus stops and when we're, you know, just on the news today, or when a young lady goes to the store to get food for her, her house and her mom's not there.

When we're doing this to these people, the horrendous offense that they have committed, most of them, the horrendous offense that they have committed is walking over that imaginary line and not filling out the paperwork.

That's it.

That's the only thing that they have done.

But, you know, this has been going on forever.

And

I really hope that soon

we, meaning the collective, we, find a way to stand up and say, not in this country, like not right now.

We're not going to do this.

I hope, I pray that that is what happens how do you personally

being

an intellectual being a commentarian on on political and and just social life in general how do you balance comedy and the very serious nature of what's going on you

you come across as as pretty funny a lot of the times but you're talking about things that's pretty serious I mean, people ask me that question.

And I think the

thought is that somehow I was like a political science professor at a a liberal arts college going, how do I get the message across?

And then I go, jokes.

You know what I mean?

And I think

the person I've been talking about a lot recently that I'm sort of walking in the giant footsteps of is Dick Gregory.

Dick Gregory, first of all, before he was a comedian, he was like a great, he was like a track athlete.

So I think the idea is that you could have, and then he became a comedian.

And he just wanted to be a comedian and really was like on the path to like, he was like the first black comedian to sit on the panel on like the, I think it then was the Jack Parr show, the tonight show.

Oh, uh, and he and they booked him on the show and said, Uh, you can't sit on the, he's like, Can I sit on the panel?

They said, No, because you know, you're black, but that was back when they would just say, No, because you're black, and he was like, Then I don't want to do the show, and then they're like, Okay, okay, you can do it.

So, you see somebody like Dick Gregory, who like was on a path to be like a star comedian, but it was during the civil rights movement.

He's like, It's not enough, being a star comedian is not important right now.

Being someone who has a big profile, like Dick Gregory did, and then going to March with Dr.

King, which brings more cameras, is actually what I should be doing.

So, I think the idea is that I wanted to be a comedian because of Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live, but the world said your skills may go elsewhere.

You know, so your skills may not, maybe, maybe I would have been great on Saturday Night Live as Eddie Murphy, being the next Eddie Murphy.

But I also think that, like, no, the way I was raised and hooped my mom and my dad and the world I grew up in and moving to the Bay Area, sort of like, you know, I was woke before it was demonized.

And so I don't think about like, how do I make this funny?

Because my brain is that of a stand-up comedian who's always like, whatever the story is I read, it starts working on like, that's the way I process the story is by just sort of like

by rolling over the story, my brain starts coming up with jokes.

Yeah, I got you.

And that's because I'm trying to do it.

Yeah, it's not because I'm trying to do it.

It's just like, man, that's ridiculous.

I can't believe that Trump said that.

That's ridiculous.

That would be like it, blah, blah, dah, da, da, da, da, you know what I mean?

Like, it's, that's how it works.

And like, I can't believe he, I can't believe JD Vance dropped the football trophy.

That's, you know, he's supposed to be a real man.

And, you know, you start to like, your brain starts to like just do things with what you've been given.

Now,

that does, that certainly means that I can't make jokes out of everything.

But so, and that, which is also why I like writing on Substack, there's different ways for there's different places for different things.

So, um, but yeah, I'm not, it just means that like if I, if I don't say it, it's because I haven't found out, I haven't figured out the joke yet, not because I don't think it's worth joking about.

Sure.

Yeah, I always, you know, I don't think this is any secret.

I'm not giving somebody great insight.

I've never given somebody great insight, but I always feel like comedians.

throughout history are the ones who open us up a little bit because when you're laughing, when a joke goes in there, right?

When we all collectively laugh at something, you could tell a joke about the right or the left or whoever, about Obama.

But when you're laughing, your mind relaxes a little bit.

The body relaxes.

The mind relaxes.

The soul takes it in, right?

It's like energetically, you're connecting people in a room or you're connecting through the TV or whatever it is.

And it's all comedians have always been boundary pushers.

Let me push this idea.

Let me show you how absolutely ridiculous this is.

Satirically, look at this from a different angle.

And people start to open up in a way that otherwise you can't from a podium with a big White House logo on it or, you know, a

office.

And let's be clear: one of the things that made Donald Trump successful is that his

base finds him funny.

I'm not saying he is funny, but he is funny to them,

which means he's opening them up and they feel like he's ah, he gets me.

Like, when you laugh, you think you're agreeing, even though you're not always agreeing, you're just saying that was a good joke.

But you go, Yeah, that's true.

Those people do do that a lot.

So, I have to, you know, that is funny how you made fun of a disabled person.

You know what I mean?

I always thought of the same thing.

That's funny.

The face you made when you, and so I think the idea being that, like,

and I think generally, what happens a lot of times with the press, especially presidential politics, is the is the sort of the most charismatic person wins.

Now, charismatic for their audience, but you know,

whatever Kamala Harris was, yeah, she was not, she was not known to rule the room with charisma.

That doesn't mean she's not smart, doesn't mean she's not blah, blah, blah.

Certainly going to be a better president.

But I think that, like, one of the things that Barack Obama Obama had in spades, which is a funny thing to say about the black guy, is that he was very, he was hyper-charismatic, his charisma, so that Mitt Romney never stood.

It didn't matter if Mitt Romney was,

Mitt Romney was a vacuum of charisma.

Mitt Romney was a stiff sock.

Let's admit it.

It wasn't a sock who got overstarched.

I mean,

he's never going to win.

Yeah.

No, it's never going to win.

So I think, and you see it like in elections, like, you know, like there's a, there's like 19 people running for mayor of New York and Eric Adams won because he just had a personality.

You know what I mean?

He's just a cool cat.

Yeah, he's a cool cat.

Yeah,

yeah.

So, and then they found out.

But then what happens?

You get in there often.

Oh, we shouldn't have elected a cool cat.

We should have elected one of the qualified people.

Exactly.

But I think that there's just a way in which every public speaker wants to be open with a joke.

Every public speaker wants to be funny.

Because if people are laughing, you know they're paying attention.

If they're not laughing, you can think that you can think they're paying attention, but they can be thinking about their laundry.

Yeah, exactly.

You and I both know how did President Bill Clinton get into office?

How did he get into office?

Going on Arsenio Hall and playing that damn saxophone.

That's it.

He got the white people.

He got the black people in one false swoop.

Yeah.

And then he got the young people when he went on MTV and answered Boxers or Briefs, I think.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

So, yeah, so do you not inhale?

I tried it, but I did not inhale.

Yeah, I did inhale.

Depends on the definition of what is.

Okay.

But yeah, so I think that he was one of the first ones to understand that.

I mean, you know, it goes back to Kennedy initially, but like that being in broad, being a part of the pop culture is actually helpful to this.

And Trump understands that too.

He's just a part of a pop culture that I don't want to be a part of.

So, but that's why he's on like the Joe Rogan show and Theo Vaughan show and

Andrew Schultz because he

understands connecting with those and Aiden Ross, all these people who are now regretting stumping and endorsing him,

stumping for and endorsing him.

But he understood that pop culture was important.

I say to those guys who I share the podus care, the podcast fear with, I say, we'll argue about it later.

Keep speaking out.

Keep

telling people that you made a mistake.

That's okay.

We'll argue about why later, right?

But now we're at where we're at, and it's good that you're talking, speaking up at all.

Go ahead.

But I would say that I agree with you.

I would just say this.

I think about it with Alc.

I wrote a sub-sec about the 12 steps to recovery from MAGA for comedians.

And one of those steps is like, make amends.

Fair enough.

Like, it's not enough to go, like, I shouldn't have done that.

Well, you've also alienated a bunch of people who you did that to.

So that means you got to do more work to come back.

It's not enough to go, I don't agree with him anymore.

But you also, it's in AA, you can't just go to one meeting and go, I quit drinking, everybody.

I'm done.

And never go to another meeting again.

It's a constant practice of showing people that you've changed and being held accountable and being okay, being held accountable.

And that's the thing I think I see what happens to like, like Andrew Schultz.

I didn't vote for any of this.

Oh, you don't want to be held accountable.

Right.

And that's not, that's not a, that's not helpful to us because that means that you're, that, then next week you're going to be like, oh, you know, I like the thing that Trump did today.

I'm back.

You know what I mean?

It's about you have to be willing in the way that I'm held accountable by my friends when I say things.

They go, come out, you said that thing.

That's not actually what it is.

So if you don't want to be held accountable, then I think what it feels more like is like, oops,

my balance and my bank account went down.

Let me try to staunch the bleeding.

Yeah,

you are very right about this.

And I do think that at some point

there needs to be a reckoning on behalf of all of these pop culture figures.

Listen, I'm not here to tell anybody what they need to say or not say.

That's for me to decide about my own show.

But

if you don't agree, say you don't agree and then say you made a mistake and say, I'm sorry, I made a mistake.

In the moment, it felt like the right thing to do.

I sensed that it was the right thing to do.

I was wrong.

And now we need to speak up against it.

And so, but I can appreciate that anybody's saying anything at all because it's becoming a scary time to say anything at all.

You know, I am friends with one of Jimmy Kimmel's producers.

And when they were going through all of that drama, he didn't say anything.

He did not give me any breaking news.

So

I'm not going to say anything that, you know, I'm not going to say anything against anybody in trouble.

But

I shared through a text message or whatever that I was, you know, rooting for them and this is terrible and all that other stuff.

And he responded, it's a very scary time.

It's a very scary time.

He was scared.

I think he was scared.

It's a very scary time to speak up.

Right.

And do you feel scared?

No, I feel responsible.

Like, I feel like I have been, I have been given, I have been given this.

I say to my kids all the time, like, cause we'll sometimes go places and people will give us free stuff because they know who I am and they're excited to whatever ice cream or something.

And I sort of want to go, look, we didn't earn this.

They are doing this because they like the the work that I do and the work that we do as a family, because I talk about it as a family business.

And so that's great that we get, that we get free things.

But if I, but then when I'm put in positions of like, should I say something?

I go, the thing that happens is like, if I am who I claim to be, then I have to say something.

If I, if, if I, the person I've told the world I am, if that's true, which I think it's true, then how can I not say anything?

Now, sometimes you figure out, I got to say it in this environment, I'll say it like this, in this environment, I'll say it like this.

And I'll say it differently on Instagram that I'll say it at like a, like a, you know, I did an event for Brady United, which is anti-gun violence, which is, which is more like corporate and lots of billionaires in the room.

So there's different ways to do it, but the message is going to stay the same.

It's just the delivery system changes.

But yeah, I mean, certainly I get afraid.

And the joke I tell on stage is whenever I get, like, whenever I start to go, man, it's so hard to speak out.

The ghost of Harry Tubbin shows up.

Oh, what is hard to do?

It's hard to.

Yeah.

What do you, you're having a hard time saying a word.

You're having a hard time tweeting.

I don't know what tweeting is, but is it hard?

Is it like, does it happen at night with white men chasing you with guns and dogs?

Is that what tweeting is?

You know, so keeping perspective on,

you know, what am I going to do?

Is it harder to be me than it was to be Malcolm X and MLK and Medgar Evers and Rosa Parks?

And like, and as a black person, we have a lot of access to who those people are.

Yeah.

It's not harder to, you know, it's harder to be a random unknown black woman in America than it is to be me.

So how can I not speak up for people given this platform?

Now, also, I know it has certainly affected my, the gigs I've been offered and the things I can do.

And, but then you just go, well, I just got to figure out something else, which is why I have nine jobs at all times.

I, that, that is a very interesting perspective, and I, I really appreciate that.

I really do.

You know,

not everybody who has a microphone uses that microphone with that kind of purpose, right?

And not everybody is supposed to or built for it.

That's just a reality.

Some people are just here to make everybody laugh.

Some people want to goof off.

Some people make funny videos online.

Yes.

That's their lot in life, right?

But I would say, like, somebody, think about somebody like Maria Bamford, who has really sort of absurdist,

like sort of lyrical, ridiculous characters that she does, but is also figuring a way to address mental health.

She's very, it's very clear which side of political aisle she's on.

She's not, think of somebody like Margaret Cho, who just would just as soon tell a dirty joke as anything else, but also has a clear.

So you don't have, you know, you don't have to be on stage, you know,

raging against the machine in your jokes to actually let people know which side of this spectrum you're on.

You know, are you fascist or anti-fascist?

That's the main question.

And if you can answer that question, yeah.

I don't need you to write a joke about fascism to prove that to me, but certainly you can use your platforms to spread those messages.

I couldn't agree with you more.

By the way, love Margaret Cho.

Love, love, love Margaret Cho.

Had her on the show.

She's one of my favorites.

And I like the way that she speaks up.

I follow her online and I like the way that she speaks up.

And I'm very proud of the fact that she does.

I mean, you know, she doesn't have to.

She's a legend.

She could sit back, rest on her laurels, you know, sit out theaters for the rest of her life, but she doesn't.

She speaks up because she knows it's the right thing to do and because of her own upbringing, you know, the way that she was raised and the values that her parents installed in her in another very tumultuous time in San Francisco.

And so I can appreciate that.

How is you're on your tour, right?

And how's that going?

Where are you going next?

How many cities are you going forever forever and ever and ever?

Like every other

comedian?

No, no, no.

I don't, because I got three kids at home.

So I don't go.

I go out.

I go out and go back.

I got 14.

10 and 7.

Yeah, 14, 10, and 7.

Oh, yeah.

So, yeah.

So we're in it.

We're in it.

Yeah.

One kid went to school late today because she wasn't feeling good.

Another kid's coming home early today because she's not feeling good.

So we're in it.

I just had one stay home for five days with a fever.

Five days with a fever.

With a fever.

I was like, dude, I hope everything's okay.

You know, like, that's when you start to get worried.

You're like, yeah, five days is a long time.

Yeah, it is.

So I don't go out for long periods of time, so the tour is pretty spread out.

So

my next stop is the beginning of November.

I'll be in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Then I'm a couple weeks later, I'm in Louisville, Kentucky.

And then December 6th, I'm in

Rochester, New York.

And we'll add more dates as we do.

It's just, you know, I just also have a lot of other stuff going on.

And like I said, I don't like to go out and be gone because I like to see these kids grow up one piece at a time.

I am so happy that I get to do a job where I can walk out the door and my family's there and I get to spend time with them.

It's a privilege that I wasn't afforded with my own parents, but that's like the biggest blessing the universe could give you is to have the ability to move in the same space as your family for extended periods of time.

You watch them grow up.

So the Substack.

I have a lot of friends who aren't Substack.

I know a number of characters on, you know, got people who are making a great living doing Substack.

And for those who aren't turned on to Substack, this is a incredible platform where people are speaking out and speaking up and being funny and talking about all different kinds of things.

It's not political by nature, but there are certainly a lot of political commentarians who are doing great work and great writing.

And you're on Substack also.

Yeah, so I think it really started out as a platform

as the newspaper started to like...

like shed uh you know shed reporters and opinion writers and long-form journalists substack it started came up as a way for like those writers who are quality writers who the newspapers just don't want to pay anymore to still do their work and get paid for it.

So it's basically like, it's like Patreon, but it's more of a community than Patreon is because on Patreon, you're not really, you're not seeing a bunch of different people.

You're sort of there to support the one person you want.

But like Substack, I think, is like the best parts of Twitter in its heyday

with also with a little bit of a Patreon model.

So people can pay you five bucks a month for your work and you can decide what they get for five bucks a month.

Everybody can get what they want.

But it's just and then in the wake of tick tock being threatened last year a bunch of tick tock people joined sub stack and so now there's a lot of video content on sub stack so to me it's like it's like social media for grown-ups because it's actually about content and producing content and like on my sub stack you can't leave a comment unless you're paying me which just eliminates a lot of like nonsense trolling that you get everywhere else on the internet so you know you can read my content you can it can make you angry you just can't tell me about how angry you are i don't I don't have unless you pay, unless you pay me, yeah, if you pay me, that's it.

You can pay me, and I'll listen to how angry you are.

And it doesn't mean everybody agrees with me all the time, but it just means the people who pay appreciate the fact whether or not they agree or not, they appreciate the content, you know.

So, yeah, um, it is a very, yeah, so it's a, it's, it's, there's a lot of like, you know, like there's a lot of like journalists and creators, and and you know, Avid Duvernay joined Substack, and and uh, yeah, there's a, there's uh, Joy Reid is on Substack, who was fired by MSNBC, Jim Acosta.

It was like Jim Jim Acosta got fired by CNN, and then hours later was on SubSack.

And now he's got a daily news show.

So there's a lot of news content.

Mediasan, I mean, he got fired by MSNBC, is on Substack.

But there's also just like a lot of fun TikTok creators on there or people who are just writing about food.

They really can do whatever you want to.

And the fun thing is people are excited to read other people's work and share other people's work.

Yeah, it is a great platform.

And I have subscribed to a number of people on

Substack.

You know who probably the number one most viewed person on MSNBC is right now?

It's Kamal.

He's the number one.

You spend the most amount of time on MSNBC.

I'm on day and nights.

I'm on day and night.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They need to cut me a check here.

For the audience listening, I was sharing with Kamal that right before I came on, you know, I have this big video screen that I bring the guests on, but it also has my Apple TV so I can watch direct TV or whatever.

And I was watching MSNBC in the background.

And he was on right before he came on.

He was on the commercial right before he came on my screen, which is a little surreal, to be honest, just for me, my own experience.

It's just a little bit surreal.

Kamal, all of his links are going to be in the show notes.

I am just honored that you came on today.

I've been a fan of your work.

I've probably watched every one of your episodes of the CNN show, maybe with the exception of a few.

I think you're fighting the good fight, my friend.

You are always welcome here to share your thoughts and have a conversation because you're,

I think what I like about you is that you're never mean spirited.

You know, know, you're opinionated, but you're never mean-spirited.

And I also think you're one of those people who's willing to listen as much as you are willing to talk.

And I think the world needs a lot more of that, and especially these United States.

So all the links in the show notes.

I appreciate you being here today.

Thanks.

Appreciate you.

Thanks for having me.

Let me do something Brian has never done.

Be brief.

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See, Brian, that really wasn't that difficult now, was it?

You're welcome.

There you go.

There you have it.

The unvarnished commentary of one of the smartest minds running around earth today, W.

Kamal Bell.

All of the links are currently in the show notes.

So if you happen to be in a city where he is going to be traveling, you may want to take this opportunity to go and say hello.

I just like the way that he approaches his own

humanity and fame.

And, you know, he's moving through life,

I think, I guess, the way that we all should.

If you have a platform and you have the ability to speak up on behalf of others who don't, maybe that's the way you should do it.

So I will

agree with a lot of the things that he's, not everything, but I'll agree with a lot of the things that he said during the interview.

And I'll repeat what I'm saying at the beginning.

Repeat what I said at the beginning of the interview, which is this.

Troops in American cities, bullshit.

People getting kidnapped off of the street.

Because they're brown or have a different skin color bullshit.

Police officers in unmarked vehicles just pulling up to schools and flying helicopters on top of buildings and yanking people out and you know causing trouble and hoping to figure it out later.

Bullshit.

It's all bullshit.

And we should stop it immediately, if not sooner.

The fuckery is going to take a long time to unfuck.

Generations, maybe.

But we got to start now.

So let's get it done.

And that goes for both sides of the aisle.

I don't care who you are, Republican or Democrat.

Everybody needs to toe the same line.

We should be generally

have a critical eye toward any government, you know, anybody in power.

That's just my opinion.

There you go.

All right, so there's your TCB politics episode for the month.

Do us a favor, go to tcbpodcast.com.

All the show notes, all of the audio, all the video, all the links to our guests, all that stuff is all right there.

One website, tcbpodcast.com.

You can also get your free TCB sticker.

Yes, that's still a thing, and you can get it.

Even if you've gotten one before, you can get a new one because we have new ones.

So go to tcbpodcast.com, hit the drop-down menu.

I want my free sticker, give us your address, and we will send you one.

Add the commercial break on Instagram, TCB Podcast on TikTok, and you can always watch the episodes at youtube.com/slash the commercial break.

All these episodes, they usually drop on the same day on the video.

Plus, please do me a favor: 212-433-3TCB.

that's 212-433-3TCB questions comments concerns contents ideas I take them all I welcome the conversation even if you don't agree with me I still welcome the conversation until next time I love you best to you and until next time I will say I do say and I must say goodbye

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