Detroit Power Shifts: Young Voters and Media Trust with Donna and Sam

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Up next, Authentically Detroit discusses what we're reading this week in the Michigan Chronicle.
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Kamala Harris in Detroit tells the NAACP crowd at Fellowship Chapel that she has not decided whether she's going to run for president in 2028.
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You saw my video, everyone there standing up in ovation when Wendell Anthony even asked the question.
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Detroiters, longtime residents, are remembering the Renaissance Center as it undergoes a potential redevelopment.
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As a symbol of black leadership, talk to folks at some of these meetings about their memories of when the building and the complex was constructed and what it meant post-white flight in the sort of um new era, Detroit's uh black era in the 1970s.
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We're also talking about 4-2 Doug and the Detroit rappers again.
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Because just today, Monday, September 28th, John James, he's the Republican nominee for Michigan governor, uh, is in a video with him uh touring around the city.
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Keep it locked.
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We're gonna talk about all of this stuff once Authentically Detroit returns after these messages.
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Interested in renting space for corporate events, meetings, conferences, social events, or resource fairs, the Stodermeier Wellness Hub and Mac Market are available for rental by members, residents, businesses, and organizations.
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We offer rentals for activities such as corporate events, social events, meetings, conferences, art classes, fitness classes, and more.
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To learn more about our rentals and reserve space, visit ecnetroit.org slash space rental.
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What's up, Detroit?
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Welcome to another episode of Authentically Detroit.
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We're broadcasting live from the Stoddemeyer inside of the East Side Community Network.
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I'm Stan Robinson.
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And I'm Donna Givens-Davidson.
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We want to thank you for listening in and supporting our efforts to build a platform of authentic voices for real people here in the city of Detroit.
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We want you to like, rate, and subscribe to our podcast on all platforms.
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It's just Donna and I in the studio today, and we're going to be running down some of the biggest stories currently happening in the city of Detroit.
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Welcome back to Authentically Detroit.
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Donna, how was the sustainability summit on Saturday?
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Oh, I thought it was wonderful.
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Um, it's one of those things I was worried about.
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I was gone most of the week, and um it's one of, you know, uh Ricky Ackerman, who is our chief program officer, was gone a part of the week because um he lost his aunt.
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And so he went home for her um her funeral.
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But the people on ECN's team came together and did a great job.
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I mean, I walked in and it was laid out.
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Um, we had great graphics, we had good food, even though some people weren't really feeling the food because it was, you know, um food as medicine.
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And so food as medicine is not the same thing as uh it was like it wasn't comfort food, in other words, but I thought it was really good.
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Our panelists were outstanding.
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Um, we had um the return of Naomi Cawthorn, who used to be the director of the Styled Meyer, come and sit on the panel.
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She's now a student at the University of Michigan.
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Shannon Gibbs Randall, who is our um Lionscape architect, who's actually worked with us for over 10 years now, um, was there to speak to the design and her values around that.
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And then we had Ali Darul from um from Rider Cooperative, who did the solar feasibility for our building as well as the other buildings in the original Resiliency Hub Network.
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And then we also had Kassan, and I can't remember Kassan's last name.
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Um, it might be Williams, but um anyway, Kassan is from Revolve Fund, and Revolve provided the funding that closed the gap in us establishing our um solar on our building.
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So it was good.
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I was the moderator, had um a lot of really emotional things to say.
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One thing I want to say before we move on is that I was reminded that as we were celebrating the ribbon cutting for the Angela Brown Wilson Gardens, that Angela's last day working in our building, her last day physically at work for ECN, she was walking the Gilbert Family Foundation through our site, sharing our vision.
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And then she got sick and didn't want to leave and was forced to leave because she was taking another person to the hospital, and the next day she was diagnosed with leukemia.
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And so um naming it after her is so apricot, and we had an opportunity to remember her.
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So that's how it was.
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It was a good day.
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I was running around following these um political candidates, and I am uh sad that I missed it.
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Uh plenty of good stuff on socials.
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If you guys aren't following ECN on uh Instagram yet, you can get a taste of what's happening at some of these events.
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What is the Instagram handle?
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I was about to just say it out loud, but then realized I don't actually know what it is.
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It's at ECN underscore Detroit on Instagram.
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Um and the good news is that um we also recorded it so um we can actually replay it for anybody who wants to listen and see what we were doing.
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Um we have lots of photos that document the event.
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I should mention that we had vendors here.
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We had this amazing lemonade, um, all these different flavors of lemonade, but um some amazing vendors from different uh parts of the city of Detroit um were housed inside of our building, and we had a decent crowd, you know.
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Um when you host the sustainability summit, everybody's not jumping at the cle um chance to attend, but we had about 70 folks here, so it was a good event.
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Want to talk about some news that happened last week, whether you want to describe it as news or not.
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I suppose Kamala Harris made news here in Detroit.
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Um didn't really talk to us that much.
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Kind of ironic to us meeting the media.
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Kind of ironic.
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She you know, walks out of the Birth Detroit Center, and this is just me speaking as a journalist.
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Sorry to offend the Khive people, but you're answering a question, shouted at you, yelled as all the other national TV news, C-SPAN, Nemes now, blah, blah, blah, Fox News, CNN are yelling at her, local media are trailing behind the national media that are like just bullying their way in the front.
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And like I love the the dynamics in a scrum, but Kamala saying, you know, Trump's media ban is so bad, of course, Trump's media ban was struck down by the court while running away from the media and not giving us a scrum.
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Not to say that she has to.
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Well, she's not uh an elected official.
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She is not presiding over public policy, and she's a very important thing.
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I think that's such a weak cop out.
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Accountable to anybody.
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Well, it makes sense.
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She's the former vice president of the United States who is considering whether or not to run again for president Clinton.
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I understand that.
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And if she decides to run, then she has the responsibility.
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She is now a private citizen.
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And I think we feel entitled to ans and ask questions of people.
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I don't think that they are required to answer questions.
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Certainly not.
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But the way that she answered standing up on the SUV as she's getting in to be to make herself look-I mean, everything that she does obviously is in preparation for whether or not she's going to run for president in 2028.
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And so the way that she answered the question is in a very like heroine type, well, it's terrible that this is happening.
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It's just like, can you please talk to us?
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We weren't able to really um see much of what was happening before um the round table at Birth Detroit that was broadcast on C-SPAN.
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I think it's available on YouTube.
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You guys can go and watch it yourselves.
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Um, but I do um know that a lot of the people that were in that room were really excited.
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I talked to a few folks that were uh you know around my age that said, what a great opportunity um, you know, to not only meet the the former vice president, but also um, you know, share with her some of the challenges and issues that they face that she might be able to speak to um, you know, through through her position as Kamala Harris.
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And so, of course, Kamala is coming here trying to shore up some uh of the hesitant slash skeptical, however many voters that is uh who might be upset over Abdul's support for uncommitted in February 2024, even though that was Joe Biden that they were uncommitted against, not Kamala Harris.
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Abdul Al-Sayed, of course, endorsed Kamala Harris the day that she announced cheers and applause for Abdul al-Sayed.
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He was not at Fellowship Chapel, but of course, Wendell Anthony has criticized Abdul.
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He endorsed Haley Stevens, Abdul's primary opponent.
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And um, on Tuesday of last week, when he was interviewing Kamala Harris on stage at his church, he actually brought up, I thought it was very interesting himself, the dynamic where some voters are still upset or saying that they're now gonna be reverse uncommitted for Abdul or they are um gonna vote for for Mike Rogers.
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Um she didn't really speak much to that point, but you know, she she did say she understands uh why people uh are still upset, referencing, of course, the the kind the the anti Yeah.
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I mean, I think the couple of things I think I think going back to your initial point, if I wanted to run for president, I would show up in a different kind of way, right?
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But I'm not certain I've ever thought that she was a great campaigner when it comes to running for president.
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She didn't really have a long runway in her campaign when she actually, you know, was on the ballot of the Democratic nominee.
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Um, in her run up for the election before she was, you know, selected vice president.
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Um, I didn't think that she had a great campaign.
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I don't think she's a great campaigner.
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I don't think she's going to be the Democratic nominee.
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I think that she represents a politics that will no longer be salient by 2028 when you know it's time to vote for her.
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So um I don't think it's I don't know if I agree because I just see everybody standing up in the in the room at the fellowship chapel.
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Well, I mean that's in the room at the fellowship chapel.
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Yeah, that is.
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And um I think that she has to, she's going to be the Democratic nominee, be able to do that all over America.
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Yeah.
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I think there is a change in the um direction of the Democratic Party, and we're just seeing the beginning of it now.
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I think so.
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And I think go ahead.
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And I also think that it is offensive that people are deciding whether or not to vote for Abdul based on what some other Arab people did.
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I know.
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He did not lead uncommitted.
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He was not anything to do with the organization other than supporting it as more than 100,000 Michigan voters did.
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Right.
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So the criticism is he has the name.
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He has the name and he has an identity that is similar.
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And so here we are in 2026, black folks judging people not by the quality of their character, by the color of their skin, andor their last name, andor their religion.
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And there's a lot of people that point to that black voters, black establishment folks doing just that as the reason why their power and influence in the party, you know, eventually could completely be irrelevant.
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We just we saw it at the convention where you had all those labor folks, all those um, you know, people that supported the candidates that did not even go close to winning.
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But your your your influence is.
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It should be that people who are in their late 20s, 30s, and 40s are driving politics in 2026.
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It should not be that 60 and 70-year-olds hold on to the reins of power even though they are making decisions that will impact people long after they've exited this space.
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Um, I want to see young people take control of politics, and I think it's happening.
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And so what we're seeing is a wealth divide, a generation divide.
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And I think we also have to acknowledge the fact that there's so many black folks who are not connected to politics at all.
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And when they get connected, a lot of times they're connected based on misinformation, based on grievance and other things, and not based on actual policy goals and objectives, and certainly not the collective will and well-being of our people.
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And so I think that anybody who ran for office in 2020 and in 2024 will not be the front runner in 2026.
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I'm not singling her out.
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I am simply saying that I think our politics are turning a corner, and we're actually seeing a realignment of politics as we speak.
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And that realignment is not going to include a lot of people unless they get on board.
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Um, I also think that we have to acknowledge the impact of the AIPAC lobby on people who supported um Haley Stevens, and black folks were impacted by that.
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You see a lot of black politicians getting paid a whole lot of money if you really break it down.
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And so that alliance between black um politicians and APEC, I'm not even gonna say Jewish politicians, but that align between black politicians and APEC is one that needs to be explored a little bit more.
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Yeah, and I think uh you see younger black political candidates across the country exploring it.
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Um certainly a generational divide that's gonna be easier to see in in places like Philadelphia, New York, or Chicago than they are in um Michigan or even maybe Cleveland, Ohio, or um Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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Detroit is not as progressive as some of those other places that I just mentioned.
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And so I do see how our sort of democratic socialisting of local politics, that's happening in every single city in Michigan, like in Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor.
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Ann Arbor just elected a DSA mayor, right?
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I think Detroit's very far from the United States.
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Well, when you look at when you look at a city like Detroit that um became majority black in the 1970s, right?
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And all of a sudden, black people are the power brokers, black people are the political elite, black people are the ones who have formed these relationships with corporate America and with all these different things.
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And so you have um elitism serving almost as a proxy for um racism, right?
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And so black elites were part of the oppression of poor black folks.
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When you talk about um, you know, Detroit's progressivism, there's a strong and enduring progressive population in the city of Detroit that um, you know, has been part of the um black slate in at one point, the shrine of the black Madonna was very progressive in its politics at one point.
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When you look at the Republic of New Africa and you look at the Boggs Center and everything that um Grace Lee and Jimmy Boggs did over the years, there are people who are still part of that.
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When you look at Malik Kikini and the Detroit Food Sovereignty Network, which actually led to a national food sovereignty network, and he is seen as a leader all across the nation.
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You've always had these forces, but they have not been the political power brokers.
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And the political power brokers are the ones who have really controlled and kept our politics aligned with, you know, traditional faith-based institutions.
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So, you know, traditional faith-based institutions don't care about women's reproductive rights as a priority.
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And many of them think that abortion is, you know, a mortal sin.
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Um, don't care about LGBTQ rights, um, a lot of times coming out of the church.
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Don't really care about women's autonomy and women having rights.
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And you don't hear the church saying a whole lot about environmental justice.
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And so these are the strongholds.
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The strongholds of power here are people who really believe that black power and the road to black power is through black capitalism.
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And that's how we show up in the world.
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And you see, in other cities, you don't have this well-established and entrenched black power structure that so suppresses the voices of the many.
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And the final thing I want to say about that is it is clearly not reflecting the whole of our community because only at most 30%, 35% of the people show up to vote.
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And that tells me that our politics are disconnected from political leaders.
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Not only are they disconnected, um but they're just they're so far, they're so far removed, right?
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And I just I think when I have conversations with voters, and then when I have conversations with people who work for um you know, black sort of establishment political institutions and organizations, there's an awareness of the disconnect that's central to the messaging from the organizations and institutions.
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But because their lives are lived so distantly, I guess, and so far apart, right?
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I mean, these people that are making up these institutions, organizations are, you know, for lack of a better word, rich, usually.
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They're usually wealthy men.
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Um and people who are skeptical of the Democratic Party's you know about how black voters are a reliable constituency for the Democratic Party.
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Um it's so it's so interesting to me.
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People know it, right?
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Like, and it was so funny just talking to last year, I think it was last year, in December, maybe November, I talked to Curtis Hertel, right?
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Curtis Hertel is a former mid-Michigan, he represented Lansing, but he's actually from Detroit, right?
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His dad represented the East Side for a long time.
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And so like Curtis knows people from all walks of life.
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He's not I mean, he is a rich guy, but he's not like a super politically rich guy, certainly.
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I don't know how, I don't know how much money he has.
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But hearing him talk about politics, and sorry, Curtis, if you're listening.
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It was just like, well, you it's not even possible for you to diagnose the things you're saying because you are the institution having grown up as the son of a.
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And I just I recognize how so many of the people in my generation are the sons of uh that are in political spaces, right?
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They're not regular people.
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Well, you know, like John Conyers, for example, who's Mario Murrow Jr.
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I like Mario.
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Um yeah, okay.
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Anyway, um You're thinking of senior.
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You don't know Junior.
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I don't know Junior, but I know you don't know him.
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Okay.
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He's a good guy.
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We'll have a conversation.
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You would like him.
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Okay.
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He he fought hard for Kamala.
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Me and him were on the phone.
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I'm not going to be able to do it.
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Arguing over Kamala Harris private citizens like this.
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Um I love Mario.
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He's very public.
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I understand that.
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I'm just gonna come in and change my conversation and say that you know, power concedes nothing without a demand.
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It never didn't and never will.
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That's um um that is Frederick Douglass.
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Whether the power is power owned by black people or by white people, whether it's owned by young people or by old people, rich people or by poor people, power concedes nothing without a demand.
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And right now you're seeing a demand, and you're seeing a demand that people concede their power.
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And it's going to change how things are done in our state in a good way.
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Um, I think I was talking to somebody the other day, and I was noting that, you know, um Herbert Herbert Hoover gave us the New Deal as much as FDR did.
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Without Herbert Hoover, the New Deal would have been more difficult.
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Herbert Hoover made everything so bad, and he was so insensitive and tone-deaf to what was happening in America that the New Deal became possible.
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And you had a complete political realignment, you know, about a hundred years ago.
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And you were gonna see the same thing soon.
00:21:54.400 --> 00:21:55.599
I look forward to it.
00:21:56.480 --> 00:21:59.759
Um, and I mean, the way people talk about politics.
00:22:00.319 --> 00:22:02.160
Right now is the way I talk about football.
00:22:02.640 --> 00:22:03.200
It's a game.
00:22:03.519 --> 00:22:06.000
Well, what do you think they need to do to gain the advantage?
00:22:06.160 --> 00:22:11.119
What do they need to say in order to flip this district, to flip that person?
00:22:11.599 --> 00:22:15.519
You almost never hear what they need to do to fix that problem.
00:22:16.240 --> 00:22:25.519
And when you don't hear pundits having those conversations, and when politics are following the scripts laid out by pundits, you have a problem.
00:22:25.680 --> 00:22:28.000
But look at Al Abdul El Sayyid.
00:22:28.079 --> 00:22:33.039
He refuses to let the pundits drive his advocacy or whatever he's going to say politically.
00:22:33.279 --> 00:22:44.799
When they come at him trying to force him to disavow Hassan Piker just to prove he's a real American, he refuses, he turns back and he goes right back to his talking points.
00:22:44.960 --> 00:22:46.559
And we talked about that last week.
00:22:46.640 --> 00:22:55.359
And I was saying I thought that that was demonstrating political discipline, that his ability to stay on message and not let pundits drive the conversation.
00:22:55.599 --> 00:23:05.599
Then you have people like Kamala Harris who are so at times subject to what pundits are saying that you're not really hearing what the community is saying.
00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:16.400
And there's a great article in, I think it's in the Michigan Chronicle today, written by a young black man who Hester Wheeler.
00:23:17.680 --> 00:23:18.880
No, no, no, not Hester Wheeler.
00:23:19.279 --> 00:23:21.359
Jeremiah, the is he not the son of Hester?
00:23:21.599 --> 00:23:22.400
Um related.
00:23:22.720 --> 00:23:22.799
No.
00:23:23.039 --> 00:23:32.799
But that was gonna be another one of my examples of how the the people in my generation are like, you know, still related to the political movers and shakers of the generations far above.
00:23:33.279 --> 00:23:33.920
Was that Jeremiah?
00:23:34.160 --> 00:23:34.880
That was Jeremiah.
00:23:35.119 --> 00:23:37.440
Oh yeah, he has to be related to Hester in some way, isn't he?
00:23:38.000 --> 00:23:38.960
His last name is Wheeler?
00:23:39.039 --> 00:23:39.200
Yeah.
00:23:39.279 --> 00:23:40.240
I didn't notice his last name.
00:23:40.319 --> 00:23:41.200
Yeah, I bet you're right.
00:23:41.359 --> 00:23:45.440
But it was but my point is, and even Jeremiah, like I like Jeremiah too, right?
00:23:45.599 --> 00:23:49.519
Like, there are people that are different than their one-ups.
00:23:49.599 --> 00:23:51.839
I mean, we had the conversation with Mary and Horace.
00:23:52.079 --> 00:23:52.480
Yeah.
00:23:52.799 --> 00:24:00.400
I mean, Jeremiah basically said that he's looking for something different than his dad, and he hosted something in his house.
00:24:00.480 --> 00:24:05.440
It does make sense that it's Jeremiah now that oh my goodness, I didn't connect the dots.
00:24:05.519 --> 00:24:06.400
And I do like Hester.
00:24:06.559 --> 00:24:08.000
Um I think Hester's a nice guy.
00:24:08.160 --> 00:24:08.799
He is, yes.
00:24:09.039 --> 00:24:12.720
Um, and um, and yet I don't agree with him politically in all instances.
00:24:12.880 --> 00:24:18.640
I do in many instances, but I think what Jeremiah was saying was brilliant, and I was really excited to read it.
00:24:18.799 --> 00:24:21.920
So um he's got a lot of energy, Jeremiah does.
00:24:22.079 --> 00:24:28.240
Um I've I've worked with him for a little bit now, and um yeah, he's a he's a good guy.
00:24:28.400 --> 00:24:29.039
Yeah.
00:24:29.359 --> 00:24:41.119
So let's talk about um, you know, on the flip side, you have um a group of young rappers who have embraced uh MAGA.
00:24:41.599 --> 00:24:43.359
They want to make America great again, too.
00:24:43.839 --> 00:25:01.680
Yeah, I think one of the one of the funniest moments of my professional career so far has been um I was at Axios, this is June 2024, and somebody people used to put my articles on Reddit, now they put my Twitter and everything on Reddit.
00:25:02.559 --> 00:25:13.440
But they used to put my, you know, the R Detroit, which again, I don't think there's much overlap in terms of people that are like chronically on the Detroit Reddit page and people that are listening to this podcast.
00:25:13.599 --> 00:25:15.759
I know that there are some that that do.
00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:26.160
And the people that do know, like, I like what a what a negative, nasty, clearly not actually from Detroit community that that Reddit is.
00:25:26.240 --> 00:25:30.640
And I just hate it so much, but a lot of the people don't like me on there either.
00:25:30.960 --> 00:25:36.000
One of the people was you know, that was like, I don't understand why Sam Ram people care about him so much, blah blah blah.
00:25:36.160 --> 00:25:36.880
I don't either, man.
00:25:36.960 --> 00:25:39.039
I just do the same thing every day, probably.
00:25:39.279 --> 00:25:54.960
Um, I forget what his name was, but he was like, Oh, there's this article connecting Trump and Detroit rappers, and I don't even need to do anything but read the headline to know who wrote it.
00:25:56.240 --> 00:26:00.240
And it was talking about this Detroit can't escape Trump's rap obsession.
00:26:00.799 --> 00:26:02.960
And it certainly has not been able to escape it.
00:26:03.119 --> 00:26:04.160
Oh my goodness.
00:26:04.240 --> 00:26:05.279
Uh oh wow.
00:26:05.359 --> 00:26:07.039
You wrote that in 2024.
00:26:07.279 --> 00:26:07.920
That's what I'm saying.
00:26:08.000 --> 00:26:10.480
Like, I've been on this for like a minute.
00:26:10.720 --> 00:26:13.119
I've been on this for a long time.
00:26:13.440 --> 00:26:20.799
How black Detroit rappers you know, we we have the white Detroit rapper, he's from Warren.
00:26:20.960 --> 00:26:27.440
But uh, you know, they're they're championing the support of uh of Donald Trump.
00:26:27.519 --> 00:26:30.240
I mean, they're they're championing Donald Trump's campaign.
00:26:30.480 --> 00:26:33.279
Vezzo kind of backed away from it a little bit in 24.
00:26:33.519 --> 00:26:39.279
But it is interesting, and I I'll say this, you know, I'm I am able to sort of speak more candidly on this program.
00:26:39.599 --> 00:26:43.519
Chanel Dominique, me and you, we should have a conversation about this.
00:26:43.680 --> 00:26:46.319
I see you in the back of this photo.
00:26:46.480 --> 00:26:50.240
She's the PR person for many of these Detroit rappers.
00:26:50.480 --> 00:26:54.400
I believe she manages PZ and Iceware Bezzo.
00:26:54.640 --> 00:27:05.759
I I know I I really do wish that they would speak more to their political ideas and perhaps be interviewed by you know a political reporter.
00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:06.480
I would say that's the one.
00:27:06.640 --> 00:27:08.480
Obviously, the political reporters probably don't have time for that.
00:27:08.880 --> 00:27:10.720
I would love to sit down with them, and I've said that.
00:27:11.039 --> 00:27:15.279
So I'm going to try to see if I can know if I know somebody who can help make that happen.
00:27:15.440 --> 00:27:15.599
Yeah.
00:27:16.079 --> 00:27:24.880
I I I don't think they'd be interested to talk politics, frankly, because their their political opinions, I think their management knows are unpopular to the other.
00:27:25.920 --> 00:27:28.079
And yet at the same time, they show up.
00:27:28.480 --> 00:27:34.559
And I think that um even if it's not on the record, like I don't necessarily need to talk to people on the record.
00:27:34.640 --> 00:27:35.599
I'd like to talk to them.
00:27:35.759 --> 00:27:37.119
So yeah, I'm not a reporter.
00:27:37.200 --> 00:27:41.119
I'm you know, um, I'm not like you, I'm just like what I call a citizen journalist.
00:27:41.200 --> 00:27:43.359
So I'm just but I'm also very curious.
00:27:43.440 --> 00:27:45.839
But here's my initial assessment.
00:27:46.079 --> 00:27:53.279
My initial assessment is that we have let so many black people down in terms of politics.
00:27:53.440 --> 00:28:03.519
You have people growing up in whole communities that feel neglected and don't feel cared for, who don't see the existing political machine working in their and who have been there.
00:28:03.839 --> 00:28:11.200
And that's a it's a very compelling argument for Republicans when John James is at Lorenzo Swell's church saying, and your and your leadership is all white.
00:28:11.359 --> 00:28:12.960
Look at it, he went through the list.
00:28:13.119 --> 00:28:16.480
Governor, white, attorney general, white, Secretary of State, white.
00:28:16.720 --> 00:28:18.000
He sounded like Minister Farrakhan.
00:28:18.559 --> 00:28:19.119
It was quite something.
00:28:19.599 --> 00:28:24.000
I mean, he knows how to play and how to manipulate conversations, right?
00:28:24.240 --> 00:28:25.599
Because that's where it all ends.
00:28:25.680 --> 00:28:30.160
And then he says, hey, you know, um, you know, Trump is my big daddy or whatever.
00:28:30.400 --> 00:28:35.759
But what I want to say is that you have people who've been politically neglected.
00:28:36.160 --> 00:28:39.039
And there's been an intentional political neglect.
00:28:39.279 --> 00:28:52.960
You know, when the former President Obama said, I'm not the president of black America, I'm the president of the United States of America, that communicated to many black people that he did not care about them or did not prioritize them as citizens.
00:28:53.039 --> 00:28:57.440
And that may not be what he wanted to prior um communicate, but that was a communication.
00:28:57.599 --> 00:29:01.599
Every time a politician talks about growing the middle class, how do we grow the middle class?
00:29:01.680 --> 00:29:03.119
How do we protect democracy?
00:29:03.279 --> 00:29:06.480
How do we do all of these things that they're trying to maintain?
00:29:06.720 --> 00:29:20.880
Every time a politician who is representing when Kamala Harris was arguing that the economy was not bad and people are struggling to pay their bills, what they hear is politicians who are not attuned to their needs.
00:29:21.039 --> 00:29:26.960
And then you have somebody like Donald Trump who's appealing to their anger, their resentment, their bitterness.
00:29:27.440 --> 00:29:34.880
And also, I think it's fair to say that if Donald Trump came back as a black man, he'd probably be a gangster rapper, okay?
00:29:35.039 --> 00:29:37.599
He'd be able to say all the same things he's saying right now.
00:29:37.680 --> 00:29:40.079
He'd be able to talk about grabbing women by their pushes.
00:29:40.400 --> 00:29:41.039
He'd be a streamer.
00:29:41.200 --> 00:29:42.160
He would be a streamer.
00:29:42.400 --> 00:29:42.799
I don't know.
00:29:42.880 --> 00:29:45.359
I mean he'd be a sort of a Twitch streamer too.
00:29:45.599 --> 00:29:46.480
I don't know if he'd be a streamer.
00:29:46.640 --> 00:29:47.839
I don't know if he'd be popular.
00:29:48.240 --> 00:29:50.559
The reality is that he is popular.
00:29:50.960 --> 00:29:52.079
He would be the biggest streamer.
00:29:52.319 --> 00:29:53.920
He's but also a rapper.
00:29:54.079 --> 00:29:56.799
Because I want to talk about the content of hip-hop.
00:29:57.039 --> 00:30:04.480
I want to talk about all of the I'm not saying they are, I'm saying the content of hip-hop is frequently misogynistic.
00:30:04.880 --> 00:30:14.079
When I think about it is it is frequently misogynistic, it glorifies violence a lot, it glorifies power, it glorifies revenge, it glorifies wealth.
00:30:14.160 --> 00:30:28.799
And when you have those as the um moral framework of an art form, even though there's many great rappers who don't ever make it big, but the ones who make it big are not necessarily speaking in social justice terms, okay?
00:30:29.039 --> 00:30:32.559
No, they're they're using you know slurs to refer to women.
00:30:32.640 --> 00:30:35.200
And I'm just like looking at all these songs that I know by Soda Baby.
00:30:35.279 --> 00:30:42.480
Like I know hella Soda Baby songs because I went to college in uh 2015 to 2020.
00:30:42.640 --> 00:30:49.200
And so And like I think about the songs that I know, and I'm just like, how many times does he say the B word in it?
00:30:49.599 --> 00:30:55.680
But as like the you know, and I just I think about that when you think of songs like Scuba says or Activated.
00:30:55.920 --> 00:30:59.039
You guys remember Activated Moon, jump up on it, da da.
00:30:59.440 --> 00:31:00.799
Yep, you know what I'm talking about.
00:31:01.119 --> 00:31:07.839
It's not even you know the activated song, yes, and it's just like dang, like we know the whole worst of that song, or T Grizzly.
00:31:08.000 --> 00:31:11.440
Like, I love when I would watch T Grizzly at Cast Tech, right?
00:31:11.519 --> 00:31:13.039
When he would come back to the high school.
00:31:13.119 --> 00:31:17.359
And I'm just thinking, like, these kids are like 14 to 18.
00:31:17.680 --> 00:31:20.960
This song came out in 2017.
00:31:21.039 --> 00:31:27.519
So it's been almost like six, seven, eight years since this song, and we're still knowing the words of these songs.
00:31:28.160 --> 00:31:32.000
But if you go a generation before to a couple generations before you, right?
00:31:32.160 --> 00:31:41.599
I'm talking about Ice Cube, I'm talking about Kumoldi, I'm talking about people who are rapping in the 80s and 90s and using extremely misogynistic language.
00:31:41.759 --> 00:31:44.000
Yeah, where does bifelicia come from?
00:31:44.160 --> 00:31:50.160
It's a term that is used to dismiss a woman who was being sexually exploited.
00:31:50.319 --> 00:31:51.359
And that's cool.
00:31:51.599 --> 00:31:53.920
And so since I was a young person, I remember when C.
00:31:54.079 --> 00:31:58.160
Dolores Bryant came out and said that rap music was really harming our community.
00:31:58.319 --> 00:32:03.200
And people say it didn't, you know, it's just entertainment, or these are people just speaking to their pain.
00:32:03.440 --> 00:32:06.559
But now we see what all that speech does.
00:32:06.720 --> 00:32:11.119
It aligns itself more often than not with a Donald Trump.
00:32:11.519 --> 00:32:12.319
And it's so interesting.
00:32:12.559 --> 00:32:22.400
It is so interesting to think about that uh into the innards of how do these people actually become re Republican voters?
00:32:22.559 --> 00:32:26.000
How do they become conservative Republicans who are supporting candidates on stage?
00:32:26.079 --> 00:32:28.640
Remember, Sada Baby was on stage at Lorenzo Sewell's church.
00:32:29.359 --> 00:32:29.839
Is he voting?
00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:31.119
Is he a voter?
00:32:31.440 --> 00:32:33.039
A lot of them don't vote.
00:32:33.279 --> 00:32:36.400
A lot of times it is um it's it's pageantry.
00:32:36.480 --> 00:32:45.359
It is I'm gonna pay you to that pageantry is is uh absolutely maybe not effective, but it makes people feel it has an impact.
00:32:45.440 --> 00:32:51.359
But what I'm trying to say is if you're not willing to talk about something and you're willing to stand on a stage, I call that pageantry.
00:32:51.440 --> 00:32:51.680
Right.
00:32:51.839 --> 00:32:52.960
Where do your values stand?
00:32:53.119 --> 00:32:54.720
Explain to me why you think this way.
00:32:55.039 --> 00:32:56.799
I would imagine Sada, baby, himself.
00:32:56.880 --> 00:33:01.279
I know I can't speak for Vesla, I can really can't speak for any of these people, but Sada, I I had a conversation with him.
00:33:01.440 --> 00:33:05.119
He does vote, he tells me, and he knows, you know, 4-2 Douglas, I can't vote.
00:33:05.200 --> 00:33:05.680
I'm a con.
00:33:05.759 --> 00:33:06.400
I'm an ex-con.
00:33:06.559 --> 00:33:08.559
I say, buddy, you can still vote.
00:33:08.799 --> 00:33:12.400
Um and I told him that at exhibition.
00:33:12.640 --> 00:33:17.119
Um he was on stage in 24 with Byron Donalds.
00:33:17.279 --> 00:33:24.400
We know Byron Donald's, he's gonna be the next governor of Florida, and uh a man named Marcellus Turner.
00:33:24.559 --> 00:33:29.119
Marcellus Turner, if not for my journalism, we would have no idea who he was.
00:33:29.279 --> 00:33:30.319
Well, who is he?
00:33:30.480 --> 00:33:35.519
He's a Republican candidate for state house he ran in 2018, he's a Republican activist.
00:33:35.839 --> 00:33:37.759
But who's who is his his cousin?
00:33:37.920 --> 00:33:39.599
His cousin is Casada Sorrell.
00:33:39.680 --> 00:33:41.680
Casada Sorel is Sada baby.
00:33:42.000 --> 00:33:48.640
And so you recognize he's standing on stage with this he's Sada is connected to this event through his cousin.
00:33:49.440 --> 00:33:55.920
And so it's a real communal thing happening in which these people who come from where do they come from?
00:33:56.240 --> 00:33:58.240
Low income communities.
00:33:58.799 --> 00:34:24.239
No low-income neglected communities, which are divested from divested, where you see uh um a lot of police misbehavior, but you also see mass incarceration take place, you see bad schools, and it's easy to convince people who don't have um of political philosophy or knowledge of history or anything that the reason these things are bad is because Democrats have controlled them and they've made things this way.
00:34:24.320 --> 00:34:28.159
And if you vote for Republicans, Republicans are gonna restore neighborhoods to what they should be.
00:34:28.480 --> 00:34:39.760
And almost a little offensive when Veso goes on Fox News and says sort of a tropey line that we've all heard before, but when he says this, he said, our I feel like our votes should be worked for.
00:34:39.920 --> 00:34:46.000
I feel like our parents blindly voted for generations, but I think this generation is now understanding what we have that we have to ask questions.
00:34:46.239 --> 00:34:59.599
Did our parents blindly vote or was there material things that activists and and leaders fought for that was given and granted by one party and not the other?
00:35:00.239 --> 00:35:03.119
But that's part of the political manipulation, okay?
00:35:03.440 --> 00:35:08.000
And you know, there's people who specifically target people with misinformation.
00:35:08.159 --> 00:35:12.079
There's Russian bots that specifically target people with misinformation.
00:35:12.239 --> 00:35:26.079
Sometimes the misinformation, they um, you know, all of this American descendants of slavery and this idea that if you don't have an ancestor who was in chattel slavery in the United States when child slavery existed here, then you are not really black.
00:35:26.239 --> 00:35:29.760
I'm reading that online and it's like, this is actually crazy.
00:35:29.920 --> 00:35:36.639
Um this is built on a lie, and you know, we could have conversations.
00:35:36.800 --> 00:35:40.079
I've been having a lot of conversations around what that means.
00:35:40.719 --> 00:35:55.440
But at the very core of it, how often did Kamala Harris go to the hood and talk to people in the hood and ask them what they thought, ask them how they felt, and explain to her her political point of view.
00:35:55.920 --> 00:36:00.559
She did go to um Solomon Kinlock's church where she met Isa Rezo, who asked her a question.
00:36:01.039 --> 00:36:04.400
How often did she go into the hood?
00:36:04.559 --> 00:36:07.679
How often did her political rhetoric reflect that?
00:36:08.079 --> 00:36:14.159
I think that the biggest mistake was campaigning with Liz Cheney, a warmonger.
00:36:14.719 --> 00:36:30.079
And then if you can campaign pl campaign with her, and if you're saying things like, Well, I'm going to try to reach across the aisle and get these people to vote for me, then what you're doing actually is you are saying that this is this is acceptable.
00:36:30.159 --> 00:36:38.400
And at the same time, not being willing to campaign with and support and platform people who represent a completely different point of view.
00:36:39.599 --> 00:36:44.880
Someone who spoke to this phenomena a couple years ago when I was asking people to speak to it.
00:36:45.920 --> 00:36:50.639
Um you guys would never know this.
00:36:50.719 --> 00:36:52.480
I asked Alphonse Pierre to speak to this.
00:36:52.719 --> 00:36:54.159
I was like, could you comment on this?
00:36:54.320 --> 00:36:58.719
He's probably the greatest rap music writer in the last 20 years.
00:36:59.199 --> 00:37:02.559
He works for Condinass's Pitchfork publication.
00:37:02.719 --> 00:37:04.320
You guys are familiar with Pitchfork.
00:37:04.639 --> 00:37:06.320
Uh he turned me down.
00:37:06.400 --> 00:37:08.320
He was like, No, I'm not gonna speak on this.
00:37:08.480 --> 00:37:17.840
It's so it's it's hard to talk about because you don't want to sound like you're speaking down to a community, I think.
00:37:18.079 --> 00:37:18.320
Right?
00:37:18.559 --> 00:37:24.719
I I think you I don't I think you don't want to s act like you're speaking down, but I think facts are facts.
00:37:25.199 --> 00:37:26.159
I mean they they certainly are facts.
00:37:26.320 --> 00:37:33.679
Facts are not someone who I spoke to, Jennifer Unwenyu, she is a local social worker and the host of the Ask Jen show.
00:37:34.000 --> 00:37:36.960
And just no when you's cousin or sister, yes, cousin.
00:37:37.039 --> 00:37:37.280
Yeah.
00:37:37.440 --> 00:37:41.760
She told me that the East Side, you know, has a has a supreme hustle mentality.
00:37:41.920 --> 00:37:45.599
She says it inherently works against the collective, but they don't get that.
00:37:46.000 --> 00:37:52.960
She told me that their ability to turn nothing into something makes them believe societal conditions are a choice instead of systemic issues.
00:37:53.039 --> 00:37:54.239
And that is such a good point.
00:37:54.320 --> 00:38:06.800
I mean, these people are one of you know, tens of thousands who made it out, quote unquote, who have changed their life to a degree in which financially they don't know anyone else.
00:38:06.960 --> 00:38:13.599
And I think a lot of these folks, when they get into this financial position, who are the first people that they're meeting in the same places?
00:38:14.239 --> 00:38:16.400
I mean they're not act they're not liberal activists.
00:38:16.639 --> 00:38:17.119
No, they're not.
00:38:17.360 --> 00:38:21.039
Right, they're they're developers and business people and and GOP consultants.
00:38:21.360 --> 00:38:38.000
And again, even before they got to making it out, they participated in a form of entertainment that is aligned with the belief systems of people like Donald Trump.
00:38:38.159 --> 00:38:39.360
It's aligned with MAGA.
00:38:39.599 --> 00:38:42.239
The only thing is that they don't dislike black people.
00:38:42.320 --> 00:38:48.559
And so if you can convince yourself that Trump doesn't really dislike black people, why in the world wouldn't you support him?
00:38:48.719 --> 00:38:58.880
When they see Donald Trump coming after people like Kamala Harris, who they think is a sellout and doesn't represent them, and they believe she locked up hundreds of thousands of black men in California.
00:39:01.760 --> 00:39:06.880
Part of it was her gender because, again, the art form is extremely misogynistic.
00:39:07.199 --> 00:39:12.880
And when people ask me about that, it's literally that it's like, no, literally, that I heard from so many voters, I'm not comfortable voting for a woman.
00:39:13.039 --> 00:39:13.280
Yes.
00:39:13.519 --> 00:39:14.800
Like, like, period, point blank.
00:39:14.960 --> 00:39:21.119
And so when people challenge me on, well, it wasn't because she was a woman, Sam, well, no, I don't think she lost because she was a woman.
00:39:21.280 --> 00:39:24.400
I know that there are some people who would disagree with me in that.
00:39:24.559 --> 00:39:26.960
Some people think that it was that was the lead reason.
00:39:27.119 --> 00:39:27.519
I don't.
00:39:27.679 --> 00:39:29.199
I think it was one of the reasons.
00:39:29.360 --> 00:39:36.639
And I'll give you several examples in which people telling me that they didn't think that uh a woman should be president.
00:39:36.800 --> 00:39:40.079
And then and and then the black men, poor men, rich men, all kinds of things.
00:39:40.480 --> 00:39:40.800
Some women.
00:39:41.039 --> 00:39:41.519
And you know what?
00:39:41.760 --> 00:39:42.079
Right, right.
00:39:42.239 --> 00:39:43.360
And and you know what?
00:39:43.519 --> 00:39:46.719
There's the people who told you and the people who didn't.
00:39:47.119 --> 00:39:52.079
But you know, if I was to run, you know, I would never run for president.
00:39:52.239 --> 00:39:54.880
But let's say I was gonna run for president.
00:39:56.719 --> 00:40:04.719
I would understand that I had to get every constituency that did not normally vote to vote for me.
00:40:04.880 --> 00:40:10.079
I'd have to mobilize different constituencies because the deck would be sacked against a black woman anyway.
00:40:10.239 --> 00:40:20.719
If you don't know that going into the game, and you get mad that that that there's bias against black women when you lose an election, she tried to get the races, she tried to appeal to the people that were never going to be like Jasmine Crockett.
00:40:20.960 --> 00:40:21.679
Crockett, look at her.
00:40:21.760 --> 00:40:23.280
She's oh, they won't support a black woman.
00:40:23.440 --> 00:40:24.639
Girl, they might support a black woman.
00:40:24.719 --> 00:40:26.079
They did not support you.
00:40:26.320 --> 00:40:31.199
Because a kind of black woman they will support has qualities that you don't have.
00:40:31.519 --> 00:40:33.440
And that's true of everything.
00:40:33.840 --> 00:40:35.440
Same thing with Hillary Clinton.
00:40:35.599 --> 00:40:46.239
It's not just that people did not want a woman, it is that we know there's bias against women, and you have to be one of those women who knows how to campaign in a manner that helps overcome that bias.
00:40:46.559 --> 00:40:49.039
And you don't see it in those two people.
00:40:49.199 --> 00:40:52.000
You didn't see great campaigning coming out from either.
00:40:52.239 --> 00:40:59.599
And then the the the impact is turning around and saying, well, people don't like black women because she's more qualified than Trump.
00:40:59.840 --> 00:41:02.960
Well, Trump voters were never your target.
00:41:03.119 --> 00:41:05.920
Your target was people who were not going to vote for Trump.
00:41:06.480 --> 00:41:10.880
And you know, elections are a mobilization game.
00:41:11.039 --> 00:41:12.400
Who can I get out to vote?
00:41:12.800 --> 00:41:19.519
Elections are not trying to convince a Republican to vote Democrat or a Democrat to vote Republican.
00:41:19.920 --> 00:41:21.920
It is how many people can I get out to vote?
00:41:22.000 --> 00:41:27.679
And if you're Republican, how many voters can I disqualify so that I can stack the odds in my favor?
00:41:29.280 --> 00:41:35.599
But I think we have to ask ourselves why we have had generations of politicians ignore the hood?
00:41:36.400 --> 00:41:44.960
Why we had generations of politicians who thought it was okay to vote for the crime bill and also came from places like Detroit.
00:41:45.360 --> 00:41:53.599
When we ask ourselves those questions, then it becomes less about party loyalty and it becomes more about political effectiveness.
00:41:54.400 --> 00:41:56.559
Nature abhors a vacuum.
00:41:57.360 --> 00:42:09.840
There's a vacuum of information surrounding politics, history, and why you should vote for these people among people who are very fragile in the political scheme.
00:42:10.079 --> 00:42:20.320
And I'm not trying to talk down on anybody and say they're not voters, but I am going to say that young black men are less likely to vote than younger than young black women.
00:42:20.639 --> 00:42:27.599
That these rappers who are supporting Donald Trump a lot of times represent constituencies that are unlikely to turn out.
00:42:28.159 --> 00:42:36.000
And when people like Trump or James and other people deploy them, it is not to get them to turn out and vote.
00:42:36.079 --> 00:42:38.960
It is to suppress their political activity.
00:42:40.079 --> 00:42:53.280
If skill uh as where Vasel gets out and says something, it's not like somebody's gonna say, Oh, let me go to the polls and vote and for whoever he says, a lot of times it's there's no point in voting.
00:42:54.159 --> 00:42:55.440
Tweedledee, tweedledum.
00:42:55.760 --> 00:43:04.079
Yeah, I think I'll say this one of the reasons that I think Kamala Harris lost the biggest reason, the the reason that no one ever talks about, right?
00:43:06.480 --> 00:43:10.639
Hey, Democratic Party, you guys lied to the public.
00:43:11.039 --> 00:43:13.199
And for two for four years, right?
00:43:13.360 --> 00:43:18.960
For four years, Republicans told us what you ended up eventually doing.
00:43:19.920 --> 00:43:22.719
And sidelining too old to run Joe Biden.
00:43:23.199 --> 00:43:24.239
Do not vote absentee.
00:43:24.800 --> 00:43:32.880
And there was Lorenzo Sewell talking about don't vote absentee, undermining his own party, who was trying to get the voters to vote absentee in the election.
00:43:33.840 --> 00:43:36.400
The corporate media perpetuated this, right?
00:43:36.639 --> 00:43:44.000
The corporate media perpetuated she did not win because Joe Biden said he was not gonna run and he did.
00:43:44.159 --> 00:43:50.480
She did not win because racism was activated.
00:43:50.800 --> 00:43:53.199
Anti xenophobia was activated.
00:43:53.360 --> 00:43:59.760
There were a lot of people who absolutely believed that the way to fix the nation was to get rid of all of the brown people who.
00:44:00.239 --> 00:44:00.800
Immigrants.
00:44:00.960 --> 00:44:04.559
There were a lot of people who believed the lie that these immigrants were dangerous.
00:44:04.719 --> 00:44:11.280
And so you cannot ignore the amount of rhetoric that was used to attack people.
00:44:11.440 --> 00:44:21.360
What did that rhetoric against LGBTQ people, rhetoric against Jeffrey Epstein, who, you know, rhetoric about inflation, all of those types of things.
00:44:21.519 --> 00:44:26.400
And so I think, yeah, it was harmful that Joe Biden ran.
00:44:26.880 --> 00:44:29.280
I mean, it was unprecedented in the history of elections, right?
00:44:29.360 --> 00:44:30.480
Like that's never happened.
00:44:30.559 --> 00:44:35.119
And the idea that the Canada could win after that happened, I just thought was ridiculous.
00:44:35.280 --> 00:44:38.559
I mean, the man got shot in the head and stood up.
00:44:39.360 --> 00:44:39.920
Allegedly.
00:44:40.159 --> 00:44:40.559
Allegedly.
00:44:40.880 --> 00:44:43.840
I mean, he got shot in the head and he stood up and said fight, fight.
00:44:44.159 --> 00:44:45.679
We've never seen that happen in American history.
00:44:45.920 --> 00:44:47.840
We've also never seen completely unprecedented evidence.
00:44:48.079 --> 00:44:50.400
We've never seen a medical record saying he got shot.
00:44:50.559 --> 00:44:56.079
Well, we've never seen medical evidence that he actually sustained those injuries.
00:44:56.159 --> 00:45:01.199
And in fact, there's many people who will point out some things in the story.
00:45:02.400 --> 00:45:05.599
There's many people that don't believe the results of the 2024 presidential election.
00:45:06.960 --> 00:45:12.239
Yes, there are many people because you have someone like Elon Musk saying that he was going to fix the election.
00:45:13.039 --> 00:45:33.280
Because of Trump lying about the election in to his favor for the past four years, I think that was incredibly harmful for what people took and take at I you know, I just tell everyone, I have no doubt in my mind, it's a hundred to zero percent that Donald Trump narrowly survived getting shot and blasted in the head on live.
00:45:34.159 --> 00:45:35.840
It was a real I know event.
00:45:36.239 --> 00:45:37.920
I know that you don't, and I do.
00:45:38.159 --> 00:45:39.679
And we can agree to disagree.
00:45:39.760 --> 00:45:40.079
I think it's a good thing.
00:45:40.239 --> 00:45:41.920
But it's a it's interesting because I think that's a good thing.
00:45:42.079 --> 00:45:43.119
It's representative of voters.
00:45:43.360 --> 00:45:44.159
No, it's not representative.
00:45:44.320 --> 00:45:48.800
Yes, I'm I'm saying you represent Democratic voters who are skeptical of what's it's not just Democratic voters.
00:45:48.880 --> 00:45:50.159
I represent independent voters.
00:45:50.320 --> 00:45:57.760
There's many people who have looked at that and said, wait a minute, how did this shooter get on this um this rooftop?
00:45:57.920 --> 00:46:00.800
Why wasn't he taken to Walter Reed emergency room?
00:46:00.960 --> 00:46:02.320
What are all the things that happened?
00:46:02.400 --> 00:46:11.519
And so I think what he did was so successfully convinced people like you that he was the victim of repeated attempts on his life.
00:46:11.679 --> 00:46:21.199
And here you have Barack Obama, the first black man to ever become president who had a death threat every single minute of every single day.
00:46:21.280 --> 00:46:24.000
And somehow he survived all of these assassination attempts.
00:46:24.320 --> 00:46:25.519
Perhaps it was because Trump did not.
00:46:25.920 --> 00:46:28.400
His Secret Service was competent and Trump's was not.
00:46:28.480 --> 00:46:28.800
I don't know.
00:46:29.599 --> 00:46:29.840
Exactly.
00:46:30.320 --> 00:46:34.239
But Trump has faced, he's been closer to being assassinated than any president of our life.
00:46:34.800 --> 00:46:35.039
Exactly.
00:46:35.519 --> 00:46:36.239
That's what you say.
00:46:37.039 --> 00:46:41.440
And what I say is that every time he's down in the polls, he has an assassination attempt.
00:46:42.159 --> 00:46:48.639
For anybody to believe things that come out of Donald Trump's mouth without a whole boatload of evidence, I don't get it.
00:46:48.800 --> 00:46:52.480
I think that there's so many circumstances that make me question that.
00:46:52.639 --> 00:46:57.840
But regardless, even if somebody did try to shoot him on his golf course.
00:46:59.679 --> 00:47:01.119
You know, you're yeah, that's what you're saying.
00:47:01.760 --> 00:47:05.119
I mean, they tried once in in Pennsylvania Butler and then they tried on his golf course, though.
00:47:06.079 --> 00:47:07.920
But that guy was a little bit crazier, the guy in the golf course.
00:47:09.119 --> 00:47:11.280
And then there's a black man in Las Vegas who's trying to get away from the city.
00:47:12.800 --> 00:47:13.679
Well, you know about this, though.
00:47:13.920 --> 00:47:14.719
He didn't get very far, yeah.
00:47:14.800 --> 00:47:16.880
He didn't get that was at the uh White House correspondence.
00:47:17.440 --> 00:47:23.199
Every single time he's down in the polls, expect uh uh an assassination attempt in the near future.
00:47:23.360 --> 00:47:30.800
But the thing is, the fact that it happens on TV, and you know that without a shadow of doubt, and you've never seen medical proof.
00:47:30.960 --> 00:47:35.119
Not a single shred of medical proof has ever been used to document that.
00:47:35.360 --> 00:47:39.199
He had that great big pad on his ear.
00:47:39.440 --> 00:47:41.280
Nobody has seen the scar.
00:47:41.599 --> 00:47:45.519
And so when we hear it, it's like, look, this happened.
00:47:45.679 --> 00:47:48.000
I can prove it happened because I watched it on television.
00:47:48.320 --> 00:47:51.199
God bless Trump, because he's able to get away with that kind of stuff.
00:47:51.280 --> 00:47:51.920
I don't believe it.
00:47:52.000 --> 00:47:52.559
I don't believe it.
00:47:53.039 --> 00:47:57.440
We can prove it happened because there's a family without their father talking about the family.
00:47:57.599 --> 00:47:58.639
You can prove that that you can prove that.
00:47:58.880 --> 00:48:00.639
And then there's a there's a family without their son.
00:48:00.800 --> 00:48:02.800
And so where I believe it.
00:48:03.119 --> 00:48:05.920
Yes, you can prove that, or how about this?
00:48:07.199 --> 00:48:08.400
It's a setup.
00:48:08.559 --> 00:48:11.760
The man was set up to shoot him, and then somebody killed him.
00:48:11.920 --> 00:48:16.480
So we can prove that somebody shot the person who shot a firearm.
00:48:16.639 --> 00:48:21.039
What we can't prove is that that is person actually shot Trump and narrowly missed his head.
00:48:21.599 --> 00:48:26.000
In terms of how I come to believing things, it's do I have evidence for it or not?
00:48:26.159 --> 00:48:27.119
I don't have evidence for that.
00:48:27.199 --> 00:48:29.679
I do have evidence for I I understand what I mean.
00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:31.440
You don't have medical evidence though.
00:48:31.599 --> 00:48:34.000
You have this guy with the reporting.
00:48:34.159 --> 00:48:38.559
You have reporting and you also have reporting and you also have reporters who question it.
00:48:38.639 --> 00:48:43.840
And they are just you have activists, you have democratic activists that question it.
00:48:44.159 --> 00:48:45.760
There's not one reporter that questions it.
00:48:46.079 --> 00:48:51.519
Okay, Sam, for you to say that, for you to say so confidently that not one reporter questions.
00:48:52.000 --> 00:48:54.400
Name one they'd get fired if they did.
00:48:54.719 --> 00:48:58.079
I I will be happy to name several.
00:48:58.400 --> 00:48:59.039
Let's hear them.
00:48:59.280 --> 00:48:59.920
I will be happy.
00:49:00.159 --> 00:49:02.800
I can't do it right now, but I will be happy to name several.
00:49:02.960 --> 00:49:06.000
This idea that nobody ever questioned except for conspiracy.
00:49:06.239 --> 00:49:07.599
I think Joy Reed might have questioned it.
00:49:07.840 --> 00:49:09.039
That's more than Joy Reed.
00:49:09.119 --> 00:49:10.400
It's a whole lot of people.
00:49:10.480 --> 00:49:17.840
And I think that because I don't listen to your same news sources and I actually read progressive news sources, I'm hearing things that you're not.
00:49:18.000 --> 00:49:21.679
I don't watch Fox News, I don't watch any of these news sources.
00:49:21.840 --> 00:49:30.159
I read a lot of newspapers that are fringe newspapers and otherwise, and I have seen people question it, and I will document what those questions are.
00:49:30.320 --> 00:49:30.800
Not now.
00:49:30.880 --> 00:49:31.280
Let's move on.
00:49:31.519 --> 00:49:45.199
Speaking with the on the fringe media, I know after I was on Breaking Points and Drop Site and the Majority Report, so many people came to me saying that they saw me on that pro on the YouTube news programs.
00:49:46.960 --> 00:49:53.039
I was shocked when I realized how many people watch those programs.
00:49:53.679 --> 00:50:13.039
I would have thought people, you know, maybe some, but I you know, I look in the views of these videos, it's like 180,000, 266,000, 350,000 views on these videos, and I'm just like, oh my gosh, this is doing better numbers than what the local regional, you know, Fox or WDIV.
00:50:13.360 --> 00:50:29.920
Um and there's something really to be said about why people come to believe the different things they do because there are so many different well-resourced news um outlets and and programs that I don't think we're around the early Trump era.
00:50:30.320 --> 00:50:40.880
And because the CIA has lied, the FBI has lied, and so if you're old enough to know that those types of institutions have repeatedly lied, um the same thing.
00:50:41.119 --> 00:50:44.719
So there's been conspiracy theories about every single presidential assassination ever, right?
00:50:45.119 --> 00:50:58.639
Um but I think that um in terms of it the people the the official record has been used to discredit people for years.
00:50:59.119 --> 00:51:09.599
The official record was used to discredit so many black leaders over the years, that to justify lynchings, to justify arrests.
00:51:09.760 --> 00:51:16.559
There are many people who question the story of who killed Martin Luther King, although you might say not a single person does because you don't know them.
00:51:16.719 --> 00:51:22.639
There are people who question whether or not that person was acting as an individual, whether that person fired the shot.
00:51:22.719 --> 00:51:24.639
There's people who question that about JFK.
00:51:25.039 --> 00:51:26.400
There's always questions.
00:51:26.639 --> 00:51:30.960
I think the reason why Michael Steele is publicly questioned whether that happened.
00:51:32.559 --> 00:51:35.199
Michael Steele is an MSNBC commentator.
00:51:35.440 --> 00:51:39.920
Aaron Membler, the host, said more information about the infantry would be appropriate.
00:51:40.079 --> 00:51:43.199
Olivia Newsy, then a New York magazine reporter.
00:51:45.119 --> 00:51:46.880
Later asked, so so okay.
00:51:47.199 --> 00:51:49.280
She's the guy that cheated with RFK Judy Remember.
00:51:49.599 --> 00:51:49.920
All right.
00:51:50.079 --> 00:51:54.800
So at at share She had a bombshell, actually.
00:51:54.880 --> 00:52:01.840
She was supposed to release some sort of bombshell, and her ex-boyfriend had it as well, like of Trump's assassination thing, and that never ended up being anything.
00:52:02.239 --> 00:52:05.039
So are you saying that Ari Melblur is not a journalist?
00:52:05.360 --> 00:52:05.760
Who is that?
00:52:05.840 --> 00:52:06.960
Who's Ari Melblur?
00:52:07.360 --> 00:52:10.239
He's he's the host of an NBC show.
00:52:10.400 --> 00:52:12.639
Are you saying he's not a journalist?
00:52:13.440 --> 00:52:15.039
Well, no, he's certainly a journalist.
00:52:15.119 --> 00:52:17.440
I just did not lose his job.
00:52:17.760 --> 00:52:18.159
What did he say?
00:52:18.239 --> 00:52:19.599
Oh, he lost his job because he caught the job.
00:52:19.840 --> 00:52:34.239
It's been three days going on for since this horrific event occurred, Steele said a person lost their life, two have been severely injured, and yet we have not received a medical report from the hospital, nor have we received a medical report from the ORC campaign or from the Trunk organization about the extent of damage to his ear.
00:52:34.320 --> 00:52:38.079
If he was shot by a high caliber bullet, there should probably be very little ear there.
00:52:38.159 --> 00:52:39.519
And so we'd like to know that.
00:52:39.679 --> 00:52:41.280
Is there cosmetic surgery involved?
00:52:41.360 --> 00:52:42.960
What is the prognosis recovery?
00:52:43.199 --> 00:52:45.920
This is the kind of question many people have asked.
00:52:46.000 --> 00:52:46.159
Right.
00:52:46.400 --> 00:52:46.960
These are the facts.
00:52:47.360 --> 00:52:51.679
I don't think those questions are to suggest that it was uh set up a conspiracy.
00:52:52.079 --> 00:52:56.800
Those are absolutely that's if you read further, a lot of people will say they believe that.
00:52:57.119 --> 00:53:01.599
Because they're saying if a high caliber bullet shot his ear, he wouldn't have one.
00:53:01.840 --> 00:53:03.199
And that suggests passed.
00:53:03.280 --> 00:53:03.679
It was passed.
00:53:05.440 --> 00:53:07.679
But there's that's that's what you're hearing.
00:53:08.239 --> 00:53:09.840
But I mean, that's what was shown on video.
00:53:10.079 --> 00:53:11.280
And and here's the other thing.
00:53:11.519 --> 00:53:16.079
I have to protect the um inst integrity of journalists.
00:53:16.239 --> 00:53:19.679
And so it would be a New York Times journalist lying.
00:53:19.920 --> 00:53:24.400
Would they have had to sort of how somehow produce a video with a bullet?
00:53:24.559 --> 00:53:27.199
Like I we have the images from that day.
00:53:27.440 --> 00:53:28.559
And so I have to go on the other side.
00:53:30.000 --> 00:53:33.039
And you don't know, you don't know whether it's a dummy bullet, you don't know what it is.
00:53:33.119 --> 00:53:36.639
Some people have questioned whether it's shrapnel, people have questioned what can out of that.
00:53:40.639 --> 00:53:42.159
Medical records would reveal if he were to be able to do that.
00:53:42.400 --> 00:53:45.760
Well, there were medical records would reveal that he actually got injured in the way that he did.
00:53:46.000 --> 00:53:46.239
Right.
00:53:47.039 --> 00:53:48.719
Since they're not showing medical records.
00:53:48.880 --> 00:54:10.000
And I think that a healthy level of skepticism, a healthy level of understanding that sometimes things are not what they seem, especially with somebody we know is willing to distort the truth on a daily basis, especially when people like you are so moved by that that they say, wow, this has never happened before.
00:54:10.079 --> 00:54:11.519
No president has ever been shot before.
00:54:11.679 --> 00:54:16.239
Which isn't true, because in my lifetime, JFK was not only shot, but he was killed.
00:54:16.480 --> 00:54:19.360
In my lifetime, Martin Luther King was shot and killed.
00:54:19.440 --> 00:54:21.280
In my lifetime, none of those happened in the live era.
00:54:21.840 --> 00:54:24.800
But but but they're that's what I that's what I mean by we've never seen that.
00:54:25.519 --> 00:54:26.719
Like we've never seen this in the live era.
00:54:26.880 --> 00:54:29.199
In in my era, in my life, I've never seen a president in the city.
00:54:30.719 --> 00:54:31.199
I've never seen it.
00:54:31.360 --> 00:54:34.800
You're saying there was no motorcade with JFK, and there were no cameras on the city.
00:54:35.760 --> 00:54:36.480
It's lore, it's history.
00:54:38.559 --> 00:54:42.719
I'm 63, and I was there to witness the aftermath.
00:54:42.880 --> 00:54:46.159
His brother Bobby Kitney, not Bobby, was it Bobby Kitney?
00:54:46.320 --> 00:54:50.079
Yeah, Bob Bobby Kitney Kennedy was also shot and killed.
00:54:50.159 --> 00:54:53.920
You had so many assassinations happening in that era.
00:54:54.239 --> 00:55:06.400
And so the other thing is the final thing I'm gonna say is the Secret Service has airspace where you cannot have a gun within a certain amount of airspace unless somebody chooses to let you do that.
00:55:06.559 --> 00:55:15.199
Now, I know Donald Trump has said that the Secret Service was also in service to was that he's the deep state.
00:55:15.840 --> 00:55:20.559
But there are many of us, and I'm not alone, who question all of that.
00:55:20.719 --> 00:55:22.639
And there are journalists who disagree with you.
00:55:22.880 --> 00:55:23.119
Oh, sure.
00:55:23.360 --> 00:55:34.079
And there are journalists who agree with you, and all I'm saying is that there are two ways of looking at any one thing, your certainty and my certainty don't mesh.
00:55:34.559 --> 00:55:44.639
I will say I I will tell you that at a Kamala Harris UAW event, um, I think the week after that this event happened, it was after Joe Biden had dropped out and Kamala had become the nominee.
00:55:44.719 --> 00:55:49.920
I think one of her first stops was at a UAW hall in Wayne, Michigan, the city of Wayne.
00:55:50.079 --> 00:55:56.079
Um, I actually asked a Secret Service agent um about what they thought.
00:55:56.239 --> 00:56:00.960
And they actually gave me a really candidate, you know, I I wasn't recording them or anything, and I told them that.
00:56:01.199 --> 00:56:20.480
Um, but I I had I was able to talk to these people, and you realize, and this is why I'm so anti-conspiracy when it comes to stuff like this situation in Butler, Pennsylvania, when it comes to the moon landing, when it comes to a various number of things, so many people are involved that you would have to have some sort of like men in black style.
00:56:20.639 --> 00:56:21.920
You do not remember this.
00:56:22.159 --> 00:56:24.960
Like it didn't it wouldn't make sense to have so many people involved.
00:56:25.440 --> 00:56:27.280
Okay, I'm not I'm not gonna say this.
00:56:27.440 --> 00:56:28.960
I'm not let's just move on.
00:56:29.280 --> 00:56:41.119
I lived through too many things, and it's when people reduce questions to conspiracy, that's one way of silencing inquiry.
00:56:41.280 --> 00:57:15.760
And what I don't believe is that we silence inquiry by saying that we accept what the President Trump says and in and the the the record that they have that we accept that without condition, and so in my opinion, the jury is still out, in your opinion, only paranoids characters to believe that, but anybody with the real journalistic integrity disagrees, and I think that that just speaks to a certain level of comfort with the things we're hearing, you know, so many things that we heard.
00:57:15.840 --> 00:57:24.320
People would say, well, Donald Trump says that he doesn't believe it, he's not associated with what is it, Project 25 or whatever.
00:57:24.719 --> 00:57:32.159
There's so many things that the news media allowed to stand while he was running for office.
00:57:32.320 --> 00:57:34.880
There's so many lies they allowed to stand.
00:57:35.280 --> 00:57:40.400
And so I don't believe our news media did a very good job at all informing people of stuff.
00:57:40.559 --> 00:57:51.199
I think the news media spent so much time focusing on Joe Biden's age, Sleepy Joe, whatever, whatever, and listen to the rhetoric that Trump was making.
00:57:51.360 --> 00:57:55.679
The news media allowed Trump to say that Kamala Harris was not really black.
00:57:55.920 --> 00:57:58.719
He set the tone for news media coverage.
00:57:59.039 --> 00:57:59.440
Trump said that.
00:58:00.320 --> 00:58:03.119
Trump said that and the tone of news media coverage.
00:58:06.239 --> 00:58:07.360
Yes, exactly.
00:58:07.679 --> 00:58:12.880
Democrats, I will say, you know, fall into that in a way that just Republicans just don't.
00:58:13.119 --> 00:58:15.360
Conspiracy theory, another Trump conspiracy theory.
00:58:15.519 --> 00:58:18.719
Remember when people were thinking that Trump gave a lot of people money?
00:58:18.960 --> 00:58:22.079
I think that was another reason why maybe some of the rappers.
00:58:28.960 --> 00:58:30.400
These are not conspiracies.
00:58:30.559 --> 00:58:37.360
Just like, you know, um Haley Stevens had Barack Obama appearing to endorse her on a commercial.
00:58:37.519 --> 00:58:40.000
That's not a conspiracy, that's a fact.
00:58:40.239 --> 00:58:43.920
People said Donald Trump gave us money and he wanted them to.
00:58:44.079 --> 00:58:45.199
He said Trump money.
00:58:45.360 --> 00:58:52.320
Donald Trump has promised to pay every single adult in the United States$5,000 if Democrats win the House and the Senate.
00:58:52.480 --> 00:58:53.599
That's not a conspiracy.
00:58:53.840 --> 00:58:56.159
If Republicans rather win the House and the Senate.
00:58:56.320 --> 00:58:57.920
That's that's what happened.
00:58:58.159 --> 00:59:07.280
Now, what we know happened, what we believe happened, how we interpret things, do we believe that it's possible for somebody to shoot something other than a bullet out of a high caliber rifle?
00:59:07.440 --> 00:59:07.599
Yeah.
00:59:07.920 --> 00:59:10.639
Trump, man, he just does whatever, he writes all new rules.
00:59:10.800 --> 00:59:12.960
Why why can't Democrats be more like Trump, man?
00:59:13.039 --> 00:59:15.199
Just be a win, give out$5,000?
00:59:15.519 --> 00:59:17.519
Oh my gosh, that's like uh, you know, quick pro-quo.
00:59:17.920 --> 00:59:26.960
And if if Democrats said that the news media would challenge the hell out of them, everything Kamala Harris said, the news media was willing to challenge.
00:59:27.039 --> 00:59:35.599
If Donald Trump said that the news media was not as willing to accuse him of lying, despite his incredible, I'll tell you another person.
00:59:36.159 --> 00:59:37.519
Are you familiar with John Oliver?
00:59:37.760 --> 00:59:38.079
Yes.
00:59:38.320 --> 00:59:39.760
John Oliver questioned it.
00:59:39.920 --> 00:59:44.239
And John Oliver went into a lot of detail about why he questioned it.
00:59:44.559 --> 00:59:47.199
Do you know who um John Stewart is?
00:59:47.519 --> 00:59:48.159
Yes.
00:59:48.480 --> 00:59:52.719
And I believe both of these are respected journalists, and they questioned it.
00:59:52.880 --> 00:59:54.960
I think there are many people who have questioned.
00:59:55.519 --> 00:59:56.880
These are hosts of television programs.
00:59:57.280 --> 01:00:00.159
John Oliver is one of the best investigative reporters in the United States.
01:00:00.320 --> 01:00:01.119
I know, but he's the investigation.
01:00:01.360 --> 01:00:02.960
He's one of the best investigative reporters.
01:00:03.199 --> 01:00:07.760
Being a journalist is much like things that if you stop doing, you are no longer one.
01:00:07.920 --> 01:00:09.760
And that's something that only journalists can really know.
01:00:09.840 --> 01:00:13.360
Like only working journalists will be like, oh, is Jake Tapper a journalist?
01:00:13.519 --> 01:00:15.119
You know, a lot of people would be like, yeah, of course.
01:00:15.199 --> 01:00:16.480
He does journalism every night on TV.
01:00:16.559 --> 01:00:19.599
And then there are a lot of other journalists who would be like, no, he's not a beat journalist.
01:00:19.679 --> 01:00:20.719
He doesn't know what the ins and outs.
01:00:20.800 --> 01:00:22.079
He hasn't done it in however many years.
01:00:22.239 --> 01:00:23.440
Same thing could be said about Stephen A.
01:00:23.519 --> 01:00:23.760
Smith.
01:00:23.840 --> 01:00:24.400
Is he a journalist?
01:00:24.559 --> 01:00:25.280
He was for 30 years.
01:00:25.519 --> 01:00:26.960
Oh, you're gonna compare Stephen A.
01:00:27.039 --> 01:00:28.239
Smith to Jake Tapper.
01:00:28.320 --> 01:00:34.480
I think that's a very fair, they kind of operate in the same sort of political top of sports media, top of political media.
01:00:34.960 --> 01:00:42.079
I'm just saying, these people are not uh, so to say, so to speak, working journalists that are creating, that are getting scoops.
01:00:42.239 --> 01:00:46.639
Like what was John Oliver's scoop on Trump's assassination attempt to do that?
01:00:46.880 --> 01:00:48.800
I don't know if you've ever watched the John Oliver show.
01:00:49.920 --> 01:00:51.840
I don't know if you've ever watched the John Oliver show.
01:00:52.000 --> 01:00:52.320
Unfortunately.
01:00:52.639 --> 01:01:00.639
But what I know that John Oliver does is he does an excellent job of backing up what he says with actual facts, not supported facts.
01:01:00.880 --> 01:01:04.480
And so this idea that he's done you can't trust him and he's not.
01:01:05.440 --> 01:01:06.000
I can't trust him.
01:01:06.079 --> 01:01:13.440
I just I think these people are, you know, uh very much doing similarly to what Hassan Piker does, and they are, you know, motivating a a base and an audience.
01:01:13.760 --> 01:01:14.400
Oh, so seeing you.
01:01:14.880 --> 01:01:15.440
Speaking to a crowd.
01:01:15.840 --> 01:01:17.440
Is 60 Minutes also speaking to a crowd?
01:01:17.760 --> 01:01:18.800
Yes, under Barry Weiss.
01:01:21.840 --> 01:01:30.880
Prior to Barry Weiss, you're saying that 60 Minutes was just like Hassan Piker, that there's not investigative journalism where you're getting people out and you are looking at facts.
01:01:31.119 --> 01:01:32.960
These are just people who are television personnel.
01:01:33.360 --> 01:01:37.440
Post Barry Weiss, there are still people doing investigative journalism in the CPU.
01:01:38.320 --> 01:01:41.039
But John Oliver doesn't do investigative journalism, in your opinion.
01:01:42.320 --> 01:01:47.920
I can't point to one of his investigations over the last several years that was impactful or noteworthy.
01:01:48.159 --> 01:01:50.880
I'm a journalist who reads every single award-winning story ever.
01:01:51.280 --> 01:01:52.000
He doesn't write stories.
01:01:52.480 --> 01:01:52.800
That's my point.
01:01:53.039 --> 01:01:53.360
That's my point.
01:01:53.599 --> 01:01:54.239
That's what I'm trying to say.
01:01:54.400 --> 01:01:55.920
Well, 60 Minutes is not written either.
01:01:56.320 --> 01:01:57.440
60 Minutes is a television show.
01:01:57.760 --> 01:01:59.679
They have producers that do journalism.
01:02:00.000 --> 01:02:01.519
He has producers who do journalists.
01:02:01.760 --> 01:02:02.639
And if you watched his show.
01:02:04.000 --> 01:02:08.400
If you watched his show, you might be able to have an informed oh, come on.
01:02:08.719 --> 01:02:09.280
He is talent.
01:02:09.360 --> 01:02:10.320
He is on-air talent.
01:02:10.400 --> 01:02:10.800
Yes, he is.
01:02:10.880 --> 01:02:11.440
It's very different.
01:02:11.679 --> 01:02:12.480
I'm in the news industry.
01:02:12.639 --> 01:02:14.239
I'm just telling you what the language that we use.
01:02:15.440 --> 01:02:16.239
I will say this.
01:02:16.320 --> 01:02:17.280
I will tell you this.
01:02:17.519 --> 01:02:25.920
The um the support of Donald Trump in our community, which we saw increase by 8,000 votes in 2024.
01:02:26.159 --> 01:02:31.360
Uh, of course, I correctly guess the amount of Trump voters because I went around talking to everybody.
01:02:31.679 --> 01:02:50.480
So many um are low income, so many are at the margins, so many are directly the individuals that Trump says he would deliver justice to or not, or sort of, you know, against, right?
01:02:50.719 --> 01:03:06.159
Talking about what he was gonna do with HBCUs and talking about how he was gonna you know defend the border, which has turned into sort of rounding up people with immigration proceeding issues.
01:03:06.480 --> 01:03:33.760
I mean, so many of the people in in southwest Detroit, um Hispanic voters, Gabriela Santiago Romero, I will never forget her saying this at the uncommitted um February 2024 event in Dearborn, that she worked, she remembers working on the Hillary Clinton campaign in 16 and that the 24 Biden campaign felt like Clinton on steroids, right?
01:03:34.079 --> 01:03:38.880
Now good for the Democratic Party that they recognized that and forced Biden's removal.
01:03:39.440 --> 01:03:50.960
But I I really just wonder, and I I wonder too, if Biden had just hadn't done the debate with Trump, if he had just said, Trump, I'm president, you're not, you will never be president again, you undermine the office of presidency.
01:03:51.039 --> 01:03:52.400
Why would I debate you?
01:03:52.880 --> 01:03:58.480
Much like how Trump would have done Biden if he would have won in 20 and then, you know.
01:03:58.719 --> 01:04:19.679
I I just I really wonder if Biden could have just been Grandpa Joe, not done a lot of I mean, do you remember that Renaissance High School July 13th, I believe it was, um, um, rally that he did, and and it was awkward and it was uncomfortable, and his supporters left saying, uh, is he okay?
01:04:20.239 --> 01:04:32.320
And so I I just yeah, I'm stuck on the fact that Democrats have done so wrong to their own voters, and it does make sense that a lot of people are like looking for different options.
01:04:32.480 --> 01:04:40.960
I do wonder how other groups that aren't Republicans are gonna have the resources that Republicans do to court some of these voters.
01:04:41.599 --> 01:04:47.840
Republicans run for office by manipulating people to vote against their self-interest.
01:04:49.920 --> 01:04:51.280
That's what they do.
01:04:51.599 --> 01:04:55.519
Republicans represent the interest of a money class of people.
01:04:56.000 --> 01:05:06.400
And the way they do it is they weaponize hate and they weaponize fear, and they weaponize everything they can to create division in America.
01:05:06.800 --> 01:05:13.039
Democrats have increasingly been unwilling to separate themselves from Republicans.
01:05:13.199 --> 01:05:17.599
They spend a lot of time reacting to Republicans as opposed to initiating new policy.
01:05:17.920 --> 01:05:22.559
We see Democrats like Mondami actually doing something very different.
01:05:22.639 --> 01:05:28.800
You see Democrats who are running for office as um Democratic Socialists doing something very different.
01:05:29.039 --> 01:05:46.800
However, Democrats do um Republicans are not the Republican brand is Mike Rogers saying prescription drugs are too high while at the same time voting to increase the price of prescription drugs.
01:05:47.039 --> 01:05:56.159
The Republican brand is trying to take away Medicare, Medicaid, housing support, civil rights support.
01:05:56.320 --> 01:05:59.039
These are very specific things they're trying to do.
01:06:00.159 --> 01:06:03.519
And, you know, there's the agenda is clear.
01:06:03.679 --> 01:06:06.639
Project 2025 lays it all out.
01:06:07.440 --> 01:06:16.239
If the news media had done a great job outlining that and connecting the dots to Trump, that would have been helpful, but that didn't happen.
01:06:16.400 --> 01:06:18.480
And I don't know what the journalistic standards say.
01:06:18.559 --> 01:06:25.199
You can only read and and quote quote cross-examine what Kamala Harris is saying, but not Donald Trump.
01:06:25.360 --> 01:06:34.159
But how many renewed shows did I watch where they asked her how she was going to fix the economy and says, well, Trump said this and Trump said that, and did not give them the same type of treatment.
01:06:34.320 --> 01:06:38.079
And so I think a lot of people believe that corporate media is bought and paid for.
01:06:38.239 --> 01:06:39.039
They don't trust it.
01:06:39.199 --> 01:06:41.760
They believe that political parties are bought and paid for.
01:06:41.840 --> 01:06:43.119
They don't trust them.
01:06:43.280 --> 01:06:46.480
And a lot of people are looking for a different way.
01:06:46.639 --> 01:06:51.840
But I think that different way is not going to come from an independent party.
01:06:52.320 --> 01:06:56.719
The two-party system in America has gone is historic to the beginning of America.
01:06:56.800 --> 01:06:58.800
I don't see it changing anytime soon.
01:06:59.039 --> 01:07:09.679
What has happened historically is that Democrats and Republicans have shifted what they do to accommodate whatever the politics are of the day.
01:07:10.639 --> 01:07:14.800
When I was growing up, it was a great thing to be a liberal and a horrible thing to be a conservative.
01:07:15.039 --> 01:07:19.199
Democrats were popular and conservatives tried to pretend like they were like Democrats.
01:07:19.360 --> 01:07:22.639
In 2026, we're kind of getting back to that.
01:07:22.960 --> 01:07:26.480
But in terms of um stories, I don't know if we'll ever be back.
01:07:26.719 --> 01:07:27.840
I'm telling you, it is.
01:07:37.360 --> 01:07:40.000
You sound like a wonderful 29-year-old.
01:07:40.239 --> 01:07:44.239
Because you've only lived through one set of politics and you believe that that's all that's possible.
01:07:44.639 --> 01:07:44.880
I know.
01:07:45.280 --> 01:07:47.679
But I lived through the changing.
01:07:48.000 --> 01:07:51.199
Like when I was a kid, liberals were very popular.
01:07:51.920 --> 01:07:52.800
They were never popular.
01:07:52.880 --> 01:07:53.599
Not when you were a kid.
01:07:53.840 --> 01:07:56.159
When Ronald Reagan became president in 1981.
01:07:56.559 --> 01:07:57.360
What about Obama?
01:07:57.679 --> 01:08:04.639
But Obama ran as there are no red states, there are blue states, and there's or blue states as the United States of America.
01:08:04.719 --> 01:08:05.599
He ran as a moderate.
01:08:05.679 --> 01:08:06.800
He did not run as a liberal.
01:08:07.039 --> 01:08:08.079
People called him a liberal.
01:08:08.239 --> 01:08:09.440
He never pretended to be a liberal.
01:08:09.840 --> 01:08:11.039
Who was the last liberal president?
01:08:11.679 --> 01:08:12.400
Um Jimmy Carter.
01:08:13.280 --> 01:08:13.840
Jimmy Carter.
01:08:14.320 --> 01:08:15.920
And that was before Reagan.
01:08:16.079 --> 01:08:24.319
So if you really look at what happened, Reaganomics came and he said there's a new day in America, and all of a sudden they slowly pushed Democrats out of power.
01:08:24.560 --> 01:08:28.399
And so, but when I was a kid, welfare was good.
01:08:28.560 --> 01:08:29.760
It was okay to have welfare.
01:08:29.920 --> 01:08:32.000
How do we build strengthen the social safety net?
01:08:32.159 --> 01:08:39.600
You actually had people believing that it was a societal responsibility to house people and provide them food and do all of those things.
01:08:39.760 --> 01:08:45.680
I grew up at a time when the Great Society was the law of the land, and the great society was how do we mend these things.
01:08:45.760 --> 01:08:47.840
So we were by no means perfect.
01:08:48.079 --> 01:08:57.279
But towards the end of the 1970s, and a lot of that had to do with what was happening in our economy at that time, towards the end of the 1970s, you started seeing shifts.
01:08:57.439 --> 01:09:02.560
And a lot of those shifts were planned for starting in the 1950s.
01:09:03.199 --> 01:09:08.720
So there have been people working all along to create what is now called neoliberal politics.
01:09:08.800 --> 01:09:11.199
And neoliberalism changes things.
01:09:11.439 --> 01:09:13.279
There is a push against it.
01:09:13.439 --> 01:09:15.439
And I don't know when it's going to change.
01:09:15.600 --> 01:09:19.600
But I do think that we can never expect politics to remain static.
01:09:19.760 --> 01:09:20.880
They never have.
01:09:22.159 --> 01:09:23.119
Yeah, I agree.
01:09:23.359 --> 01:09:33.520
I will tell you that in my lifetime, even among the like more moderate conservative Republicans in Midland, there was like, you know, social.
01:09:34.000 --> 01:09:36.800
I'm a social liberal, but I'm a fiscal conservative.
01:09:37.279 --> 01:09:38.399
That's what I guess what I meant.
01:09:38.479 --> 01:09:43.680
Like maybe not democratic politicians being cool, but there was sort of this, you know.
01:09:44.159 --> 01:09:54.000
That was the way that they were able to dress up their austerity measures and say, well, I care about people having freedom, but I didn't but you know, but but I mean look at what fiscal conservatives did.
01:09:54.159 --> 01:10:03.279
They cut off the welfare, they eliminated public housing, they did so many things that really shrunk the role of government in helping to protect people.
01:10:03.439 --> 01:10:06.560
And so there was no environmental justice and social liberalism.
01:10:06.640 --> 01:10:09.680
And they allowed people, the police to go out.
01:10:09.760 --> 01:10:13.680
And you know, you had mass incarceration happening by social liberals.
01:10:14.239 --> 01:10:19.119
It's so people said that, and now the the the mask is off.
01:10:19.199 --> 01:10:21.840
Now we just are anti-all of these things.
01:10:22.399 --> 01:10:32.640
But when you go too far and you push too hard against the well-being of the American public, the public begins to push back.
01:10:33.359 --> 01:10:43.680
When you take away people's health care benefits and food benefits, and when people cannot afford gas, when people cannot afford to purchase a home and a car, that has political implications.
01:10:43.760 --> 01:10:55.520
And when we're in these wars in Iran, which I mean, nobody really understands um why we are in um in the to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon.
01:10:56.239 --> 01:10:57.359
Why we're in Iran.
01:10:57.520 --> 01:10:59.199
Nobody understands why we're there.
01:10:59.760 --> 01:11:03.680
We don't want them to have a nuclear weapon, so they can't do 9-11 again, I guess.
01:11:04.079 --> 01:11:08.720
That's the statement, and yet Barack Obama reached an accord that would stop them.
01:11:09.600 --> 01:11:16.399
And Donald Trump undid that accord to stop them, and there's no more symmetry there.
01:11:16.479 --> 01:11:22.159
And so I think looking beyond what they say, most Americans don't know why we're there.
01:11:22.399 --> 01:11:25.600
There's trunk Trump says there's no more nuclear devices.
01:11:25.680 --> 01:11:27.039
We don't know that that's true.
01:11:27.279 --> 01:11:32.000
We're in a world where things are not what we thought they were going to be.
01:11:32.720 --> 01:11:34.640
I know that we have to wrap this up.
01:11:34.960 --> 01:11:35.359
We do.
01:11:35.680 --> 01:11:40.640
We're we're gonna uh go through uh short break.
01:11:40.880 --> 01:11:43.600
When we come back, we're gonna hear what we're thankful for.
01:11:51.039 --> 01:11:58.319
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01:11:58.720 --> 01:12:06.880
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01:12:35.359 --> 01:12:36.239
Welcome back.
01:12:36.479 --> 01:12:38.399
You're listening to Authentically Detroit.
01:12:38.560 --> 01:12:41.439
We are broadcasting live at ECN.
01:12:41.600 --> 01:12:44.960
We want to thank you guys again for tuning in to our program.
01:12:45.279 --> 01:12:50.880
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01:12:51.119 --> 01:12:54.399
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01:13:06.239 --> 01:13:11.920
Of course, it is time our weekly wrap-up, which is our shout-outs.
01:13:12.159 --> 01:13:17.840
Anyone that you want to give special attention to that you want to shine this week, Donna?
01:13:18.159 --> 01:13:20.159
Once again, a shout out to the ECN team.
01:13:20.319 --> 01:13:21.840
Outstanding job on Saturday.
01:13:22.000 --> 01:13:24.960
Shout out to everybody who came to visit and all of our panelists.
01:13:25.279 --> 01:13:25.680
Awesome.
01:13:25.840 --> 01:13:27.279
I want to shout out my neighbor John.
01:13:27.520 --> 01:13:33.039
He has been taking care of our other neighbor's yard, sort of thanklessly.
01:13:33.520 --> 01:13:37.760
Um, and when I tried to do it the other week, he was like, no, no, no, you're good.
01:13:37.920 --> 01:13:39.199
I was like, he's paying you to do this.
01:13:39.279 --> 01:13:41.119
He's like, nope, I just like doing it.
01:13:41.279 --> 01:13:42.079
So thanks, John.
01:13:42.479 --> 01:13:44.399
Appreciate your contribution to the neighborhood.
01:13:44.560 --> 01:13:50.159
If only we could get our real tea crypto house, which somebody apparently is there, somebody owns it, I guess.
01:13:50.239 --> 01:13:50.720
I don't know.
01:13:50.880 --> 01:13:55.439
But we got a crypto house on our block that nobody ever takes care of, Mozolana of anything.
01:13:55.680 --> 01:13:57.920
And so uh, yeah, we're figuring that out.
01:13:58.000 --> 01:14:04.159
But shout out to John for uh being our our little block, our unofficial block cub champion.
01:14:04.239 --> 01:14:05.119
Thanks, John.
01:14:05.840 --> 01:14:08.159
All right, we're gonna hear from you guys next week.
01:14:08.319 --> 01:14:10.319
We appreciate you so much for tuning in again.
01:14:10.479 --> 01:14:11.840
This is Authentically Detroit.